Movie Review: The Midnight Sky (2020)

A visually spectacular science fiction drama, The Midnight Sky combines an end-of-the-world scenario with a crisis-in-space and personal torment, but gets distracted by multiple survival misadventures.

Earlier in his career, astronomer Augustine Lofthouse (Ethan Peck) identified Jupiter's moon K-23 as possibly life-sustaining. Around the same time he started an intense relationship with Jean Sullivan (Sophie Rundle), but eventually he neglects her and she leaves him.

Now in 2049, the Earth is being rendered uninhabitable by an unknown cataclysmic event. The ailing Augustine (George Clooney) elects to stay behind at an Arctic research station while everyone else evacuates. Seemingly alone and terminally sick, he stumbles upon a seven year old girl he calls Iris (Caoilinn Springall), who barely speaks and appears to have been left behind. She becomes his companion as he attempts to make contact with the space craft Aether travelling back to Earth from K-23.

On-board Aether are Dr. Sullivan (Felicity Jones) and Commander Adewole (David Oyelowo) along with other crew members, returning from a two year mission to test K-23's viability to support life. Unaware of the situation on Earth and unable to communicate with anyone, the Aether crew members also have to deal with a navigation malfunction.

Undoubtedly ambitious and bathed in beauty, The Midnight Sky tries to tell too many stories at once but suffers from ponderous pacing in addition to fragmented focus. Working from the Mark L. Smith script adaptation of a book by Lily Brooks-Dalton, director George Clooney does establish an intriguing premise. A debilitated last-man-on-a-dying-Earth attempting to connect with astronauts grappling with an unexplained communications blackout carries exquisite early promise.

But for too long the stories of Augustine and the Aether crew remain disconnected and divergent, squandering the early momentum. To reach an Arctic station with a more powerful antenna Augustine and the curious but silent Iris trudge across the hazardous ice and snow, and suddenly The Midnight Sky becomes a bland survive-the-elements trek. Meanwhile Aether encounters navigation issues and strays into dangerously unmapped space, and soon the crew are embroiled in an emergency repairs drama. By the time Clooney gathers up all the stray pieces for the final eloquent 15 minutes, it's well too late to salvage the original intentions.

The sequences in space are delivered with a sometimes majestic artistry, Aether a particularly elegant creation both inside and out. Clooney's performance is all existential broodiness, while Oyelowo, Jones and the other space travellers (Kyle Chandler, Tiffany Boone, and Demián Bichir) each get a couple of scenes to reflect on their predicament.

The Midnight Sky launches with a bang, but is soon drifting in both space and snow.



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Movie Review: Jack Reacher (2012)

A clever action thriller, Jack Reacher unleashes an irresistible crime investigator onto a convoluted conspiracy.

In Pittsburgh, five innocent civilians are killed in a seemingly random sniper attack. Physical evidence leads Detective Emerson (David Oyelowo) to ex-army sniper and Iraq war veteran Barr (Joseph Sikora), who is summarily arrested. A stunned Barr requests help from Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise), a crime investigator who served with him in the army and now lives a nomadic off-the-grid existence.

Jack teams up with Barr's lawyer Helen (Rosamund Pike), who is also the daughter of District Attorney Rodin (Richard Jenkins). Jack is aware of Barr's unhinged behaviour in the army, but his investigation into the Pittsburgh killings suggests Barr was the fall guy for a larger conspiracy. Both Jack and Helen are soon targets of the ruthless criminal enterprise behind a sinister plot.

An adaptation of the book One Shot by Lee Child, Jack Reacher is a slick and relatively grounded crime thriller. Director Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise combine to deliver quick paced and special effects-free action with a dash of biting humour. Rational editing, glistening night-time cinematography, an involving plot, and a cheeky attitude elevate the entertainment value.

Of course with Reacher quickly established as the epitome of cool heroism, some suspension of disbelief is required to ride out his antics. Reacher can outfight any number of goons, even when he literally finds himself with only a knife in the middle of a gunfight. He out-thinks friends and enemies alike, connecting barely visible conspiracy dots with remarkable prescience. And on close inspection, the central evil plot carries the whiff of bad guys choosing the most complicated route towards achieving their objective.

But the highlights are plenty. McQuarrie stages a one-against-many street fight with panache, and follows it up with a hilarious confined quarters brawl. The car chase scene is an epic two-chases-in-one combo delivered with exceptional control. And the final showdown is suitably orchestrated at an isolated quarry, with caustic humour sustained to the bitter end.

In addition to his radiant charisma, Cruise adds to the sense of realism by performing all his own stunts, and struts through the film with brilliant arrogance. Pike struggles to match him in a marginally frantic performance. Robert Duvall rolls back the years in a crusty role as the operator of a shooting range reluctantly drawn into the mayhem, while Jenkins and Oyelowo contribute robust support. Celebrated director Werner Herzog adds cold menace in a small acting role.

Discarding gadgets and over-the-top imagery in favour of polished grit, Jack Reacher is a welcome embrace of brainy basics.



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Movie Review: A United Kingdom (2016)

A biographical romance and historical drama based on a true story, A United Kingdom couples a story of deep love with colonial geopolitical intrigue.

It's 1947, and Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) is studying law in London, as part of his preparation to take over as King of Bechuanaland, the tiny landlocked British protectorate bordering South Africa. Bechuanaland is being ruled by Seretse's uncle Tshekedi (Vusi Kunene) as Regent until Seretse comes of age. At a dance event Seretse meets Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), a humble office assistant. After a whirlwind courtship they fall deeply in love and decide to get married.

He is black, she is white, and this represents a big problem for the South African government, which is embarking on the abhorrent policy of apartheid. Britain needs natural resources from South Africa, and is therefore pressured to scupper the marriage. Alistair Canning (Jack Davenport), the British government representative in Southern Africa, delivers the message to Seretse and Ruth that they are not to wed. But the young lovers are as stubborn as they are in love, and indeed do head off to Bechuanaland as a married couple, setting off a diplomatic crisis that would last for years.

Directed by Amma Asante and written by Guy Hibbert, A United Kingdom is an inspirational story of nation building. While the film is almost too reverential towards the central couple, who are portrayed as essentially without any faults, Asante succeeds in constructing a remarkably gripping tale of love and idealism holding firm against dirty games of global economic convenience.

The film clocks in at 10 minutes under two hours, and Asante packs an exceptional amount of content into the efficient running time. With uniformly brisk pacing, A United Kingdom gallops through the romance, introduces the ominous diplomatic forces lining up against the mixed marriage, follows the couple through their difficult early days in Africa, and delves into the power struggle between Seretse and his uncle. And that's just the first half.

Still to come is a dramatic escalation of British muscle flexing, a heartbreaking separation, a broken  promise that exposes that futility of ever trusting politicians, and invigorating machinations involving natural resource exploration and misrepresentations of government inquiry findings. The film never stands still, and if anything can be accused of all too rarely pausing for reflection. A clever use of contrasting colours maintains the energy level: the African scenes burst with yellows and oranges; the London scenes are more staid and grey.

David Oyelowo owns the film with a domineering performance, whether quietly expressing his resolve or emotionally rallying his countrymen. Rosamund Pike gets relatively fewer scenes to shine, holding steady as the stoically resilient woman and supportive wife.

A United Kingdom deserves plenty of credit for allowing the romance to underpin the story rather than dominate the narrative, and for not shying away from often underrepresented issues of disreputable international diplomacy as practiced by fading colonial powers. A good love is hard to find, but better still is devotion to the land and an unwavering commitment to justice.

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Movie Review: Queen Of Katwe (2016)

A rags-to-prominence story, Queen Of Katwe is standard feel-good fare delivered with honest intentions.

Phiona (Madina Nalwanga) is a young girl living in the Katwe slum of Kampala, Uganda. Her widowed mother Nakku (Lupita Nyong'o) is poor but principled and doing her best to raise Phiona and her many siblings the right way. One day Phiona stumbles into a ramshackle classroom where volunteer football coach Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) teaches chess to disadvantaged kids.

Phiona learns chess from scratch and displays a natural talent for the game. She emerges as the most talented of Katende's students, and he starts enrolling the kids in prestigious school chess tournaments, where they have to fight the stigma of being from the slums. Phiona continues to excel and international opportunities open up for her. But on the home front, Nakku's situation becomes dire when the family is evicted for non-payment of rent, Phiona's brother is involved in a motorcycle crash and her older sister falls in with the wrong crowd.

Produced by Disney, directed by Mira Nair and based on a true story, Queen Of Katwe continues the series of based-on-real-events Disney sports-themed films like 2015's McFarland and 2014's Million Dollar Arm. The premise of underprivileged youth finding their calling through an unlikely sports opportunity is an eternal and exhausted cliche, and Queen Of Katwe is essentially predictable from the opening credits to the closing scroll.

But at least Nair and writer William Wheeler do a few things right. The film is almost entirely set in Africa (there is a brief trip to a tournament in Russia), and Nair colours the movie with the bursting, earthy tones of the continent. There is no white saviour in sight, this being a story of black Africans helping black Africans. And for a Disney film, Queen Of Katwe does not shy away from portraying the squalor of the slums. Although the depictions of Phiona's world are still relatively sterilized, issues of homelessness, prostitution, the lack of basic civic infrastructure (like storm sewers) and rudimentary medical care make it to the screen.

Also interesting is the tension that develops when Phiona is exposed to the potential for a better life through her travels and rubbing shoulders with kids from more fortunate backgrounds. She starts to resent her humble surroundings and a chasm opens between her and Nakku.

David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong'o deliver earnest performances, Oyelowo more reserved and Nyong'o marginally overdoing the motherly anger bit. The rest of the cast is made up of unknowns and amateurs, newcomer Madina Nalwanga serviceable in the central role.

Queen Of Katwe is impossible not to like, and but as entertainment never deviates from lukewarm.

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Movie Review: A Most Violent Year (2014)

A gritty business drama, A Most Violent Year is a pragmatic story of commerce and crime coming together in a brewing mix. The film promises much, but ultimately misses its boiling point.

It's 1981 in a violence-plagued New York City. Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) is an immigrant who has done well running the growing Standard Heating Oil company, having purchased the business from the father of his wife Anna (Jessica Chastain). Abel is now taking the biggest risk of his career, trying to close the deal on an expensive river front industrial property to further boost his business advantage. The Morales family move into their dream new house, but all is not well.  Abel's adversaries are circling, and the Standard delivery trucks are being repeatedly hijacked and their cargo of oil stolen. One driver, an ambitious young man called Julian (Elyes Gabel) is badly roughed up in one such heist.

Abel and his lawyer Andrew Walsh (Albert Brooks) turn to District Attorney Lawrence (David Oyelowo) to try and identify the aggressors, but Lawrence is no help. In fact, the DA's office is about to charge Standard Oil with various counts of fraudulent business practices. An attempted break-in at Abel's house is followed by more truck hijackings, with the level of violence increasing to include shootouts on the freeway. Anna grows restless, the bankers get cold feet, and suddenly Abel has to face the prospect of potentially losing everything he has ever worked for.

Directed by J.C. Chandor, A Most Violent Year leaves the vague impression that it should be much better than it is. There is a thread of sloppiness that runs through the film, from a script (written by Chandor) that sounds remarkably stilted to a slipshod editing job that all too readily truncates scenes prematurely. Key characters, including the lawyer Walsh and most of Abel's business competitors, are barely provided with any screen time despite their increasing importance to the story. Instead the film tilts towards over-investing in individuals like Julian, who are ultimately not as relevant. The film ends with too many loose ends flailing in the riverfront breeze.

Visually the film captures a pleasing late 1970s / early 1980s dour aesthetic, but the attempt at industrial bleakness also borders on sparse.

Where the film does succeed is in presenting an inflection point in a struggle between good and evil on the battlefield of a single industry and more specifically one business. While the 1970s are associated with a crime-infested and dangerous New York City, by the time the late 1980s rolled around the city had undergone a remarkable transformation into a sparkling modern day and relatively safe metropolis. A Most Violent Year sits at the transformational crossroads, Abel's stubborn insistence on a different way of doing things representing a forthcoming societal sea change.

Most of the better moments come thanks to a terrific performance by Oscar Isaac as Abel Morales. He finds the essence of a man determined to play the business games as ethically as possible within the confines of a corrupt industry. Isaac's dark, intense eyes are essential in conveying a businessman carrying the weight of the future on his shoulder and fending off appeals from all around him to dive into distasteful sleaze and increased violence.

The pacing and tone are also generally good. The film maintains steady momentum, Abel and Anna dealing with one misfortune after another, and creating some of their own strife through a tumultuous lack of alignment. The rising tension serves to highlight the film's shortcomings, with some of the good set-up work going to waste, Chandor too often failing to deliver the intellectual punch when needed.

A marginally rewarding drama, A Most Violent Year is also an opportunity wasted.

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The Movies Of David Oyelowo

All movies starring David Oyelowo and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Derailed (2005)

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011)

The Help (2011)

Lincoln (2012)

Jack Reacher (2012)

The Butler (2013)

Interstellar (2014)

A Most Violent Year (2014)

Selma (2014)

A United Kingdom (2016)

Queen Of Katwe (2016)

The Midnight Sky (2020)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Butler (2013)

The story of a black butler who served at the White House under numerous administrations, The Butler is a mildly enjoyable drama centred on the history of the black civil rights movement as experienced from a unique vantage point.

On a Georgia cotton plantation in the 1920s, Cecil Gaines is a young boy helping his parents in the fields when his mother is raped and his father is killed by the farm's owner (Alex Pettyfer). The plantation's matriarch (Vanessa Redgrave) takes pity on Cecil and converts him to a house servant. As a teenager, Cecil leaves his origins behind and makes his way north, stumbling into a job at a modest hotel and eventually securing a position at the fancy Excelsior Hotel in Washington DC. By the late 1950s Cecil (Forest Whitaker) is offered the coveted position of White House butler, with Eisenhower (Robin Williams) and his Vice President Nixon (John Cusack) in office.

Cecil marries Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and they start a family, although his long hours at work take a toll on their marriage. Their son Louis (David Oyelowo) grows into an idealistic young man seeking to translate theoretical black rights into actual societal change in the South. Much to Cecil's consternation, Louis becomes an activist who lands in jail with alarming regularity, and eventually joins Dr. Martin Luther King's circle. Meanwhile, Cecil observes the successive administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy (James Marsden), Johnson (Liev Schreiber), and Nixon grapple with the changing social landscape, as blacks slowly and painfully gain the rights to equal treatment.

Very loosely inspired by the life of Eugene Allen, who worked as a White House butler for 34 years, The Butler (also known as Lee Daniels' The Butler) is a staid recounting of the civil rights movements from the late 1950s to the election of Barack Obama as the first black President. Directed by Daniels, the film revisits familiar material from the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Reagan eras (Carter and Ford are afterthoughts), as Cecil Gaines finds himself with an unlikely front row seat to more than 30 years of White House history.

The Butler suffers from being an observer of history rather than having any meaningful part in shaping it. Cecil Gaines actually instigates precious little over the more than two hours of running time. History happens around him, and he catches snippets of it. While the focus on the civil rights struggle provides an admirably concise summary of an essential slice of American history, the film never gains traction as a drama and does not generate any emotion momentum. All the screen time invested on Gaines' family life, including Gloria' frustration with her husband's long absences, her drinking problems, and her toying with the idea of an extra-marital affair with a neighbour (Terrence Howard) is quite mundane and more tedious than engaging.

Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong go looking for sources of tension, and find them more in the fully manufactured story of Louis Gaines. The activist son fighting at street level in the deep South for the meaningful fulfillment of black rights is carrying on his father's legacy, but of course Cecil only sees a headstrong young man potentially throwing away a hard-earned opportunity for a respectable life. Louis appears to show up at every major incident in black history, including Dr. Martin Luther King's motel room on the day he was killed. The estrangement between father and son takes over as the focal point of the film, but is too easily fabricated and just as conveniently resolved.

Forest Whitaker is fully committed in portraying Cecil from a young man carving out the early stages of his life to a stooped old grandfather witnessing the election of the first black US President. The performance is good, but is more concerned with studious aging rather than capturing any compelling dynamism. David Oyelowo provides the most watchable character, bringing a steely eyed intensity to the generation of black youth that pushed a dream into real change. The huge supporting cast includes Cuba Gooding, Jr. as another White House butler, while Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda bring Ronald and Nancy Reagan to the screen.

The Butler moves with elegance, and allows events to surround him while maintaining a watchful eye. The film offers as interesting a perspective as can be expected from the standpoint of the silent witness.

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Movie Review: Selma (2014)

A biographical drama focusing on a specific chapter in Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, Selma looks for the man behind the image, and finds a leader struggling against self-doubt as he charts a course to change history.

It's 1964, and in the southern United States, blacks have the theoretical right to vote. Practically, they are denied that right by a maze of paperwork and ridiculous civic tests administered by bigots at small-town city halls. In the shadow of the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young girls, black civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo) raises the issue with President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), who is sympathetic but distracted by other agendas. Although King and his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) are living under the constant shadow of death threats, King decides to push the issue by organizing peaceful marches deep in the south, and chooses the small town of Selma, Alabama as the rallying point.

Not all blacks are supportive of King's tactics, but he connects with members of The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and they start to organize. Alabama's Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) does his best to inflame local opinions against King, and local sheriffs are quick to resort to brutality when the marches start. Johnson conspires with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker) to try and intimidate King into stopping the marches by creating a wedge in his relationship with Coretta. But King pushes ahead, the national media pick up the story, the marchers grow in strength, but the number of victims also mounts.

Selma does not spend much time on the marches themselves. Most of the 127 minutes are spent on the backroom politics that shaped public events, and on King's personal struggle to balance duties to his family, with his vision for his people and the trauma of placing individuals in harm's way. King was all of 35 years old when the events of the film took place, and director Ava DuVernay places the focus on the young man carrying an enormous burden, stripped from the legend.

For the first time the subject of a feature film, King in Selma is not just an imposing figure behind a microphone rousing a crowd (although there are several such scenes). Rather, DuVernay is more interested in how one man showed the courage to lead, move thousands, and change a country, despite opposition from the President, apprehension and dissent from on-the-ground black activists, and a marriage being rocked by threats and infidelity. The film is at its best when King is in small groups holding intense conversations, allowing waves of doubt to emerge, talking through the issues, deciding on the next action by assessing the trade offs, and then persuading others to join in.

Much like the marches, Selma moves slowly and deliberately. DuVernay contrasts dark rooms and prison cells with the harsh outside light, and unfurls the narrative at a gradual pace, allowing the enormity of the challenge to sink in. This does mean that the film drags on occasion, waiting for something to actually happen in amongst all the planning. When the climactic marches do finally start, DuVernay effectively marshals armies of extras, uncorks the tension that exists whenever history reaches a turning point, and finds impressive contrasts between those who define the future and those left behind on the sidelines, their raised middle finger a pathetic confirmation of their own extinction.

David Oyelowo steps in the shoes of King with confidence. While the speeches are delivered with the expected powerful cadence, it's in the many smaller, more intimate scenes, either with Coretta or with King's advisors, that Oyelowo shines. He creates the private King, passionate, determined, and yet often uncertain about his actions and the impact of his activism on his family. In a relatively few but pivotal scenes, Carmen Ejogo makes a strong impression, representing the home front where pride and fear reside side by side. Tom Wilkinson never quite gets the right angle on Lyndon Johnson. Martin Sheen and Cuba Gooding, Jr. have small roles in the court battle that helps determine the legality of the marches, while Gionanni Ribisi plays Johnson's main advisor.

Selma does not attempt to be the definitive statement about King, but it does provide a satisfying behind-the-scenes taste of his history-changing impact.

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