Arrival (2016, directed by Denis Villenueve) is the thinking person’s Independence Day.

Don’t get me wrong: while I wasn’t much of an ID fan, I did love the Aliens franchise, where the baddie ET’s were blown to bits in thrilling action sequences, and Sigourney Weaver’s bad-ass performance made me pump my fist in the air with a heartfelt “You go, girl!”

Amy Adams’ character, Louise Banks, is a heroine of a different nature. The quiet, unassuming linguistics professor is chosen to help communicate with the aliens who’ve parked their egg-shaped ships in twelve different locations across the globe. Louise is swept away to Montana, the location of the American alien ship, to work with the military, as well as with scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). Forest Whittaker is the no-nonsense Colonel Weber, who’s running the show. The directive from his superiors: find out what they want.

Louise and Ian are suited up and brought to the ship to meet the aliens, who look like a cross between squid and branch-like walking fingers. Their language sounds like whale song, and Louise knows that a written or visual language would be more appropriate to communicate with them. In a breakthrough, they witness the aliens secrete an inky substance from one of their tentacles which forms a lovely circular symbol that acts as writing. Building on this, they spend a few months accruing a vocabulary that lets them talk with the creatures on a basic level.

Unfortunately, the world isn’t patient enough to let this important work continue; global tensions are rising, people are getting nervous, and China and Russia are getting antagonistic toward their alien visitors, threatening to attack them. Weber urges Louise to ask them the vital question: what is your purpose on earth?

This is where the film takes a twisty, philosophical turn, even as the tension rises. There’s a wondrous, heartbreaking secret at the core of this movie, one which I won’t reveal here, of course. It’s all a bit mind-blowing and has to do with a personal experience of Louise’s that encompasses both joy and grief, and ties in with the aliens’ perception of time, which is circular (like their visual language) rather than our linear experience of it.

I know, I know–huh? But believe me, it works, and the final act unfolds in a beautiful sequence that is moving and impressive. This is a film about the nature of time and how we communicate; it’s also about choosing love in the face of grief, joy over fear. This is my kind of science fiction, encompassing the human heart as well as spanning the literal universe.



Bright Star


fanny reading Johns letter





fanny and John









The Revenant


*(Some spoilers.)






Tom Hardy as Fitzgerald






revenant montage


The Dark Tower

dark tower movie

Over the past year or so, I’ve been reading Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower series. There are eight books in all, and I’m about in the middle of the fifth book, Wolves of the Calla.

I’ve been quite eager to see the movie version that came out last August. I was under the impression that it was based on the first book, The Gunslinger.  The film does center on the relationship between the last Gunslinger, Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) and young Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), as he pursues the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) in order to protect the Dark Tower (a structure that holds the universe together). That’s the basic premise of both the film and the book.

The problem, as I see it, is that the filmmakers tried to pull various threads from all of the books and weave them into something coherent in a not-quite two hour movie, as well as adding in things that never happened in the books. The result is a jumbled mess that I suspect would barely make sense to anyone who hasn’t read the books. Or rather, because I have read some of the books, it seems like a hurried scramble of elements that could have been handled better; maybe the average movie-goer who hasn’t read the series would have no problem with accepting the plot. Maybe.

Either way, the film follows Jake, a 13 year old from New York City, who’s been having nightmares. Specifically, about a Dark Tower in another world that is of immense importance, a Tower which is under attack. Children are being abducted, children who have a special power called the Shine (some level of psychic power), and are used to send destructive beams toward the Tower. The person orchestrating all this is the sorcerer Walter, aka The Man in Black. He wants the Tower destroyed so that the universe will collapse, letting in chaos and darkness. Jake also dreams of the last Gunslinger, a man who opposes Walter and means to end his life.

Jake manages to find a “portal” or door to Roland’s world (there are many such portals between the worlds), and finds Roland. To his dismay, he realizes that Roland only wants vengeance against Walter, who had killed his father and everyone else he has ever loved. He has no interest in saving the Tower; basically, he’s given up that particular quest. Walter soon learns that Jake has the most “pure” shine ever discovered in a child, and wants him for his mechanism that sends destructive beams toward the Tower. He wants to end it once and for all. The film lurches toward that inevitable meeting between Gunslinger and Man in Black, with Jake in the middle, along with the fate of the universe.

Roland and Jake
Roland and Jake

I have to say that casting McConaughey as Walter was brilliant; the man clearly enjoyed playing the flippant, purely evil Man in Black. Not quite the Devil himself, but a very effective agent of evil, one that’s gotten a little bored with eternity and likes to play around with his victims. Though Stephen King has said that his character Roland was based on Clint Eastwood in his spaghetti western films, Elba was a refreshing choice for the stoic, spiritually spent Gunslinger; Taylor did fine as the suffering, idealistic kid who brings Roland around to do the right thing.

Still, the great performances couldn’t save this film for me. The biggest problem was the Tower itself: yes, it holds the universe together, but how, and why? What’s in the Tower? These questions were not answered. It remained an inanimate object that failed to engage our emotions. With the fate of the universe at stake, it has to be more than just a sliver of rock in the middle of nowhere.

As a reader of the books, I caught references to things that held great meaning in the novels: the number 19, the roses at the base of the Tower, the wrecked amusement park, the thirteen orbs, and many other little things that held significance. None of which were explored or explained in the film, which I found frustrating. I get it; there’s no time in a film. So why bother putting them in at all? It’s just a tease to a fan of the books, and makes no sense to anyone else. I feel this story would have been much better served as a mini-series, where the nuances and details of this great epic could be explored more satisfactorily. Very disappointing, to say the least.








strangerland mathew and katherine
Fiennes and Kidman







The Reader

the reader





reader michael and hanna
Kross and Winslet as Michael and Hanna.




Blade Runner 2049










joe and joi
Joi and K/Joe








Fahrenheit 451

F 451





montag and clarisse
Montag and Clarisse















cargo image





Anna Karenina

anna karenina







Anna principals
