Poison in the Well (Dark Waters, 2019)

Frankly, companies do not care about you. Amazon does not care about you. And chemical companies really do not care about you. And Dark Waters is about the fight to not just expose this to the world, but to hold polluters accountable for the destruction they have caused.

Dark Water is a legal drama that somehow manages to pace itself like some sort of action movie. It does not spend a lot of time establishing Ruffalo’s Rob Bilot. He is a lawyer and has a family, and quickly he finds a farmer, Wilbur Tennant, in his office demanding his help. Wilbur is certain that Dupont chemicals have been destroying the earth and cattle of his farm.

Hesitant at first Bilot does a little research…it does not take long for him to suspect Tennant is on to something. His firm is unsure at first, as they normally defend companies like Dupont. But as time passes and information comes in that seems more damning, top people in the firm start to share Bilot’s conviction.

One of the most effective aspects of this film is how they sell the paranoia and demoralizing nature that can be part of challenging the status quo. In one scene, a man Bilot believes he could trust tells him he is sending all their research. It is so many boxes, as they pull away it feels defeating. It is clear they were inundating Bilot with so much they hoped he would give up or never be able to process it all and therefore miss something.

Dark Waters spans over a decade, and sometimes the time jumps greatly between scenes. This method of transition lulls the viewer a bit as you kind of expect maybe jumping a couple years here and there…and then around 2006, the screen stays dark as the title card jumps year by year.

Mark Ruffalo gives a great performance and you see the years of not getting justice take their toll, the fear that he and his family are in danger.

Dark Waters got kind of overlooked last year, but it is worth locating and watching.

May 6, 2020 0

Crime Time (Ocean’s 8, 2018)

We have not seen an Ocean’s followed by a digit movie in eleven years. And that has been okay. I really enjoyed the first and third films of the series led by the husband of Amal Clooney and Angelina Jolie’s ex-husband. But I had not really given much thought over the years to another installment.

Set shortly after the apparent death of Danny Ocean, his sister Debbie gets paroled. She promises the parole board she just wants a quiet life. But you do not have much of a movie if she weren’t lying. It turns out that Debbie has been working out a big heist the entire time she was in prison. She joins up with her former partner in crime Lou. Lou is a semi legit nightclub owner with a shady past of working scams with Debbie.

They assemble a team of “the best at what they do” ladies. There is jeweler Amita, hacker Nine Ball, pick pocket Constance, disgraced Fashion designer Rose and fencer Tammy. They set out to steal a very rare necklace that almost never sees the light of day at the yearly Met Gala.

There is not a lot of depth to the characters, they exist more for their skills than anything. But that is to be expected in a heist film in general and a larger ensemble one even more. Heist films are about the heist, the characters just need to have some unique flavor. And thankfully, they do. Each character has a distinct personality from the others. This may seem like I am contradicting myself, but being a loose sketch that does not go to deep does not mean characters are not memorable or distinctive from other characters in the story.

When it comes down to it, a heist movie should be fun. You should be trying to work it out, see if you can find the flaws and if the plan actually covered it. If the final reveal is satisfying, you have done good. And Ocean’s 8 is quite a bit of fun. The choice to make the heist crew all female makes for a bit of a twist on the Ocean Franchise giving all sorts of creative costume and fashion changes (as I imagine guys would all end up in tuxes). The Met Gala setting also allows for fun interferences.

Ocean’s 8 is a fun heist movie. I enjoyed the performances, the set up and the results. When the film was announced, I recall some negative responses of “Who asked for this”? But I honestly find that a dumb question. Most movies were not “asked” for. Nobody was saying “I need a movie about Oscar Schindler…but Speilberg made a powerful film anyways. Was I asking for another Ocean’s heist film? No. But we got one and I had a lot of fun watching it.

July 2, 2018 0

Rage Against the Machine (The Dark Knight Rises,2012)

It was becoming clear that Nolan was planning to form a trilogy. The Dark Knight ended with Batman on the run, taking the blame for Harvey Dent’s death. It suggested Batman would be hiding in the shadows in his fight against crime. There were no real casting controversies this time. Generally, people seemed okay with announcements of Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway.

After the Dark Knight, people seemed to trust the team making these films. So there was much anticipation when the Dark Knight Rises arrived four years later.

And right from the start? The film kicks off with a nice little plane hijacking by the villain Bane. This Bane appears to be a pretty brilliant criminal and Occupy Terrorist. And yet? The terrific setup from the Dark Knight is not used at all. The film picks up eight years later with Bruce Wayne having retired Batman. The police did their job, so Bruce retired the persona shortly after the events of the Dark Knight. Apparently, no weird bad guys appeared after the Joker. Wayne is in rough shape, physically speaking. The years as Batman took a real toll. He catches Selina Kyle busting into his safe during a party, Kyle is a morally ambiguous character. She is a thief of course, but she is not entirely without conscience.

Commissioner Gordon is deemed a hero, but this is eating away at him…and he keeps a letter on himself at all times confessing what really happened to Harvey Dent. This certainly could have been a real damning situation. Admittedly, I felt it would have been better to bring Two Face back as the central villain, out to humiliate and expose (and destroy) Gordon and the Batman.

Bane starts to wreak havoc on Gotham’s social and financial districts. Forcing Batman out of retirement and into a confrontation, Bane breaks Batman’s back and tosses him in hole. Ultimately Bruce Wayne must climb to the top to get free. The film is a bit on the nose.

It turns out that Bane is teamed up with another villain, who is revealed to have ties from the first film. And their plan just makes no sense. They trap the entire police force underground and plan to blow up a bomb.

What makes the Dark Knight Rises so disappointing as a followup is that it is incredibly sloppy in it’s storytelling. How and why things occur are not fully thought out. The film is full of exciting sequences…but they don’t bring the film together. The film is heavily focused on being a “last Bruce Wayne” story for the Nolan version. But the villains activities don’t really have a satisfying connecting moment. There is, technically, an “Ah HA!” moment. But it still leaves a lot of Bane’s overly elaborate scheming kind of pointless.

As a follow up to the Dark Knight (and Batman Begins) this is a well cast movie full of plot-holes to the point of Swiss Cheese. Catwoman is a fun character, and Hathaway’s performance is great, without drawing on earlier film versions. Freeman, Cain and Oldman are great in their roles, vital to the enjoyment of this film. As a fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he is always welcome, and his tenacious cop Blake (in spite of a “groaner” of a name reveal at the end) is likable…he is also pretty obvious the out of they wanted to make a fourth film without Bale, as the Bale Batman seems to have run it’s course. That Bat Voice starts to grate on a viewer, especially after three movies.

I wish Nolan’s series could have ended on a higher note, but that was not meant to be. We have a movie with some fine performances, some good action scenes and a rather hard to buy into massive plan by villains even taking into account this is a movie about a guy dressed as a bat.

August 26, 2016 0