In Which We Exercise A Spiritual And Moral Preference

Always the Bridesmaid

by ETHAN PETERSON

Bright
dir. David Ayer
118 minutes

I recently received an e-mail from a concerned reader, a member of the guild. He asked me why we put the only name of the director on a movie review when the writer of a film is often just as important to the final product. As an example, he cited The Princess Bride, which required almost no input from Rob Reiner at all, and was possibly made substantially worse by the director’s presence. Well, this concerned reader had a point, and I will take it under advisement. But today is not the time, since the writer of Bright is dogshit, and whether the changes director David Ayer made to the script are good or bad, it is spiritually and morally preferable to pretend that Bright was more like an immaculate conception.

Pretending only goes so far, however. Bright still features the awful, patterned, unfunny dialogue of He Who Shall Not Be Named, and listening to it is something of a chore. On the plus side of the ledger is the presence of two likable and disciplined actors: as a police officer in Los Angeles, Will Smith, who is finally beginning to look seriously old, and Joel Edgerton as his partner, an orc. The former is somewhat traditional casting, but the latter is inspired. Edgerton’s chameleonic face is intrinsically unmemorable. Slathering it in blue makeup gives him the distinctiveness required to slip into a particular role.

For the amount of adjectives I have used so far in this essai, I should probably try to get my name removed from this review. Sometimes such words are required to say what you mean. (I will try to be more plainspoken from now on; like if Raymond Carver had a child with the guy who wrote The Trumpet of the Swan.) Bright has its own vocabulary/lore, although it is pretty shitty/dumb. Urban fantasy is new to Max Landis, since the only book he has ever read is the Model Penal Code. This Los Angeles is filled with different races: orcs, elves, centaurs (I didn’t see any, but I think it says this in the wikipedia). OK actually there are not that many races.

Envisioning Bright as the first effort in a series of films, Ayer never has the Dark Lord of the Elves make an appearance in Bright, but we are told that a thousand years ago he was fought off by orcs and elves and humans. Since the Los Angeles depicted in Bright features rampant police abuse (“Everybody hates cops,” Smith’s daughter tells him before never appearing in Bright again), racism, sexism (Noomi Rapace has all of four lines), anti-Semitism, poverty, gang violence and prostitution, drug use and slavery, it is unclear that the Dark Lord did not, in fact, win a significant victory.

Smith and Edgerton spend the entire movie trying to protect a magic wand from its rightful owner, a powerful elf played by Ms. Rapace. The majority of the running time consists of running between two locations, as it was clear Netflix was intent on paying most of Bright’s $90m production budget to Will Smith. I can’t attack the wisdom of this move, since no other actor clicks so completely with the streaming service’s core audience, and Smith’s recent choices at the actual box-office have been wretched. Ayer does enough to make Bright feel like his other cop stories (End of Watch, Training Day). He is knowledgeable, at least, about how cops feel and think, and several scenes reflect this experience.

Like many of Ayer’s films, he tries to convince us of a variety of plot twists that only make sense in his mind. Unfortunately, this is also the execrable trend of the writer behind this project, and the pairing leads to a messy, unemotional final project, which is probably one of two reasons why Bright received some seriously harsh reviews from critics. As bad as Bright was, there is something redeemable about the project that could probably be salvaged by another writer. Then again, you could say that about anything that does not involve Colin Trevorrow.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.

In Which We Escape From The Pursuing Army

Dead Air

by ETHAN PETERSON

The Last Jedi
dir. Rian Johnson
152 minutes

There is a scene in the middle of The Last Jedi, the second Star Wars film made by Disney, where Benicio Del Toro is disinterestedly ransacking a ship he has stolen, looking for treasure. He comes across a collection of coins, preserved for their sentimental value because, of course, in an age of interstellar travel, there could be no actual reason to have individuated currency. Therefore these objects only have whatever meaning their owners, or others, ascribe to them. To a thief from another planet, they would be nothing more than useless baubles, unless they happened to contain precious metals or gems.

Well, nothing in this interminable movie has any actual value. It is good, solid fan service that only has meaning because of sentimental referents. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is looking somewhat rough, but the past two decades in voice acting have made him expert at that particular field, and everyone else short of the preternaturally talented Adam Driver as Ben Solo sounds mealy mouthed in comparison. In The Last Jedi, Luke never leaves the isolated island on which he resides, but he is still the clear highlight. He is the only character in this entire production capable of change.

This is no slight on the rest of the cast. The main protagonists of The Last Jedi never actually do much in the empty chase narrative supplied here, which consists of General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) slowly, slowly pursuing the rebels across space. But they are all genuinely likable in their own way. As Rey, Daisy Ridley possesses a faithful masculinity and imposing physical strength befitting the final Jedi. As Finn, John Boyega is given rather less to work with, but he continues to prove that his breakout performance in the British comedy Attack the Block announced the arrival of a serious talent in need of a writer, any writer.

Director Rian Johnson is not that, but he does his best with what Kathleen Kennedy and Co. have permitted him. No one we care about dies in The Last Jedi; no one particularly lives either. There is one brief moment where mechanic Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) murders three enemy pilots and Boyega lets out a cheer. This isolated incident only emphasizes how little there is to enthuse about for in The Last Jedi as a whole.

A major subplot, one that ends up of being of absolutely no consequence to the story as a whole, involves Boyega and Rose freeing a number of animals abused by jockeys and trainers on a racetrack in a snooty, upscale town. Given that Disney reaps financial rewards from promoting a Saratoga Springs Resort in Orlando, this seems a bit hypocritical, but it is still a positive message.

Actually The Last Jedi is full of such preachiness, as if to prove that this saga will be about something through sheer force of effort. Animal rights comes into focus a number of times, and the film seems to delight in the inclusion of a diverse cast, none of who we actually begin to know or understand. Is this simply the empty virtue signaling of a massive, hegemonic company? Probably, but it seems somewhat well-intentioned just the same.

These general practices do not come anywhere near actual artistry, of course, and those who say they enjoyed The Last Jedi are on some level lying to themselves. This movie is the paradigmatic example of a work of mercenary fiction, emphasized by the deliberate criticism Johnson levies against such people, who take money from both sides, in his impotent, inoffensive script for The Last Jedi.

As Johnson presciently observes, we tend to mount our strongest attacks on our major weakness as they are displayed in our enemies. The Last Jedi reserves its withering critique for individuals devoid of substance and purpose, in an attempt to distract us from its total lack of the same. At some future moment, though, Star Wars will have to again have to tell some kind of original story. In life, you can only postpone that essential task for so long.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.

In Which We Visit Our Wife In The Hospital

Double Trouble

by ETHAN PETERSON

Counterpart
creator Justin Marks
Starz

Howard Silk (J. K. Simmons) is meant to be the sympathetic protagonist of Counterpart, a new series debuting January 21st on the premium network Starz. He works as a low level functionary in an NGO, he is nearing the end of an unremarkable career, and his wife (Olivia Williams) is in a coma after a non-fatal car accident. My sympathies for Howard were destroyed at the exact moment when he found out there was a parallel universe, and the only question he had for the Howard Silk in that universe (still J.K. Simmons) was “Do you also enjoy carbs?”

Counterpart proves that human curiosity has evaporated completely. Other things prove this in equal measure. The Pentagon recently released footage of an unidentified aircraft moving at an unprecedented speed and it barely made the news. On one hand, almost nothing could manage to be as impossible as the world we now inhabit, and the prospect of having to deal with the unlikeliness of another universe does seem daunting. On the other hand, as Counterpart alleges, we may very well be that other universe.

The other Howard Silk - let’s call him Howie - since he drinks more and is very informal at times - is an impatient man who is unfaithful to his wife Emily (also Olivia Williams). Counterpart tells a lot of the story of the differences between these two worlds from visual cues and props. These details inform us one version of reality is far advanced from another. In order to prevent the series from ever becoming dated, this is not a story about politics on a global level. Instead, we are focused on J.K. Simmons to an exclusive degree.

As a sadistic instructor in Whiplash, and other memorable roles, Simmons invests his characters with a trademark, overwhelming amount of a self-possession that makes him believable in a variety of specific professions. As Howie Silk, he is a higher-level functionary in the parallel-universe business, and it is amusing to watch him boss around his meeker Howard version. Simmons sometimes overacts his parts, but he seems to make a concerted effort in Counterpart to hold back from entirely taking over each scene in order to allow his supporting cast here - which includes Homeland's Nazanin Boniadi and the versatile Ulrich Thomsen (Banshee) as Howard's superior.

Simmons has always used his unnaturally blue eyes as a weapon to show the depth of his engagement in a particular scene. As Howie, those electric spheres take in everything around him, whereas Howard Silk may as well have regular brown peepers – in a scene where he asks for a promotion he proves that he is the sort of person reluctant to take what belongs to him. Marks dresses his pathetic hero like he is in reconstructed Eastern Europe in the middle of the last century, with old-fashioned hats, vests and overcoats. When he goes to visit his wife at the hospital, he always brings flowers.

These nods to Kafka are somewhat novel, but they do not really contain any kind of substance or background that interests the viewer in any way. As a result, Counterpart feels more like a sketched out concept (see Lost, where the writers had no idea why they were on the island). Here we sense that Counterpart’s creators do not really have a destination in mind for this parallel universe concept – it is mostly a device that allows J.K. Simmons to stretch his range as a featured performer rather than a genuine mystery in its own right.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.