11 World Dictators That Had Problems With The Force Awakens

11. Francois "Poppa Doc" Duvalier


10. Benito "Il Duce" Mussolini

9. Idi "BYOB" Amin

8. Muammar "Momar" Gaddafi

7. Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier

6. Joseph "Iron Joe" Stalin

5. Phillipe "Le Bristles Stache" Petain

4. Robert "Bobby" Mugabe

3. Kim "Il Communication" Il Sung

2. Pol Pot

1. Adolf "Hitler" Hitler

Mark Watney of Mars

A Review of The Martian (2015)

by James Kislingbury

The past decade or so of Ridley Scott's career has not been the greatest. Since the early 2000's successes of Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, his output has been one long run of questionable films that range from the half-baked, the butchered, the confusing, and the downright awful. During this period, his technical skills only seemed to remind us that he once seemed capable of making good films. And then we remembered that his last unqualified good film came out around ten years ago.

The Martian, thankfully, defies this trend. It's the best movie Ridley Scott has turned out in a decade.  It's fun, it's light, and despite lacking the depth of his best works, it's an eminently watchable film. Considering the amount of calories I've wasted defending Kingdom of Heaven and Prometheus, this is exciting for me.

The Martian is about Dr. Mark Watney, hunk and space botanist, who is stranded on the red planet after a freak storm. From there, it's a series of duct-tape drama, self-surgery, and, back on Earth, an oddly gripping story that revolves around resource allocations (that and conversations about how people should just, like, try harder). It's more Robinson Crusoe than it is Enemy Mine, more Apollo 13 than it is, uh, Robinson Crusoe on Mars.

It's tackles the science fiction genre in a way that I don't think I've ever seen. Namely, it's a movie that is about actual science. Films in this niche have always dabbled with this sort of thing. Interstellar jumps most immediately to mind and 2001: A Space Odyssey jumps most unfairly to mind (as though anything should ever be compared to a Kubrick movie, for good or for bad). Those films only use the science a starting point for the drama. With The Martian, the science is the drama. It is the end all, be all of the film. It's a film without a villain, where doing long division is more important than bravery.

For the most part it works. Seeing a guy, step-by-step figure out how not to die is pretty intriguing. You know, that's cool. The problem comes from the fact that there's no real emotion in the film. It's a long line of problems that need to be solved and smart people doing bloodless math in their heads about how it gets solved. I mentioned it in my podcast, but later on, I thought of United 93 and the thrills Paul Greengrass manages to eek out of bureaucratic procedure and couldn't help but realize that I've seen it done better than it was in The Martian.

The Martian is a perfect title, because nobody in the film ever seems to act like a human being. People assemble into rooms, assess a problem, and then all go to their respective corners like no collection of human beings in charge of multi-billion dollar programs would ever do. It's a movie where Jessica Chastain is stoic. I don't know about you, but stoic is not why I show up to a Jessica Chastain picture.

The film seems more interested in maintaining momentum than it does in creating individual moments where characters can be confused or upset or indecisive. Human beings don't fit into alegebra, so the film moves right past them.

As lacking as the film is in emotion or any sort of attachment, it does have its moments here and there. You have Donald Glover taking the set of skills he honed in Community to be the most obvious quirky scientist this side of The Big Bang Theory (which, like JPL, is also in Pasadena). Then there's you have Sean Bean and Jeff Daniels dueling in a series of industrial offices over who can appear the most affably schlubby without tipping over into "I have a puppy in my van" territory. Most importantly, you have a montage set to David Bowie's "Starman," which is important if only because it is only the third most obvious David Bowie song about space and someone deserves credit for that coup. Then, after these moments, the story kind of slides back to its steady, unwavering tale about a dude trying to figure out how he can, oh boy, "science the shit" out of his space car.

Beyond the drama and beyond its technical achievements, The Martian deserves viewing, because it speaks to the importance of space exploration. Between the various disasters that have plagued our space program and the various earthbound horrors we've witnessed over the past decade or so, we've lost our ability to stare at the stars and wonder what could be. We've forgotten what they mean. The Martian steadfastly ignores this sort of cynicism. Like its drama, there's no place for it. Space travel is an incredible achievement. It is something that represents the best of our race. In this film it isn't some asshole's talking point about how we should spend that money feeding people in America instead of sending people to space (as though we have to choose). Going to space is, in a very real way, the best we can do as a species. If this film can put us right on the importance of space exploration, to get us wondering about what could be, then The Martian will have done its job.

Imperfect as it may be, The Martian is one of the smartest blockbusters to come out since, well, Interstellar. It is a film that, despite its failings, manages to strike a balance between hard science fiction and populist entertainment. It's, you know, pretty cool for the most part. As many better films of this sub-genre as there are, there are few that are as well produced as this one and even fewer that are as technically accomplished. The Martian is a respectable, enjoyable film that is also about as overflowing with human feelings as the planet it depicts.

James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and an Explorion. 

Zero Narc Thirty

A Review of Sicario (2015)

by James Kislingbury

I've been burnt by films like this before.

The Counselor leaps most readily to mind. It had a perfect cast, a great director, a screenplay from the English language's greatest living writer, and it was a disaster. Top to bottom blegh. A front to back conveyor belt of vomit and fish heads that is was so perfectly constructed, you almost have to wonder if Ridley Scott was entering into some kind of a Fat Tuesday-like purge of his baser artistic instincts. More recently True Detective Season 2 pops to mind, but the less energy spent on that thing the better.

I say this because expectations can be a terrible thing, especially when your expectations are not only not met, but pulled forcibly from your arms and thrown into a well. Even when a film is good, your expectations can often sabotage your appreciation of that film. "Well, it could have been better," you say, walking through the parking lot, glumly talking to no one.

Sicario defies this tradition. It's a fantastic film, one of the best I've seen this year. It is a film that not only meets my impossible to define, solipsistic expectations, but it, more importantly, it is a film that is as good, if not better, than the collection of talent behind it. The end result is a film that is as horrifying and compelling as anything you will see in 2015.

A shorthand description of Sicario would pit it as Zero Dark Thirty* meets The Counselor (but if The Counselor was good). It's a nihilistic procedural that collides with reality. In this case we follow FBI door kicker Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) as she is recruited into the War on Drugs. The film also stars Josh Brolin as a suspiciously laconic OGA spook and Benicio del Toro, who seems to have channeled all of his typical scenery chewing into being as imposing as possible. Along with Macer's partner played by Daniel Kaluuya**, the team charges headlong into the underworld of Mexican (and American) crime.

As you can imagine, things go poorly for everyone.

This is a movie that begins with the discovery of over forty bodies packed into the drywall of a cartel-owned house. It doesn't let up from there on out. Sicario is a film that manages to use this setting without exploiting it for shock value. The desecrated bodies that hang from Ciudad Juarez's freeways are not titillation, they're facts of life.

Few movies embraces Werner Herzog's concept that "The poet must not avert his eyes" as well as this one does. To show what the current war on drugs looks like is sure to turn off many and hopefully piss off a lot of other people, but it's a vision that works. The story requires its characters to walk through this underworld and, like us, they walk out changed. And maybe not for the better.

One of the reasons Sicario stands out as a film about drugs is that unlike Savages or Scarface, it's a movie that nails the double-think of the War on Drugs. In order to beat brutes, we must become brutes. In order to stop crime, we have to let it carry on. In order to bring things to light we have to hide them. It's a film with all of the glamor and sheen of a head on collision. And each collision is couched inside of a thrilling, perfectly put together action sequence. You can have your nihilism and eat it too.

It reminds me of Zero Dark Thirty, not because of the driven female lead or the deadly bearded men running around in military kit. Both are films that steadfastly refuse to give you an answer. It simply shows you. These are the facts. Here is what a human being suffocated and stuffed into a wall looks like. This is what your government is willing to do for the sake of. . . justice? This is what happens to a man who has lost everything. No judgment, no music cues, no twists just the facts. It isn't a film that is looking to meet you half-way, which is why I like it so much.

Another bit of grounding in the film is Emily Blunt's performance. I would say she was a revelation if it wasn't already clear that she's one of the coolest actors in the business. She's the female Tom Hardy, which is to say that Tom Hardy is the male Emily Blunt and that I would watch them both in any movie that they appear in. Also they should both be James Bond***.

If you haven't seen her in Live. Die. Repeat, All You Need is Kill, The Edge of Tomorrow, you should. It's the best video game movie ever made and she's the best thing about it. Sicario is a very different kind of a film, but she carries it in the same way that Tom Cruise carries The Edge of Tomorrow. She has charisma. As bad as things get in this movie, as abused as she may be, you want to hang out with her while she is going through this. As much as she carries you through this film, she also carries the burden of the story in a way that is somehow mundane to the core, yet heroic in a way that all lost causes are.

Drugs are all around us and as a culture, as a species, we still don't seem any closer with grappling it today than when we did, well, ever. Beyond being entertaining, Sicario is a way to digest this complex subject in some way. That's what great art does. It leaves us with something more interesting than answers.

Twenty minutes into Sicario, we see Blunt's Kate Macer washing the results of a particularly brutal SWAT raid on a house. That is a thesis statement of the entire film. It's what you'll want walking out of the film or maybe you'll agree with Kate later in the film “I need a drink.”

Amen to that.

Sicario isn't exactly a fun movie. It's packed with tension, it's thrilling in places, and even manages a few laughs, but it isn't fun. It doesn't provide answers or edification. It points its lens at the Abyss for two hours and let's the camera roll. Sicario deserves to be seen, not because it's an uncompromising look into the War on Drugs, but because it manages to be, on the one hand, suffocating and heartless, and on the other, completely and utterly gripping. It's a film that needs to be seen. No, it's more than that. Sicario a film that needs to be witnessed.

FOOTNOTES

* Coincidentally, Kathryn Bigelow produced a documentary about the border and vigilantism called Carteland this year. Obviously something is in the air and it's not just Don Winslow, who I imagine burns his typewriters after every novel to "free the demon.

** Oh, he's British? Of course he's fucking British.

***And also Idris Elba. Rotating Bonds. Can you dig it?

James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and DAREs to be drug free. You can check out his podcast A Quality Interruption here. You can support his creative endeavors on Pateron here. You can follow him on Twitter here. There are no wrong answers here.

The Ant Man Cometh

A Review of Ant Man (2015)

by James Kislingbury

Sorry to get to this so late! I've had a few personal things come up and I'm going nuts with, like, what feels like eight different writing projects. I didn't mean to neglect you, dear reader! So, with no further ado, here's my review of the incomparable Ant-Man--

Pandemonium. That is the only word I can use to describe the excitement in Hall H as Ant Man was announced. “Ant Man,” they said. You could feel it like a wave. As the peels of turgid excitement washed over the crowd of sun-burnt and crowd drunk virgins, I thought to myself “This is what Marvel does. This is what it gives the people.”

Would we be worthy enough for Ant-Man?

Would I be worthy enough for Ant-Man?

Did this place validate parking?

While the need was always there, the technology wasn't. After a decades long gestation period, cinemas are finally read for the vision of Ant-Man that so many millions of children and man-children have pined for.

We are living in times of miracles.

Why didn't this guy get a movie earlier?

Paul Rudd is perfectly cast as the titular super hero. He brings a special edge that no Marvel movie has ever had. By blending affability with an avuncular charm Rudd allows the scenes to breath, allowing the comedy to come through naturally. Yet, between all of the humorous asides, I still bought Rudd as an actor in the Ant-Man movie. And, believe me, his likeness is very believable as you see it on the various stuntmen and computer generated images that make up the bulk of the movie.

While Rudd brings the chuckles and the kapows, much of the film's gravitas comes in the form of the film's older, distinguished actor. The older actor added a lot to the scenes he was in, lighting them up  by delivering exposition and occasionally reminding Ant-Man what the stakes of the film were (I think it was Infinity Gems). Also, he said something about Bruce Banner which, in the theater I was in resulted in fifteen solid minutes of applause.

There is also Evangeline Lily, who is a brunette white lady.

I kept on typing "Ant-Man Villain" into Bing and
this kept on popping up. I don't know.

Of course, as pretty as white ladies are, that isn't why you go to a Marvel movie. You go to see action and spectacle that you can only see in other Marvel movies, two to three times a year. And, lemme tell you Ant-Man delivers. It's a bang-smash popcorn munching flick of epic proportions (or should I say “miniscule proportions?” Yes. I should. Thank you for pointing this out). Whoever directed Ant-Man does a great job of balancing the story with various special effects that you would expect from the House to Astonish.

For me, I'll know I'll look back for years to come at the first time that Ant-Man got small. It just took my breath away. And just when I thought I had seen it all, he then became regular sized again. How do they come up with this stuff? It was what Munsterberg meant when he called cinema “That beautiful, living dream” probably.

Hero? Yes.

All of this leads up to a satisfying, massive showdown at the end of the film between Ant-Man and the bad guy that is slightly different from Ant-Man. As much fun as the showdown is, it does tend to run a bit long. But what can we expect? Ant-Man is simply too much character for one screen, for one actor, for one director. I mean, it's not a Joss Whedon film, imperfections are going to appear here and there. What I can say is that, despite the imperfections, Ant-Man was definitely two hours long and did not consist entirely of room tone and flashing lights. What more could you want from a movie?

As the credits rolled, set to a slightly off kilter rock song, and the much needed reminders of Marvel's future movies flashed across the screen, I thought back to my time at Hall H. As I hung upside down, caribined to one of the convention center's walkways, one particular fan stands out in my mind.

I hope you're prepared for Ant-Man's signature line,
"I am Ant-Man."

As the Marvel executive said those fateful words on that hot July day, I looked down at this fan. He had become so overcome with the sheer ectasy of Ant-Man being on a very large screen that he lost control of all of his limbs. As he rended his shirt from his white, white body, he screamed the names of all of the great artists and writers from Ant-Man's illustrious an lauded run at Marvel.His mania seemed to go unnoticed by those around him, as each fan was consumed with a rapture of his own. As the shirtless honkey swallowed his own tongue, pink foam erupting from his mouth, I thought to myself “This is important. I must remember this” because I knew that this was as pure of a love for Ant-Man that I would ever, could ever see. I shed a single tear for that moment. Also, the stench of a thousand people losing control of their bowels was horrifying. A lot of people died at that panel.

Seeing this new ad for Avengers 3 I now know that had that man lived, he would have loved to see the truth of Ant-Man come to pass.

I personally cannot wait for Ant Man 3 and 4 to grace our movie theaters. I only hope that we are still worthy.