Annihilation (2018)

Directed and written by: Alex Garland

Starring: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson

I was mostly confused after watching Annihilation, so this piece of writing will be my attempt to make sense of it. The travel into the shimmer and its strange remixing of nature is inter-cut with the relationship between Lena and Kane, and Lena's affair with Dan. I wondered what the affair had to do with anything, and maybe the ending has the explanation for that. The Kane that arrived back at her house and kickstarted the whole movie was not technically the real Kane. The real Kane killed himself on camera with a phosphorous grenade. Early on in the film I remember talk about the ability for cells to copy themselves. The shimmer is a prism, a DNA reflector, bouncing around a little bit of everything into everything, but it can make copies too. Or maybe the creatures that live in the asteroid that crashed make copies and the DNA prism is just part of their atmosphere or how they live. I think that they need the prism to live seeing as Kane started to undergo organ failure when he left the prism and arrived on Lena's doorstep.

It would make sense that once Lena destroyed the lighthouse, the parts of Kane that are conflicting with his new human body burn away. There's no longer conflict and he is now a man. A new man. At the end of the film, Lena says that the creature that she killed was creating something new. I think that's a big clue as to why the affair is shown. This is a new Kane that doesn't have the memories of the original. This Kane doesn't know about Lena's infidelity. They can start anew. Also, that they both were exposed to the DNA remixing of the shimmer, they are something new themselves. The Adam and Eve of a new world. There's no guarantee that the shimmer's effects have been eradicated. What would happen if they now had a baby?

Dr. Ventress' cancer and what happens to her in the belly of the lighthouse confused me. It seems she was taken as a whole in order to create the creature that mirrors Lena. Is it because she had cancer and was willing to die? There's evidence that an individual's will does play a part in how this world affects you. Josie chooses to give herself over to the shimmer before Lena reaches the lighthouse and appears to have become one of the human shaped flowers. There's also the theme of self-destruction. There's a line about how the desire to self-destruct is programmed into every one of our cells. Ventress' cancer is her cells self-destructing, and she turns into a pulsating fractal ball of energy before Lena's mirror is created out of it from one drop of blood.

I like how the colours of the forest are muted. Due to the colour choices of the flowers and the fungus, there's an otherworldly element to them. Seeing these colours next to each other in nature, these particular shades is off-putting. That's why even with how beautiful the deer were, I could never feel comfortable with them or the landscapes. Maybe it was because of how dangerous this place is to our group of explorers, but I think it's that I recognise that there's something wrong with this picture. Maybe it has to do with it being on Earth. If they were in another dimension or on another planet, it would make sense. Here on our planet, especially knowing what the shimmer has been doing to all the humans that entered before, it's unsettling. It's just wrong.

At the end of this writing, I've worked out a couple of the idea strains floating around in my head regarding the film, but I'm still at a loss as to what it's trying to say. What the point of it was. There's a speech by Kane on the video recording. After spending time in the shimmer he starts to question what he actually is. Maybe we all are just a group of cells that can be easily interchanged, and that our identity is a fabrication. If that's the point, I can see why all the characters devolved into an existential nightmare. Destruction of the cell, destruction of the self. There might be something there.

Loving Vincent (2017)

Written and Directed by Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman

Starring Douglas Booth, Jerome Flynn, Robert Gulaczyk

The most impressive part of Loving Vincent is of course the animation. Most of the film looks like the animators were trying to recreate the style of his paintings. There are brush strokes that call attention to themselves to indicate detail as moving trees or the beard of Chris O Dowd. Watching the characters move through the landscape reminded me a lot of cutscenes in early 90s adventure games. There was a lot of rotoscoping going on to capture movement in those cutscenes and the surreal traversal of these images gives the same impression.

Where the visuals of the film really shine are in the flashback sequences. They are painted in black and white and it looks like a lot more attention was given to each particular frame. Because of imitating the style of Vincent Van Gogh, there's never a moment in the colour scenes where I was fooled that I was watching a movie with real actors and locations as the imagery was so surreal. I was fooled on many occasions during the flashbacks. The rendering of light in whites and grays is astonishing. Often the movement will break the illusion, but even still, most of the flashbacks made me think I was watching a black and white movie instead of an animated painting.

Now I've been thinking whether or not this mammoth undertaking and unique vision of animating a story in the style of Vincent Van Gogh actually has any bearing on the narrative being told. The plot is a mystery. The son of the postmaster that Vincent sent his letters through has one final letter to Vincent's brother Theo he wants delivered a year after the artist's death. Armand spends the film tracking down Theo, and then trying to understand what happened to make Vincent want to kill himself (and if that is really what occured). Talking to the townsfolk reveals insight into Vincent as a character, and this is where the black and white scenes take over and the world is rendered in great detail.

The rest of the movie, when Armand is trying to discover what happened to Vincent and who he was, that's when Vincent's art style showcases itself. Like Armand is trying to see the world through Vincent's eyes to understand him, or at least that's what we as the audience are meant to do. When the conversation with Dr. Gachet at the end of the film finally occurs, the revelation is shocking, and very sad. Vincent thinks himself a burden to his brother and to the rest of the world. Anyone familiar with the thought processes of depression will recognize this feeling and how destructive it can be. I teared up a little during this revelation.

The film ultimately ends on an uplifting note with two letters of Vincent's talking about the struggle of an artist, his goals for life, and the lasting effect he wanted to make on the world. I never knew this story. It paints Vincent Van Gogh as tragic as all the tales you've likely heard about him. Despite his inner turmoil, he gave us 800 pieces of beauty in the short time he painted, and this film is a celebration of his life (Gachet's daughter says this outright). I was happy that beneath the impressive visual undertaking, there was a well acted story that was at least for me, emotionally resonant.

Logan Lucky (2017)

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Written by: Rebecca Blunt

Stars: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig

The first scene in Logan Lucky should have been a tip off to the climactic end of the movie. Logan sees his daughter's performance and she sings the song from that first scene. This climax is not the end of the movie however. It keeps going. Afterwards he gives the money from their successful heist back and we see the fallout of that action in terms of Adam Driver's character and Joe Bang getting out of prison. There's also a weird scene where Joe gets beat up by the warden for seemingly no good reason other than maybe the warden has realised that Joe being sick means he could have escaped even though the warden can't prove it.

Joe gets out and talks to Adam Driver's character about Logan (man, I can't even remember the names of the two brothers. The main characters) and his whereabouts. He has a fancy new arm so this might be a tip off that he kept some of the money. Then there's a sequence about how he fooled the Bang brothers and kept a lot of the money. This is alongside an FBI agent investigating the crime and learning that the speedway replaced all their stolen money through insurance. The dicky race car manager and the warden are interviewed and made to look stupid, but there's nothing to those scenes just as there's nothing to the FBI investigation. The FBI Agent turns up in the bar at the end of the movie when the Logan brothers, Melly, and Joe Bang are all toasting a successful job well done. This makes me think that a sequel is being set up, but for what? Another heist?

I mean Daniel Craig as Joe Bang was great. Truth be told I thought Channing Tatum was Mark Wahlberg for most of the movie because of the type of character he was playing. Adam Driver's character was harder to get a read on. He was meek and not too bright, but protective, and willing to do whatever he needed to. Skilled as well, at least in bar tending or getting by without his arm. The Bang brothers were comic relief, as was the new husband of Logan's ex-wife. At the end her interaction as Logan was picking up his daughter makes me think that it didn't work out and she wants back with him now that he seems happier. What was Logan's character arc? He wanted to rob the raceway because he was let go from his job. His daughter already loves and adores him. He does his best for her, so it's not to be a better father or provider. In the early part of the movie his daughter is moving state and he says he's getting a lawyer to make sure that doesn't happen, but no time is spent on that being the motivation to put together the heist, and in the end he just moves state anyway.

The characters make this movie worth watching, and there are some genuinely funny moments in it (the bear in the woods was my favourite). The heist is original and not too much goes wrong so it was even weirder when the film kept going. I think perhaps it has to do with character motivation but something was missing. The soul of the film. What it's really about. I wouldn't mind seeing another film with these characters, I just would like that film to be about something and to have their motivations more defined.