The Martian
2015 - Ridley Scott
IMAX could be the tell-all issue with me, as my eyes run consistently during a show with the extra goggles on. People think I'm crying at movies. Not true, simply dripping from the strain my eyes go through in compensating for the false vision experience. It's age, or something....too many films, so little time.
I'm going to be rough on this particular film, but make no mistake, I DID enjoy seeing it. The experience was fun because space and adventure are always a good ride, unless you totally screw it up like "Lost in Space" or something. Ok wait, I'm feeling apologetic because this is Ridley Scott and I'm about to be critical of a long-time favorite, genius, "must-see" director. He's in the same list with Scorsese, Kubrick, Eastwood, Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson....you get it. Ok, he's nothing like Malick, right, but I'm putting him at my own personal same "appreciation" level.
EMOTIONALLY this was a highly effective piece of work, on the level of Apollo 13 in its tension, and at about the same pacing. Great acting, no doubt on the part of Matt Damon, and some others. And of course this means great directing, thank you Mr. Scott for another "stellar" job of getting the people right, good reactions, motivations, etc.
Well, there's that. However, casting needs some help in other departments. I do understand the need for the NASA lead to be a bit of a mush character, and he needs to be a sort of fall-guy, but it could have been someone else. I admire Jeff Daniel's screen cool in that he is relaxed, ok, but every time I see him I think Disney. I'm sorry, it's the truth. When he's on the cast, there is Disney, and it's a film again. In other words, he did not help with the supposed realism of the situation, because I don't think of him as the character he's playing, I think of him as an actor. He's acting. And that's not what you want in this situation. However, he was completely offset by Jessica Chastain, and her presence. Nice. And something of Interstellar was hinted at here, for fans of that film.
Anyway, IMAX could really be an issue in my observation of this film, but I have a feeling it's more an issue of "too well done" as far as the special effects. It was all so pristine, and crisp, and...well...sterile. Right, I know there was a great deal of sand, and sweat on the humans, and there was the feces scene and all, mixing up soil and growing potatoes. Well and good, but even the sand-storm particles were too large and too clean looking, all faky-like. This was highly "produced" and processed, and for some reason the evenness of the special effects and the cutting edge technology cut off a bit of actual realism for me. Remember how black and white films would actually conjure for us a dream state of alternate reality and make a world of their own in their atonalism and how removed that was from the world we walk in? Some of those shots in those older films were done in soft-focus, or with Vaseline on the lens, or not even in very good focus at all . So when you get effects that are so real, as in The Martian, suddenly they are beyond real, sur-real, and then it can cause us to drop our "suspension of disbelief", and suspect that we're watching a film. The rotating bolts and nuts in the free-floating hatch scene near the end, well, they were just too clean or something. Hm.
Another element is the story as it unfolds. I actually don't like to read a new book that a film is based on, if it's a new work. I'd rather see the film first. I don't think I'll read this book however. There was nothing out of keeping in this work with known science, and held true to the 2001 A Space Odyssey tradition of putting the science first ahead of the fiction. Accurate. But the story development was so Hollywood-esque, and unlike Mr. Scott, really. There was the Jeff Daniels figure with appropriate corporate responses, the typical juggling of priorities at that level of decision making, and as I've said he puts a plastic kind of feel to every scene he's in. But there was the "secret weapon" figure of the unsung hero from another department which figures it all out. For those of us who know SciFi, that answer was all too obvious, the "turn around and go get him" move. I did like that character's personal life being so messy, his sleeping in his cubicle. I did appreciate, like everyone else probably did, the rebellious move by Chastain's character to take a vote and override NASA.
But I also think this work was highly influenced by formulaic insiders and producer interests, and Ridley did not have as much of a hand in it as he would probably like. I am making a guess here based on nothing except what I already know, but that's my guess. It does not have the grit and earthiness of Gladiator or Robin Hood. The terror of Prometheus. The gnarly unknowedness of the Alien franchise. It lacked some kind of personality that I can't quite pin down. And frankly, the film should have ended with Damon's speech to the astronaut class and not gone on with the further footage of the NASA program's future development. That leads me to my last point.
Together with my previous points, the reason why I think this film feels so corporate, faky, possibly even propagandistic, is that in the end, it was like Space Cheerleading, let's go NASA! Yeah! I almost feel like it was funded in part by the space program. So I guess not leaving with a bit of mystery, or wonder, but instead an upbeat commercially-type of endeavor left me feeling a bit more like Disney than Scott Free.
I went way out of my way to see Blade Runner again at the theater when it was on special run recently in Indianapolis at a Landmark theater. I will still look forward with great anticipation Ridley's upcoming films, especially what might be a final chapter in the Alien works, but this one did not leave me with a great desire to see it twice, unlike many of his other features which I've seen multiple times over.
Agitatus
I'm going to be rough on this particular film, but make no mistake, I DID enjoy seeing it. The experience was fun because space and adventure are always a good ride, unless you totally screw it up like "Lost in Space" or something. Ok wait, I'm feeling apologetic because this is Ridley Scott and I'm about to be critical of a long-time favorite, genius, "must-see" director. He's in the same list with Scorsese, Kubrick, Eastwood, Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson....you get it. Ok, he's nothing like Malick, right, but I'm putting him at my own personal same "appreciation" level.
EMOTIONALLY this was a highly effective piece of work, on the level of Apollo 13 in its tension, and at about the same pacing. Great acting, no doubt on the part of Matt Damon, and some others. And of course this means great directing, thank you Mr. Scott for another "stellar" job of getting the people right, good reactions, motivations, etc.
Well, there's that. However, casting needs some help in other departments. I do understand the need for the NASA lead to be a bit of a mush character, and he needs to be a sort of fall-guy, but it could have been someone else. I admire Jeff Daniel's screen cool in that he is relaxed, ok, but every time I see him I think Disney. I'm sorry, it's the truth. When he's on the cast, there is Disney, and it's a film again. In other words, he did not help with the supposed realism of the situation, because I don't think of him as the character he's playing, I think of him as an actor. He's acting. And that's not what you want in this situation. However, he was completely offset by Jessica Chastain, and her presence. Nice. And something of Interstellar was hinted at here, for fans of that film.
Anyway, IMAX could really be an issue in my observation of this film, but I have a feeling it's more an issue of "too well done" as far as the special effects. It was all so pristine, and crisp, and...well...sterile. Right, I know there was a great deal of sand, and sweat on the humans, and there was the feces scene and all, mixing up soil and growing potatoes. Well and good, but even the sand-storm particles were too large and too clean looking, all faky-like. This was highly "produced" and processed, and for some reason the evenness of the special effects and the cutting edge technology cut off a bit of actual realism for me. Remember how black and white films would actually conjure for us a dream state of alternate reality and make a world of their own in their atonalism and how removed that was from the world we walk in? Some of those shots in those older films were done in soft-focus, or with Vaseline on the lens, or not even in very good focus at all . So when you get effects that are so real, as in The Martian, suddenly they are beyond real, sur-real, and then it can cause us to drop our "suspension of disbelief", and suspect that we're watching a film. The rotating bolts and nuts in the free-floating hatch scene near the end, well, they were just too clean or something. Hm.
Another element is the story as it unfolds. I actually don't like to read a new book that a film is based on, if it's a new work. I'd rather see the film first. I don't think I'll read this book however. There was nothing out of keeping in this work with known science, and held true to the 2001 A Space Odyssey tradition of putting the science first ahead of the fiction. Accurate. But the story development was so Hollywood-esque, and unlike Mr. Scott, really. There was the Jeff Daniels figure with appropriate corporate responses, the typical juggling of priorities at that level of decision making, and as I've said he puts a plastic kind of feel to every scene he's in. But there was the "secret weapon" figure of the unsung hero from another department which figures it all out. For those of us who know SciFi, that answer was all too obvious, the "turn around and go get him" move. I did like that character's personal life being so messy, his sleeping in his cubicle. I did appreciate, like everyone else probably did, the rebellious move by Chastain's character to take a vote and override NASA.
But I also think this work was highly influenced by formulaic insiders and producer interests, and Ridley did not have as much of a hand in it as he would probably like. I am making a guess here based on nothing except what I already know, but that's my guess. It does not have the grit and earthiness of Gladiator or Robin Hood. The terror of Prometheus. The gnarly unknowedness of the Alien franchise. It lacked some kind of personality that I can't quite pin down. And frankly, the film should have ended with Damon's speech to the astronaut class and not gone on with the further footage of the NASA program's future development. That leads me to my last point.
Together with my previous points, the reason why I think this film feels so corporate, faky, possibly even propagandistic, is that in the end, it was like Space Cheerleading, let's go NASA! Yeah! I almost feel like it was funded in part by the space program. So I guess not leaving with a bit of mystery, or wonder, but instead an upbeat commercially-type of endeavor left me feeling a bit more like Disney than Scott Free.
I went way out of my way to see Blade Runner again at the theater when it was on special run recently in Indianapolis at a Landmark theater. I will still look forward with great anticipation Ridley's upcoming films, especially what might be a final chapter in the Alien works, but this one did not leave me with a great desire to see it twice, unlike many of his other features which I've seen multiple times over.
Agitatus
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