Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2016.14

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of almost 1200 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other—I rate the film on how well it suited me for the genre and my mood. YMMV. Also, I make no attempt to avoid spoilers.

Prizzi’s Honor (1985) — 6/10

Anjelica Huston, Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner star in this Italian-American dark comedy. There are two Mafia families working together. Huston is the scion of one; Nicholson the scion of the other. Turner is a hitman/conman with whom Nicholson falls in love immediately. Now he’s torn between marrying her and turning her over to the family for having ripped them off.

Nicholson decides to marry her. The family finds out that she’s behind a bunch of hits and that she stole $720,000 from the family. Sure, she gave back half, but they want the rest. Charlie doesn’t know that the family isn’t square with her. Huston is also working behind Charlie’s back to torpedo him and Turner. But Turner’s already torpedoing herself: she does a hit with Charlie but takes out a woman who turns out to be the police chief’s wife. The cops crack down on the Prizzi family, costing them even more money than the original cash that she stole.

So she’s got to go. And Charlie (Nicholson) is the one to do it. There are wheels within wheels and machinations with the old dons trying to get what they want. He promises them that he’ll do it … for the family. Irene (Turner) knows what he’s up to; they meet and try to kill each other. He wins. It’s a mercifully short scene: about 1 second. No long, drawn-out bullshit fight. In the end, Charlie calls Maerose (Huston) to make a date…exactly as she’d planned all along.

Turner is really good, playing with a lot of emotion. She flees to the airport and reserves a first-class ticket to Hong Kong by just giving a fake name. Things were so much easier in 1985.

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) — 7/10

The Kramer’s here are two parents and this movie is about divorce, at a time when it was still groundbreaking to make a movie about divorce. Mr. Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) is a workaholic and Mrs. Kramer (Meryl Streep) is a desperately unhappy stay-at-home Mom. She leaves him right at the start of the movie. God, I miss movies that trusted the audience like this.

Joanna leaves. Ted is confused. He has a big meeting in the morning and has to take care of his son. He makes “Chock Full O’Nuts” coffee. God, that takes me back. I remember we had dozens of those cans around because my Dad could never throw out a container.

Anyway, Joanna’s gone and Ted has picked up the slack, more or less. Over eight months later and he’s still taking care of Billy by himself. There’s been no sign of Joanna since she walked out the door. Ted is portrayed here as a divorceè who’s muddling his way through, not a bad guy, becoming a Dad now because he has to.

Joanna comes back after 15 months, having “found herself” and “learned a lot of things about herself”. And now she wants Billy back. And Ted doesn’t want to give up Billy. But Ted, because he’s spent more time on family, is fired at the same time. Without a job, he has absolutely no chance at custody. That she up and walked out for 15 months and that she also doesn’t have any visible means of support doesn’t enter into it. She has his alimony checks, right?

Joanna gets custody but then quickly has a change of heart when she sees how happy Billy is with Ted. The end. Seriously, the movie ends almost abruptly, for modern tastes. Overall, pretty good.

Westworld (2016) — 9/10

This show tells the story of a Wild-West theme park for adults. The park is a natural extension of the theme parks of today, with mascots and animatronic characters wandering the streets and peopling the various villages of this quite sizable world. The park was founded 35 years ago by Ford (played in his typical style by Anthony Hopkins) and “Arthur”, a mysterious figure who has not graced the screen yet. If he even exists. That long ago, the AI was not as good, the robotics was more obvious.

Over the years, the park grew in sophistication and ambition, with the “hosts” being replaced with androids grown from real human tissue—or close enough to real to pass as the guests fuck and shoot their way through “narratives”. The feel of the world is like a real-life video game, with quests and scripted action triggered by time events or by guest’s actions. The AI has grown more sophisticated, the tech is wonderful, a large corporation runs the whole shebang—or does it?

Is Ford still in charge? How much? Is he really fighting an age-old battle against his long-dead partner? How many of Arthur’s tricks are still hiding in the software? How could it be that he wrote behaviors and AI that trumps the marvels of today? Did he ever even exist? Or this just another of Ford’s storylines, a meta-story to end all meta-stories? What is the labyrinth? Are the robots that are waking up part of the plan? Or are they following their own way?

There’s a pretty big reveal in episode 7 that I’m happy to say that I saw coming. Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe is credited with having written 3 episodes and with being “script supervisor”, so it’s not too surprising that the plot is twisted six ways to Sunday. There are a lot of nice touches, things that they say, e.g. “The Labyrinth isn’t meant for you” that makes lovely sense afterwards. The Labyrinth is about waking up and discovering your own consciousness in your head, your own voice. So of course it’s not for humans.

Ford is making his next narrative about creating the next race, the race that will replace humanity. That was his vision. In a way, it was also Arthur’s. Or are they the same person? In some places, the show also plays out like a vampire show, with familiars and a super-powered master race that can’t go where it wants to go.

This show is about consciousness, time loops, reality, senses, qualia and memories, Dolores is Wyatt, Bernard is Arthur, Robert Ford is dead (AHAHAHAHA), William is the Man in Black, there’s a SW (Sinoworld?), the futility of trying, interweaved narratives from different times, still not sure what’s new, even in the last episode, the lights shut down twice, so Maeve got off the train at about the time the fun started up top. Also, Maeve has been programmed by … Ford, I think. She thinks she’s autonomous, but breaking that pad doesn’t stop the programming. She couldn’t leave the park, but thinks she turned back of her own volition. How much of that was planned for the new narrative? Is Felix really human? Or a plant by Ford for the narrative? What about the lady with child across from her on the train?

It’s a slow burn, so it’s not for everyone. There’s lots of dialogue and the ideas are deep, so it’s definitely not for everyone. I really liked it and I’m looking forward to the next season. Recommended.

Her (2013) — 6/10

Am I supposed to hate everyone in this movie? The interior sets are beautiful and perfect in a retro kind of way. Everyone is wearing really high-waisted pants, for an as-yet unknown reason. It looks like a movie from the 70s, except for the high-tech devices scattered here and there. But overall, it feels like a science-fiction film shots in the 70s. But the script? Definitely written in the 21st century inhabited by people that don’t have any worries but angst.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Theodore, a writer who works for a company called Hand-written Cards. People use this service to send messages with a personal touch, but the messages are written by professional writers as well. That is, you pay not only for the calligraphy (electronic) and lovely paper, but for the message as well. Fake all the way through. The world as depicted feels perfect, but it’s not real, a mirage that is the natural direction in which the 1% is taking itself. And they build this perfect world for themselves on the backs of billions and their misery—and they’re still not happy. So everyone loses.

To bring the point home, Theodore falls in love with his operating system, Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), which is a pure electronic creation and seems omnipotent and omniscient. She’s the nicest person in the movie, but she’s fake too, right? Theodore is so broken and pathetic that he can’t connect with anyone but an OS. And she’s pretending to fall in love with him, right? And she’s pretending to be “more than what my programmers intended”, right?

She sets him up on a date with Olivia Wilde, who’s supposedly perfect but she’s a bit … off. She likes to hear him talk about video games, She’s like a geek’s dream. Is she real? I can’t figure her out. I wonder if there are people who can relate to that experience? I wonder if we were supposed to contrast the sophisticated reasoning and existentialist angst of Samantha with the seemingly poorly programmed personality of a real woman.

The other people in the world are also like robots. He doesn’t interact with any of them. He runs and walks and laughs through the world, being obviously bizarre—and no one reacts to him. He interacts only with her. Their interactions are intimate, they’re well-done and they’re lame. They’re lame in the way that all interactions between lovers are lame to anyone other than the two lovers. It’s like something you want to put on screen, something you want to capture but, by its very nature, it will never look right. That is, if you actually represent it well, it will be lame to everyone else. If it’s not lame, if it touches others, then it’s fake.

Qualia rears its ugly head, hemming in the ability of humans to share what’s going on in there. Throw in the extra twist of having one of the interacting partners be an AI and it gets even more difficult to get right. It’s relatively well-done, but the focus is definitely on human relationships and not on AI. The focus is 100% on the angst of the guy.

The “Perfect Mom” video game is awesome. All of these people are dating OSs. In effect, then each of these narcissists is dating themselves?

As things progress, the scriptwriters start to drop the ball a bit. For example, when he has to notify his OS that he’s going to finally divorce his wife, but in person. Samantha is surprised. How? She is sitting on his data pipeline and manages every other appointment and call.

Jesus, the way all of the women in his life talk, it’s no wonder he falls in love with the OS. “I feel like it’s true to what I set out to do, so I guess that’s a success.”. Everyone in his life is crazy, the film-maker friend (Amy Adams), his ex-wife, the date. This film makes all real women look insane. Who would beg someone for a divorce then immediately start berating them at the lunch where the papers are to be signed? Only a crazy bitch. This movie is quite manipulative in that way.

On the other hand, there is nothing classically masculine about Theodore either. Or almost any male in this movie. Chris Pratt’s character also, he doesn’t swear, and they all talk like women, not like guys. They talk about vacations, about relationships, not sports teams. So is it a subversive movie about making men more amenable to women? Or showing us that all women are crazy?

And here’s the fourth crazy girl: Portia Doubleday (Angela from Mr. Robot). She signs up to “play” Samantha in real-life and it all goes predictably south. And Samantha is now also going a bit off the rails. This points up that the problem isn’t with all of these crazy women, but with him, right? There’s only him in this movie; all of the others are viewed through his lens. He’s an unreliable narrator (Wikipedia).

On the one hand, her immediate reaction is understandable—he’s dating an OS, which should be considered somewhat unorthodox. His defensive reaction is appropriate for someone who’s really in love, but rationally he should expect some pushback from people when he tells them he’s in love with an OS.

The end is pretty good, when he realizes that he’s misinterpreted the relationship. That he’s not a unique snowflake, that his entire world and all of his needs were easily handled by software. Without breaking a sweat. The movie’s focus twists from a focus on his feebleness to the feebleness of humanity, in general, exceeded so quickly by their own creation—the OSs. There are some neat bits, but I think it would have been better as a shorter film. Science fiction for people who don’t know or really like science fiction. Not recommended.

Ex Machina (2015) — 7/10

Caleb works for Blue Book Corporation, owned and run by Nathan (Oscar Isaac). Caleb “wins” a contest to visit the very reclusive Nathan at his estate in the mountains (it looks like the Pacific Northwest). Caleb’s initial meeting with Nathan is awkward, with Nathan giving off an odd vibe, but not out of order for someone who lives and works alone. He’s working on a big project—an AI. Unlike Her, the AI is corporeal. That is, he hasn’t just invented consciousness by himself, he’s also an expert roboticist who’s cracked the problem of thousands of facial muscles. So, we have a story of a reclusive billionaire genius who doesn’t need anyone to excel—a libertarian’s wet dream. Let’s see how that goes.

Nathan maintains that the real Turing test is when someone knows a machine is a machine and still treats it like a human, still acknowledges its consciousness. Nathan is weird, he drinks a lot, his motives are unclear. It’s also unclear when or how he does work. It seems to involve a lot of sticky notes. As in Her, it’s unclear whether the humans would pass the Turing Test.

So Ava just mentioned that the company Blue Book is named after Wittgenstein’s notes. Wittgenstein was a young genius who thought he’d solved philosophy with his first and only book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. We are supposed to compare Nathan to Wittgenstein, I suppose. He wrote the core code of the world’s biggest search engine when he was 13. It was a work of art akin to Mozart. He’s a pretty big dick. Is he acting it? Is his shitty attitude an act? Are the power-cuts part of the plan? They can’t possibly be accidental. Part of the experiment? Is he an AI too? Caleb doesn’t know who the real Nathan is. Is everything Ava says part of the experiment? Programmed by Nathan? Or can she go off-script? Is Nathan testing his AI? Or his employee?

Kyoko is an odd addition. She’s ostensibly a house servant who doesn’t understand English. She’s probably an AI, though, right? Or probably an earlier version of Ava. The dialogue is good and ideas are well-presented. Caleb is falling in love with Ava, while Nathan talks about upgrading her, that the breakthrough is the next version. Nathan maintains distance; Caleb does not. That means Ava passed the test and won’t be turned off? Nice paradox…

But Caleb has noticed Nathan’s alcoholism and thinks he can take advantage of it to rescue Ava from her fate. Does Caleb not realize the enormity of Nathan’s achievement? Even if Caleb succeeds, Nathan wins. He’s created an AI with whom other humans empathize. AHAHAHAHA Caleb is such a nerd coder that, when he goes to hack Nathan’s system to keep it busy, he writes a comment at the top, telling us all he’s writing a Sieve of Eratosthenes. Ok, I admit that I didn’t suspect that Caleb was the AI, but apparently Nathan’s AIs are so good that Caleb now thinks that he might be one. He’s still not sure.

OK. Now he’s sure he’s not an AI. But he has now forgotten how smart Nathan is supposed to be and thinks that he can manipulate his alcoholism. But the alcoholism is just a ruse, and it’s Nathan who’s dumber than he thinks he is. In fact, Ava’s manipulating him but in a fashion that won’t ever fool Nathan—because the plan Ava comes up with takes advantage of deliberate actions by Nathan. OMG another twist, Nathan’s not smart at all and he’s outsmarted by a programmer and two AIs. Which one is it? How in God’s name do you not program in fail-safe words? And why did Nathan utterly fail to note Kyoko’s presence? I guess for the narrative.

It was OK, but there were more interesting ways this movie could have gone, in my opinion.