10 Cloverfield Lane

J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot, which produced 2009’s “Cloverfield,” and “Super 8,” has made Abrams’ concept of the ‘mystery box’ a big part of the way it they tell their stories and an even bigger part of the way market their projects. “10 Cloverfield Lane” is a conceptual successor to the 2009 found-footage, monster-movie but it’s not necessarily a sequel. Of course Bad Robot sold the, as with many of its others, with a shroud of mystery, releasing a vague but enticing trailer. Luckily the film itself lives up to most of the intrigue of the trailer and though it only takes about 30 minutes before you realize this has nothing to do with the original “Cloverfield,” it settles in successfully as a contained thriller on its own... that is until it loses its nerve in a jarring and disjointed final sequence.

In keeping with the ‘mystery box’ narrative style we are introduced to our movie’s lead Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as she is racing down the highways of rural America after initiating a bad breakup. On her way, she collides with a truck and is left for dead on the side of the road, where she is eventually rescued by an intense survivalist/conspiracy theorist named Howard (John Goodman). Michelle wakes up to finds herself in a hand-built bomb shelter where her captor/savior Howard insists that Armageddon has begun outside of the walls of their sanctuary and that she must live with him and his younger apprentice Emmet (John Gallagher Jr) until the air outside has become clear of nuclear fallout.

This would be a great premise for a bottle episode of anthology television shows like “The Twilight Zone,” “The Outer Limits” or even “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” The contained locations and the intimate cast focus the energy of the film on steady, deliberate scene direction and performances. All three of the leads are convincing in their parts – Winstead proves again that she can hold the camera’s attention and can bring both emotional heft and levity when it’s needed. Gallagher Jr works as a great foil that helps to settle the story’s tension with a general sense of everyman relatability. Goodman is given the license to ham it up and he chooses to use it, integrating many acting ticks into his creepy portrayal of a deeply paranoid and lonely control freak. Much of this is presented like a perversion of the American family archetype and in the background there’s only a hint of something more dangerous and otherworldly at stake. Unfortunately, the movie’s awkward landing doesn’t maintain the same kind of subtly and suggestion.

 First time director Dan Trachtenberg is able to keep the pot simmering for the most part but reported on-set rewrites lead to the movie’s downfall in a tonally jarring conclusion. I can’t give away what happens, but let’s just say that the human interactions happening inside of the seller is a hell of a lot more interesting than what’s apparently happening outside of it. Because the “Cloverfield” brand was slapped on this otherwise good thriller, Abrams’ made more effort to connect the two movies in ways that undercut this film’s deeper themes of fanaticism and the results of dangerously regressive gender dynamics. Like a pulpy cousin to last year’s Oscar-nominated “Room,” “10 Cloverfield Lane” wants to explore bigger ideas outside of the confines of its genre, but those ideas are ultimately trapped within a problematic rewrite.  

Even though the movie is hobbled by its misjudged ending, the merits of everything leading up to it can’t be ignored. As such, the film will sit alongside Steven Spielberg’s “A.I” and Danny Boyles “Sunshine” in the pantheon of sci-fi near-masterpieces that are marred by their last half hour.


Grade: B -

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2016 

Listen to more discussion about "10 Cloverfield Lane" on this week's Jabber and the Drone Podcast.

Eddie the Eagle review

It’s not necessarily a terrible thing when a movie perfectly exemplifies the genre it’s working in. Such is the case with “Eddie the Eagle” -  a wholesome, underdog sports movie that ticks every box expected in that kind of narrative. There’s nothing new or surprising about the way the plot develops but it’s confidently told and competently made, and sometimes that’s just enough effort to keep an audience satisfied. Despite the training montages, the corny humor, and and gee-golly innocents it exudes, “Eddie the Eagle” is a very satisfying movie. 

Matthew Vaughn, director of genre defying, post-modern send-ups like “Stardust,” “Kick-Ass” and last year’s gleefully subversive teen-spy movie “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” somehow produced this sincere throwback, based on the true story of an unskilled English underclassman who finagled his way into the 1988 Olympics. Kingsman’s Taron Egerton plays Eddie, an enthusiastic Brit with ambitions to compete, despite never receiving any formal training or encouragement to do so. His father would rather his son learn a useful trade while his mother politely indulged Eddie’s fantasies. After trying sports and failing to master them, Eddie learns that nobody has competed on behalf of England in the field of competitive ski-jumping, thus sending him to Norway to learn the skill well enough to qualify within a short window of time. There he meets Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman), a drunk groundskeeper who just happened to be an ex-Olympian who ski-jumped for America in the 1970s. 

As previously warned, this movie hits every sports movie cliche;  the young ambitious underdog meets a world-weary and damaged pro and in working together the novice athlete learns the value of sportsmanship and victory while the older man rediscovers his original love of the game. It’s all there. We also have period-specific 80s pop-music and broad victory metaphors that are called back to repeatedly. And yet, every one of these paint-by-numbers elements are perfectly realized and actually pay off in the way they were originally intended.

What elevates the storytelling is the wonderful character choices by Egerton, that include many physical affectations and an unusual mumble-through-his-teeth accent, without the character becoming too cartoonish or losing credibility as a real person. Egerton and Jackman have great screen chemistry and the juxtaposition between Eddie’s acceptance to compete without contending and Peary’s frustration in Eddie’s resolve to likely finish in last place speaks to how the British class system differs from the American exceptionalism. 

Director Dexter Fletcher made this film with a lot heart and it manages to beat through familiar plot mechanics. Plots, overall, are not that important as long as they make sense within the context of the story. A movie’s success usually has more to do with how well film portrays a  character’s emotional state than it does with the ways a script decides to get them from act-1 to act-3. “Eddie the Eagle” is an unabashedly traditional film without a shred of self-referential cynicism and ultimately the warmth and confidence in that choice becomes the film's most unique quality. 

Grade: B

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2016

Listen to more discussion about "Eddie the Eagle" on this week's Jabber and the Drone Podcast.