movie review: A Quiet Place

When it comes to horror films, I admit that I love me a good, mindless slasher flick, where (often undead) serial killers chase shallow characters of dubious intelligence until all but one have fallen prey to the villain. But sometimes, I'm in the mood for something a little more artful, a little smarter, and A Quiet Place is one of the best, smartest movies in years. Not just one of the best and smartest horror movies, one of the best movies period.

The premise: In the near future, creatures of unknown origin* stalk and kill anyone who makes a sound. The creatures are too fast to flee, and too well-armored to fight. The only defense is to remain really, really quiet. Forever. Make a noise, and you're dead.

Naturally, such a lifestyle comes with its share of challenges, to say the least, and the movie is the story of one particular family trying to survive in a world where silence is a constant necessity for survival. The premise is intriguingly unique on a story level, but on a presentation level, it's ingenious, and co-writer/ director John Krasinski surpasses the challenges, to make a true piece of art that should be studied for generations to come. Krasinski uses the premise to play with silence and sound in a manner of such inventiveness not seen since the days when cinema was first starting to experiment with replacing silent films with sound films for the first time. This involves not just what you hear, but what you see, and as a director, Krasinski knows that the premise lends the sight of normally innocent, everyday objects -- a child's toy, a nail sticking out of the floor, a precariously placed glass jar -- a dread unparalleled in most of even the best horror films. Krasinski's having fun with his audience, and we're having fun back with him, but don't mistake my meaning as some kind of declaration of "hey, it's a fun, wacky comedy!" because oh no it isn't. The suspense is intense enough to be almost unbearable, and I mean that in the best way possible.

There's a far-too-often-ignored rule of narrative that states that the best stories play to the top of the audience's intelligence. Krasinski and his co-writers repeatedly prove that they've taken this rule to heart. This is a movie that requires attention to both foreground and background (headlines on newspapers flapping in the breeze in the background, for example, provide some of the back-story) and I like how the writers know when we'll be able to figure important details out without everything being explained to us like we're inattentive children. Example: When we see that the wife in the family is very pregnant, her every appearance on screen is a constant, nerve-wracking reminder that her very condition risks the lives of everyone in the family. The fact that this monumental danger is unspoken only increases the spell of suspese and terror generated by the situation; Krasinski and his co-writers know that the spell would be partially broken if one of the characters had observed in dialogue, "but hey, what do we do when the baby's born, babies cry, and they cry loudly, we're all gonna die from the monsters hearing it!"

It's unnecessary. The characters know that their life is in constant danger, and so do we. This is a very scary movie. But more to the point, it's a very creative, very intelligent, and over-all, very good movie. I highly recommend it.

*In interviews, John Krasinski has stated that the creatures are extraterrestrial, but there is absolutely nothing in the actual film that establishes this.

review: Ready Player One

It's almost pointless to review Ready Player One, Ernest Cline and Steven Spielberg's loving tribute to popular culture. Those who think it looks cool are bound to see it and enjoy it, and those who think it looks like a flashy, loud, substanceless mess are going to steer clear.

If you're on the edge, let me say, it is a very good movie. Yes, there were times when I felt uncomfortable with its over-reliance on pop culture. But I'm going to draw a distinction here.

Family Guy is chock-full of pop culture references. I am not a fan. In my (admittedly limited) viewing experience, nine times out of ten, Family Guy's idea of humor is "look, we just made a random pop culture reference!" without any attempt at creativity, insight into the reference itself, or even cohesion with the scene or storyline. To the writers of that show, the fact that they made the reference itself should be enough to get a laugh. I think of such laughter as mere "laughter of recognition." You laugh only because you delight in knowing the reference, but there's rarely anything actually funny happening on the screen.

Ready Player One usually doesn't go for laughs, but its difference in how it treats its many, many pop culture references is that those references are used for flavor. The references are so constant -- sometimes multiple references in just a single screen shot -- that it's easy to mistakenly assume that the movie is dependent on them. They're not. For the most part, this movie (I understand this probably isn't true of the book) could actually remove the specific references and plug in generic names and concepts, and the main storyline would hold. Yes, you would lose the fun of "oh, look, it's [fill in the blank]!," which is a great deal of this movie's appeal, but the story would hold.

The story is set in a future in which most of the world lives in over-crowded poverty, making escapism more in demand than ever before. The vast majority of people find that escape in the Oasis, a virtual reality world in which more or less anything is possible. You can be the Iron Giant, or play a life-size version of 80s Atari games, or do something absolutely ridiculous, like, to quote one example, "climb Mount Everest -- with Batman."

The Oasis and the people who manage it (not to mention the makers of Ready Player One itself) seem to have somehow eliminated the issue of copyright infringement; Warner Bros. cartoon characters, popular horror film villains, and random film and television icons interact freely within the Oasis.

The story concerns a race to find/ solve a series of clues hidden inside the Oasis by its late designer, James Halliday (Mark Rylance). Whoever first solves the entire series of clues not only inherits a fortune from Halliday's estate, but also inherits sole ownership and control over the Oasis.

You can tell the good guys from the bad guys based on cliches: The good guys are brave and plucky, and must fight against odds and poverty, while the villains are rich and ruthless and care only about profit. I say this not with complaint; they're cliches because they work. I'm not sure if I would enjoy a movie in which the hero is a corporate CEO out to crush a poor teenage boy, and thankfully, Ready Player One doesn't force such rule-bending on its audience.

I want to address two things in this review: First, there's the extended sequence in which the main characters find themselves at the Overlook Hotel, interacting with scenes from The Shining. It seems an oddly random choice to devote so much screen time to this particular bit of pop culture, and it's almost like a mini-movie unto itself. I don't know how much of this sequence is CGI used to insert the new characters into actual 1980 footage and how much of it is a result of production design lovingly re-creating every detail of the Overlook (right down to the look of early 80s cinematography), but this is a masterful sequence.

Second, I want to address the heaps of criticism that have been thrown at the movie for its perceived shallowness. Even Spielberg himself publicly stopped just short of apology, making a distinction between this being a movie (as in popcorn fluff) as opposed to a film (as in a serious work of art). I've always had a pet peeve about filmmakers apologizing for their own work. It strikes me as hypocritical, as if they're anticipating or reacting to criticism and saying, "hey, I'm not crazy about it either!" In this particular case, apologism is an insult to the many people who did such a great job on this film -- oh, I'm sorry, I guess I mean "movie." The characters are likable, the special effects are fantastic, but what really impressed me was the production/ set design. It goes beyond the standard Hollywood professionalism, and well into the realm of "inspired." From the multi-level mobile homes that make up the "Stacks" of future Columbus, Ohio, to the slightly different styles of clutter* in each of the characters' homes, every frame of this is -- yes, Mr. Spielberg, it's true, even if you are too scared to admit it -- a work of art.

*side-note: I seem to have a highly niched respect for this concept of "individualized clutter"; I remember praising Only Lovers Left Alive for the same thing. But there's a reason for this. Far too often, Hollywood production designers think, "okay, 'clutter,'" throw a bunch of loose papers and fast food wrappers onto the set, and call it a day. Yes, that works, but it's neither inspired nor detail-oriented -- nor even realistic. If you examine anyone's particular clutter, you'll see signs of that person's particular habits, interests, and culture. It's a detail that is often over-looked by both makers and viewers of Hollywood movies. But the people who made Only Lovers Left Alive and Ready Player One get it.