It’s no scoop to say that the IMAX format dictates the production of certain movies, since it’s difficult to imagine a Hollywood conference call where, after a movie has been greenlighted and cast, someone thinks out loud, “Hey, maybe this would work on a towering screen!” The latest Dwayne Johnson vehicle, in which the former wrestling hulk shares top billing with a 4,000-foot CG Hong Kong office-and-residential building, was obviously made with the IMAX format in mind, and after you think carefully about it, Johnson is the only A-list actor at the moment who could have starred without wilting in the shadow of the titular edifice.
Of course, that greatly reduces the appeal of the movie when it isn’t giving the viewer vertiginous shots that highlight how high up we are. Though the obvious template here is The Towering Inferno, basically director Rawson Marshall Thurber is just trying to one-up that WTC novelty, The Walk, wherein Robert Zemeckis attempted to get audiences to puke without resorting to horror movie images. Thurber assumes that by putting his star, who plays a former FBI agent now being interviewed as the yet-to-open skyscraper’s security chief, in constant danger and forcing him to leap across empty space a mile or so above the ground, he’ll get the reverse peristalsis reflexes churning as well, but since he isn’t much on building suspense—the action in Skyscraper is relentless—there isn’t a whole lot of fear generated, either.
Even the script’s one attempt at high concept—Johnson’s Will Sawyer is an amputee thanks to a botched hostage situation that’s actually the most exciting thing in the film—is never taken advantage of fully. Also, the disaster that forces Sawyer into superman mode is completely man-made and on purpose. Some sort of terrorist organization has planted devices that start fires on multiple high floors, which shouldn’t be of much consequence because nobody has moved in yet—except, of course, Sawyer’s wife (Neve Campbell) and kids. Would he have tried to save the building if they weren’t there? Probably, but now we’re getting into suppositions that make absolutely no sense outside the bailiwick of Hollywood.
And that brings us to the film’s most egregious missed opportunity. Johnson has proven that he’s adept at self-deprecating comedy, even in the purview of action films, but Thurber seems uninterested in anything but depicting The Rock’s body mass and how extraordinary the character is in moving that bulk nimbly throughout a burning high-rise. Johnson really was just cast for his body. Consequently, the set pieces are thrilling but instantly forgettable, the stakes high but dismissed as soon as the next hazard is conquered. In the end, the skyscraper wins, even if it isn’t fit to occupy any more.
Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Picadilly (03-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).
Skyscraper home page in Japanese.
photo (c) 2018 Universal Studios
Collaboration is more than just the theme of Agnes Varda’s latest curiosity. Teaming up with the tall-glass-of-water visual artist JR both on camera and behind it, the veteran nouvelle vague director expands her late career discussion of the French polity by engaging it in one of JR’s art projects, thus freeing herself up as more than just an enthusiastic observer of what is mostly rural life.
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I have yet to see Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s previous film, the internationally lauded 5-hour domestic drama Happy Hour, which, probably due to its length, hasn’t been picked up by WOWOW. But having read about its charms for almost a year I was intrigued to see his latest, which premiered in competition at this year’s Cannes. It’s much shorter and, based on a popular novel, apparently more manageable than Happy Hour. In fact, it’s pretty conventional in terms of plot and characterization. Hamaguchi’s strong point is his attention to personality detail. Despite the hackneyed dialogue and thin motivation that’s built into the story, he manages to make the people on screen seem familiar in a three-dimensional way, though, in the end, it isn’t enough to lift the narrative out of the pedestrian.
It’s a good thing the second Ant-Man movie is above average, because it’s becoming quite a chore to fit all these Marvel superhero movies into the Marvel universe, at least as it applies to the Avengers movies, which seem to be the focus. Much of the plotting of Ant-Man and the Wasp is dependent on both the last Captain America movie and the last Avengers flick, though temporally they exist in different relative dimensions, and I found myself uselessly trying to recall the details of Avengers: Infinity War, which hasn’t taken place at this point, when I should have been concentrating on Captain America: Civil War, which is the reason our hero, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), is under house arrest as the movie begins.
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Thanks to Japan’s complicated publicity machine, the sequel to the successful movie version of the very successful ABBA-inspired jukebox musical Mamma Mia! arrives well after most of the rest of the world has decided it’s a better movie than the original. The first thing that strikes me is pity for Meryl Streep, who basically saved the first movie from mawkish amateurism with her native ability as a stage performer and willingness to parlay her appreciation of the songs into a silly nostalgia romp. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything at this point by saying that Streep’s character is deceased in the sequel, a move that may have been production-oriented (Meryl may have simply thought once is enough) but was probably strategic, since the plot is divided into two parallel storylines taking place in different time periods. In the present, we have Donna’s (Streep) daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), preparing to reopen her mother’s Greek hotel, with or without the aid of her famously three fathers, Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard), and Harry (Colin Firth). The other storyline depicts the early 20-ish Donna, played by the other young blonde go-to actress of the moment, Lily James, coming to the Greek island in question for the first time and meeting the three men who will seal her fate as not only a single mother of distinction, but a popular travel destination entrepreneur.
The titular elephant in this Thai film is named after the iconic cartoon sailor, though I can’t really fathom the title’s unconventional spelling. In a way, the linguistic disconnect expands on the movie’s sometimes jarring juxtaposition of universal themes and local particulars. The hero is a successful architect, Thana (Thaneth Warakulnukroh), who is going through the usual mid-life crisis (failing marriage, loss of direction, etc.) and one day happens upon a man trying to move an elephant along a Bangkok street. Convinced the elephant is Popeye, his childhood pet when he lived in the deep countryside, he buys the animal off the man and sets out to “bring the elephant home” on foot. In other words, Pop Aye is a classic road movie of self-discovery except that we have no insight into the mindset of one of the members of the entourage.
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