Wayward Pines (2015) s02e07 – Time Will Tell

After an inglorious character arc in the regular story, Djimon Hounsou finally gets his own episode, albeit a flashback one. Turns out Hounsou’s job—before “Wayward Pines: Season Two”—was to wake up every twenty years and take care of the people sleeping in cryo-pods for two thousand years. He also tested the soil, played chess with himself, and did some cardio.

The flashbacks also reveal Hounsou met the creatures (Homo sapiens superior?) early on before they’d turned into Gollum-looking things when they still just looked like Paul Bettany. One time out of the cryo-pods, Hounsou goes hiking and runs into Dakota Daulby. They hang out, but Daulby lives in a post-apocalypse and is miserable and suffering, and Hounsou’s just observing, so it’s very uncool for him.

It does, however, lead into Hounsou’s character motivation after he wakes Toby Jones. They discover a settlement, complete with huts, on the land where they want to build the town. Hounsou says, let’s sleep until they’re gone; Jones says let’s kill them because we’re white men. Well, he’s a white man, and Hounsou gets to work for a white man.

There’s also some ret-conning to explain why he wasn’t in the first season (other than they only let one Black person on the show for ten episodes). Hounsou thought it was gross to wipe out the creatures and isn’t cool with the human settlement, so he was antisocial all first season.

Sure.

There’s an okay Simone Missick cameo. She’s Hounsou’s wife, who he hallucinates depending on how lonely he’s gotten.

The present-day action has Jason Patric and Hope Davis trying to communicate with the female creature (Rochelle Okoye, who glares well, the only role requirement). They have some success until they have to tell Tom Stevens, and he loses his shit. Kacey Rohl tries to reason with him (a weird flex since last episode she told him to white man his way through everything), and it just pisses him off more.

Stevens’s character arc has pretty much stalled out at this point.

There’s also no update on Nimrat Kaur, Josh Helman, and Patric’s love triangle, with Kaur and Helman not appearing in the episode. Tim Griffin’s around a bit to assist Patric (broadly speaking). He makes little impression, which is a compliment for Griffin.

The end twist is really good—Jeff T. Thomas’s direction is competent throughout the episode without ever being exciting. The Hounsou flashbacks all seem to be done on the cheap, and the present-day action takes place in one or two locations. But when it comes time for the twist, Thomas does a phenomenal job with it.

This episode also lets Patric and Davis really act opposite each other and not just for exposition’s sake. Credited to Anna Fricke, the script breaks through Davis’s caricature a bit and lets her show some personality. Davis’s a good villain; this episode’s the first time we’ve seen more to her. The way she’s startled when Patric’s nice to her is very cool.

Patric’s really good too. He should’ve done a doctor show.

It’s a good, affecting episode. Lots of tension in the present-day plot, and the flashbacks are interesting to a point, especially with Hounsou doing it.

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e06 – City Upon a Hill

Vincenzo Natali directs this episode. I’ve never seen any of his movies, but he’s far and away the best director of the season so far. He even knows how to do a Toby Jones cameo—as few lines as possible, as short of a scene as possible.

Jones shows up at the beginning for a flashback to before the construction of “Wayward Pines.” He’s in a helicopter gunship, shooting at the monsters in the forest as they frolic and tend to their young. They’re in the way of the wall, and so he has them shot dead.

Can’t imagine why they don’t like the humans.

Natali does a great job with the primordial bliss sequence, but where he really shows off is during the action sequence in the present. The monsters have gotten fire, and they’re burning down the town’s cornfields, so all the able-bodied civilians have to firefight while the soldiers provide cover. There’s a startling thirty-five killed, which ends up just showing how disposable the humans are in the show. Though they don’t even bother to track any of the casualties’ stories.

Well, not if they’re not special guest stars.

This episode has Tim Griffin’s flashbacks pre-season one, when he’s setting up Matt Dillon (and possibly Carla Gugino), so he can get together with Shannyn Sossamon. Sossamon returns for a really lousy final appearance; “Wayward Pines: Season One” had an absolutely disastrous plot outline. In season two, Sossamon ends up with the poopiest end of that stick.

Even worse, Griffin’s got scenes without his glue-on beard, which means it can’t do his acting for him. Instead, he’s got to try to keep up with… well, Hope Davis, sure, but Griffin can’t even successfully stalk Sossamon when he’s inserted into scenes from season one. Real lazy.

However, it’s another “Wayward Pines” where someone on the writing staff heard my dismay from the future and had someone comment on the Nazi uniforms all the bros wear. Unfortunately, it’s Josh Helman making the observation to Christopher Meyer. Helman’s white, Meyer’s Black, and the scene has Meyer defending Nazi uniforms (ignorantly because they wouldn’t have been taught world history or the Nazis being bad). Since “Wayward Pines” is a Fox show… makes you wonder if the News department made some requests.

Also, it turns out Helman is supposed to be playing a scoundrel a la Han Solo, which just makes the whole thing worse. Helman is better than Griffin in this episode. Griffin without his fake beard is worse than Helman; a surprise, but also maybe not. What they really needed was a glue-on beard for Helman.

There are a lot of scenes at the hospital—Hassler and Sossamon are both injured—and Amitai Marmorstein gets some great scenes with Jason Patric. Marmorstein’s such a good twerp, and Patric finally fully engages, leading to some great moments.

Other plot points include Kacey Rohl going a little Lady Macbeth with Tom Stevens, who’s doubting his chosen one status as the world literally burns thanks to his policies (making him more self-aware than, what, ninety-five percent of politicians), and then Davis and Patric doing some tests on the captured female creature. Turns out their brains are big in all the right places.

There’s a soft cliffhanger, but it’s also clear “Pines” is gearing up for the final arc. Everything is very dramatic, very consequential. We’ll see if they do better than last time. Regardless, I hope Natali’s back for more episodes.

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e05 – Sound the Alarm

Toby Jones is back this episode, which has a flashback subplot about how architect Nimrat Kaur actually designed Wayward Pines, the town, and lied to husband Jason Patric about it when he asked a few episodes ago. Jones looks much older in the flashback than he did last season on the show when he was a regular. He also plays the part like full Bond villain, instead of how he built up to that reveal. Apparently, in the past, when putting the project together, Jones was whole-ass evil and toned it down for the future. He also got some plastic surgery to take a few years off.

Wait, that second part’s not a bad idea.

Hope Davis also appears in the flashbacks, establishing an animosity between her character and Kaur’s, which we first saw the last episode. None of the other people who ought to be in the flashbacks are in the flashbacks, meaning Melissa Leo and Terrence Howard. Though maybe they were off on a kidnapping mission together.

The idea the town was designed by an architect is the silliest detail in the “Pines” lore, as the town is not architecturally interesting, innovative, or even distinctive. Patric sees her working on the design—and apparently forgot in the future—and makes a Mayberry crack, but it’s on-point. The town made sense when the show was an M. Night Shyamalan joint. As the intentionally, willfully created future cauldron of white fascists… it’s a lousy job. Like, hopefully, Kaur’s better as a hairdresser than an architect.

There are still some other unanswered questions about Kaur’s involvement with the project, but her big reveal to Patric—in the present—isn’t even about designing the town; it’s about how she knows Josh Helman. Helman’s not in the episode very much, which is great. Outside a scene where he gets drunk–he works around kids, incidentally—and gazes what I think’s supposed to be longingly across at Kaur’s salon, he doesn’t have many shots where he needs to try to act. Though his scene opposite Patric is embarrassing for Patric. Patric’s got a lot to do in the episode, even though he’s basically supporting everyone else, and he’s really good throughout. Even when the script’s thin. Patric works. Helman takes up space. Their scene’s very existence plays like a diss on Patric.

Especially with the reveal.

Helman takes the cake on a show with some profoundly bad casting and performance decisions.

Anyway.

Besides Kaur’s flashbacks and present-day reveals, the episode’s got three subplots going. First, Djimon Hounsou, Shannyn Sossamon, and Tim Griffin are doing an agriculture survey outside the wall. The drama comes from Griffin revealing he machinated the whole pilot set up just so he could get into Sossamon’s pants. Reacting to that confession gives her something to do besides be sad about Charlie Tahan’s death; Tahan didn’t come back to play the corpse. I wonder if they lowballed or just didn’t offer.

In town, Kacey Rohl has decided Hope Davis doesn’t know anything about science and wants Patric to run the “study the monsters” project. Davis gets really mad about it because she likes torturing them to get back at them not eating her last season. Rohl’s good—she’s got a funny scene opposite Siobhan Fallon Hogan—and the personality tensions are strong this episode. At least in the present. In the flashbacks, they’re all exaggerated because Jones hasn’t got any subtlety and is a bad influence on Davis, who’s best when she’s the only broad caricature in a scene.

Then Michael Garza has a subplot—also involving Patric—about not being able to get his procreation on, no matter what girls they try him with. His conversation with Patric addresses some things the show entirely avoided in the first season when it seemed like it wasn’t aware it was creating a fascist, white supremacist future. This season they acknowledge it.

Garza’s really sympathetic.

The show’s now halfway through the season and isn’t really forecasting what they might try to get done before it’s over.

The cliffhanger’s good too.

In addition to Patric playing support, Tom Stevens has been reduced quite a bit lately. Outside yelling about one of the monsters getting into town, his big scene is threatening Kaur while dressed very much in SS summer wear. It’s weird no one’s acknowledged Jones’s reclusive billionaire very much wanted to have a little Nazi army because all of the clothes in the town were made in the past and brought into the future with them. Stevens’s outfit this episode is almost too obvious.

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e04 – Exit Strategy

It’s like “Wayward Pines” heard my complaints there weren’t enough bad performances on the regular and felt the need to deliver. This episode features the return of Tim Griffin from season one, who was an entirely personality-free white man and goes on to one-up him with Josh Helman, who’s got even less personality and might be the worst actor on the show ever. It seems like someone’s feeding it to Helman from off-frame every single line delivery.

Helman was billed in the season premiere’s opening titles but soon disappeared outside the wall and from the titles. He’s back now, with the episode finding him unconscious in a monster pit. He meets up with Griffin, who’s been living in the wild for at least a decade, and is basically just doing a Grizzly Adams riff. That riff is much better than anything Helman’s doing.

After some world-building involving the monsters’ behaviors, the two end up back in town, where Helman reopens his ice cream shop and Griffin checks himself out of the hospital to become a town drunk. Both leader Tom Stevens and return guest star Shannyn Sossamon want something from Griffin. Stevens and Djimon Hounsou are gung ho to explore the outer world (ignoring Hope Davis and Kacey Rohl’s objections); Stevens wants Griffin’s help knowing what’s out there.

Meanwhile, Sossamon wants to tell Griffin to drop dead for getting her entire family kidnapped 2,000 years into the future and subsequently killed by shitty white people.

However, Sossamon wants to get outside the wall—they call it a fence, which seems a choice entirely based on Game of Thrones having a wall—to find Charlie Tahan’s corpse, which might require Griffin’s help.

The subplot has Emma Tremblay indeed becoming a supporting regular; she gets her first period and doesn’t want to tell Davis about it because “Wayward Pines” rules say she’s got to start trying to get pregnant, eleven years old or not. Since Tremblay works for Nimrat Kaur, Kaur decides she’s going to stand up for Tremblay against Davis. It’s a nice subplot because Kaur’s a very active performer. When she and Davis face-off, there’s palpable energy coming off both the actors.

Of course, when the show establishes Kaur knows Helman, there’s zero energy between them because Helman’s terrible. Terrible for “Wayward Pines.”

Though, of course, second season acting’s much better than the first season. Sossamon, freed of her confounded mom constraints, is far more effective here than she ever was before. Though it helps she’s opposite Griffin, who’s letting his fake beard do all the acting for him.

Tremblay’s subplot also involves brother Michael Garza, who’s got his own secrets. Unfortunately, those secrets make him susceptible to bad influences, and the fallout will put him into the sort of surprisingly but not if you listen to Ian Malcolm cliffhanger.

Despite Helman—and Griffin, really—it’s a decent episode. Kaur’s got a good arc for most of it, and Davis is a profoundly upsetting villain. Also, despite not really doing anything and having a thin character, Hounsou classes the joint up.

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e03 – Once Upon a Time in Wayward Pines

“Wayward Pines: Season Two” really is committed to the bit. There’s a scene where schoolmarm, monster researcher, and psychotherapist Hope Davis tells a group of girls there’s nothing wrong with them not having their periods yet. They just don’t get to participate in the Davis-supervised orgies with the other thirteen-year-olds yet. Not in those words, but it’s the scene. They’re just running headfirst into the Davis breeding humans with these earthen vessels. It’s incredibly creepy; Davis is great at it.

That subplot may or may not be making Emma Tremblay into a regular supporting player. It’s too soon to tell because Davis has bigger fish to fry this episode, specifically very special guest star Melissa Leo.

They apparently can only afford a single season one regulars in an episode at a time, minus—I guess—Terrence Howard and Carla Gugino in the season premiere. Though it turns out Leo was with Howard on that people-hunting expedition, they just didn’t show her because, you know, budget.

She’s back this episode to fill in what’s happened to her since last season, but not really. Instead, she’s back to retcon Tom Stevens into being Toby Jones’s town savior. From birth. Stevens showed up in the last two episodes of season one, presumably when they decided Charlie Tahan wasn’t going to be a regular in season two despite the show literally being set up for him to be the new protagonist. But he’s been around since the beginning, raised to think Leo and her brother, Jones, are his biological parents.

In the flashbacks, Leo wants to brainwash the young versions of Stevens, which runs afoul with Djimon Hounsou (who’s also retconned in like Jones’s character would ever listen to a Black guy), who thinks the awful truth is a better option. It also puts Leo and Davis on a collision course because Davis’s whole character is manipulating young boys into doing her bidding. The Leo and Davis thing, which the episode introduces since they never had a scene together in season one, plays out before the episode’s over.

In the present, Leo convinces Stevens she’s ready to be a team player again and help him with his conquest of the surrounding area. Both Stevens’s ladies, Davis and Kacey Rohl, are unhappy with Leo’s return, and more unhappy Stevens is welcoming her.

Jason Patric’s arc involves meeting Leo—who treats him cruelly, just like she did Matt Dillon, and makes her hard to like—and arguing with wife Nimrat Kaur. Patric suspects Kaur of something, which the show never confirms, and he works through it. It’s a really good performance from Patric, making up for Leo’s lackluster return. Neither the flashbacks—with bad wigs and bad writing—nor the present action material is any good. The show can’t successfully shoehorn a relationship between her and Stevens, though Stevens gives it his best.

There’s some funny cringe material for Siobhan Fallon Hogan (whose current problems apparently stem from generally living in the post-post-apocalypse, not reacting to Stevens and his teenage stormtroopers randomly murdering people).

Having Leo back, having her give a bad performance, having that lousy performance be in a tepid retcon does clarify “Wayward Pines: Season Two”’s newfound strengths. Patric’s good and is great in a lead TV part. Stevens is a good shitbird villain. The exploitative genre-y stuff is more amusing than “M. Night Shyamalan TV.” But the show’s still got a litany of problems.

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e02 – Blood Harvest

Djimon Hounsou arrives this episode as the town farmer. He’s supposedly a protege of first-season villain Toby Jones, though there’s no explanation why he wasn’t around before. It stands out, of course, because Jones’s villain was pretty plainly racist; the whole project—in the first season—was about breeding white babies. In the second season, the show’s definitely gotten the note about having some Black characters; though, so far, they’re all villains.

The episode begins with a surprise resolution to last episode’s cliffhanger. Little Nazi-in-charge Tom Stevens (who’s actually great as an evil little shit) broke his promise to Jason Patric and Charlie Tahan and sent them out beyond the wall to let the monsters eat them. Only the monsters ignore them to instead pile up against the fence, which electrocutes them dead until the bodies get high enough to jump over.

I’m ninety percent sure I’ve seen the same device used somewhere else, but it’s a solid device and effective here.

Stevens gets all his teen stormtroopers in trucks and drives out to fend off the invasion. He brings his girlfriend, Kacey Rohl, along with him, which results in her getting almost immediately injured and Stevens needing Patric back from the monster side of the wall.

If Patric can save Rohl, he’ll get some semblance of a normal life again—a job as town doctor (they don’t have any others) and to live with wife Nimrat Kaur. Turns out Kaur’s got a bunch of secrets she hasn’t been telling Patric about, though he’s not ready to accept he’s living in a post-post-apocalyptic future where man-eating monsters are running around; so maybe he can’t handle her truths either.

Meanwhile, Shannyn Sossamon is back, trying to get Stevens to go out and get Tahan too. The little fascists’ only rule is they can’t kill each other, and Stevens is breaking that rule.

Sossamon being back makes almost no sense, given where things finished up last season and then with Tahan being an underground revolutionary. Apparently, since the first season, Sossamon’s gotten generally okay with living in military occupation as long as she gets her house. It’s unclear. Sossamon’s pretty good, though, albeit just in a “hysterical mom” part.

She’s got a scene opposite Kaur where it seems like Sossamon will have something to do with Patric and the new A plot, but nothing comes of it. It’s going to be interesting to see how “Wayward Pines” handles its guest stars and season one returnees.

Another returnee, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, finally gets a real scene, albeit one where she’s recovering from the electroshock therapy the kids do to keep her in line.

Patric’s good, Kaur’s good, Stevens is good. There’s a lot with Patric discovering how bad Stevens has been at caring for the townspeople, and Stevens hates Patric being right. Amitai Marmorstein’s awesome as this medical student who looks up to Patric.

Once again, there’s something almost schlocky to it, like “Pines: Season Two” is an Ozploitation flick instead of a vain attempt from Fox to get another “Lost” going. I expected the fascist teens in charge plot to stink, but they’re making it work.

Oh. Toby Jones is back for a cameo, looking markedly older than last season, which breaks the suspended animation conceit. But it’s fine; it’s first thing and over fast.

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e01 – Enemy Lines

The season two premiere opens with Charlie Tahan, set up as the new lead in last season’s finale, narrating a recap of the first season. It’s a terrible recap, writing-wise. It does not bode well.

But then the first real scene is Jason Patric in Hawaii, in the middle of a spat with wife Nimrat Kaur, heading down to the bar and happening to meet Terrence Howard. Howard apparently got to go to fabulous vacation spots to kidnap people and put them in cryosleep for two thousand years. Good for him.

It’s an overwritten scene, but Patric and Howard are both good, so it’s mostly fine. Howard leading Patric into the bushes to knock him unconscious is a little much, but otherwise, it’s okay. Patric’s immediately a strong lead.

One fade out later, Patric wakes up in the fifth millennium, and he’s confused. A severe young woman, Kacey Rohl, tells him they need to get to the hospital so he can perform surgery. “Where am I?” Patric asks. “‘Wayward Pines,’” Rohl says. Cue opening titles and the new regular cast list, which suggests a lot of people who seemed like they’d be back aren’t back.

Instead, fascist white boy murderer Tom Stevens has been promoted to regular. And Hope Davis, who very clearly died last season, gets the “with” credit. Djimon Hounsou gets the “and” credit, suggesting “Wayward Pines” is finally getting some Black people, but he doesn’t actually appear in this episode. Though Christopher Meyer is Black, and he gets a lot to do, it’s mainly carting Patric around town and being a really good little boot-stepper.

There are some familiar names in the special guest star list: Tahan, Carla Gugino, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, and Greta Lee. Last season, Lee was a fourth-tier recurring character but a reasonably recognizable one. Fallon Hogan’s the awesome secretary; she’s barely in this episode. Tahan and Gugino get full arcs, though Gugino’s confined to a hospital bed (she’s Patric’s mystery patient), and Tahan’s barely in the episode like they just weren’t willing to pay his rate. Adult John Connor has more presence in T2.

Gugino’s around for the first season transition wrap-up. The show’s done a three year-jump ahead from where the main action left off, though last season’s cliffhanger was a jump ahead tease. So now we find out Gugino led a resistance against Howard, who militarized his Neo-Nazi sidekicks, and they rule “Wayward Pines” with an iron fist. And Davis, now in a wheelchair (she’s so nasty the monsters wouldn’t eat her), whispering in his ear. But Howard and Rohl are a couple, which complicates things a little.

Patric finds himself in this bewildering setting–Lord of the Flies with girls and guns—and isn’t sure what’s going on, especially not when they keep promising he’ll see wife Kaur in just a scene or two.

It’s a very different show than season one. It feels like a sequel from another production company, which is doing a much better job. The regular cast isn’t anywhere near as expensive (Patric and Davis are the only real names). Howard’s an A-number one creep, but in a good way (think evil Wesley Crusher).

But the other big chance is Patric. Well, Patric and the audience knowing what’s happening to Patric and not them discovering it all simultaneously. Patric’s a great lead.

There are problems, of course. Even though the show’s very different from when M. Night Shyamalan directed the pilot, episode director David Petrarca brings back his terrible framing techniques. And the writing’s way too dismissive on Gugino.

But the teenage fascist dictatorship stuff? It’s “just genre,” but in a good way.

Or maybe it’s just all worth it for a Jason Patric TV show.

The Nice Guys (2016, Shane Black)

I recently joked to a friend I wanted to claim “audacity” as a complementary phrase, but just for Stanley Kubrick. Something simple like, “Stanley Kubrick: Audacity can be a compliment.” But then she called me on it being gross.

The Nice Guys is basically, “Shane Black: Humility is for [slur we’re allowed to use because the movie’s set in 1978].” It’s never terrible, though Black’s got his usual “no, but, maybe you’re misogynistic for saying this scene or characterization is misogynist,” which gets exasperating. Especially since it’s in the Boogie Nights riff part of the movie. Nice Guys is a pseudo-noir and mostly a series of lifts from other movies, including ones Black wrote for other directors.

The film’s heroes, The Nice Guys, are soulful bruiser Russell Crowe, who hates his comically evil ex-wife and protects young women from predators, and sad drunk private investigator Ryan Gosling. Except the de facto protagonist of the movie is Angourie Rice, playing Gosling’s daughter. Since she’s a thirteen-year-old in 1978 L.A., tagging along on her dad’s job to porn parties, hunted by vicious hitmen, she’s always in danger, and the audience knows it. Gosling and Crowe forget about it at the drop of a hat, but the film’s always about reminding terrible things could happen to Rice anytime. So when she’s not around, it just means she might be in danger, which focuses the film on her.

Of all the things Black didn’t think to rip off… it’d be a fine “Veronica Mars” riff.

Gosling is bilking client Lois Smith (the film’s most successful cameo but only because the others mostly stink); she’s convinced her pornstar granddaughter is alive, even though the movie showed her dying in the first scene. You know, kind of like Lethal Weapon 1.

He’s actually doing some investigating—which the movie never shows and instead uses as gotchas from Gosling to other characters—and is pretty sure Smith really saw Margaret Qualley. Qualley knows Gosling is after her, so she hires Crowe to beat him up.

Then the actual bad guys looking for Qualley—an okay but wasted Keith David and an annoying Beau Knapp—go after Crowe, so he has to team up with Gosling (and Rice).

There are various chase scenes, drunk comedy scenes, objectified young women (it’s the seventies so it’s okay), fight scenes, kidnappings, and so on. At one point, Knapp warns the real villain of the movie isn’t even in town yet, letting Crowe know he’s got a big fight in the third act.

At some point, Nice Guys becomes just a period-action comedy instead of something else with those themes. No one gets an actual character arc, just the potential for a sequel.

Both Crowe and Gosling seem like they’re playing sidekick to the star. Of the two… Crowe’s better most of the time. Rice is fine. Her performance is more successful thanks to script and blocking, but she’s charming enough.

As the film progresses, there’s more supporting cast introduced. Kim Basinger, Matt Bomer, Yaya DaCosta. Basinger’s terrible and derails the movie. Boomer’s terrible, but because of the script and the directing, he’s just aboard while it derails. DaCosta’s got a thin part, but she’s good.

Technically, Nice Guys is solid. Black’s direction is fine—he doesn’t have a single well-directed action sequence, though, which is a problem—Philippe Rousselot’s photography is good, John Ottman and David Buckley’s music always seems like it’s just about to get good and never does. The visual stars are obviously production designer Richard Bridgland and costume designer Kym Barrett’s recreation of seventies L.A. In some ways, it’s more impressive how much they’re able to recreate, not their actual designs.

Nice Guys is fine. It’s got a whole bunch of problems, and all of them are Black’s, but it’s fine. It’s better than the Shane Black movies it rips off but not better than the other movies it rips off.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016, Taika Waititi)

I kept waiting for something to go wrong in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The first act is this exceptionally tight, efficient narrative—but with time for montage digressions as director (and screenwriter) Waititi gently examines lead Julian Dennison as his life goes through a pastoral upheaval.

Dennison is a tween on the edge of teen and has been bopping around the foster care system his entire life. He’s at his last attempt at a home placement—Rima Te Wiata is going to take him; she just happens to have a farm on the edge of the New Zealand bush (New Zealand bush being rainforest). So city boy to the wilderness.

We also meet intense but not empathetic child services worker Rachel House (and her suffering flunky Oscar Kightley); they’re going to both be important later on. Especially for absurdist—but good absurdist—humor.

And then there’s Sam Neill; he’s Te Wiata’s husband who she didn’t tell child services about (but they don’t care, apparently). He’s a gruff, tough, farming guy who’s not into the foster dad thing but loves Te Wiata. Waititi leans heavy on making Neill mysterious in the first act, but we soon find out the social awkwardness around Dennison isn’t just for dramatic impact; Neill’s an odd duck. It’s a particularly choice part because no matter what, there’s a hard limit to how much Neill’s going to have to do. The character’s got insurmountable constraints, which gives Neill and Waititi a lot of room to flex without having to worry about breaking through.

Also it’s not Neill’s movie. It’s Dennison’s movie.

Waititi splits Wilderpeople into chapters, with the first playing more like a short subject, complete with its own epical structure. The chapters end up working out, especially in the second act, which has Neill and Dennison thrown together by tragedy, on the run from House while trying to do right by Te Wiata.

Most of the film takes place over uncounted miles of New Zealand rainforest, with occasional stopovers at ranger stations or whatever, and Waititi makes the bush feel like a consistent, familiar setting without it actually ever being the same spot. Except when he does one of the really cool, digitally enabled composite shots—the camera pans in a circle, capturing the characters in the space at different times. Sometimes because they’re lost, sometimes because they’re found, sometimes because they’re on the run. Usually there’s great music accompanying it. If there’s not great music, then it’s just great sound. Wilderpeople, technically, is pristine work.

So while Dennison and Neill play fugitive—no one-armed references but a great Terminator one (though nothing compared to a First Blood riff, which is out of nowhere but absolutely phenomenal because Waititi makes it absurd, hilarious, and also exactly what the scene needs). Waititi’s rather good with the asides and outbursts. They always end up fueling something new in Wilderpeople, even at the very end.

The film’s a bit of a character study grafted to a wilderness adventure, complete with faithful dogs, stupid hunters, and bush folk vs. city folk wisdom. Oh, and Dennison having his “I like girls differently now” moment, after he meets Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne. Ngatai-Melbourne’s only in it for a bit but she’s fantastic and gets to show Dennison’s able to maintain the high level of acting even without the precise structuring of his scenes with the foster family. Dennison’s great, full stop, but Waititi’s also made a film where it’s so strong on everything else it could get away with him being one note.

He’s not, which surges Wilderpeople ahead.

Along the way, we find out more about Dennison, Neill, and Te Wiata while they’re finding out about each other and themselves. Maybe if Te Wiata and Dennison weren’t so good in the first act when they’re doing their getting to know you scenes, Neill would be able to steal some of the thunder but he’s very much there to give Dennison a frequent foil. It’s an exceptionally well-acted film, with Waititi’s direction of those actors as integral as the performances to its success.

The third act falls apart a bit because of course it falls apart a bit; once the film hits a certain scale, it’s inevitable the conclusion is going to be rough. Waititi holds it together through a bit of a too fast segue to the superior epilogue.

Wilderpeople’s fairly great. Waititi’s direction, his script, Dennison, Neill, Te Wiata, House, Ngatai-Melbourne, editors Tom Eagles, Yana Gorskaya, and Luke Haigh—lots of spectacular work on display.

Bastille Day (2016, James Watkins)

Bastille Day is an abject waste of time from the start, which opens with some very bad “video stock” only it turns out to be supposed to be “bad” video from a smartphone. Not even getting into the opening sequence, a terribly directed one, seems more appropriate for an eighties Porky’s rip-off more than a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. Except Bastille isn’t even a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. It’s a buddy flick, only without any of that fun chemistry between the buddies.

Bastille’s buddies are top-billed Idris Elba, as an American CIA lifer who is more a blunt instrument (it doesn’t matter, director Watkins and co-writer Andrew Baldwin’s espionage details suggest they didn’t even bother checking Wikipedia), and Richard Madden, as an American ex-pat pickpocket in Paris. If Elba and Madden had okay American accents, it wouldn’t matter they’re not, except their accents are terrible. Occasionally the most amusing thing about Bastille is wondering what they must’ve sounded like between takes, when they aren’t retching out Watkins and Baldwin’s insipid dialogue with their very shaky accents. Elba seems more like he’s doing an impression of an American actor than giving a performance, which is a bummer because he comes in late enough to save the movie from Madden and then doesn’t.

Madden’s performance isn’t even serious enough to call a performance so no time on that aspect, sorry. Though it is also fun watching him strain to emote as you can watch him consider making that decision, then not doing it.

It’s impossible to say, of course, how much is director Watkins’s fault. Watkins is really, really bad at the directing. So maybe Elba and Madden would be great if they’d just had the petty cash buyer or graffiti artist take over directing. It certainly wouldn’t be any worse.

Though I do suppose neither Madden or Elba get anywhere near as bad as Kelly Reilly, who hopefully locked her agent in a metal box and dumped them in the ocean after this one. She’s atrocious. And paired with Anatol Yusef, who’s so bad as the Paris station chief (they don’t have station chiefs, the writers didn’t Google deep enough), I spent the movie wondering if he was the producer’s nephew or something. He’s not. He’s a professional actor. He does dramatic moves with his glasses professionally. It’s rough.

The story involves Madden getting involved in a terror attack—Bastille’s politics are dumb but also occasionally, unintentionally insightful—which leads to Antifa (or are they) getting involved with CGI-enhanced demonstrations before, you guessed it, Bastille Day. Elba is the super-agent saving the day without involving the French, namely bureaucrat José Garcia.

Throw in a damsel in distress (presumably native French speaker Charlotte Le Bon, who’s better at delivering her lines in English than Madden for sure) and a scary bad guy leader (Thierry Godard) and you’ve got a movie.

Though Bastille Day is a long ninety-two minutes. It gets even worse after the action sequences start and it turns out they did actually hire someone who can choreograph big guy Elba in fight scenes, Watkins just can’t direct them. At all. There are a couple potentially, actually good fight scenes and Watkins sinks them both. Though editor Jon Harris tries hard to mess them up too. Harris’s never any good at the cutting but during the action scenes he’s downright annoying.

Bastille Day is dumb and even if you’re sympathetic to the actors, it’s not like they haven’t given better performances elsewhere. A still photograph of Madden, for example, probably exhibits a lot more depth than anything in this movie. It’s a bad, dumb script, with some truly incompetent direction from Watkins.