"Black Sea"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

I tend not to like submarine movies. They just remind me that stressfulness and boredom are not mutually exclusive. Yeah, all those depth charges, red flashing lights, sweaty faces, and steam are plenty stressful. But, my goodness, they can be pretty dull. It’s like a slow, constant drip of water on your skin: both monotonous and torture.

I would not call “Black Sea” torture, though. It’s not a day in the park either, nor is it a quiet evening in, or even a swashbuckling adventure. It is predictably watchable.

“Black Sea” makes sure to remind you of the darker, and perhaps more intriguing, days of submarining—the Cold War, in particular, but also some of the Nazi U-Boats and WWII. But this movie is not really about all that. It is about Captain Robinson (Jude Law), who is a present-day submarine captain working for a corporation that, you know, needs submarines. That is, until he gets laid off. After all, who really needs submarines these days?

Robinson is pissed and doesn’t know what to do. He dedicated his whole life to submarining—and even sacrificed relationships with his son and former wife—and doesn’t really have anything to fall back on

But then a friend—also an out-of-sorts ex-submariner—tells him about this really hush-hush, really dangerous, certainly very illegal, opportunity. He tells Robinson that once upon a time the Soviets made a deal with the Nazis that involved shipping (via submarine) tens of millions of dollars in solid gold back over to the Third Reich. But on the way back through the Black Sea, the gold-laden submarine crashed. Either everyone forgot about the submarine—kinda a lot going on back then—or else they could not get to it, because, according to Robinson’s friend, the submarine is still there.

So of course what could be better for out-of-work sailors than to go on a treasure hunt? So that’s just what they do. They get their hands on an old Soviet sub, assemble a half-Russian, half-British crew, and set sail for the wreck.

The good-hearted, magnanimous Robinson tells his crew that, after paying their backers, they are going to split the treasure evenly between them. Jackpot! Right? Well, the problem is, the divers start to think, “Why does that there cook get as much as me?” And the beastly Russian engine-room worker thinks, “Well if one of these Brits happens to die on the job, there is more for the rest of us.” In other words, discontent is sown.

And of course it only gets worse, because, as we all know, a ride on a submarine is never smooth—whether it is a power failure, sinking below crush depth, enemy torpedoes and depth charges (which, mercifully, do not make an appearance in this film), or just those random yet seemingly ubiquitous hull breaches, something must go awry. I’m pretty sure Murphy Law’s was made with submarining in mind.

All that is to say, “Black Sea” has plenty of the stress and tension you would expect from a submarine movie. You really do feel like it would absolutely definitely suck to be on a submarine when something goes wrong. And I, at least, had the opportunity to once again thank my lucky stars that I am a landlubber.

But, for all its heart-pounding, stress-inducing drama, “Black Sea” remains strikingly conventional. This or that particular scene may not be predictable, but the movie as a whole sure is. Jude Law and the rest of the cast do an admirable job bringing the amusing (albeit contrived) story to life. But all the plot points just feel too familiar.

So yes, you will still feel the stress, just like you will still feel a punch in the gut even if you know it (or something like it) is coming. But whereas a punch in the gut always feels pretty fresh—it never gets old, if you know what I mean—“Black Sea” does feel somewhat stale.

"The Interview"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

“The Interview” is not entirely humorless. But by far the funniest thing about this movie is that some dictator halfway around the world thought that it was so seriously provocative, so worthy of outrage, that it called for an act of so-called “cyber vandalism”. This movie isn’t so seriously anything. And it is at most worthy of a languid wave of the hand, perhaps a derisive sneer, or maybe—just maybe—a chuckle or two. If you’ve burned more than three calories in the process, you’ve overreacted. So what’s truly hilarious is that “The Interview” has gotten the attention (and profits) that it decidedly does not deserve evidently because Kim Jong-un was so worried about it getting the attention that, again, it does not deserve.

Why doesn’t it deserve attention? Well, just watch the trailer. Also if you want to know the entire plot of the movie, just watch a trailer. Dave Skylark (James Franco), half-Barbara Walters, half-Perez Hilton, has a popular TV show where celebrities debase themselves. Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen) is its producer. These two bottom-feeders get a chance to do something important when they land an interview with Kim Jong-un (Randall Park), who turns out to be a big fan of the show. But the CIA wants them to use their insider access to assassinate Kim Jong-un instead.

The rest of the movie is epicycles fluttering around the same plot points and gags. Skylark and Rapaport find out that Kim is surprisingly down-to-earth. Then they find out he’s not. They discover that Kim isn’t so bad. Then they find out he is. They think for just a second that Kim has his own side of the story and really cares about his people and actually isn’t doing such a bad job. Then they found out: Uh, nope.

Meanwhile they ride a tank while listening to Katy Perry, tangle with a Siberian tiger, hide things where even the TSA wouldn’t look, and play basketball with topless strippers. Yes, it is that kind of movie.

But with that said, “The Interview” is not as awful as I thought it would be. It has a certain level of self-awareness to it—awareness that it is, in fact, quite a dumb movie—that makes it hard to criticize too harshly. James Franco, in particular, should be lauded for the drunken smirk he wears on his glossy, contorted face throughout the movie—a smirk that says, “Yeah, I don’t know what this is either … so I’m just going to be relentlessly goofy.” At least he seems to be having fun. It reminds me of a sixth-grade slumber party: By midnight everyone in their soda- and pizza-induced stupor is giggling themselves sick over jokes they all know are ridiculously unfunny … but hey, why not?

Don’t get me wrong, “The Interview” is not a good movie. It is unabashedly dumb—nothing more, nothing less. Its guiding thoughts seem to be: “Wouldn’t it be funny if we made Kim Jong-un do this?” “Wouldn’t it be great if he turned out to be really into Katy Perry, margaritas, and gossip shows?” and “Kim should poop his pants at some point, right?”

The lasting legacy of “The Interview” will always be that, once upon a time, North Korea thought it was worth getting bent out of shape over. And yet ironically the only thing less effectual—less capable of being taken seriously—than North Korea’s threats is this movie.

"Interstellar"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

“Interstellar” has to be one of the more polarizing movies in recent months. Many are head-over-heels in love with it; others gag just thinking about it. This makes sense. There is plenty to love and plenty to hate about this movie—plenty that’s great and plenty that’s pretty bad. So I can see how one might think the great totally swamped the bad, or vice versa.

One thing we can all agree on is “Interstellar” is ambitious. It takes a while to pinpoint the historical setting of its opening scenes. At first it looks like 1930s dust bowl. Dirt everywhere. People trying to live through crippling dust storms—trying to keep their crops alive, tractors running, curtains clean, and lungs clear.

Then we see Cooper’s (Matthew McConaughey) beat-up pickup truck, his clothes, and his family—his daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy), son, Tom (Timothee Chalamet), and father-in-law, Donald (John Lithgow)—and it looks more like the 1990s or early 2000s.

Then we see Cooper whip out some fancy electronic gismo and it’s clear that we are in the future. Nonetheless, there is a reason it looks like the 1930s dust bowl: The land has been ravaged, we humans are responsible, and now we are paying for it. It is not clear what we did—it seems to be some combination of global warming, bad farming practices and nuclear holocaust—but this time it is not just Oklahoma, or the Midwest, or even just the United States. This time the whole Earth is dying.

The only thing for the human race to do is call it a day—move on, give up on Earth and look toward a new horizon. To be a bit more specific: People need to find a new planet. Luckily a mysterious wormhole has opened up near Saturn, and scientists believe that several habitable planets lie just on the other side. So Cooper, his family, Oklahoma, the Midwest, and all of humanity need a space cowboy. They need someone to go out there, wrangle with the wild side of Mother Nature, and find out what’s up.

Cooper is that space cowboy. He has to go. And yet, his 10-year-old daughter begs him not to. His 15-year-old son is stoic, but clearly needs his pa. Cooper is torn, not just between his family and the rest of humanity, or between life on the farm and a space adventure, but also between the felt need to move on to a new frontier—to a new way of life—on the one hand and an instinctual, arch-sentimental loyalty to Earth and its current inhabitants on the other. Cooper always has one eye looking forward and one eye looking back—one to the planets before him and one to the planet behind him; one to the future and one to the past.

So does the good swamp the bad, or is it vice versa? Was it true love or bitter hate? I think I am in the “love it” camp. I think. The first 2/3 of the movie is, in many ways, masterful. It is beautiful, compelling, well-acted, and intriguing. Perhaps the biggest highlight is the score. The incessant, chilling organ reveals the universe to be our greatest cathedral. It is a bold and ambitious score. Quite often it dominates all other sound—even to the point of drowning out dialogue. But this is a brilliant move. Despite outer space’s utter silence, the hounding, divine chorus of the universe is deafening. The score alone—but also the rest of the first 2/3 of the movie—are enough to garner my approval.

There is, however, the last 1/3 of the movie. Best to ignore it. It is a mess. It pushes the story from science fiction to silly fiction, or science farce, or you know whatever—it doesn’t so much push the bounds of physics, cosmology, and astronomy as it dribbles out a bunch of words that kinda sound deep but actually are not meaningful or coherent or interesting or cool or deep in any way, shape or form. It is a cheesy and ham-handed finale. Halfway through the movie I wondered: Can (filmmaker) Christopher Nolan do it? Can he land the dismount? Can he give this movie the ending it deserves?

Nope.

But the first 2/3: That’s a good movie.

"Nightcrawler"

By Matt Dunca
Coastal View News

To call Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) a sociopath—i.e., a person who exhibits extreme anti-social behavior, lacks a conscience, and feels no empathy for other people—is to assume that businesses are not people. If they are people, then Bloom has to be among the most perceptive, conscientious, caring, non-sociopathic people of all time, especially when it comes to his own business.

Bloom is a “stringer” aka “nightcrawler”, which is someone who trolls around city streets (L.A. in this case) in the middle of the night waiting for some kind of human disaster—whether it be a car wreck, fire, or murder—so that he can film the ghastly business and sell it to a news station eager to spice up their morning rundown.

This automatically puts Bloom in the “sleazy” category. But it’s not an over-the-top, oily-used-car-salesman sleazy. It’s more like an over-eager, nerd-who-took-some-business-classes-and-is-now-Obsessesed kind of sleazy (if there is such a thing). This is a subtle but key distinction—one that Gyllenhaal is masterful in getting right—because, insofar as we are to be icked out by Bloom, it is not because his way of comporting himself is hokey; it is because it is too measured and calculating (and, again, a bit nerdy).

Now, at first it seems like Bloom might just be like any ol’ guy desperate for a job, perhaps with the exception that he is willing to sidestep certain rules (or go the extra mile, depending on how you look at it). What he does prior to nightcrawling is go around in the middle of the night stealing chain link fencing and manhole covers to sell for scrap. So we know Bloom has no problem slinking around in the middle of the night.

But one night while driving around he comes across a car wreck. The police are already there, trying to save a woman from her burning car. Just after Bloom arrives a crew of nightcrawlers come screeching onto the scene like a pack of wild animals unconcernedly jostling those around them. They butt right into the action—getting intrusively close to the drama for the sake of the best shot.

Bloom is in awe. He thinks (a) “What an awesome job!”, (b) “Hey, I could do that!” and (c) “What a really awesome job!!” So Bloom starts his own nightcrawling business. He jumps right in, tirelessly stalking disaster—waiting, hoping, aching for the blood and gore that will help him realize his economic ambitions.

Before long, Bloom gets his foot in the door at a local news station. And then it is no time at all until he has jammed and crammed his whole maniacally single-minded self through that door and taken up residence like he owns the place.

Again, Louis Bloom isn’t much for lines he ought not cross. It is not that he sees those lines, feels their pull on his conscience, but then steps over them anyway. No, Bloom doesn’t even see the lines; or maybe he does in some cold, intellectual way (after all, it is not good business to seem like a ruthless sociopath). But he certainly does not feel as if there are any lines he should not cross; they are not part of his moral landscape.

Here I refer to his “moral landscape”. At first it is easy to think this is nonsense for Bloom—that he just doesn’t have a moral landscape. But really Bloom’s moral landscape is just different (and sick and twisted). His ethos, moral code, conscience, religion are centered on the demands of the marketplace. One might ask: How could it be wrong to make money while at the same time giving people want they want? What could be so bad about ambition? Are not diligence, creativity, and efficiency the spirit of capitalism—what drives our culture … The American Dream? Why would anyone want to thwart a small business owner?

You can guess how Bloom might answer these questions. Others—presumably without Bloom’s moral and social pathology—are happy enough to ignore their consciences and go along with this business of shock and awe because staying afloat in the competitive marketplace demands ignoring such things. But for Bloom it is hard-wired. It is natural. He is the byproduct of economic evolution—the values of capitalism are encoded in his genes.

The short of it is “Nightcrawler” is a really good movie. To my mind, this is Jake Gyllenhaal’s best performance. And as for filmmaker Dan Gilroy, he has been playing around with pretty movies that lack a soul (or any plot, or any thematic punch) for a while, but now he has finally made something worthwhile.

"The Drop"

By Matt Duncan
Coastal View News

A “drop bar” is a bar where criminals conveniently drop off cash from their criminal activities. Each night there is a different drop bar in Brooklyn, N.Y. People come in, drop of their packages, and then slink off unnoticed. Then the boss comes in and gets all the cash.

“Cousin Marv’s” is one such bar. The owner is, appropriately enough, Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini). Marv and his cousin, Bob (Tom Hardy), run the bar and manage all the cash transactions. Marv is the shrewd ringleader. Or so it seems. Bob is the meek (and maybe a little slow) bartender who does Marv’s bidding. Or so it seems.

The usual routine is broken up one night when burglars rob Cousin Marv’s. This would suck pretty much no matter what. But it really sucks for Marv and Bob, since the mob bosses still want their cash. This thread fizzles out pretty quickly, though. What seems to be important is just that we get a sense of how ruthless and unforgiving (and predictably stereotypical) the mob bosses are. They don’t care what happened. They just want their money.

Even more tangential than the robbery is a peculiar little romance. One night when Bob is walking home he hears something jostling around inside a trashcan in someone’s front yard. He investigates, and finds a beaten, bloodied puppy dog. Nadia (Noomi Rapace), who lives at this house, hears the commotion and comes out to see what is going on. She has no idea about the dog—she did not put it there and does not know who did. But she is just as concerned about it as Bob. So they form a bond over the dog.

What happens next? Well, there are some scenes where more robberies are planned. Then some more of Bob, Nadia, and their puppy. Then more sociopathic mobsters. More planning. More puppy. More mobsters. At some point a lunatic of a jealous ex-boyfriend/ex-dog owner shows up and mixes things up. Then more planning. More puppy. More mobsters. And so on.

“The Drop” is a poorly sewn together Frankenstein of a movie—with one dangling, comical arm longer than the other, ears where there should be eyes, and alas, no soul animating its heaving, clunky corpse. The effect is neither scary nor dramatic nor funny nor interesting nor touching nor compelling. It’s odd, this movie. You get the sense that each of its parts belong somewhere in a good movie. Take the score, for instance. Its persistent foreboding tones do a nice job of casting an ominous pall over the whole movie. But why? A scene where two people are playing with a puppy has no use for the music from “There Will Be Blood”.

Or consider the acting. Tom Hardy is a gifted actor. And he is by far the most compelling person in this movie. One wishes he could save the movie. Perhaps in another version of it—with the right context (and more of it)—he could. But here Hardy’s character is perplexing, and not in a good way. At times he seems quiet and dim-witted, but at other times he comes off as sharp and assertive. His true character never really emerges—it never finds a place in this script. It would be nice if this could be chalked up to complexity or mysteriousness. But I doubt it can.

No, “The Drop” is a collection of poorly organized parts—some of which are silly and cliché in their own right, others of which could be good parts of a better movie.