Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019) Review

rating: ****

the story: Survivors of an apocalypse living on the moon discover their best hope for the future is inside the hollow Earth…and all they need to do is defeat Space Hitler to obtain it!

review: Obviously I don’t review a ton of movies as described above (nor watch them!). I am not a fan of schlock cinema. I don’t make a point even to watch it if it’s the subject of sarcastic commentary. On the surface Iron Sky: The Coming Race is pretty much exactly schlock cinema. You can watch it with the expectation that the results are going to be ridiculous, and be happy with it.

I haven’t even seen the first one yet. I did see Finnish director Timo Vuorensola’s first feature film, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, a madcap Star Trek parody, and have remained interested in what he does next. When the chance to see Coming Race came up, I figured it was worth a look.

It was!

For those keeping score, it’s very possible to see in the results direct nods to another sci-fi franchise. There’s a spaceship culled from Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon, the kind of nod that has surprisingly taken a lot longer to happen (outside Spaceballs’ Winnebago, of course!), more than forty years in the making. In fact, the career of Vuorensola suggests that we’re getting that much closer to actual responses to George Lucas, rather than mere attempts to cash in (which was easy enough to attempt…immediately).

The movie, with its political and even social satire (the riff on Steve Jobs and smartphone culture, employing a surprisingly effective performance from Tom Green of all people, is more successful than evoking Sarah Palin, the part critics who just wanted to dismiss the results fixated on), knows when to take things seriously and when to just unleash expectations (Space Hitler’s abruptly hilarious fate!)

Surprisingly or not, comic books, and comic book movies, often seem like they want to be exactly like this, and too seldom manage to pull it off, despite considerable, sometimes painfully desperate, efforts. 

Anyway, it’s the kind of movie that seems unlikely on basically every level, including the ability to be legitimately entertaining. It pulls it off!

Knight and Day (2010) Review

rating: ****

the story: A CIA operative has been set up, and in the process of clearing his name his life becomes entangled with an unlikely accomplice.

review: I will readily admit, until a rewatch a few weeks back I was as convinced as anyone that Knight and Day was nothing much writing about. In 2010 Tom Cruise was scrambling to put his career back on track, and when I saw this particular effort in theaters I thought it was a particularly desperate byproduct. I even dismissed costar Cameron Diaz, who has been a favorite since her film debut in The Mask, as forgettable.

I don’t believe any of that anymore.

If anything, Knight and Day has the potential of being a modern classic. It’s lighthearted and flippant concerning its surface action elements. The whole point is calculated screwball, which in older Hollywood days was the holy grail of romantic comedy. It’s a unique movie in Cruise’s career, which has in the decade or so since its release relied ever more heavily on straight action.

It’s really a waltz between Cruise and Diaz; eventually the tables are turned and it’s Diaz in control rather than the character who seems to have been one step ahead and her to be dozens of steps behind. 

And there’s plenty of support around them, too, something of an embarrassment. Maggie Grace, officially wrapping up her time on Lost, is there in one of her many tiny supporting roles (she’s also in the Taken movies, although you’d be forgiven to assume they’re all just Liam Neeson brandishing his action jones). Peter Sarsgaard (nearly always a villain, alas!), Viola Davis, Paul Dano actually feeling like he’s perfectly cast for a change, even Gal Gadot!

The director in charge of all this is the perennially criminally underrated James Mangold, who has proven himself a master of modern cinema. In fact, restoring Knight and Day, and this is not why I choose to champion it now but it’s a nice benefit, as a treasure would add an additional feather to his cap (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma, Logan, Ford v Ferrari).

Too often today we reduce the art of moviemaking to…whatever’s not the box office blockbuster. There’s a huge tradition and a wide range of material out there. Recognizing achievements is a fine way to encourage the breadth of the medium to continue pursuing that range, rather than allowing it to narrow to “blockbuster” and “art film.”

That and acknowledging that movie stars continue to deliver, regardless of whatever happens in their personal life.

The Mauritanian (2021) Review

rating: ****

the story: A Guantanamo Bay detainee struggles to win his freedom.

review: There are plenty of people who would assume they know exactly how to respond to a movie with this subject matter. And yet, here is The Mauritanian being more or less released to little enough attention. 

It deserves better. It is of course an incredible story, and a true one, about the most controversial of the responses to 9/11 (no shortage of material there), and relentlessly sure that it is in fact representing an innocent man caught up in it.

Tahar Rahim plays the suspected terrorist Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley his public defenders, and Benedict Cumberbatch the face of the prosecution, who quickly enough questions if he’s on the right side of justice.

Rahim became an instant favorite of mine from Mary Magdalene, where he played a surprisingly sympathetic Judas (so he has clearly found himself a type), Foster is Foster, Woodley has the trademark random moment where she seems to forget she’s not a model (for me, anyway; it popped up in the Divergent movies when she’s flying in a futuristic helicopter; I don’t get why she keeps getting away with it, although otherwise she’s a fine actress). For Cumberbatch, putting on another fine vocal performance, it’s an interesting companion to the equally compelling The Courier, also released this year. Zachary Levi has a supporting role as a part of the system that let everything happen to Slahi. It’s another chance to broaden his range, a full dramatic turn where he’s not a good guy.

At the end there’s footage of Slahi himself, which lends credibility to the idea that this story can be taken at face value, that the film’s positive opinion of him is a reflection of how positive he himself is, so many years after all this began, everything he endured.

The effect is to put a face on the whole thing, not just to say there’s been gross injustice or that everyone detained there has a similar story and is worth rooting for, but that so few stories have come out, much less one this seemingly unlikely. Many reviews have suggested it’s some sort of confusing mess, which it is not. Presumably so the critics don’t come off as sympathetic to a terrorist.

Foster’s character has a response to that kind of reasoning right in the movie. Don’t let such nonsense get in your way.