MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: ARRIVAL (2016)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Wednesday, March 29, 2017

ARRIVAL (2016)

Denis Villeneuve, who specializes in well-reviewed/award-winning quiet disappointments (hey, he’s Canadian), tries for hushed gravitas & scary wonderment in this Alien Encounter story. Somber, sobersided, shamelessly bookended with funereal beats of a daughter lost to some unnamed incurable disease, it begs to be taken seriously. But beyond the up-to-date technical rigging, it’s just the latest mash-up of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS; DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and that TWILIGHT ZONE fave: TO SERVE MAN, sans wit, wisdom or reason, laid out in stately fashion with a murky palette. You know the deal before the film starts: giant spaceships park around the planet; hoi polloi in fear & awe; deep-think scientists assume goodwill & humanist/liberal leanings; hard-ass military types certain of alien pretext to war or colonization. Heck, we even go all Cold War with China & Russia threatening belligerent action unaware the visit is meant to bring communication & harmony to an increasingly unsettled world. The irony! All while beautiful brainy linguist Amy Adams, hoping for more examples of 'speech' from the beings, doffs her spacesuit, braving the spaceship atmosphere for closer contact . . . and a decent camera angle for her upturned nose. So too physicist/partner Jeremy Renner . . . but without the adorable nose. And why not, he’s given nothing else to do other than come up with cute names for the intergalactic beastie boys. (Abbott & Costello. No kiddin’, that’s what he comes up with.) Let the translation begin! Rosetta Stone? We don’t need no stinking Rosetta Stone! (The sole bit of humor comes when alien communication smoke rings suddenly appear on screen bearing subtitles, tasteful subtitles.) Someone called this the best Sci-Fi pic since CONTACT/’97. A comment tough to top.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: While there’s nothing quite as momentous as having to remember the phrase ‘Klaatu Barada Nikto,’ like Patricia Neal in DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’51, Amy Adams does try for similar narrative drive with ‘Non-zero sum game.’ Not quite as catchy. Anyway, isn't 'SYMBIOTIC' the word she's looking for?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Any film mentioned above but CONTACT.

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ERNST LUBITSCH

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Wednesday, March 29, 2017

ARRIVAL (2016)

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