The Creator (2023) review

rating: ****

the story: A vet in plunged into the endgame of a war between humanity and AI.

the review: Here's another movie I have no clue hasn't had far more praise than it's received.  It's damn near a work of genius.  It's close to a masterpiece.

I'm starting to implicitly trust John David Washington's instincts.  He's had a whole string of fascinating projects under his belt in recent years (Tenet, Amsterdam, and now The Creator), pushed himself well beyond dad Denzel Washington's shadow, and establishing his own definitive screen presence, not the calm cool of dad, not necessarily capable of more, but very much his own, and with the capability to fit in effortlessly into sweeping situations without being lost in them.

The Creator is more than Washington, of course.  It's Gareth Edwards' directorial follow-up to Rogue One, which is the leading candidate for Star Wars fans as best of the current cinematic era.  I personally was not a fan of Rogue One.  No, I was very much the opposite.  In context, now, however, it makes a lot more sense, since in a lot of ways The Creator is a response to and continuation of its ideas, which makes much more sense, to me, in this context.  The Creator itself also serves as that elusive concept Hollywood chased for years after 1977, a movie that evokes Star Wars without buckling horribly under the pressure, a thing that was almost impossible for twenty years.  (Incredibly, although I have no idea when I myself will be able to consider the results, 2023 potentially gave us two such movies, with Rebel Moon also clearly envisioned from the bones of Star Wars.)

This is familiar territory, whether you consider the classic I, Robot stories, the movie that eventually resulted from it, the Terminator franchise, the Matrix movies, or even current fears of emerging AI prominence (although The Creator features traditional robots, its was heavily marketed with the concerns sweeping through the culture at the moment, and viewed from that light by critics and likely audiences).  It doesn't matter.  You've never seen anything like this.

I even say this as someone who loved Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen's Descender/Ascender comics, which have a number of parallels to The Creator, including a child robot destined to play a climactic role in events desperately sought by numerous figures.  Doesn't matter.  Visually the results are astonishing, exactly what modern filmmaking should be accomplishing (and not just an endless stream of superhero movies), but narratively, the results are equally assured, deliberate, and where all the critics complaining otherwise are coming from, I haven't a clue, since the central message is as relevant as it's ever been: the oppressed just don't want to be oppressed anymore, they just want to be free to live.

And that's really what's so great about The Creator, that it finally boils the robot story to what it really always was.  We keep dreading the robot apocalypse, and yet...why?  Why assume they're just gonna want to annihilate us?  When do we figure out the best solution will always be the one that benefits everyone?  That's what intelligence tells us, and the "i" in "AI" literally means "intelligence," so again...why?  

That's what The Creator answers.  That's what pushes it toward greatness.  

Along with Washington are a few name actors, Allison Janney representing the humans and Ken Watanabe the robots.  Isn't the presence of Watanabe itself an indication of quality?  He's another actor who's consistently selected great material, always unfailingly delivering quality performances in roles intriguing and relevant to the success of the films around them.

Trust Ken Watanabe.  Trust John David Washington.  There are built-in moments just waiting to be enshrined in the pop canon.  Help make The Creator a cult sensation at the very least!

Liberal Arts (2012)

rating: ****

the story: A thirty-something unexpectedly reconnects with his college self when visiting a retiring professor.

review: Josh Radnor's bid to be recognized in the same league as Zach Braff, Liberal Arts is the kind of small film that reminds you why small films are important, too.  Like Braff (best known for Scrubs before making a brief transition into film glory with Garden State), Radnor is best known for his starring role in a sitcom (How I Met Your Mother) but subsequently made a push into making his own movies.  Liberal Arts was the second of two movies he's directed to date. 

It's the story of the struggle to reconcile real life with the kind experienced in college.  Radnor's character feels lost in the real world.  Everything he valued in college seems meaningless outside of it.  At college, literature and poetry didn't feel out of place. 

Any good review will tell you why the reviewer feels connected to that particular material.  Radnor's thoughts are much my own.  Even working at a bookstore for five years wasn't anywhere close to the literary immersion I experienced at college.  I often found myself wondering who these book people were who showed up at the store, because I never really recognized them.  Sure, they read, but they didn't seem to feel any of it.  It was just an obligation to them.  For a lot of students, reading is an obligation, too, but the sheer volume of students means there's a greater chance of finding, inside and out of the classroom, other people who get it, who aren't just going through the motions. 

But Liberal Arts ultimately concludes that you need to stick your head out of the books, too, and while it's not a new message, and the story feels like a collegiate exercise, it's done with conviction, it feels real.  It doesn't attempt to give you all the answers.  Like Radnor's work in How I Met Your Mother, it's a subtle reminder that life is a struggle for everyone, but that magic can sometimes happen, too, mostly in the connections we make along the way.  Radnor's old professor is played by Richard Jenkins, who has cornered the market on this kind of character, who's aged and agitated, but also a welcome presence, someone you want around.  Allison Janney plays Radnor's favorite poetry professor, and while her part is smaller and more stereotypical, even she gets to have an open ending.  Zac Efron has a small but memorable part as a kind of spiritual guru, a part he would probably never have played outside of this film.  Elizabeth Olsen, the kid sister of the famous twins, had a breakout role as the college girl who nudges Radnor along to better understanding his predicament.  Elizabeth Reaser gets to benefit from that as the bookseller who becomes his girlfriend.

Maybe it's a movie that speaks so directly to me, with a lead actor I already like, and so that's why I think it's good.  And maybe it's just one of those movies that fills a whole in the cultural narrative, and its value is objectively visible, and you just need someone like me to help point it out.  I wish Radnor had gotten to make more movies (there's obviously still time).  He and Braff are representing an entire generation, one that can easily get lost in the shuffle, a generation that took a lot of things for granted and started finding out that not everything benefited them the way they thought it would.  This is the kind of stuff a previous generation (or two or three) of movie stars got to make whole careers out of.  And this is what it looks like today.