Silo (2023) s01e02 – Holston’s Pick

As is the way since, what, “The Shield” in 2002, “Silo” changes its opening titles to adjust for last episode’s big “surprises” as far as lead actor deaths. Also in this episode’s titles is Harriet Walter, which made me happy. I couldn’t wait until Harriet Walter showed up.

And I’m glad she’s getting work other than her standard British lady stuff. Maybe someday it’ll even be a good part. And, maybe someday, her director will tell her—and her British costars—to work on their freaking accents. It wasn’t until Walter shows up I realized… none of the British cast members in “Soil” can hold their accents. Now, “Silo” takes place in an unknown future location. There’s no reason to think it’s not in the UK. Maybe it’s just a Brexit thing.

But neither Walter, Rebecca Ferguson (who’s Swedish, sorry; director Morten Tyldum doesn’t care either), David Oyelowo (who has more to do in this episode than last, even though he’s dying in the present), nor Geraldine James (as the mayor) can do normal sounding accents. They all sound like they just remembered they’re supposed to be doing American and did anyone notice they weren’t. Except Walter. Walter’s doing a voice out of a fantasy cartoon.

This episode opens with Oyelowo walking outside the “Silo,” presumably to his death—only, as all the people inside the silo watch, it’s obvious they’re not going to reveal it right away at the start of the episode. “Silo,” the previous episode established, is all about leaning in on the timeline manipulation. Like in this episode, which establishes Oyelowo is walking out three months after he met Ferguson last episode and had his “connection” with her, or whatever Will Patton called it.

Except as we find out later on in the episode, not only is calling it a “connection” tenuous, they only meet the one time. Oyelowo’s just a special guest star. They have a relatively eventful first meeting—including Ferguson revealing she and Ferdinand Kingsley are lovers and have been exploring the history of the silo—the forbidden history. Also, they’re forbidden lovers. Kingsley’s an amateur archeologist, which is super-illegal, and he doesn’t want to put a ring on it because then Ferguson would be liable for his crimes or something.

This episode also introduces Common—who may have been in a crowd shot last time—as one of the future KGB guys or whatever. They all dress in black, and they make people disappear and whatnot. It’s pointless because the show’s obviously waiting to explain it for emphasis later, not just telling the audience what they need to know. Then, the content might have to be interesting rather than its presentation.

But it’s 2023, and presentation over content is how streaming prestige series roll.

Director Tyldum failed some very basic sci-fi imagery last episode and continues to do so here, except this episode’s also where AppleTV+ apparently told “Silo” to cut back on the CGI a bit (not a good sign telling them to cut back on episode two, obviously). The composites are particularly poorly lighted, but since Tyldum’s not interested in making it visually engaging or compelling… it doesn’t matter?

They promise things will get interesting next episode—unraveling conspiracies and solving murderers interesting—but it’s also their TV show. They could’ve just made it interesting from the start.

Silo (2023) s01e01 – Freedom Day

“Silo” is about future humans living in a giant, hundreds of levels deep silo because the outside atmosphere is toxic. They don’t remember why it’s toxic; just it’s toxic. They also don’t know how they got to living in the silo. If you say you want to go outside, you have to go outside. And die. They ask you to clean the single video camera with a piece of wool as you go outside.

“Silo” is based on Wool, by Howey, the first book in the Silo series. I read the comic book adaptation, Wool. I sort of assumed the series was a one-and-done, but if it’s a series now, maybe they’ve got future seasons in mind. I don’t remember the comic very well, other than it being pretty good and thinking a movie or TV show would be solid.

The TV show’s okay. I’m not sure if it’s solid. It’s prestige-y streaming, with Rashida Jones playing a rare dramatic role in a special appearance. She’ll come back in flashbacks later, I’m sure, but the cold open—slowly—spoils she’s dead, having gone outside, and her husband, the sheriff, played by David Oyelowo, is going out after her. Sometime later. We later learn it’s two years later. There are lots of indeterminate time periods used for dramatic effect, which the show can get away with because it takes a full day to walk from the top of the silo to the bottom.

Would it help to understand how life worked in the silo? Oh, heck yeah. I skimmed my old posts about the comic and the show’s following its narrative structure (and presumably the novel’s), but it’s a bad structure for TV. We start in the present with Oyelowo, jump back to Jones’s story, jump forward in Oyelowo’s a bit so the show can introduce eventual lead and executive producer Rebecca Ferguson, then jump forward back to the present to get ready to kill Oyelowo off.

Neat trick in a novel if the writer can pull it off. Neat trick in a comic if the writers and artists can pull it off. Neat trick in a TV show if the showrunner, episode writer, show director, cast, and crew can pull it off. Director Morten Tyldum really doesn’t get it. Graham Yost—also the showrunner—gets the writing credit, and he doesn’t not get the relatively simple noir structure, but Jones isn’t playing for it. The actors in “Silo” don’t get much direction, whether Tyldum’s got a good idea or not. Professional competence and affability get them through.

I mean, Will Patton’s the deputy. There’s basically a genre of “Will Patton’s the deputy” TV shows now.

The flashback’s about how renegade IT clerk Jones and husband Oyelowo got permission to try to have a baby for a year, and over that year, their continued failures to get pregnant will drive Jones to question their reality. Oyelowo’s got an iffier part the longer the episode progresses, as he eventually manages to gaslight Jones both as a lawman and just as a man. It should be a better part, and it’s not Oyelowo’s fault at all. In this case, it’s mostly Yost’s.

Jones teams up with computer repair guy Ferdinand Kingsley to uncover the secrets of “Silo,” and then she can’t live with them. Fast forward two years but not to the present, Kingsley’s dead, and Oyelowo’s investigating. Patton’s voiceover tells us Oyelowo then has some reinvigorating due to Ferguson (who may not even have an audible line of dialogue, just sweaty biceps).

Then the episode’s over, and they’ve killed off (imminently) two likable protagonists.

Tune in next time for a third?

It’s nice to see Jones in a dramatic thriller, I guess. And it’s decently produced. Unfortunately, there’s just nothing particularly exciting yet.

See How They Run (2022, Tom George)

Sam Rockwell can do an English accent. See How They Run occasionally has him use it but mostly has him stone-face while sidekick Saoirse Ronan amiably chatters away. The movie only asks Rockwell to act once or twice; he can do it with the accent. He’s not really a stunt cast because the movie doesn’t have him do anything, so it doesn’t get anything from him. He and Ronan are fine together. She’s the one who acts, he reacts, so their scenes all work off her momentum. For a while, it seems like the film’s building towards them as a duo, which works.

Sadly, it doesn’t end up going there, instead taking an ill-advised diversion involving a big-time Shining nod (though Amanda McArthur’s production design sets it up, lots of red carpets), where detective Rockwell talks to the murder victim at an art deco bar. It’s part of the second red herring suspect—as narrator Adrien Brody (an American film director in London adapting a stage play) would say, comes with the territory in a whodunit. See How They Run constantly reminds it’s a genre piece and shouldn’t be judged too harshly. Usually to modest but satisfactory effect. The problem with the second red herring suspect isn’t the red herring; it’s the lack of a third. They just go right into the finish, which involves bringing in the supporting cast and putting Rockwell and Ronan in a charming but pointless driving montage.

Because once the film inexplicably gives up on Ronan and Rockwell as a duo, it becomes a relatively engaging Agatha Christie spoof. Ronan and Rockwell were just diversions. Though then, the movie ditches the suspect pool to a fantastic cameo and an elaborate in-joke involving Brody’s film director before finally settling on being an unofficial advertisement for the Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the world.

See How They Run is set in 1953, during the first cast’s run, meaning someone is playing Richard Attenborough—Harris Dickinson. Dickinson is 6’1” and change. Attenborough was infamously shorter; pretty sure it was a plot point in at least one picture, if not more (he was 5’7”). The problem with Dickinson is he’s never a suspect. Neither he nor wife Pearl Chanda. It wouldn’t matter except the movie’s short murder suspects.

The first prime suspect is screenwriter David Oyelowo, who doesn’t get along with the victim. He doesn’t get along with the victim, Brody, his boyfriend Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, or anyone else. Oyelowo gets the film’s “and” credit; he’s the closest thing to a stunt cast.

And he’s not up for the task. He’s okay, but never anything more, once too often less. It’s an adequate performance, nothing more. Ruth Wilson and Brody are the other supporting cast members with the most to do. Brody’s amusing as the unlikable American, while Wilson’s only around to fill in backstory for other suspects.

Director George often uses a split screen device to show different characters’ perspectives. It’s almost good once, but it’s a padding gimmick. Run’s artificially enthusiastic.

Luckily, the cast and production are enough to get it through. It’s not a good star vehicle for Ronan, but she’s definitely the star in it. Until the third act, anyway. The third act’s a mess.

See How They Run’s fine. Affable, likable, engaging, disposable, which puts it ahead of the Mousetrap play if the samples are any indication.

Five Nights in Maine (2015, Maris Curran)

So, it turns out sometimes you do actually need a story. No matter the locations, no matter the photography, the music, the actors, the editing, even the directing, sometimes you can’t get away with eighty minutes without some kind of narrative.

Five Nights in Maine is the story of newly widowed David Oyelowo. He becomes severely melancholic after his wife, Hani Furstenberg, dies in a car accident. Unfortunately, writer and director Curran putting Furstenberg in at the beginning ends up being utterly pointless, especially given the later flashbacks and reveals. The first sign the script’s not there.

Her estranged and dying mother, Dianne Wiest, calls and leaves an ominous voice mail telling Oyelowo to come to visit her in Maine; no need to call ahead. He lives in Atlanta. It’s a twenty-one-hour drive, and there’s no driving montage footage at night, so presumably, he stops somewhere at least once; we don’t see it because, despite being an ostensible character study of Oyelowo, Curran’s got no idea what’s going on with the guy.

The film sets up a bunch of pieces—Oyelowo’s been pressuring Furstenberg to get pregnant, Wiest didn’t like Oyelowo because he’s Black, her lily-white neighbors are at the least weird to him, something happened on Furstenberg’s last visit to Wiest, Oyelowo’s driving around with Furstenberg’s ashes. Now, if Curran set up that chess board and then inspected it, Five Nights wouldn’t have an epical arc, but it would have a purpose. Instead, Curran just sets things up and moves past them. Only two of the aforementioned items matter, and only during the end-of-second-act blow-out. It’s a shockingly thin film.

Curran’s able to imply a lot more depth thanks to Oyelowo. However, he works his ass for nothing. The camera spends most of the film inspecting him, and he’s always doing something relevant, but it adds up to nothing. Not even for his performance—when Oyelowo’s at the big payoff, Curran goes to long shot. It’s a not surprising miss. Because Curran wastes Wiest, there’s nothing she can do to disappoint.

Oyelowo spends, presumably, Five Nights staying with Wiest. The first four nights, she’s barely around. They probably have dinner together, but the only first and last times are important. We don’t even find out home healthcare worker Rosie Perez doesn’t spend the night until the third night. Maybe fourth night. The film doesn’t count them; it’s not worth the effort for the audience either.

Wiest goes from rude to mean to rude to meaner. She has a couple moments of levity, which the film doesn’t know what to do with; like, they seem accidentally okay, with Wiest getting to do some character development. There’s minimal character or character development in the film. Curran can’t be bothered.

Curran does appreciate her actors, however. She holds her shots forever, letting Oyelowo and Wiest act, react, emote, pout, all sorts of things. Sweat—Oyelowo has a very dangerous jog. Smoke. He starts smoking a lot the last night to gin up conflict. As the film winds down, Curran does what she can to jumpstart the act change, and it’s all desperate and all weird. The last night is entirely different from the other nights, but it’s supposedly all routine.

Though Wiest does have cancer, and she’s not getting better, and she’s maybe having mental health things going on. She doesn’t have a doctor in the movie, and Perez’s medical duties are opaque. Perez is there to talk to Oyelowo and make Wiest dinner.

However, since she doesn’t have a genuine part, Perez’s performance can’t come up short. She’s fine. It’s an extended cameo. Fine. Bill Raymond’s good in a scene, and Teyonah Parris’s good in a couple scenes. It’s unclear if Furstenberg’s any good—Curran’s unreliable when presenting her.

Good photography from Sofian El Fani, great editing from Ron Dulin. The Maine locations are lovely. The music appears not to be original; it’s solid. Manipulative but well-selected; Chris Robertson supervised. Unfortunately, the original song at the end, which uses lines of dialogue from the film as lyrics, is not good.

Five Nights in Paris seemed like an easy proposition, and Curran’s a fine technical director, but she did not have the story. At all. It’s a waste of everyone’s time: Oyelowo’s, Wiest’s, the audience’s, Curran’s.

The Midnight Sky (2020, George Clooney)

The Midnight Sky goes wrong for a number of reasons. It’s too thin, even with phenomenal special effects—half the film is an Arctic adventure tale, half the film is a hard sci-fi but done as a 2001 homage. They’re destined to collide, but the Arctic adventure ceases to be an Arctic adventure by that time and instead has become… well. It’s kind of hard to describe.

A poorly executed character study maybe?

Doesn’t matter. The Arctic adventure stuff and its importance in the narrative is a complete waste of time. The space stuff is where it’s at in Sky, which is a problem since it’s a movie where George Clooney directs George Clooney in an Arctic adventure poorly juxtaposed opposite a space mission’s return to Earth.

The year is 2049. We make big advances in science real fast apparently, but there’s another global pandemic or something about to it, we just know it. So we’re going to colonize a previously undiscovered moon of Jupiter. Clooney has spent his whole life working towards that goal—starting when he’s in flashback and the character is played by Ethan Peck. Oddly, we know what George Clooney looked like thirty years ago and he did not look like Peck. Also Peck’s performance is terrible. Like. Real bad. Just real bad.

The whole flashback thing is a disaster. It doesn’t have to be a disaster. If Clooney were interested in pulling it off—Clooney the director here—it could be fine. Because Sky shows it can be fine, when it’s in space and Clooney gets to do the mechanics of speculative space travel stuff. Then he’s interested.

But when he’s literally the star of the movie… not so much.

Clooney’s the last man on Earth until he finds out he’s not. There’s a forgotten little girl (played by Caoilinn Springall), who’s forecast in the first scene with a jackhammer. There’s no nuance, no subtly. Midnight Sky hangs at least three Chekov rifles on the wall in the first act, with Clooney holding the shot on them about five times too long. Stephen Mirrione’s editing is one of the film’s strongest technicals and the film’s got lots of strong technicals, but the literal physical plot giveaways? Mirrione can’t cut those lingering shots well because they’re bad shots.

So Clooney’s got to warn the last spaceship to turn away from Earth or else they’ll die and now he’s got to bring this kid across the Arctic with him. And there are dangers and so on. There are some great action thriller sequences with it, but since they add up to bupkis with Springall (who suffers the thin writing worst in the cast, which is impressive because there’s so much thin writing), they’re kind of a waste. They’re Clooney padding it out with technical success while it turns out, giving himself this great character study part, he’s got zero interest in acting the role. It’s an incredibly loose performance; Clooney puts no effort into directing Clooney.

And, outside Springall, pretty much no one else either. He just sort of lets them try to figure it out on their own, though Tiffany Boone and Demián Bichir do get some direction and to good effect. They’re on the spaceship with Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, and Kyle Chandler. Oyelowo is the best—and gives the film’s best performance; he’s the captain. Jones is the engineer maybe. She’s pregnant. There’s a bit of pointless tension over introducing the father’s identity, but it’s in the space section so it’s permissible.

Chandler’s the pilot. Chandler gets the least direction. At times you wonder if he literally rejected it. He’s fine though. Jones is fine too. Though with less affability than Chandler.

We’re going to find out—if we can’t guess—Jones is going to be incredibly important only she’s never incredibly important. Quite the opposite. She’s the least interesting character on the spaceship because otherwise the third act twist and turn won’t work.

She also gets all the alien planet scenes to herself and they’re all terrible CGI composites. Like, Martin Ruhe should be reprimanded terrible. Otherwise his photography’s fine. It’s not great. It’s fine.

But the production values are strong, even if Jim Bissell’s production design is 2001 plus Alien plus I think “Doctor Who” plus The Thing plus… you get the idea. There’s not a single original visual in the movie, which is understandable, there have been so many sci-if movies you can’t reinvent the wheel or spinning centrifuge again.

The lighting in the spaceship itself is always good.

The real star ends up being Alexandre Desplat’s music, which seems to be from that better movie Oyelowo is acting in. Seriously, by the third act, it’s incredible Desplat was able to come up with such good music to accompany such insipid narrative.

So.

The Midnight Sky is a technically excellent sci-fi outing—also, the 2049 thing, seriously, if they’d bumped it another thirty to fifty years it’d end up making the movie at least ten percent less silly—but otherwise it’s a well-acted stinker. Though, cut all the Clooney stuff and add some more space stuff and the story’d probably be good.

But with the Clooney stuff? It is not good. It’s not even disappointing, because when Sky crashes, it does so proudly under its own hubris. It has it coming, which is a disservice to the better performances and the quality production.

Clooney maybe should’ve found a better lead for it; someone whose acting he was interested in watching would’ve been a good start.

Jack Reacher (2012, Christopher McQuarrie)

The first third of Jack Reacher is an elegantly told procedural, with director McQuarrie emulating a seventies cop movie. Of course, there are some garnishing, but nothing monumental. Tom Cruise’s cop is actually an ex-Army cop, it takes place in the twenty-first century (but I don’t think there’s a single computer turned on in the entire picture) and it’s a got an action movie finish. The finish is great–McQuarrie doesn’t give the violence flare, it’s all matter of fact. It knocks the movie’s quality down a little, but only because McQuarrie has to stop making a cop movie.

Technical standouts are Caleb Deschanel’s photography and Joe Kraemer’s music. Kraemer (until the last bit, when he’s just scoring action) does an amazing job. The music gives Reacher a lot of its personality, especially since the film often leaves Cruise in the first half to do other things.

Some of these other things involve Rosamund Pike, who I’ve never liked before but here is phenomenal, and Jai Courtney as a bad guy. Courtney’s good too. He doesn’t have a lot to do, but McQuarrie makes sure it’s all important. Same goes for Richard Jenkins and David Oyelowo. They’re both great. And Alexia Fast is good too.

As for Cruise?

At the end of the big action finale, Cruise tells a bad guy about how he’s a badass. Maybe McQuarrie waited with the line because he had to know Cruise had earned it.

And Cruise (and Reacher) definitely earn it.