Black Mirror (2011) s02e01 – Be Right Back

Okay, now I’m beginning to understand some of the “Black Mirror” hype. Despite its trying for too clever and not getting there title, Be Right Back is fantastic. It overcomes director Owen Harris having one shot and repeating it over and over again: lead Hayley Atwell is on one side of the frame, the other side of the frame is empty space; it’s like Harris composes for a smartphone.

Speaking of smartphones… they’re the obvious thing Back gets wrong about its future. The episode aired in 2013 when smartphones were still small and clunky, so the future phones are small and slim. There’s also some hilarious stuff with Atwell’s touchscreen laptop, which is a commercial for why the product category hasn’t taken off. But, otherwise, no real notes on Back’s future. Though, asterisk. Charlie Brooker’s script ignores a whole lot of Atwell’s story so as to not talk about the future practicalities.

Atwell’s a young widow. Actually, wait. Unclear on her and Domhnall Gleeson’s marital status. It sure seems like they’re married—they’ve been together ten years, and they’re renovating his dead mum’s house to live in, which seems like a married thing. But when he’s been gone a few months, Atwell’s sister (Claire Keelan) is thrilled to see Atwell shacking up with some new guy. I mean, grieve how you’re going to grieve, which is also the episode plot.

See, in this future, they—they being the brandless tech companies (the least believable thing about “Black Mirror”… its intentional lack of capitalist reality)—have made a large language model you can train with a dead loved one’s online presence so you can converse with them. Upgrades start basic, with you uploading private emails for better training, but it can also do fake voices (better than the fake voices in last season’s “Black Mirror” future, where they never fixed crappy robot voices). Since FaceTime wasn’t a thing yet, Back doesn’t involve any video calls.

I mean, Skype was a thing, right?

Anyway. The story’s about what happens as Atwell starts using the zombie email service to cope with her grief and new stresses. She goes from reluctant to addicted, eventually upgrading to the OT VIII level, which will change her life forever.

The story’s pretty good, but Atwell and Gleeson are spectacular. They’re great alone; they’re great together. It’s Atwell’s show—episode—but Gleeson’s essential.

So, the secret to “Black Mirror” is apparently genuinely great performances to glaze over mediocre production and cravenly plotted scripts.

To be fair to Brooker, Back is one of the few cases where something continues past its natural ending to find an even better one. Except, of course, the only reason they pull it off is Atwell and Gleeson.

They’re so good.

American Made (2017, Doug Liman)

While Tom Cruise is most of the show in American Made, it’s not a star vehicle. Star vehicle suggests it’s got somewhere to take him. Made exists because of Cruise’s likable performance, not the other way around. Thanks to that likability, he even gets away with an eighties TV “Louisiana” accent. The film also avoids putting an age on Cruise’s character—real-life person Barry Seal was thirty-nine when the movie starts, while Cruise (here in his mid-fifties) can play thirty-nine, mentioning it might get audience members doing math and distract from the fun.

Made’s just fun. Based on the true story of an airline pilot who went to run drugs and guns for the CIA and Pablo Escobar, the film’s a hand-held period piece action crime comedy. Most of the action’s in the first and second acts before Cruise becomes an Arkansas land baron. His CIA handler (an okay but bland Domhnall Gleeson) wants a spot to train the Contras in the U.S.; near Cruise’s private airstrip makes perfect sense since he’s bringing them into the country anyway.

The film avoids all the logistics of Cruise’s operation. If Made’s accurate, anyone with a plane can fly in and out of the U.S., avoiding detection by flying low—the plane photography in Made’s excellent and only occasionally obviously CGI—no filed flight plans, no FAA, no nothing. So who’s lying to us, “Wings” or Made?

Also, getting into the minutiae would cut down on the fun. Director Liman and star Cruise are sure Made is going to be a lot of fun, as Cruise gets favors from a certain Arkansas governor, hangs out with Ollie North and Manuel Noriega, all while avoiding Cruise and Wright’s kids to the point their names and number aren’t necessary. They start with one or two and end up with at least three, but it could be four. Wright’s okay when the movie’s got something for her to do, which isn’t often. Not even after her deadbeat little brother (an okay but bland Caleb Landry Jones) shows up and starts bringing about Cruise’s downfall because he’s a dumb redneck.

There are a lot of Confederate flags in Made and Cruise’s definitely a Johnny Reb, along with all his team of pilots, and the soundtrack’s almost entirely “Country Rock before they started wearing the hoods on stage” classics. We wouldn’t know if anyone was actively racist or bigoty because there aren’t anything but white people in the movie. Cruise has a cute scene with a Black kid at one point, and it’s like someone realized they needed to clarify.

Speaking of the other pilots… while William Mark McCullough is the only one to get any real scenes outside montage or long-shot, I swear one of them is John Glover, but he’s not credited anywhere. IMDb’s missing the character (they’re called “Snowbirds,” which sounds like a Bond villain’s all-female killer ski bunny squad, and there’s no “Snowbird #3,” who’d be Glover).

Anyway.

American Made’s well-produced, with always okay direction from Liman. César Charlone’s photography is occasionally too “DV,” particularly in the cockpit shots, but never bad. Editor Andrew Mondshein does a fine job with the innumerable entertaining montage sequences. Made’s fine and fun, with a delightful Cruise lead performance, but it’s entirely fluff.