BEFORE: I've got two jobs, so two bosses with two different opinions about how to respond to the Corona shutdown - one wants to keep the studio working because any work stoppage in the independent film business means loss of income, and we're always in danger of running out of money as it is. The other boss has told all employees to stay home, so I'm in some form of working from home/quarantine for the next few weeks, at least. The way things have been going, it seems like only a matter of time before this gets mandated by the NYC government, anyway, so I'm at least willing to comply.
I've got enough movies to last for a while, but the problem will soon become that I was counting on some Academy screeners to make my chain possible - if I can't get to the studio with the screeners, then I'll have to adjust the chain or break the chain, but I'm going to put off that decision for at least a couple of days. Maybe on Thursday I can swing by the studio just to grab the screeners I need to get me to Mother's Day, we'll see.
Kristin Scott Thomas carries over from "Life as a House".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" (Movie #2,214), "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" (Movie #2,215)
THE PLOT: Lara Croft, the fiercely independent daughter of a missing adventurer, must push herself beyond her limits when she discovers the island where her father, Lord Richard Croft, disappeared.
AFTER: SPOILER ALERT for this film tonight, there are plot points at the end I want to talk about, so if you haven't seen the 2018 "Tomb Raider" reboot, please self-quarantine. You've been warned.
If yesterday's film was all about absent fathers, that topic rolls over to today as well - the flashbacks of Lara's childhood show that her business mogul father was always going away on some kind of business trip, how was she to know that he was investigating some shadow organization that was trying to find supernatural power to take over the world?
But yesterday's film was also about building a house, and I imagine plenty of people are stuck at home right now with little to do - why not tackle that outstanding home-repair project? I just finished typing my database of all my DVDs, so I'll know where to find films in the future. Soon I'll have to take a look at cleaning up around the house or getting some things taken care of in the yard. But here's another timely tie-in - in today's film, Lara Croft has to prevent an ancient virus from escaping from a lost tomb somewhere near Japan. Oooh, so close, if only this were set in China I could say it was very prescient. But a virus from Japan that could kill millions? Still very similar, but not a match, so the board goes back.
The first step in Lara's journey is to figure out who her father really was - the kind of guy with a secret underground lair, it turns out. There she finds his research on the Trinity Corporation, and a video message from him, asking her to burn all of his research in the event of his death. And he has been declared legally dead after being missing for a number of years - I've always wondered about this, I think it's just a movie convention, right? Being declared legally dead? How does this work in the real world, someone's off in the jungle for five years and then somebody inherits all their stuff if they file the proper paperwork? It just feels like something out of a soap opera, that's all - if they come back then they have to have a story about surviving a plane crash, being nursed back to health by jungle natives and then getting plastic surgery so they look completely different, right? I feel like maybe everything I know about the legal system comes from TV shows.
So instead of burning all of his notes, Lara uses them to try to figure out where and why he disappeared, he was tracking down the tomb of Himiko, some legendary Japanese figure with the power over life and death. This is where the film really starts to follow the pattern of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", where Indy used his father's notes on the Holy Grail to track him down. Very similar, even the notes on what to do to avoid the traps in the tomb. To some extent, that's just how these stories go, but on the other hand, if they wanted to avoid people thinking of Lara as just a modernized, gender-swapped Indiana Jones, I think more could have been done. OK, so she doesn't use a whip, she shoots a bow and arrow - but that's just a rip-off of "The Hunger Games", right?
All that being said, there is a good amount of original stuff here - now, I've never played the "Lara Croft" video-games, so I don't know if any or all of this comes from the games. But the stunts are really great here, lots of last-minute or last-second escapes, like when she avoids going over a waterfall by grabbing on to a conveniently-placed old warplane that's been stuck on the edge of the cliff for the last 50 years, just slowly rusting and waiting for someone to need help. Only the plane picks this EXACT moment to start falling apart. Right.
Once the slaves revolt (as in "Temple of Doom") and the bad guys regain the upper hand (as in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"), it's time to enter the final tomb and find the sarcophagus of Himiko - it turns out that long ago, she was the asymptomatic carrier of a deadly virus, which unfortunately, was not killed despite her isolating herself and being sealed in a crypt for what, 1,000 years? Yeah, that's not good. (Again, this message could not come along at a better time - if you find you are a carrier, please isolate yourself - what's two weeks of your life worth if that saves someone else's?) Somehow I don't think that this pathogen could survive 1,000 years in a sealed crypt, but I guess it's possible? Hey, if dinosaur or mammoth DNA can survive millions of years in amber or permafrost, then maybe.
Lara finally gets out of the tomb (umm, with a little help) and back to London, where there's some kind of indication that the woman who was her legal guardian for many years might be connected to the mysterious Trinity organization. Clearly they're setting up the next movie here, and yep, the next film in the franchise is scheduled for 2021, unless the real virus in the real world interferes with the shooting or release schedule, which is a definite possibility.
Also starring Alicia Vikander (last seen in "The Light Between Oceans"), Dominic West (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Walton Goggins (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), Hannah John-Kamen (ditto), Daniel Wu (last seen in "Warcraft"), Derek Jacobi (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"), Nick Frost (last seen in "The Huntsman: Winter's War"), Jaime Winstone, Antonio Aakeel, Duncan Airlie James (last seen in "Outlaw King"), Josef Altin (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Billy Postlethwaite (last seen in "1917"), Roger Nsengiyumya, Michael Obiora, Emily Carey (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Maisy De Freitas, Annabel Elizabeth Wood.
RATING: 6 out of 10 wooden puzzle boxes
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