Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000, Kenneth Branagh)

It’s a funny idea, and it would explain a lot about Love’s Labour’s Lost, but I don’t think screenwriter, director, and co-producer Branagh cast Alicia Silverstone on a bet regarding whether or not he could get her to deliver an okay monologue.

He succeeds and she succeeds, but just okay, and it takes most of the movie. No, outside Adrian Lester, Natascha McElhone, and maybe Carmen Ejogo, Branagh doesn’t seem to have any actors in the leads he’s happy with. He’s one of the eight leads, of course, and he’s delighted with himself. He shows off somewhere in the late second act; he and McElhone get to do a scene from a great Shakespeare production in a middling adaptation on a disappointing set.

Branagh’s Labour’s is set just before World War II. Unlike some adaptations, the World War II setting will be necessary to the film’s narrative. Unfortunately, not so much to the character development because Silverstone’s the Princess of France, and asking her to do character development and deliver one okay monologue is a bridge too far.

Okay, real quick, here’s the setup. Top-billed and “lead” Alessandro Nivola decides, with war looming, he’s going to lock himself up in a library and learn for three years. Obviously, in the original play, there wasn’t World War II looming, but the effect in this Labour’s is to make Nivola seem like a foppish Eurotrash jackass who doesn’t care about the Nazis. Or would if Nivola had any character development. The film’s a musical—supposedly a thirties musical homage but not at all because there are usually only six performers and the movie’s Panavision—and Nivola manages to sing, dance, and monologue just well enough for his performance not to be a failure. He doesn’t succeed at anything, though, not even on a curve, especially not as far as romancing Silverstone.

See, Nivola and sidekicks Lester, Matthew Lillard, and Branagh have sworn off women for their academic pursuits. Silverstone and her sidekicks, McElhone, Emily Mortimer, and Ejogo, are on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan (or whatever Nivola’s country’s called, sadly not Freedonia) and they read the boys won’t be able to talk to them. Because of Branagh’s staging, directing, and Silverstone’s acting, the intentional trickery falls flat. There are multiple disguise sequences, which Branagh also messes up. He does a great job directing some of the film—not the musical numbers, except when it’s Nathan Lane, who’s the GOAT, and somewhat Timothy Spall, who feels like a Branagh idea gone wrong, not a studio casting mandate.

Oh, right, another thing: the songs performed by these not singers and dancers (except Lester and Lane) aren’t original to the film. They’re doing covers of thirties show tunes, which weren’t written with World War II or, you know, the King of Navarre’s romance troubles in mind. There are some good numbers (very much not dinner theatre Fosse) but never particularly good. Never good enough to cover the problems. So why do them?

Though when they’re not doing a musical number, Branagh relies on composer Patrick Doyle’s score to do all the film’s emoting. Even during Branagh and McElhone’s scenes.

The film barely runs ninety minutes and manages to plod through much of that runtime. Unfortunately, it takes way too long to get anywhere with the romance pairings—the musical numbers are asides, irrelevant to the plot—and then it’s time for the movie to end. Except, Branagh’s still doing a World War II movie, and he somehow brings it to a satisfactory conclusion. Miraculously, given the film’s annoying newsreel footage summary device… not to mention the very uneasy previous eighty or so minutes. It’s a hell of a save.

Performances: Branagh, McElhone, Lane; they’re great. Lester’s good. Spall and Ejogo get an incomplete. Nivola and Silverstone pass, him likable, her sympathetically. Lillard and Mortimer aren’t entirely unlikable, but they’re too thin to be sympathetic.

Technicals are all good. Alex Thomson’s photography’s great. Utterly wasted but great. And editor Neil Farrell is up to Branagh’s considerable requests for cutting the film into something sensical.

Whoever did the lackluster sets… it’s not their fault. Either Branagh didn’t have the money he needed, or he was bullshitting his way through the project. Seems more like the latter.

But one hell of a save for that finale.

Alien: Covenant (2017, Ridley Scott)

Alien: Covenant is at its best when it’s pedestrian as opposed to anything else. Director Scott botches all of the big action set pieces; the more CGI vehicles involved, the worse it gets. The first false ending action sequence has “protagonist” Katherine Waterston suspended in mid-air from a careening CGI space ship while she fights a CGI alien in front of a CGI backdrop. Scott brings zero energy to it, which is appropriate as Waterston brings zero energy to her performance.

Waterston gets second-billing, even though technically Billy Crudup’s deeply religious captain gets more to do. He actually gets to do something with his character arc. Waterston’s is all in the first act and the film rushes through it. In space, no one has time for character development, especially not when Scott is setting up the film’s premise.

A colony ship experiences a freak accident then discovers a mysterious signal from far away. So they go and investigate. Aliens and another Michael Fassbender (he’s already in the movie on the ship) show up to make things difficult. The Fassbender they find is the one from the previous movie in the franchise–Prometheus, not Alien: Resurrection, though John Logan and Dante Harper’s script is loaded with desperate callbacks to the original series. Even more desperate is when Scott tries to do them. All it does is remind not just of better films but better acted ones.

Fassbender is fine, though a little too restrained for the absurd roles he’s got. Playing opposite himself, his ability results in some good scenes–made pedestrian by Chris Seagers’s worst production design on the film–but everyone else is mediocre at best. Crudup occasionally seems like he might try, but there’s nothing to do with the part it turns out so he gives up. Carmen Ejogo is so wasted as his wife, it’s never clear if she’s religious too (religion is frowned upon in the future, something the disasterous outcomes of the plot confirm as a good). Danny McBride has a big part as one of the ship’s pilots. He’s atrocious and not even comically so, because Scott has absolutely no sense of humor. Not even when he’s desperately trying to remind the viewer they probably liked at least the first two Alien movies.

Besides Fassbender, who’s uneven in one of his roles–he kind of flops with the blandly American accent–Demián Bichir is probably best. He’s got nothing to do, but at least he never embarrasses himself.

The score is either Jed Kurzel’s generic action music or Jerry Goldsmith’s themes from the original Alien; in space, the nostalgia is strong.

The sad part is even when he’s not contending with too much CGI, Scott just doesn’t have the pacing. Not to make it scary, not to make it exciting. Though he’s not the problem. Not even the script is the problem (well, not until the tacked on, way too long third act); it’s Waterston, Crudup, McBride, and the assorted supporting cast members who have no presence and only occasional competence. Scott doesn’t seem to think directing his actors is important. It’s not clear what he thinks is important to direct in Alien: Covenant. He’s not even energetic enough to be desperate.

Dariusz Wolski’s photography is mostly good. Not so much when he’s in Seagers’s dreary catacombs or any of the night scenes. But he’s much better at lighting Covenant than, say, Pietro Scalia is at editing it. Everything, even when it’s genially pedestrian, goes on too long.

Kind of like this franchise, at least with Scott steering it.