BEFORE: Well, I had two things go my way today - first off, I found my little flash drive with all my movie lists on it. For the last week I thought that maybe I'd lost it, that it fell out of my pocket while I was taking my wallet out to pay for something or get my Metrocard. But I just left it at one of my offices, the one I go to on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I hadn't been there in a week because of the New Year's holiday. I mean, I've got printed out lists of what movie to watch next, but the drive also has my cast breakdowns, so I couldn't go any further past mid-March without that. It's a big 36-page document that I would hate to have to retype, so getting the drive back is a real plus. I also use the drive to carry home digital music files from the one computer that I have access to that can still rip CDs, but the movie lists are hard to replace, so I'm going to back up the lists to every computer at home and the offices, just in case I really do lose the drive someday.
Secondly, the news broke today that the "L" subway train is not going to go out of service for 15 months starting in April - without this train in service I was looking at either a 15-minute walk each day to another, probably more crowded train, or a combination of train, bus and ferry that could have potentially doubled my commuting time, so this is great, I can continue to lead the lifestyle I've become accustomed to, which involves staying up late, oversleeping and getting to work a little late every day instead of forcing myself to get up earlier to arrive even later than usual. Governor Cuomo toured the tunnels under the Hudson that still need to be repaired after Superstorm Sandy, which was like 6 years ago, and he had some university think tank come up with a way to repair the tunnels without affecting my daily commute. So thank heaven for small favors, and thankfully I stayed the course and didn't panic by doing something crazy like moving or buying my own car. (Once again, I'm rewarded for inaction, it's kind of my thing...)
Natalie Portman carries over from "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium", and I think this is just the way my chain is going to run for a while - the bulk of what constitutes my list are relatively new films, like over 1/3 of the films were released in 2016-2018. But I can still dip back for a film like last night's, which came out in 2007, if I need to make a connection. Perhaps I should look at it the other way, that I need to use recent films to connect the older ones. But it's really all the same thing.
THE PLOT: A biologist signs up for a dangerous secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply.
AFTER: I'm going to be a little generous tonight, because there's some good stuff here, plotlines that I haven't seen before in a movie - and this movie did get some attention for having so many strong female characters, right about the time that the #metoo movement was really going full steam, about a year ago. But now I've read that some people didn't like the way the director changed the ending of the book, and added some plot elements that are somewhat reminiscent of other movies - but they're movies I've never heard of, so that makes no difference to me. And it's also being referred to as one of the big box office bombs of 2018, but that's neither here nor there to me - hey, if you want a movie to make money, maybe don't release it while everyone's rushing out to see "Black Panther".
It's good and twisty, too, and for once I didn't see the twists coming, which isn't easy considering I dubbed it to DVD and tried VERY hard not to see anything important, but sometimes I can't help it. Still, I can't help but feel even though the story is strong and feels very original (to me, again, your mileage may vary) once I start listing a few NITPICK POINTS I may have a different opinion.
My first bone of contention is my most common complaint about films, the non-linear time-jumping. The story starts with Lena, noting that her husband's been gone for a year, though we don't know at first if this means he left, or he died, or what. Eventually we learn that he's been on a military mission and presumed dead, only then he shows up. Before this, he's seen a few times in flashbacks, so here's where the confusion starts - when he comes home, is that just another flashback? See, this is where I find myself with two differing opinions, because when you jump around like this, it only sows confusion, but here the jumping around also slowly reveals the information we need to know, like the details of the mission. We didn't need to know them at first, because neither did Lena, so we're right there in her shoes - but still, I maintain that the story could have been told in the proper order, and dramatic tension still could have been maintained.
This occurs again because we see bits of Lena's debrief after HER mission, before we even get to the point where she BEGINS the mission. So, way too early in my opinion, we learn a few things we DON'T need to know, namely that Lena's going to go on a mission, and that she's going to survive. This seems to be working against maintaining tension, because the mission, when it comes around, would be a little scarier if we hadn't already gotten a peek at her debrief. Obviously this is a common practice, to use an interrogation as a sort of framing device, and then show all the action as someone is relating their story. But then the real meat of the movie is essentially a flashback, and then I think here as a result there's flashbacks within flashbacks, which shouldn't happen as per the rules of film language. Come on, just find a better way.
(Like, later on, the team finds a video camera and gets a glimpse of what went down with the last team - that's a sneaky way to accomplish the same thing as a flashback, only it's motivated by the plot, and it just works better.)
I don't think I'm spoiling anything by revealing that her husband's not in great shape after his experiences within the zone they call "The Shimmer", which is also expanding in size. Several missions of military men have entered the zone and not come back at all, so the assumption is that they all either died, went crazy or both. I guess another assumption is that testosterone or male ego was somehow the downfall of those men, so the next thing to try is to send in a team of women. Umm, sure, that makes perfect logical sense. The film tries to make a clear distinction that this is NOT a suicidal mission, merely a "self-destructive" one, but I think that's putting too fine a point on things. There's a big difference between being a drinker, an addict and a person willing to enter a contaminated zone.
Which brings me to my biggest NITPICK POINT, which is, if you know, or even suspect, that there's something in this area that is toxic, dangerous or hallucinogenic, or something that killed the last team by being eaten or breathed, then the next team should go in wearing full hazmat gear, right? Like oxygen tanks and bullet-proof vests, or those suits that people wear when they defuse bombs. But no, the women are sent in with only guns, their wits, and a week's supply of food. Whatever happened to being prepared?
I'm not going to talk too much about what the new team finds in the Shimmer - just that the proper technical term would be some weird, freaky-ass shit. Like, think of the last 10 minutes of "2001: A Space Odyssey" mixed with "Interstellar" and "Arrival", maybe throw in "War of the Worlds" and "The Thing" to be on the safe side. I hope I haven't given anything away here.
The film also tries to make some kind of point about life, from a scientific point of view - we look at the way that cells reproduce, the way that a human embryo develops into a fetus, and that process also bears some resemblance to the way that cancer cells grow and form a tumor. I guess that's like the yin and yang of biology right there. But it only leads to more questions, in my opinion - like, if you trace that process back billions of years, does that mean that all life on earth came from one cell? But then where did THAT cell come from? Was it an accident, a mutation, a random bunch of chemicals and materials that got struck by lightning? Of course, we could never know - some people say the first cell on earth might have arrived on a meteorite, but then where did it come from before that? That doesn't answer the question, it just moves its location.
Also, the process of cells reproducing doesn't really completely explain a few things, like humans start out as a fertilized egg, which is two cells coming together, a sperm cell and an egg cell. Together they each have half the genetic material to form a new full cell, which splits to become two and then four cells, eight and so on. But at some point those cells have to specialize, like THIS cell is going to end up in the fetus's heart, and this one's going to be a tiny bit of a hair follicle, and so on. How does THAT happen? Some theories have suggested that what we now know as human organs were once organisms on their own, and somehow they came together to form more complex biological systems that worked together - like some organisms were better at processing food, and others could see and others had chemicals that could fight infections. And over billions of years of interactions both good and bad, somehow we ended up with things like reptiles and mammals with internal organs that did different things. I don't know, a planet full of eyeballs and hearts and lungs floating around, trying to figure out how to work together is just way too weird.
I think it's also a huge stretch that someone with so much knowledge in biology would also have a military background, but what do I know? I'll have to withhold my other N.P.'s because I don't want to even come close to giving away the film's ending. Just know that they're there.
Also starring Jennifer Jason Leigh (last seen in "Dolores Claiborne"), Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Gina Rodriguez (last seen in "Deepwater Horizon"), Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Benedict Wong (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Sonoya Mizuno, David Gyasi (last seen in "Interstellar")
RATING: 6 out of 10 combat boots
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