News of the World (2020)

"News of the World" is some sort of mix between a western and a road-trip movie. Captain Kidd (without any relation with the pirate bearing the same name) is a Confederate veteran of the Civil War, who earns his living from some sort of a show he performs in small isolated towns - reading stories from some newspapers on which he adds his own theatrical mark. On his way between two such performances he passes by the spot of an incident - a broken wagon, a hanged man, and the sole survivor - a little blond girl who doesn't seem to know any other language than an indian dialect. The mystery is solved quickly by some papers revealing that the girl, kidnapped shortly after birth by indians who killed her family, must be returned to her closest relatives. Kidd's luck: a military patrol also gets to the same place and tasks him with the "delivery". And like that we're getting to the road-trip part...

The movie's development is slow, you're getting about two slightly more dynamic sequences for the entire trip. In its first part it reminded my of "Deadwood"; there's also there an episode where we have the exact same situation of a scandinavian girl who doesn't speak any English, who's saved from a similary situation. But the resemblance stops here. The rest is a sort of calm meditation on the effects of the war, the ocupation of the white in the indian territory, and others. It's relatively obvious that the movie targets some prizes, but as most of the productions signed by Paul Greengrass, there's something missing. There's a lack of feeling in it. It shows that his first experiences as a filmmaker were in the documentary area where is typical to detach from the presented subject, although I've seen documentaries that left me with a much stronger impression than what we have here. Anyway, considering the lack of productions lately, you have to appreciate a new release. Let's hope better ones will follow...

Rating: 3 out of 5

Never Cry Wolf (1983)

In the landscape of Disney productions, "Never Cry Wolf" looks like a sort of accident. It's true that we're talking about a 1983 Disney production, not one of today. But even so, if you wouldn't have the reference in the credits or on the poster, you probably would not guess that such a non-commercial movie received its budget from the above source.

The film is based on an autobiographical book of a biologist sent to conduct a study in the isolated North of Canada, about the reduction of the caribou population, the main cause suspected at the time (before 1950) being the wolves in the area. There's to be mentioned that parts of the book remain debatable, from the accuracy of facts like wolves could mainly feed for a long time with small rodents up to accusations that claims of being a solitary expedition are completely fake. Even so, the publication apparently caused enough impact to clarify that the main issue was the excessive hunting, and not the wolves, which have their own role in maintaining the ecosystem. But, let's move back to the movie...

The director is Carroll Ballard, who only counts six feature films in his career, the majority revolving around a subject close to nature, and you can spot the clear tendency here towards a documentary. The cinematography is gorgeous, especially given that pretty much all is real stuff - we don't have artificial augmentations = the effects of today. What might come as a surprise is the density of surreal scenes, from repairing a plane during flight up to using a typewriter in the middle of a snow desert. But that's probably also the main factor that makes the movie likeable & non-boring. The second part tends to drag a little, and you're left mostly with the documentary side to keep you watching. Anyway, if you want a break from mainstream stuff, this is a pretty good option.

Rating: 4 out of 5

 

The Expanse

I didn't take to much advantage of the blogging vacation to gather new material. I was thinking to start the new year with "Tenet", and I could actually write enough about it. But not very positive stuff... So I decided for a subject on which I don't have so much to tell, but looks more promising: "The Expanse" a series where I didn't get far yet (I'm somewhere in the 2nd season of the 4 completed so far), sufficiently enough though to convince me.

Set somewhere in a future where mankind partially colonized the solar system, the action involves three power - the UN = Earth, Mars and OPA = Outer Planets Alliance = the asteroid belt. The first two are caught in a sort of cold war, and "the belt" gets the rebel part that doesn't get along with any of them but must serve both. In this context we have to narrative threads developing. One follows a crew of four that left a cargo ship to answer an emergency distress call, but soon they're the ones getting stranded in space. The other thread begins on Ceres, one of the belt stations, where a local cop gets a case of a missing girl, without any hope of actually solving it. Slowly the two paths merge, first towards the question of who and why is trying to start an interplanetary war.

The construction of the story might seem slow in the beginning, but was the most solid I've seen in a SciFi series in the last 10 years. Not that are many of these. "Killjoys" comes probably as the closest example, having there too an interplanetary conflict intrigue and (light spoiler) also an external enemy more dangerous than all it's known. Unfortunately "Killjoys" was completely buried by its last seasons, with an atrocious bad ending. For the political intrigue in "The Expanse", one of its good points, I've heard comparisons like "GoT in space", but I'd say that's actually even better than that = it slips less towards cheap soap. Moreover, within the limits of SciFi, which this is after all, it seemed to me very well grounded in the reality we know - e.g., the asteroids in the belt have their real shape, the gravity differs depending on where we're located in space, etc.

As I was saying, I didn't get too far with this, so as in any series case I don't know if I'll feel the same about it after the ending (I wrote a positive entry on "Killjoys" too in the beginning). As in GoT's case, this is also based on a series of novels, actually one awarded with a Hugo the year that just ended, which normally should offer a more solid guarantee for the story. Considering that the planned number of series is less than the number of published volumes, maybe this time we'll escape lame ending improvisations. We'll see...