Get Out

                
Jordan Peele's directorial debut, Get Out, has garnered critical acclaim and commercial reward. On a budget of five million, the US gross is approaching two hundred million and the darn film is still playing here in Portland, five months after its opening. It has touched a chord of racial unease that has resounded with the populace. The death of George Romero reminded me of how Night of the Living Dead captures the racial climate of the late 60s better than any history I have read. Both films are buried in the horror genre, but both exist as triumphant termite art.

Peele has not exactly come from nowhere and his background in sketch comedy shows with his handling of the cast. There are no weak or misguided performances, indeed there are a number of outstanding ones: by Bradley Whitford, Stephen Root, and LilRel Howery. Peele also shows taste and restraint with his camera. When the Afro-American protagonist arrives at his white girlfriend's parents' home, Peele holds onto the long shot of the columned manse for a few extra moments as the initial greetings are made. The protagonist is not really gleaning his hosts as they are, but seeing only the façade.

A similar intelligence is discernible behind the camera throughout Get Out. Peele has macabrely pictured the American body politic in an incisive manner as Romero did in the 60s, as Siegel did in the 50s with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and as Carpenter did in the 80s with They Live. (7/29/17)

The Matrix Resurrections

 

Once more unto the breach: Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix Resurrections

The feeble commercial and critical response to Lana Wachowski's The Matrix Resurrections gave me very low expectations for this, the fourth film in the series. Director Wachowski was in dire need of a hit and Mr. Reeves has found renewed success in grizzled action roles, so this seemed like it was going to be a mere cash-in; The Matrix regurgitations. 

I was certainly not bowled over by the film. The exposition scenes are tedious with Jada Pinkett-Smith trying to scowl under layers of latex. The action is largely rote. This bloated white elephant of a movie runs almost two and a half hours when it should have been 100 minutes. Still, compared to the previous sequels, I thought the movie had a pulse.

Lawrence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving are MIA, visible only in flashbacks. Perhaps the filmmakers didn't want the sexagenarians to look ridiculous in the action sequences or it was a way to cut costs. Regardless, Wachowski mostly succeeds with the young additions to the saga. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jessica Henwick both seem promising. The presence of David Mitchell on the screenwriting team also helps.

What was most heartening to me is that Wachowski seems more personally invested in the material than in the previous sequels. The tyranny of binary choices and the ambivalent impact of the world wide web (or matrix) are, at least, grown-up themes that they attempt to grapple with here. I wouldn't call myself a Wachowski partisan, but in their best films (Bound, The Matrix, Cloud Atlas, and this one), a genuine artistic personality with recurrent themes has emerged.

The Shallows

Jaume Collet-Serra's The Shallows is a forgettable surfer versus shark flick with Blake Lively as the imperiled vacationer. Suspense is extremely mild and the back story half-assed; as are the gratuitous, Millennial attracting inclusions of screens within screens. Lively's performance is OK and her bod and the Australian settings that stand in for Mexico are magnificent. The overall effect, though, is negligible, even for a mindless popcorn flick. I got more of a buzz from the idiotic Sharknado pictures. (7/26/17)