The Martian

Lovingly polished to within an inch of its life, this sophomoric outer space busyness by Ridley Scott, based on the novel by Andy Weir, is not only an extended commercial for NASA (not that there's anything wrong with that), but as the Magnificent Arepa memorably put it, it most resembles a reality cooking show -- in space.
The film makes an impassioned case about "sciencing the shit out of" everything, and this is a worthy message in these obscurantist times, in which millions of Americans think the world was created in seven days and women are a figment of Adam's rib. However, cheerleading for science does not a good movie make.
The premise is promising enough: a guy is left for dead in Mars. He is all alone in the red planet and needs to survive for as long as he can with what's left in the spaceship. But because he happens to be an American with an extreme case of gung-hoitis, there is not one pause in this film for poetry, or self-reflection, or awe, or a personal reckoning with the universe. This Mark Watney is a doer, a hero with a capital H, and he has no time to ponder. What he has plenty of time for is cracking wise and complaining about disco music. There is nothing wrong with humor, and we were not expecting Tarkovski, but the character is insufferable. Matt Damon, a damn fine actor, does what he can to make Watney likable and human, but the character, as written by Drew Goddard with teenagers in mind, is an alpha-male jock with a soft spot for plants. I liked that he was smart and solved problems, but I hated his self-congratulation, his smugness, and his competitiveness with no one around. Wouldn't it be more exciting to cast perhaps a more fragile nerd, so that the odds would seem more insurmountable? One look at Damon's abs and his superior blondness, and we know that there is no way that this enterprising bro won't make it.
One goes to the desert here on Earth and is quickly brought down to size by our sudden awareness of our insignificance in the grand scheme of things. This guy is all alone in Mars and he acts like a sitcom character. He has no time for vulnerability. There is shit to do. When alone in space and about to die, one is cocky. These are the values Hollywood exports: only the individual is heroic, he works solo and his is all the glory. They don't bother giving him an Achilles heel. He doesn't have hubris. He's the perfect guy for the job. Even with a team of equally insufferable heroic characters on Earth trying to help him, each one trying to be his own little hero, there is no sense of something bigger than the individual. Republicans who extoll the virtues of bootstrapping must love this crap. I wonder if the rest of the world is not fed up already with this relentless hero worship. It can't be the only game on Earth.
I do not understand why this movie is in 3D. The opening sequence in which a tornado hits and Watney is left for dead is visually incomprehensible. The photography by Dariusz Wolski is spectacular, and so is the production design by Arthur Max, but everything is busy with endeavor, and Ridley Scott gets lyrical only with a few lovely scenes of the crew members cavorting in zero gravity. The rest is scientific exposition that no one understands, or endless repetition of the same tired clichés. How many times can you see people clapping and cheering in control rooms, here or in China? How many times is the hero going to bitch about disco music? Do we need a character who announces that something might go wrong and then cut right to everything going wrong? There is no sense of wonder, let alone surprise. The movie, which involves cooperation with the Chinese space program in order to sell billions of tickets in China, pretends to be clever, but it is written for dumb appeal.
As incomprehensible as the opening sequence is the scientific mumbo jumbo the poor actors have to spout while pretending they understand any of it. I resent movies where they throw technical jargon at us. They make the audience think it's smart for paying attention. Who knows what any of it means? Who cares? Are you going to go check your equations to see if it pans out?
Worse, I never really understood why they couldn't send the crew back to retrieve Watney. The obstacles seem invented out of thin air only to create fake moral dilemmas. Which is why I find movies like The Martian morally bankrupt. They squander the opportunity to say something true about being human and instead they sound like the Koch Brothers, if only they liked plants.

Ex-Machina

A creepy science fiction film by screenwriter Alex Garland, Ex-Machina worries about the terrifying notion of man creating artificial intelligence capable of consciousness. This is a fear as old as time, told by storytellers in tales featuring man-made creatures from The Golem, to Frankenstein, to passive-aggressive Hal 2000.
Now Alicia Vikander plays Ava, a sultry robot who looks half human, half hardware. Oscar Isaac plays Nathan, her creator, an ornery, drunk Silicon Valley grade A asshole whose version of playing God is not only creating consciousness in a robot, but also messing with other people's heads, among other self-involved pursuits we discover later. Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson), a brilliant nerd employee, is invited to Nathan's secluded compound to perform a test on Ava to determine if she exhibits human consciousness. What follows is a satisfying brain riddle, with Caleb developing a crush on the very lovely, transparently human Ava, and Ava playing games with his poor heart and mind, while an out of control Nathan thinks he controls things.
Luckily, Garland is interested in the sterile yet febrile atmosphere that surrounds Nathan, and in the mind games robots and their makers play. He is interested in the discomfort created by the balance of power of artificial consciousness in interaction with humans, let alone the God complex that comes with it, and if indeed conscious, the almost inevitable rebellion of the created against their creator.
Slowly and delightfully, the movie turns into a quiet horror flick that hints at the disturbing possibilities of a creature like Ava unleashed into the world. She doesn't care about ruling the universe, but she has been created with only self-interest at heart. She is, after all, her father's daughter. Garland's hall of mirrors script and his poise as a director examine our capacity for invention and the uses we put to it with an unsentimental, refreshingly non-preachy eye. He is not an optimist. (I hate optimists).
If creepy sci-fi with a side of sang froid is not your cup of tea, watch this movie for the work of the three wonderful actors, and in particular for a scene where Oscar Isaac gets his groove on. A quietly controlled actor with an angelical face, he tends to play men with a cold, driven side, (A Most Violent Year, The Two Faces Of January) or rueful misanthropes (Inside Llewyn Davis). He is the best thing in the movie, although Vikander does a splendid job of acting like a robot acting like a human, never an easy feat. For a robot passing as human, she is subtly alluring. Her allure is not studied, and hence makes it possible to believe that Caleb, or any other man, would succumb to her unspoiled charms.

P.S: For a comparable acting tour de force, you can endure Ridley Scott's uneven, all over the place Alien prequel, Prometheus, in which an excellent Michael Fassbender portrays a robot who likes to imitate Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.

Exodus: Gods And Kings

Any movie where John Turturro plays a Pharaoh and Christian Bale plays Moses is worth seeing in my book. But just as it should not have taken the Jews 40 years to cross that desert, it should not have taken Ridley Scott almost three hours to tell the story of Moses and the exodus from Egypt.
But three hours it takes, and it befuddles that Scott, who is quite a visual storyteller, chooses to linger on endless chariot chases, multiple aerial views of Memphis (not Tennessee), has Jews sauntering through the desert with what seems nary a care in the world,  and Moses falling in love for forever in screen time with Zipporah (who cares?). But then he doesn't let the story alight on more interesting stuff.
Blink and you will miss the golden calf. But the most egregious omission is that he diminishes the very payoff of the story: the bequeathing of the ten commandments to the Jews. They were slaves for centuries, they are liberated by Moses with the help of some fabulous CGI plagues, courtesy of a very testy God who murders everything in sight, and, in an amazing ironic twist with a Biblical amount of chutzpah, gives them the basic tenets of civilization in writing, which include, in capital letters, Thou Shalt Not Kill. It is with these laws that they will flourish as a free nation. Alas, we are not to see this epic moment in this epic film. Instead, we see a much diminished Moses sitting inside a dumpy cart guarding the ark of the covenant as if it were lost luggage at La Guardia.
Why bury the most redeeming aspect of such a violent story? To me this is far more ridiculous than the decision to have God appear to Moses in the form of a British child. I would have much preferred the thundering voice of say, Benedict Cumberbatch coming from behind that feeble burning bush that looks like someone lit it by accident with a can of Sterno, (perhaps Reese Witherspoon wandering in from Wild - same story), but apparently Scott and his four writers move in mysterious ways.
Having a physical presence for Moses to argue with is not an uninspired choice. It may have seemed more modern to the filmmakers, but it does detract a wee bit from the majesty and mystery of an unseen, but very much felt, God.
Epic movies about anything that happened more than two centuries ago are not to be taken factually or seriously. They tend to be a hoot. Hence, it is my humble opinion that it is a waste of time to disparage the racial casting in this movie. We might also whine about 2000 years of Western art in which Jesus, the Virgin and the Apostles are always all as white as Wonder Bread. I didn't see an actual Jew playing any Jews, but I haven't heard anyone complain about this either. I agree that movies need to be more inclusive and true to reality in casting, but not necessarily when it comes to ancient times. Ancient times call for British thespians and Aaron Paul looking as if he'd rather be dead in Arizona than Joshua in this other desert dump.
Turturro nails his sadly short part with a couple of wonderful scenes with Bale, with whom he seems to have real rapport. Edgerton, who has quite a pair of Egyptian lips, is also quite good and campy as a petulant megalomaniac with daddy issues. He finds something to hold on to in his Ramses, while Bale has a harder time finding Moses as Moses tries to find himself. It's hard to be a Jew. Also, it's hard to play a hero whose transformation into a revolutionary is not very convincing. Is it because he saw the suffering of the people, because Ben Kingsley told him to, or because God finally appeared to him? I love that he argues with God, true to biblical form, but I didn't understand how Moses gained his sense of purpose. So Moses is conflicted. But his conflict seems visited on him by the rulebook of Hollywood Personal Conflicts 101, rather than by a real identity crisis. Being an Egyptian prince your entire life only to find out you are a lowly Jew has got to to mess with your head, but Scott prefers to cut (again and again) to the bigger battles.
We can discuss other strange liberties taken by this movie, such as why the very corrupt and evil character of the Viceroy (an Egyptian played by Ben Mendelsohn, probably the only Jew around), is a raging homosexual of the most insidious variety. Why does he have to be a sibilant gay? Is that in the Bible? More importantly, is anybody other than me complaining about this yet? Why bring in Sigourney Weaver to give her half a second of screen time? After three hours of some truly well crafted spectacle interrupted by unnecessary padding, I realized that the reason why this this epic story was failing is because it has been boiled down to yet another irrelevant yarn about two dudes fighting. GAWD. Guys, you got to get a hold of yourselves. This is getting tiresome. You can feel the movie balloon in preposterousness while it deflates in intelligence as this ridiculous, simplistic thread is pursued. If we're not going to have a payoff of Biblical proportions, why bother?

The Counselor

My friend Gina asked me if The Counselor was trashy, in the hopes that the answer was a resounding yes. To her good fortune, "trashy" is probably the perfect description for this Ridley Scott venture written by Cormac McCarthy. As movies go, trashy is not always bad. Many trashy movies are wonderful pleasures. Among my favorite middlebrow trash, I count Louis Malle's Damage and Richard Eyre's Notes On A Scandal. Then there is intellectual trash (Claire Denis' Bastards, Lars Von Trier's Antichrist), and loads of basic trashy trash.  
The Counselor aspires for high trash but it inexorably slips into lowbrow, trashy trash, albeit with a million-dollar cast. To get Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz all together in one place qualifies as what in Mexico is called a major taco de ojo. An eye taco, a feast for the eyes (and decent acting).
Ridley Scott has never been a subtle or elegant director. At his best (The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, American Gangster, Black Hawk Down), he is a master of thrilling spectacle. At his not so good, his movies are all clunky bombast. The Counselor tries to have it both ways. The script is full of intermittently insightful philosophical musings about greed and evil and terrible human choices. What it lacks are characters with inner lives and a coherent plot. As is the case with No Country For All Men, McCarthy is more interested in expounding his thoughts about human depravity than in giving plausible, believable, realistic actions and motivations to his characters. They function only as devices to serve his morality plays. This is the reason why, as much as I enjoyed No Country For All Men, I did not believe one second of it. The same thing happens in The Counselor. The plot makes no sense.
Michael Fassbender plays the Counselor, a slick lawyer for Reiner, a sleazy, yet somehow lovable club impresario played with utter dissoluteness by Javier Bardem, who needs to stop toying with his hair. He is too much of a great actor to keep relying on ridiculous hair for his characters. It worked in No Country For Old Men and that was it.  The most reliable way to describe these two business associates is, the Counselor (like Everyman, he doesn't have a name) wears Armani suits, while Reiner is festooned with Versace and looks like a human piñata. But whereas we do get a sense of the kind of person Reiner is (a genial, sleazy nightclub owner who likes to dabble on illegal stuff on the side), it is impossible to gather who the Counselor is, why he is there, where he comes from or what makes him tick. For McCarthy, the sole answer is greed, but for the audience this might not be enough. Why is the Counselor, who drives a hugely expensive car, the court appointed lawyer for a woman festering in jail (Rosie Perez, always good and always welcome)? Does he do charity on the side? Are we really supposed to believe he is as innocent as he professes? He is always surprised at the information supplied by Westray, (Brad Pitt), a character whose role in the whole adventure is unclear, except he is there like some sort of Stetson hat and cowboy boots wearing Greek chorus to explain to the Counselor in graphic detail how very bad the Mexican drug cartel is, and what a very bad idea it is to cross them. Yet even though he knows so much, and he is so certain of his safety, he makes a mistake so simple and unbelievable, and so telegraphed to the audience, you end up rolling your eyes. The second you see a sashaying female ass encased on a pristine white minitube skirt, you know this chick is trouble, but heretofore wise Westray is oblivious. This is the kind of lazy plot turn that sinks the movie into trashy trash. The movie is plagued by them.
The plot may be convoluted and unclear, but the movie is a fetishistic eye taco, as many Ridley Scott movies are. Which is what brings up the guilty pleasures. One of the best things in the movie is Cameron Diaz and her metallic silver nail polish. You will fixate on the nail polish and its burnished perfection, as you will fixate on her asymmetrical hairdo and the way her mesmerizing black eyeliner makes her look like the leopards she adores and keeps as pets. That's the kind of maleficent lady she is, and she is extremely good and entertaining as a ruthless narcowoman called Malkina. Diaz understands the campiness of the proceedings and lets rip accordingly. Not so fortunate is Penelope Cruz, who plays the counselor's love interest, an unlikely Polyanna who is oblivious to the fact that she is surrounded by the creme de la creme of the worst of the worst. How do we know she is a pure spirit? She claims she likes to go to church. Cormac McCarthy is not a subtle writer.
I had trouble reconciling the mansion where Bardem and Diaz live in with El Paso, Texas, but you can count on Ridley Scott for over the top production design, be it slick modern spaces that ooze ill gotten wealth, or shady Mexican lawyer offices that look like they were decorated by the Spanish Inquisition. All the scenes that take place in the shady underworld of the cartel and in supposedly Juarez, looking ridiculously colonial, are as sadly flimsy and fake as Reiner's mansion looks like money. Though the action is supposed to happen in and around El Paso and Juarez, the sense of place, like the characters, feels ersatz. That Scott, who has directed several movies in Mexico, still commissions music that sounds like a Cumbia infested version of the Gypsy Kings, only adds insult to injury.
Still, you get your pleasures where you can. In this literal, heavy handed movie, where first they tell you about the violence and then they cheaply show it to you, a wonderful relief is the appearance of several character actors who totally kill. Rosie Perez is one, but also, improbably, Bruno Ganz (Hitler from Downfall), as an Amsterdam diamond dealer; John Leguizamo, nailing it as a Colombian narco and, the man who absconds with the movie, Ruben Blades, as a mysterious go-between lawyer. He has one conversation over the phone, which he delivers with a world-weariness that is about the only truthful thing in the entire film.
Here and there we are treated to McCarthy's impassioned words about greed and corruption and the inevitability of evil, and here is where, if you could take this movie seriously, you could find a vital rant about the depraved evil of the drug trade and our pathetic approach to stomping it out. But literal as it is about everything else, the movie does not make the connection between the infinite hunger for drugs here in the States, and the depraved indifference to human suffering it encourages on the people doing the drug consuming; that is, between the beheadings and other terrible depravities that the cartels unleash as a way of doing business, and the bump of coke going up somebody's nose. A pity, because it's such a waste of words and resources. Just being a dark morality play is not enough. Being so schematic, The Counselor barely rises above expensive trash.