Tag: Natalie Martinez

Reminiscence (2021, Lisa Joy)

I did give Reminiscence a fair shake. I really did.

It’s not my fault it opens with an all-CGI “helicopter” shot introducing the setting—a future, flooded Miami—and a terrible voice-over from star Hugh Jackman. It’s writer and director Joy’s fault. And her producers. And whoever thought doing low-to-middling CGI on a fake helicopter shot was a good idea. And whoever told them no one would remember Dark City, which is the first obvious… um… “homage.” Unless the helicopter shot is a Birdcage nod.

Reminiscence is what happens when you put Unforgettable, Blade Runner 1, Blade Runner 2, Waterworld (Joy didn’t have the courage for the urine filtration, sad to say), the aforementioned Dark City, and Dredd into a mixer and then bake them in a Big Sleep-shaped pan. I’m only including Unforgettable on the list because it’s got the same MacGuffin, but I’m not sure Joy’s familiar with it—though the movie ends up lifting a scene from The Departed trailer, so nothing’s too obvious. A Bugs Bunny cameo would’ve improved Reminiscence a lot. Especially since femme fatale Rebecca Ferguson is based more on Jessica Rabbit than anyone else.

That Departed lift jumps out because all the other prominent references outside Blade Runner 2049 are at least twenty years old. Wait, no… Dredd. But I feel like if you made Reminiscence you assumed no one saw Dredd, because if they had, why would they be watching your movie (outside the eventual and then frequent Jackman beefcake, which at fifty-two is still very impressive, as is his ability to emote in underwater close-ups). From the first few seconds of the film, Reminiscence is a fail. It’s just going to be two annoyingly tedious hours to figure out exactly how it’ll fail. Who it’ll fail. Spoiler: Thandiwe Newton. It completely and utterly fails Thandiwe Newton, particularly when it turns out the Occam’s razor on why Jackman falls for Ferguson instead of long-time best friend Newton (he’s Bogart, she’s Dooley Wilson, wish I was kidding) is because… you guessed it… she’s a Black woman.

There’s a lot of backstory to Reminiscence’s dystopian future, and we get every single bit of it from terrible voice-over narration. Even before the end of the first act, you’ve got to wonder how Jackman—who’s sort of been trying to do everything as a neo-noir (superhero neo-noir, sci-fi neo-noir)—didn’t get someone to try to fix the film. Somewhere in the third act, he does such a good impression of Clint Eastwood saying yes to a movie he really shouldn’t have, and you all of a sudden remember Jackman’s the movie star, and Reminiscence completely fails him.

Anyway.

In the ruins of the old world (Miami and the Gulf of Mexico flooded, Americans banded together to force Mexicans, brown people, and poor people of all colors drown), Jackman is a former interrogator (for the Americans) who uses the technology they developed to go into people’s memories to sell people “reminiscences.” You pay to relive your good memories from before the world went to shit while Jackman and Newton watch it all. Jackman’s a good guy though, he turns his head when there’s nudity. Even when femme fatale Ferguson wants him to look.

After sweeping Jackman off his feet because she can sing and apparently no one’s left who can sing, Ferguson leaves him, and he becomes a memory junkie. But when he and Newton have to go consult on a case for the cops—they need Jackman to talk calmly to the suspect while Newton watches the computer in case it tells her to tell Jackman to stop (the district attorneys and cops in Reminiscence are abject morons because Joy can’t figure out another way to do the Big Sleep nod)—he sees Ferguson in a memory and has a new lead.

He wasn’t actually investigating her before just reliving the memories (there’s even a massive clue to where she might be hiding the movie doesn’t notice because Joy’s a bad writer). But now he’s on the case, and he’s going to meet drug dealer Daniel Wu–Reminiscence forgets for the first act the majority of the population is addicted to some drug you can never, ever kick, and it’s ruining the ruined society—and crooked cop Cliff Curtis. Wu’s terrible, but Curtis is good with horrible writing. Like he’s trying. No one else in Reminiscence tries. Hopefully.

It’d be much, much worse if Jackman and Ferguson are trying. Jackman’s on autopilot. Ferguson’s got what Joy thinks is a great part, kind of an empowered femme fatale, but it’s actually this very weird slut-shaming, aggressively misogynistic, classist take. Also, Ferguson and Jackman have zero chemistry. Probably because of the bad script and bad direction, but neither actor should’ve believed Joy telling them they were Bogart and Bacalling it.

For some of Reminiscence, it seems like Jackman will at least escape unscathed. Joy must have something to say about these genres she’s blending together. When it turns out she doesn’t, and then there’s still another forty minutes in the movie, it’s just a descent into mainstream mediocrity. Jackman doesn’t have to be embarrassed by his performance, just agreeing to be in the project. Though maybe the voice-overs.

Newton’s not great. She’s fine. But not really anything more because her writing is terrible and her part is worse. She’s believable in this lousy production, which makes her definitionally infinitely better than anyone else. Must be Newton’s experience working with Joy on the similarly insipid “Westworld” show.

Technically, Reminiscence is without highlights. Paul Cameron’s photography is bad or worse. Worse on the green screen composite shots. Ramin Djawadi’s music is terrible. Waterworld Miami isn’t great, but not as good as it should be—so either Howard Cummings’s production design just misses it or Joy’s direction screws it up. The fail on the flooded city, which has tropical noir overtones, seems mostly to be Joy’s impatient direction–Reminiscence is such a chore to watch; Joy’s predictable, contrived, impatient, and tedious. So the movie’s rushing to do things slowly. The relatively short and hilariously bad epilogue goes on forever. Even the last fade-out is too long.

So maybe it’s all editor Mark Yoshikawa’s fault. Perhaps he could’ve saved us. Or at least made Reminiscence’s seemingly endlessly bland, unimaginative mediocrity move at a better pace instead. The film’s a bad memory and hopefully one easily forgotten.

Battle at Big Rock (2019, Colin Trevorrow)

Battle at Big Rock is a reminder the Jurassic Park Franchise Part 2 isn’t over yet. It’s a suspenseful nine minutes where director Trevorrow puts the preserving lead characters in danger—a family, of course—culminating in an allosaurus about to eat a baby. There’s also the precocious kid Melody Hurd, who’s a caricature but it doesn’t matter because Hurd’s so good, which is kind of the whole thing with Big Rock. It’s marketing, but it’s well-executed marketing. It’s the promise of R-rated danger with at most PG-13 ratings. It lionizes parents to the point they should be empowered enough to bring the whole family to the next movie because of its positive messages. And it’s not like dinosaurs are real, they’re not going to eat a baby out of its crib. We can just pretend.

And it does a great job of it. Dad André Holland and Mom Natalie Martinez are perfectly good movie parents for a terrifying short about dinosaurs getting up higher than they’re supposed to be (two years since Holland and Martinez Brady Bunched, presumably because of dead spouses)—oh, it’s like A Quiet Place. Oh. That’s dumb.

Whatever. Both Holland and Martinez are fine. Once Trevorrow reassures they’re not going to be running scenes without dinosaurs too long.

Things get scary, they get desperate, then they get silly. And all of a sudden, you get an imagine of the next Jurassic World movie and you wonder if somehow Universal is trying to make itself pretty for Disney.

But it’s all well-executed. Larry Fong’s photography, Stephen M. Rickert Jr.’s editing, it feels like Jurassic Park enough. Like a good Jurassic Park commercial. Amie Doherty’s “just pretend I’m John Williams” music is good too. It’s like homage; soullessly corporate homage but… whatever, it’s nine minutes. If the ending didn’t cheap out it’d be actually good. As is… it’s not bad.

So it’s technically, if unenthusiastically, okay.

Death Race (2008, Paul W.S. Anderson)

Death Race opens with an almost too classy intro text (reminiscent of Escape from New York, intentionally I’m sure) informing the viewer in 2012, the U.S. economy collapses. Death Race opened in August 2008… is Paul W.S. Anderson now a seer? With all-powerful, insulated corporations and cops beating protesters… it’s the perfect movie for this year. It’s just too bad they were using rubber bullets instead of Tasers, so I guess Anderson isn’t always spot-on in his fortune telling.

All joking aside, Death Race has to be Anderson’s best film. He manages to fully embrace his own mediocrity, but here he infuses it with a more capable cast than usual and his action scenes are good. They aren’t exciting, but they’re masterfully executed, which is more than enough to engage the viewer. It’s the only time I’ve ever thought of Anderson in the same vein as Carpenter–but whereas Carpenter was inventive, Anderson’s simply a competent recycler of other people’s better ideas.

There isn’t a single interesting thing Anderson does in Death Race, except maybe go soft for his ending. But it’s slick and well-produced.

The key is Jason Statham. Statham can make Anderson’s dialogue sound good. There are other good performances in the movie, but only Statham’s delivery rises above the material. The secret to Statham’s solid performance–as usual for him–is his ability to appear to be an intelligent actor but never condescend the material. The more respectable actors in the cast–Joan Allen and Ian McShane–are both aware of Death Race‘s artistic import (specifically, its lack thereof). Allen seems to be slumming for fun and has a great time, while McShane is miscast. While he’s fine, he doesn’t embrace the movie’s absurdity. He isn’t having fun and all Death Race is about is fun.

Another solid performance comes from Tyrese Gibson. I’ve never seen him in anything before–wait, I guess he was in Transformers but didn’t make an impression; his performance is strong. He’s a likable antagonist. He doesn’t manage to escape all of Anderson’s lousy dialogue–in some ways, he has the worst of it–but his good moments far exceed his bad. Anderson always ends Gibson’s scenes with some exit line and the exit lines are always terrible. Some of them even look like they were added in post-production, which is unfortunate.

Death Race actually comes close–during the racing scenes, where Anderson is running a pure filmic adrenaline line–to being a good movie. Because these are the best scenes and are unrelated to the larger story, it’s obviously not going to work out. But they’re good enough to convince some magic might occur. After all, he did see the future of the economy. The ending disappoints in some ways–despite handling Allen so well, he objectifies Natalie Martinez (after spending the whole movie not treating her in that manner). I forgot about Martinez above; she’s okay, some bad scenes, some good… but better than expected. Just like the rest of the movie.

Wait, I’m wrong. Anderson does do something really interesting with Death Race. He implies Gibson’s character is gay. One scene gives Gibson the opportunity to deny it and he doesn’t. It’s a bold move for a b-movie pseudo-blockbuster….

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson; screenplay and screen story by Anderson, based on a screenplay by Robert Thom and Charles B. Griffith and a story by Ib Melchior; director of photography, Scott Kevan; edited by Niven Howie; music by Paul Haslinger; production designer, Paul D. Austerberry; produced by Anderson, Jeremy Bolt, Roger Corman and Paula Wagner; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Jason Statham (Jensen Ames), Joan Allen (Hennessey), Ian McShane (Coach), Tyrese Gibson (Machine Gun Joe Mason), Natalie Martinez (Elizabeth Case), Max Ryan (Pachenko), Jacob Vargas (Gunner), Jason Clarke (Ulrich), Frederick Koehler (Lists), Justin Mader (Travis Colt), Robert LaSardo (Grimm) and Robin Shou (14K).

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