DOPPELGANGER DRAMA

MOVIE
Us
Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke
Director Jordan Peele
Review Ray Chan

After comedian-turned-filmmaker Jordan Peele earned an Oscar for debut feature film Get Out, the expectations were high for his follow-up.
    Early reviews of that movie, Us, have been overwhelmingly positive, and it’s a pleasure to report that it's easy to see why. There’s no sophomore slump to be found here, and Peele remains one of the most exciting American filmmakers to come around in a long time.
    Us is a 1970s-inspired horror flick that wears its references on its sleeve and crawls with terror and tension, a melodrama which throws up philosophical questions about existence and identity. 
    Our unsuspecting picture-perfect American family is the Wilsons: Gabe (Winston Duke), Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and their children, Zora and Jason. They arrive in Santa Cruz, California, at their family summer home ready to enjoy the beach town — even though Adelaide is troubled by disturbing memories of her childhood there, when she eerily confronted a doppelganger of herself.
    But they go anyway to keep up appearances and impress their affluent friends. Adelaide's fears are realised when a strangely identical version of the Wilson family — clad in red jumpsuits and wielding sharp scissors — shows up in their driveway one night, causing her cold sweats to flow profusely. It proves to be not just a physical invasion, but one of the soul as well. 
    As both Adelaide and Red, the matriarch of the photocopied Wilson family and leader of the attack, Nyong’o anchors the film with a spellbinding and bone-rattling dual performance. Red is a horror hall-of-fame scary mommy as unnerving as any you’ve ever seen. Her presence becomes even more menacing when it's revealed she is the mastermind of a whole tribe of community copycats.
    Peele, meanwhile, demonstrates a mastery over film-making craft and tone much in the same way he did with Get Out. His elegant command of cinematic grammar build slow, lurking dread, and the surprisingly melancholy mood he captures in the film’s more reflective passages provokes a deeper response than just cursory shrieks of fear.
    But while the script for Get Out, with its clever allegories and visual prompts, felt like a tightly wound watch with gears all in place, Us feels messier because of its bigger and broader plane. 
    The director has widened his scope from one small hamlet’s terrible secret to the entire country, dabbling in ideas of governmental mind control and total societal collapse. It alludes to people being treated as test subjects, symbolised by the recurring use of rabbits in laboratory cages. 
    In doing so, it doesn't settle on a central focus, drifting between a home-invasion thriller, an apocalypse film, a zombie movie, to an identity crisis. It’s impressive that Us manages to be all those things with finesse and style, but it feels as if it hasn’t fully gelled yet. There's a twist ending which half satisfies because it opens up questions which don't have immediate answers. 
    The Wilsons' envy of a richer family emulates the hunger suffered by the duplicates. It is a story about whether all our fortunes or happiness requires the privation of others. It's about what it’s like to covet a tiny object from the universe — in the movie, items like a stuffed rabbit, or lipstick — and never get it. 
    It seems a clear message from Peele to the people of his homeland. Indeed, reflecting the dualism theme, there's a dichotomy to the name of the movie itself, with Us a clear reference to the United States. It invites Americans to not only look at the film Us, but to then “look at us” figuratively. This is a movie about divided selves in a divided nation with no clear resolution, forcing viewers to leave the theatre with their fears intact.

#Usmovie

BRICKS IN SPACE

MOVIE
The Lego Movie: The Second Part
Chris Pratt, Emily Banks, Will Arnett
Director Mike Mitchell
Review Ray Chan

The first Lego movie ended up being one of the most wholesome hits of 2014, to the surprise of many, so much so that a sequel to the adventures of optimistic everyman Emmett (voiced by Chris Pratt) always seemed a foregone conclusion.
    The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part has followed real time and is therefore set five years later, when things have changed dramatically for the residents of Bricksburg. The city has been laid to waste by confrontations with Duplo invaders from outer space, who wreck everything faster than the Lego legions can rebuild it.
    Everyone's now living in a dystopian setting, where all the characters have become dark and brooding, apart from Emmet, who is still happily singing about how “Everything Is Awesome”. But his demeanour is upset when the aliens from the Systar system end up taking girlfriend Lucy, Batman and all of Emmet's other friends, leaving him to find a way to save them and stop the so-called Our-mom-ageddon (the genesis of which is revealed later in the story).
    On his journey to the Duplo homeworld, Emmet teams up with Rex Dangervest, a galaxy-defending archaeologist, cowboy and raptor trainor, who's basically an amalgamation of Pratt's post-Lego roles. It's a clever tongue-in-cheek nod at the the contrast between Pratt's Parks and Recreations' good-natured Andy Parks character, and his more recent dabblings with dinosaurs and galactic guardians.
    We're introduced to a new batch of characters from Systar, including an upbeat vampire DJ, a sentient ice cream cone, and the Duplo queen Watevra Wa'nabi, who can transform into anything she wants. She introduces herself through the song "Not Evil", in which she dispels any ulterior motives on her part.
    Indeed, the movie contains more than its fair share of musical numbers. Some fall flat but others work well, such as "This song is gonna get stuck inside your head", which it certainly does.
    As in the first Lego film (and the Batman one, which earned bouquets for the brick Bats), writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller excel in their unique brand of self-referential humour, with characters ranging from various DC heroes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Bruce Willis. There's also another real world lesson mirroring the events in the film, this time involving sibling rivalry and conveying the message of learning to get along with one another when things aren't really awesome.
    It's worth noting that the chief appeal of the Lego movies has always been in watching the plastic playthings come to life. It's a delight to see how the Lego builders face up to new modelling challenges, particularly with ephemeral constructs such as smoke, clouds, water and fire. In this movie, the futuristic Mad Max-style vehicles and intergalactic vessels certainly exemplify terrific imagination and do not disappoint in their creativity.
    As it is though, with its recycled jokes and revisited tropes, the film can't help but highlight the fact that the original movie was, well, indeed quite original. That being said, it does fit snugly into the franchise with heaps of heart and humour, although many of the references are so adult-themed that they will not be understood by the younger viewers, whom one would assume are the chief demographic this offering is directed at.


#thelegomovie2 

SHE IS STRONG, SHE IS INVINCIBLE, SHE IS ...

MOVIE

Captain Marvel
Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Jude Law
Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

Review Ray Chan

Set in 1995 before the Avengers were created, the movie tells the story of a test pilot from Earth named Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), who inadvertently absorbs cosmic powers and gets kidnapped by alien race the Kree to serve as a weapon on their home planet of Hala.
    Brainwashed of her memories, she gets captured by the Kree's enemy, the shape-shifting Skrulls, who, in probing her mind, trigger flashbacks to her time on Earth, or planet C-53, as the aliens call it.
    Danvers, referred to as Vers because that's all the name on her damaged dog tag reveals, manages to escape her captors and crash lands a spacecraft somewhere in the USA (like they always do). More specifically, she plummets into a Blockbuster video store, which of course were ubiquitous at the time. 
    (In a curious case of poignant timing, the movie opens in cinemas the same week as the second last Blockbuster in the world, situated here in Perth, shut its doors.)
    But this isn't the only time stamp for the period, as directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck throw in other reminders of an era when teenagers stomped to grunge music, Happy Days memorabilia abounded and Internet users still flocked to Alta Vista search engines.
    To find out more about her origins, Vers rediscovers herself with the help of her old pilot comrade, Maria Rambeau, and the young S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Coulson and Fury (Clark Gregg and Samuel L. Jackson, respectively), who are bound for greater glory in the future.  No doubt enhanced by a touch of CGI, the pair look suitably de-aged, with Jackson in particular standing out with his chubbier face, healthy crop of hair and two good eyes.
    Indeed, the character of Fury is one of youthful exuberance, untarnished by the darkness of the many inter-galactic adventures that are to befall him and that he will share with the batch of super-heroes that will emerge in the next decade. While in the present he is a jaded, grim, cold fish, here he even cuddles up to a friendly feline, whose presence ends up stealing the show.
    Ultimately, the crew work together to dodge the Skrulls (led by a Cockney-speaking Ben Mendelsohn) and, later, the mega-weaponised Kree, led by Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), both of whom are after a light-speed engine whose possessor will control the universe. 
    Rambeau, while helping Vers fill in the missing chapters of her life, refuses to give up her life on the farm to help fight the aliens. Unimpressed, her frizzy-haired daughter Monica chirps in with “Consider what kind of example you’re setting for your daughter!”, a line that will resonate well with audiences who know that, in the comics, Monica also ended up with the Captain Marvel mantle.
    While lots of superheroes feel conflicted about using their powers, this blonde bombshell is different. Inherently decent and with a sound moral compass, she still doesn’t hesitate to employ her super flight, photon blasts or invulnerable fists, but the whirlpool of action around her is so confusing that she’s not sure whom to trust, or whom to help.
    In the end, our heroine, adapting the name of her Kree mentor Mar-Vell, defeats one of the races while leading the other to safety at the far end of the galaxy. It's a journey that has resulted in her absence from planet C-53 for 23 years. But, as we have seen at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, old comrade Fury manages to send out a distress call to her to help out against Thanos, signalling the possiblity of this super-powered woman leading the charge against the near-omnipotent villain in the forthcoming Endgame conclusion.
     And that, in itself, is this movie's greatest triumph. In much the same way as Wonder Woman did, this film empowers women and gives them the leading light without pushing the message in everyone's face. Given the responsibility of reconstituting half the world's population, including many of its most charismatic heroes, Vers now wears the burden of saving the Marvel Universe. And that onus is on the shoulders of an Earthwoman whose manner is as ordinary as her power is extraordinary.
     “You have no idea who I am. I don’t even know who I am,” she says early in the movie in one of her battles.  But then that’s what’s best about Captain Marvel. The title is a metaphor for every woman — or even every person — who is trying to figure out how to harness their own power.
**By the way, look out for a loving tribute to Stan Lee at the start of the movie and a bittersweet cameo within. 

#captainmarvel