Authors: Walter Chaw Archives - Page 41 of 146

Spectre (2015)

November 7, 20152015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Espionage, James Bond, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes
screenplay by John Logan and Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth
directed by Sam Mendes

by Walter Chaw My favourite James Bond movie is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: the first without Sean Connery as Bond, and the first and only featuring Australian model George Lazenby in the role. It’s the one where Bond falls in love, marries, and, in the end, is unable to protect his new bride from her demons. I like it the best because, despite a few typically silly Bond moments, it has Bond’s Moriarty, Blofeld (Telly Savalas in that film), acting as the spear in our hero’s side, and it has Bond attempting to address his own failures as a human being and being taught, essentially, that the world is a cold place. I like it the best because it feels melancholy and hopeless. Bond is psychotic, you see, a serial philanderer and killer given license to do both by a broken state and the illusion of order. He’s a rapist in Fleming’s novels (and consider the conquest of Pussy Galore in Goldfinger)–literally in some instances, in others just given to taking advantage of women in extremis. It’s a very particular ruling-class fantasy punctuated by gadgets and automobiles–film noir, except the code our ambiguous hero plays by is more Humphrey Bogart’s from In a Lonely Place than Bogey’s from The Maltese Falcon.

Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut (1990) [Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack] + Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions (1995) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

November 1, 20151990s, 2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

Clive Barker’s Nightbreed
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg, Charles Haid
screenplay by Clive Barker, based on his novel Cabal
directed by Clive Barker

CLIVE BARKER’S LORD OF ILLUSIONS
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C+
starring Scott Bakula, Kevin J. O’Connor, Famke Janssen, Daniel Von Bargen
written for the screen and directed by Clive Barker

by Walter Chaw Clive Barker’s too-brief directing career, capping his time as the Stephen King-anointed prince of horror (“I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker,” went King’s famous endorsement), produced three cult classics: Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions. His Hollywood trajectory traces the familiar tale of enfant terrible allowed full reign on his first project, only to find subsequent efforts bowdlerized by non-believers. Director’s cuts of Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions have circulated in some form over the years, with fans claiming–particularly in the case of Nightbreed–that masterpieces had been corrupted, hidden from sight. It’s the kind of intrigue that forms the basis of much of Barker’s work: the hidden grotto, arcane knowledge secreted away, art too beautiful for human eyes. There’s something of the fury of H.P. Lovecraft’s cult of personality in this–something more of the cosplay phenomenon. Each of Barker’s movies evokes the absolute acceptance that outsiders encounter at genre conventions: they are explosions of the internal, actings-out of repressed desires. Find in this explanation of the coda, surprisingly sticky despite the bad pun, to his short-story anthologies: “Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.” Clive Barker is the Douglas Sirk of splatter.

Needing Bigger Boats: FFC Interviews Larry Fessenden

October 24, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Interviews

illustration by Bill Chambers

It was within the first six months or so of trying this thing out professionally that I reviewed Larry Fessenden's third film (and masterpiece), Wendigo. I was moved, deeply, by its observation of childhood and innocence lost. I was taken by the care of its presentation. It was thematically tight. And technically? On point, including a fantastic stop-motion, practical conception of the titular bogie. It's a lovely bit of myth-making that understands why we make myths in the first place. Years later, when Fessenden directed his "aquatic" film Beneath for basic cable, certain wags would brand it his Jaws–knowing, famously, that Spielberg's maritime yarn was among Fessenden's favourites. The boat they missed is that his Jaws is actually Wendigo: childhood's end; death of the father; the parents' inability to protect their young; and, yes, the creation of myths to contextualize what it could and explain the rest away.

Fantastic Fest ’15: Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

October 19, 2015****/****, 1970s, 2015, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Fantasy, Film Festivals, Japan

****/****
written by Yoshiyuki Fukuda, Eiichi Yamamoto, based on the novel La sorcière by Jules Michelet
directed by Eiichi Yamamoto

by Walter Chaw The completion of Osamu Tezuka's "Animerama," a trilogy of early-'70s erotica initially imagined as a tie-in to that era's "pink films" that eventually applied their boundary-testing to its own form and function, Belladonna of Sadness is the only one of the three pictures to, ironically, feature no direct involvement from Tezuka. Instead, longtime collaborator Eiichi Yamamoto takes the reins and, in this loose adaptation of a non-fiction tract on witchcraft and Satanism, produces the headwaters for everything from hentai to Andrzej Zulawski's Possession. It's a template that parallels Ralph Bakshi's dabbling in ani-porn, a thing that runs on evocations of Roman Polanski in not just its function and form, but also the drawing of its heroine, Jeanne, as the very image of Sharon Tate. The fate of pretty blondes is a primary concern of Polanski's in this period–no less so enacted through this saga of a woman, raped and humiliated before, in the end, like Yeats's Leda, she takes on the power of her patriarchal tormentors to exact precise, poetic vengeance.

Fantastic Fest ’15: Short Films

October 16, 2015****/****, 2015, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disability, Drama, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Romance, Satire, Sci-Fi, Short Films, Sweden, ZERO STARS

by Walter Chaw

The Babysitter Murders ****/**** (d. Ryan Spindell) For certain artists working in the short-film format, I don't have any idea how or why it is they haven't been called up to the big leagues yet. This speaks as much to my prejudice, obviously: there's nothing wrong with the short form. In literature, many of my favourite writers are best in the short form. In film, though, there's so little real opportunity for distribution that it seems a particular shame when guys like Ryan Spindell have only produced shorts. I'm not complaining (his work is excellent), merely hoping he has the means to continue. Spindell's latest, The Babysitter Murders, is so expertly composited that it would be kind of a shame to dissect it at all. Sufficed to say that it unearths a new place to take Wes Craven's Scream meta funhouse, and does it without a hint of smugness or show-off-y insecurity. It's beautifully paced, conceived, and executed. Look at a cooking scene early on, set to "Fast & Sweet" by Mondo Boys feat. Kestrin Pantera–the way it's shot and edited, the way Elie Smolkin's camera stalks and Eric Ekman cuts it all together. The movie's premise–a babysitter alone on a stormy night when a psycho escapes from an asylum–is as rote as they come, but Spindell, as he did with The Root of the Problem and dentists, finds something new to say. The performances are to a one pitch-perfect and the gore is appropriately horrifying; it's a film balanced in that space between hilarity for its excess and hilarity for its brilliance. I'm out of superlatives. Spindell is one of the finest voices working in genre right now, carving out a niche that's neither self-serious nor self-abnegating. He's full of joy, this one, and his movies are treasures.

Tomorrowland (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

October 15, 20152015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Mystery, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A+ (ultra) Sound A+ Extras C+
starring George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy
screenplay by Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird
directed by Brad Bird

by Walter Chaw Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland is a mess and it knows it. It’s unruly, barely contained, just this side of completely falling apart. There are many and distracting continuity errors, and though it makes a joke of it, it’s clear immediately that the movie doesn’t know how to start, much less end. It has an engaging, irrepressible heroine it strands at the moment she should be doing something (“Am I supposed to be…doing something?” she actually asks), and it has a visit to a memorabilia/collectibles store run by unusual proprietors that is packed to the girders with Brad Bird ephemera of the Iron Giant and Incredibles variety. Tomorrowland has hanging about it, in other words, all the elements of disaster: winky meta references, lack of narrative cohesion, desperation-born mistakes, bad screenwriter/Nick-Riviera-bad script doctor Damon Lindelof as Bird’s co-author…and yet it’s good somehow. Credit Bird, who knows his way around spatial relationships, and credit a simple, plaintive idea that the world can be better if we believe that it can be better. If the sign of a great filmmaker is his ability to make a bad actor seem good, Bird is a frickin’ genius for making something Lindelof worked on not an utter catastrophe. It’s big and simple and corny in a Lone Ranger, Captain America, Silver Age Superman kind of way–the kind of big and simple and corny I can get behind.

Crimson Peak (2015)

October 14, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Jim Beaver
written by Guillermo del Toro & Matthew Robbins
directed by Guillermo del Toro

by Walter Chaw I love Guillermo del Toro. I love the ethic driving Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone and the Frankenstein and Pinocchio myths driving Mimic. I love the Prodigal Son of Blade II, the ferocity, of course, and vision of Pan’s Labyrinth, and all of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, my favourite of his films; every frame is wonder. I didn’t like Pacific Rim but I did think it was at least all-in and there’s something to be said for that. And now here’s Crimson Peak, which is just, you know, really bad and for no one. I have a friend who referred to del Toro’s book version of The Strain (I’ve never read it) as arrogant. I didn’t understand that, but it tickled during Pacific Rim and has found full flower now in Crimson Peak. There’s a point at which someone who is an expert in something can go from teacher to pedant. What begins as a conversation, nurturing and full of joy, becomes patronizing and solipsistic. I myself probably crossed over years ago. Now I have company. Del Toro at his best shares what he loves. At his worst (and Crimson Peak is del Toro at his worst, by a long shot), he believes that he’s talking over your head. You couldn’t possibly understand. You’ll never catch all his references, he says. And suddenly the party’s over and he’s all by himself in his self-aggrandizing echo chamber of curiosities.

Bridge of Spies (2015)

October 13, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Drama, Espionage, Spielberg

*/****
starring Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda
screenplay by Matt Charman and Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw Steven Spielberg is the great Hollywood pastry tube. He’s packed to the brim with sugary, awards-season sweetness, and he extrudes little nuggets of prestige with the greased regularity of a lifelong prune-eater. In his latest bit of machine-tooled calculation, Bridge of Spies, he makes the unintentional statement during his patented unforgivable epilogue that the American public is a disgusting, moronic, animalistic mob ruled by prejudices and the media (which is the foundation of a different, good movie on the subject of Bridge of Spies)–ironic, because it’s those very deficiencies in critical discernment, moral certitude, and sophistication that Spielberg has made a cottage career of taking advantage of. If it’s true that all films manipulate but we only complain when they do it poorly (and it’s more true than not), then let me complain that Spielberg is an absolute visual savant–proof of it in the first ten, wordless minutes of Bridge of Spies (compare it to the wordless section of Amistad)–and an absolute pandering whore in his inability to deliver an ambiguous ending. He’s said as much. He’s the only living director who could turn out a masterpiece from a Philip K. Dick short story and ruin it with a sunshine double-happiness lollipop of a ridiculous Hollywood ending. But have no fear: Bridge of Spies never threatens to be a masterpiece for even a moment. It’s no Munich or Saving Private Ryan–more like The Terminal. Bridge of Spies is decrepit, highly-polished garbage from almost the beginning, with no relief from its elderly ministrations all the way through to the end.

Fantastic Fest ’15: Sensoria

October 13, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, Horror, Sweden, Thriller

**/****directed by Christian Hallman by Walter Chaw Swede Christian Hallman's first feature, Sensoria, sports a couple of nice, creepy moments but ultimately adds little to the "we have always been here" subgenre of haunted-house movies. In this iteration, Caroline (Lanna Ohlsson), freshly single and lamenting that her circle of friends consists largely of digital phantoms offering ephemeral support through social media, discovers that her new bachelorette pad is maybe haunted by the ghost of a little dead girl, My (Norah Anderson). Not helping her isolation and increasing paranoia are a pervy landlord and a dotty old lady of the kind that…

Pan (2015)

October 10, 20152015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Family, Fantasy, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Levi Miller
screenplay by Jason Fuchs
directed by Joe Wright

by Walter Chaw Paired with Hanna, his take on the Little Red Riding Hood story, Joe Wright’s Pan suggests that the director’s closest career analogue is that of J.J. Abrams. Wright’s askew take on Anna Karenina hints at a sympathetic penchant for ebullient reinterpretation–no less so his adaptations of Atonement (by an author essentially making a career of taking a piss) and Pride & Prejudice, which, in its sparseness and emotional economy, could stand alongside Andrea Arnold’s magnificent Wuthering Heights. Hanna, his best film, achieves at least a portion of its greatness through its bull-headed perversity. No premise is too fanciful to be presented seriously by Wright. In Pan, when we’re introduced to the pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), a Fury Road‘s collection of orphan miners sing-chants “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in obeisance to their monstrous overlord. It’s something born of Brian Helgeland’s anachronistic A Knight’s Tale and of Terry Gilliam in its antic set design and costuming and of David Lynch, even, in a sequence where Blackbeard dons a mask aboard his flying ship to breathe deep something that resembles the Spice. There’s another sequence in which a pirate ship, a 16^th-century galleon, engages in midair with a trio of British Hawker Hurricanes (I think) defending Mother England against the German blitz before breaking through the clouds for a brief, weightless moment.

A Brilliant Young Mind (2015)

October 3, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disability, Drama, Theatrical, UK

X+Y
½*/****
starring Asa Butterfield, Rafe Spall, Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan
screenplay by James Graham
directed by Morgan Matthews

by Walter Chaw Reminding most of Camp in that it's ultimately more of a zoo for curiosities than an invitation for empathy, here's A Brilliant Young Mind, which posits, among all the Rain Man things it posits about autism, that the Chinese, besides being good at backflips, are very good at math. For the Chinese, you see, math is like art. It says so in this book that was written over the course of a thousand years. For the type of audience that gets off on those Olympics puff pieces where the Chinese are portrayed as opportunistic monsters who sell their children to the national team, it's a special sort of Eurocentric auto-flattery. The implication, see, is that although you're about to lose to the Chinese, they're still morally inferior to you. The Chinese, you understand, don't love their children. And they're good at math. Also, they're sexually naive, you know, because it's not like Asia is horrifically over-populated or anything. Later, a British guy quotes Keats in relation to how if truth is beauty and beauty is truth, then math must be the most beautiful thing of all. It's that kind of movie. The kind of movie with a score of industrious violin pulls and ambitious, then sad, keyboards. It has a moment where the evil dragon uncle of the Chinese mathlympians shouts, in perfect Mandarin, "What are you two doing?" and the film translates it as, "Are you in a relationship?" It's that kind of movie. You'll like it if you're that kind of person.

Fantastic Fest ’15: In Search of the Ultra-Sex

October 3, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, France, Satire, Sci-Fi

A la recherche de l'Ultra-Sex½*/****directed by Nicolas Charlet & Bruno Lavaine by Walter Chaw I saw a hacked anime once--pre-Adult Swim and projects of that ilk--that took place on a flying aircraft carrier and had been re-dubbed so that all the characters were offering different euphemisms for flatulence. My favourite was, "I can't seem to take a step without introducing Mr. Wetty." It lasted about four minutes and I enjoyed a good three-and-a-half of it. Nicholas Charlet and Bruno Lavaine's In Search of the Ultra-Sex is a full hour of R-rated excerpts from classic porn, dubbed to be a Plan 9…

Mississippi Grind (2015)

October 2, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Ryan Reynolds, Ben Mendelsohn, Sienna Miller, Analeigh Tipton
written and directed by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden

by Walter Chaw Completely adequate from start to finish, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck's Mississippi Grind is essentially California Split without the stylistic innovation or sense of sadness and danger. In it, down-on-his luck gambling addict and self-proclaimed "not a good guy" Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) runs into bon vivant gambling addict Curtis (Ryan Reynolds), who Cheap Thrills Gerry into a series of escalating gambles before whisking him away on a journey to the Big Game. There's a tremendous scene right in the middle with a loan shark played by the great Alfre Woodard that showcases both her immense warmth and her sudden steel. There's also a whore with a heart of gold (Sienna Miller) and a winsome epilogue that suggests, The Wrestler-like, that this big, lovable, broken-down lug just can't get out of his own way, gosh darn it–isn't that a shame? It is. It's a terrible shame.

Fantastic Fest ’15: Yakuza Apocalypse

October 2, 20152015, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Horror, Japan, Vampire

**½/****directed by Takashi Miike by Walter Chaw Takashi Miike makes one, sometimes two, sometimes three movies a year, which is not so remarkable as the fact that they're often exceptional. He's as fecund as a Fassbender and hasn't shown signs of the same catastrophic burnout. Even his middling projects have moments in them to recommend--no less so his latest, Yakuza Apocalypse, a return to the Yakuza genre that gave him mainstream credibility (such as it was) and the supernatural horror genre that gave him cult immortality. This one isn't about anything that I could ken, really, but it is technically…

Fantastic Fest ’15: Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler

October 1, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Documentary, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, Italy, Japan

**½/****directed by Andrew Seklir & Tim Kinzy by Walter Chaw This is a well-mounted documentary about videogame geek Tim McVey (no, not that Tim McVeigh), who, as a carbuncular teen, once scored a billion points on little-known stand-up game Nibbler--a symbolic victory for its marathon nature (typically a 40-hour run is required for such a feat) and for the rarity of having a machine that would actually tally a ten-digit score. Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler is ultimately best when it diagrams the essential decency of Tim and especially his impossibly kind and supportive wife, Tina. The film…

Fantastic Fest ’15: February

September 30, 2015****/****, 2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Fantastic Fest, Film Festivals, Horror, Thriller

****/****
starring Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, James Remar
written and directed by Oz Perkins

by Walter Chaw Osgood Perkins's hyphenate debut February is haunted. It plays like a boarding-school version of Rob Zombie's extraordinary Lords of Salem, coloured by the same sadness and sense of inevitability and doom. Like it, February features a female protagonist cast adrift in a mostly-empty building, waiting for something to take her away–to Heaven or to Hell, it's not clear. Not clear, either, if there's much of a difference at the end of the journey. Here it's Kat ("Mad Men"'s Kiernan Shipka), who has a terrible dream one night that her parents aren't going to arrive to take her home from school over the mid-winter break and then wakes to find it come true. She's marooned there with two guardians and a Heather, the beautiful Rose (Lucy Boynton), who's engineered her own abandonment, the better to spend an extra week with a boy who may have knocked her up. February is obviously about young female sexuality, locating its girl heroes right there, teetering on the cusp of still calling out to their mothers when they're hurt. And it's about grief. Grief for the passing of innocence to experience, literalized in the loss of parents and the desire for their surrogates. It wonders what would happen if Rosemary's baby were a girl, and met her real father for the first time as a young woman going through puberty. It's a lovely metaphor for the sensual horror of that transformation, for the little deaths that separate children from their parents, literally or figuratively.

Sleeping with Other People (2015)

September 30, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet
written and directed by Leslye Headland

by Walter Chaw Massively over-written, smug, baselessly self-assured, and world-weary in the way that people who watch a lot of "Sex and the City" and "Girls" are world-weary, Leslye Headlund's rank, unwatchable Sleeping with Other People is like that date that Death goes on "Family Guy" with the girl who tells Him you can't hug your kids with nuclear arms. To say it's awful is unfair; better to say it's tedious as shit. It's a chronicle of insufferable, half-wit narcissists and, given the success of stuff like Obvious Child, hell, it's worth a try, right? Honestly, though…and no one's asking, but…wouldn't it be better to not have a career than be tied to great white albatrosses like this? Sleeping with Other People is like Diablo Cody on steroids, complete with an entire album's worth of soft-alt rock and Lilith Fair covers on the soundtrack. And much like Cody's script for Juno that has references to Soupy Sales flying from the mouths of babes, this gem has a college girl in 2002 warning a prospective beau not to reference The Graduate on learning that her name is "Elaine" when, you know, "Seinfeld". Jesus, c'mon.

Fantastic Fest ’15: Gridlocked

September 29, 20152015, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Dominic Purcell, Stephen Lang, Trish Stratus, Danny Glover
screenplay by Rob Robol & Allan Ungar
directed by Allan Ungar

by Walter Chaw Danny Glover's been too old for this shit for over thirty years now, making it all the more tragic to find him in Allan Ungar's dipshit remake of The Hard Way that nobody wanted, Gridlocked, which magnifies its crimes by also being the second remake of Assault on Precinct 13 that nobody wanted. A desk jockey checking IDs at the police station, Glover's Sully advises about 45 minutes in that he is, yes, too old for this shit. The only thing missing is a wry saxophone riff when he says it. At least Gridlocked, as it's pissing on the corpse of the literally dozens of better movies it's ripping off, had the decency to let Michael Kamen rest in peace, if nobody else. It's uniquely awful.

TIFF ’15: Full Contact

September 27, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Croatia, Drama, Film Festivals, Mystery, Netherlands, Thriller, TIFF

***/****
starring Grégoire Colin, Lizzie Brocheré, Slimane Dazi
written and directed by David Verbeek

by Walter Chaw Brilliant if often a bit too on-the-nose, Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek's Full Contact takes on the state of modern man by detailing America's drone war. I heard a thing on NPR a while back talking about how the traditional metric of tracking a battle group's efficiency by tallying its loss-to-kill ratio has been blown of late by drone groups that have thousands of kills to zero losses. It's an existentially frightening situation in which Nintendo skills not only predict military success, but also potentially engender the same sort of desensitization regarding the tactile obscenity of murder. The movie's title is a clue to its intentions, then: Verbeek follows drone captain Ivan (Grégoire Colin), sequestered away in a bunker somewhere in Nevada where he pilots drone aircraft, bristling with munitions, into somewhere in the Middle East, the better to assassinate tagged targets. He communicates via live messaging and a headset (the way a kid on an Xbox 360 might, essentially), and one day, though he suspects better, he hits a target that turns out to be a school. Outside, he befriends a stripper, Cindy (Lizzie Brocheré), telling her he's impotent although he's not.

The Martian (2015)

September 22, 20152015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

**/****
starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristin Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor
screenplay by Drew Goddard, based on the novel by Andy Weir
directed by Ridley Scott

by Walter Chaw The riposte, and it’s a fair one, is: What would make you happy? And the frustrating response is, “I don’t know.” The problem is this (and in a movie about solving problems, it’s germane to raise one): The Martian, Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard’s faithful adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestseller, is essentially a bwana story in which smart and resourceful black and Chinese people band together to save a white explorer who declares himself both “colonizer” and “pirate” at various points in the movie. It’s a summary of a certain kind of film, too, the space opera that used to be all the rage in the 1950s–a decade actually interested in exploration rather than defunding NASA and rabid anti-intellectualism. The only thing missing is a spacechimp and a space lady with rockets in her brassiere. I confess that I probably wouldn’t have even been thinking much, or perhaps as quickly, about the racial politics of this film had Matt Damon, the bwana in question, not “whitesplained” to a black producer (a female black producer) what diversity means as regards his wish-fulfillment reality series “Project Greenlight”. Or if it weren’t directed by Ridley Scott, whose last film, Exodus: Gods and Kings, required volumes of whitesplaining itself as to why the principals of his Middle Eastern/African tale were white.