Annihilation. (15.)
Directed by Alex Garland
Starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaacs, Gina Rodriquez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, David Gyasi and Benedict Wong. 115 mins.
The most annoying movie fad of 2018 is potentially interesting films popping up on the release schedule, only to then disappear a few weeks before they are due out, bundled away into the protecttive custody of the heavies at Netflix. Previously I was robbed of the chance to review The Cloverfield Paradox (probably a mercy robbing as it turned out, but i'd have liked to learn for myself ) and was damned if I was gonna let that happen with Alex Garland's follow up to Ex-Machina.
Made famous as the author of The Beach, Garland seems now to have devoted himself to sci-fi, and the kind of sci-fi film that asks big questions. His adaption of a novel by Jeff VanderMeer is nothing less than an attempt to rework Tarkovsky's Stalker in a way that will engage mainstream audiences, while remaining a film of ideas.
Portman is a biologist joining an all-female team heading into The Shimmer, an inexplicable and expanding Zone centred on a lighthouse in the swamps of Florida's Blackwater National Park, where the laws of nature are corrupted and nobody ever returns from. Or almost nobody. It is tense and gruesome in places but also thoughtful and contemplative. It has a complicated narrative structure: a mission debrief that includes flashbacks to Portman's life before the mission.
The film's strongest visual asset is all the mutated fauna and plant life. In other places, the CGI isn't quite up to the task, though it might have worked better shown on the big screen which it was designed for. Increasingly Launching On Netflix is becoming the new Straight To Video: a dumping ground for the terrible. Or, in Annihilation's case, a way to cut your losses for producers who have decided that their film isn't likely to attract enough people to be worth the bother of putting it in cinemas. A shame because I think it deserves its week or two on the big screen though I'm not sure it really gets close to achieving its aim of being a Tarkovsky film for popcorn eater. Plus, it suffers from the problem that is systemic for films that ask big questions: it can't really provide big enough answers.
Directed by Alex Garland
Starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaacs, Gina Rodriquez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, David Gyasi and Benedict Wong. 115 mins.
The most annoying movie fad of 2018 is potentially interesting films popping up on the release schedule, only to then disappear a few weeks before they are due out, bundled away into the protecttive custody of the heavies at Netflix. Previously I was robbed of the chance to review The Cloverfield Paradox (probably a mercy robbing as it turned out, but i'd have liked to learn for myself ) and was damned if I was gonna let that happen with Alex Garland's follow up to Ex-Machina.
Made famous as the author of The Beach, Garland seems now to have devoted himself to sci-fi, and the kind of sci-fi film that asks big questions. His adaption of a novel by Jeff VanderMeer is nothing less than an attempt to rework Tarkovsky's Stalker in a way that will engage mainstream audiences, while remaining a film of ideas.
Portman is a biologist joining an all-female team heading into The Shimmer, an inexplicable and expanding Zone centred on a lighthouse in the swamps of Florida's Blackwater National Park, where the laws of nature are corrupted and nobody ever returns from. Or almost nobody. It is tense and gruesome in places but also thoughtful and contemplative. It has a complicated narrative structure: a mission debrief that includes flashbacks to Portman's life before the mission.
The film's strongest visual asset is all the mutated fauna and plant life. In other places, the CGI isn't quite up to the task, though it might have worked better shown on the big screen which it was designed for. Increasingly Launching On Netflix is becoming the new Straight To Video: a dumping ground for the terrible. Or, in Annihilation's case, a way to cut your losses for producers who have decided that their film isn't likely to attract enough people to be worth the bother of putting it in cinemas. A shame because I think it deserves its week or two on the big screen though I'm not sure it really gets close to achieving its aim of being a Tarkovsky film for popcorn eater. Plus, it suffers from the problem that is systemic for films that ask big questions: it can't really provide big enough answers.
