SHADOW IN THE CLOUD

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Special Effects: C+

There is so much to say about Shadow in the Cloud. Where do I even start?

If I were to start at the true beginning, then I would need to mention the 1963 Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” from which this movie clearly gets its inspiration. In that episode, starring William Shatner, a man taking a commercial airline flight sees a “gremlin” on the wing, and no one believes him. The episode has been remade a couple of times, both in a 2019 reboot of the series, and perhaps most famously, in a segment of the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie starring John Lithgow.

In this 2020 film, starring Chlöe Grace Moretz, the setting is World War II, and the cold open before the title cards features an old-school style animated instructional video cautioning pilots to stay focused and not blame their own errors on so-called “gremlins”—a real reference to a myth among aviators of the mid-20th century. This is even how they are first referenced, by character Murray Futterman, in the 1984 feature film Gremlins (which is far, far superior to this film). One could even argue that, at least in spirit, Shadow in the Cloud is the third film in the Gremlins franchise. It sort of blends the original myth with the literalization of the mischievous creatures of the films.

There’s even a serendipitous irony to the production of Shadow in the Cloud: it feels very much like a film that might have been made in quarantine, most of the run time featuring a single character onscreen, alone in a confined space. From this angle, it takes inspiration from films like Locke (2013), which featured only Tom Hardy driving a car for its entire run time. I’d estimate a good two thirds of Shadow in the Cloud features only Chlöe Grace Moretz, as Maude Garrett, in the Sperry ball turret of a B-17 bomber plane. She arrives at this plane with a crew of seven men, wielding a document proving she is on a top secret mission that means they must let her board. But, they demand that she ride in the turret.

It’s the setting, and the World War II context, where Shadow in the Cloud veers from that original Twilight Zone episode—which featured a man on a present-day commercial airline flight—but the basic premise remains exactly the same. She starts seeing a creature crawling around the outside of the plane, and, after the men spend a lot of time making openly misogynistic comments about her over the intercom, they don’t believe her when she tells them what she sees.

Before long, though, we see plenty of this creature, which, although they continually refer to it as a “rodent,” looks much more like a quasi-humanoid bat. This is going to qualify as a spoiler, but I don’t care because by this point the movie has gone into high-octane preposterousness: she has with her a “package,” which is later revealed to be concealing her baby. This package gets taken all over the place, including at one point being snatched by the creature. Whenever we see the box from outside of it, the thing is getting whipped around all over the place: flapping in someone’s hands as they run, or even dangling from beneath the wing, before Maude literally goes out of the turret to retrieve it and then crawl back into a hole on the underside of the plane, all while it is flying. At one point, even while Japanese aircraft are firing at them. And then? Every time Maude opens the box to check on the baby, it’s contented as can be.

The point is, there is no part of this film that is in any way concerned with realism. Having a “gremlin” somehow crawling around a flying fighter plane is one thing, but most filmmakers would at least compensate for that with some measure of plausibility elsewhere. Not director and co-writer Roseanne Liang (the initial drafts of the script were written by accused sexual assaulter Max Landis, which is a whole other story). It’s as if this film started with a literal cartoon just to prime us for the rest of the movie being just like one.

There’s a curious element to the tone of Shadow in the Clouds, which seems almost to be self-aware but stops just short. The storytelling is straightforward, which somehow makes it more entertaining. I won’t lie: even though this movie is objectively idiotic, I had a pretty good time watching it. Mostly because it was so shamelessly dumb. There’s a scene late in the film where Maude is essentially in a fist fight with the gremlin on the ground—and she’s kicking his ass. In no universe is it plausible that this woman could dominate this creater, but, perhaps Liang just made a conscious decision: in no universe would this gremlin actually exist either, so what does it matter?

The latter half or so of the movie is packed with this kind of stuff. The other men on the plane are dispatched, one by one, and somehow Maude narrowly escapes death herself each time. There’s even a moment where she literally falls out through an opening in the floor of the plane, and an exploding enemy plane just bounces her right back in—conveniently through the opening she just fell through. I laughed out loud. And nothing about the film suggests we’re supposed to find it funny.

The dialogue is nearly all completely contrived, which makes the “feminist” bent to the story a little hard to take. This movie is getting a fairly typical amount of hate by man-boys online who insist it’s made by “man-haters,” which is a stupid take no matter what. Still, even I would say the script lays it on a little thick, especially or a movie about a monster on an airplane. I’m usually all for feminist subtext, except in this movie it’s both unsubtle and clunky, lacking in any intellectual wherewithal.

Depending on your perspective, however, that arguably adds to its charms: the way this movie tries to be taken seriously as an action-horror filick and winds up being unintentionally campy. Not to an extreme degree, but it’s there. And it was a big part of what entertained me about it. I might have had less of a fun time if it were longer, but this movie not only clocks in at a mere 83 minutes, but the end credits begin with nearly 10 of those minutes to spare. It doesn’t even give you time to get too annoyed with it. It’s just a fun, dumb ride.

A gremlin snatches a baby in a box on the underside of an airplane, which is totally normal.

THE DISCIPLE

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Music: B+

The Disciple was only released a little over a week ago on Netflix, and it’s already one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year—ranked #20 for the year 2021 (so far) on MetaCritic—which, I will admit, was a big reason I decided to check it out. Knowing nothing else about it, aside from it being the story of a failed artist struggling to make it as a classical Indian music singer, I probably would have otherwise gleaned right over it.

The sad irony here is how much more easily accessible this film is on Netflix, ostensibly with a global audience, and yet it seems likely to have gained more media attention, and even more revenue, with a traditional theatrical release, even a limited one. Or rather, it would have before a pandemic happened, anyway. In spite of its impressively prestigious pedigree and history of accolades (executive produced by Alfonso Cuarón, Best Screenplay award winner at last year’s Venice Film Festival), its release on Neflix just throws it into a gigantic ocean of content, destined to disappear under the mass of it all. This movie isn’t even in the Netflix Top 10 in India right now.

That said, who would I recommend this movie to personally? No one, really. The Disciple is clearly constructed with measured skill and care, arguably to an almost Kubrickian degree, but I don’t know how much overlap there is in the Venn diagram of people interested in cerebral cinema and people interested in Indian classical music history. I’m sure they’re out there . . . I’m just also sure they do not make a very large group.

This movie moves at an almost glacial pace, which isn’t inherently bad, except that, again, it’s only available on Netflix. This does not feel like the kind of movie that benefits from at-home viewing. It’s the kind of film that requires immersion, which means it would be a lot easier to stay connected to in a darkened theater on a big screen. Which no one, at least no one in the United States (and that’s where I am and thus who I am writing for), is going to have access to with this film.

Which is to say: The Disciple is indeed a good movie. Writer-director Chaitanya Tamhayne has created a uniquely specific portrait of an Indian artist as a young man, and there is no question this is one of the best non-Bollywood films to come out of India and break into international markets in ages. Furthermore, Indian classical music is unlike any other kind of music you are ever likely to hear in film, particularly in America, and it is quite beautiful. The protagonist, Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak), is meant to be struggling with mastering the form, and thus imperfect. But to any untrained ear, he sounds great.

As with youth in any context, this story also qualifies as a portrait of . . . just a young man. We meet him in his mid-twenties, with his guru asserting that he needs to be patient: focus only on practicing, until at least the age of forty. There is no sense in being frustrated with imperfection before then. Except this perspective ignores the realities of modern life, things like paying bills and debts, which are struggles even the guru contends with while being asked to travel long distances for performances in his twilight years.

There were moments of The Disciple that, for me, brought to mind Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Not in either form or content, but rather, more in tone: each scene exquisitely designed, staged, and framed, with an almost frustratingly quiet pacing. Except in this case there’s a lot more music, in particular that of the tanpura instrument, which is similar to a sitar. Sitting through The Disciple, it’s easy to imagine someone calling it a “masterpiece.” It’s just that sometimes a “masterpiece” is so lacking in excitement it struggles to maintain our focus and attention. I kept nodding off. Would that have happened in a movie theater? I suspect it would be less likely, but we’ll never know.

Reverence doesn’t pay the bills, Sharad.

Overall: B

THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+
Animation: B+

There’s a lot I very much enjoyed about The Mitchells vs the Machines, and there’s a lot about it I found dumb or annoying. In the latter case, I have this sneaking fear that it’s just because I’ve gotten old and out of touch.

I mean, what’s the target demographic of this movie, anyway? The main protagonist being a young woman about to go to college—in the end casually revealed to be queer, no less—notwithstanding, it is clearly young children. I am 45 years old. Some disconnect here is inevitable.

This film is made by Sony Pictures Animation, which has made a few great animated features (especially Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse), but also a lot of pretty forgettable stuff. You could argue back and forth about this: such an assessment is merely a matter of opinion. But, history still doesn’t like: unlike, say, Pixar Animation Studios, Sony hasn’t made much in the way of animated feature film classics. On the other hand, maybe the more pertinent question these days is: does that matter? I can’t really deny that The Mitchells vs the Machines will be wildly entertaining for plenty of viewers. This movie has been available to stream on Netflix for a week and it’s still #2 on their Top Ten list.

So, what difference does it make what I have to say about it? Do you want to know about how meta my thoughts about it got while I was watching it? Like, this movie regularly pokes fun at our tech-obsessed society, and yet it could never exist without the very technology it criticizes. Or maybe, is there some underlying layer where it’s making fun of our fear of A.I. rising up against us? There is literally a line where, right after a knowing throwaway line about giving tech companies far too much power, a character declares “it’s not all bad.”

Honestly, my biggest issue with this movie is the editing. Way too much going on at any given time, almost from beginning to end, in a movie that goes on for 113 minutes and would have worked better at 90. Relentlessly rapid-fire editing is just pandering to short attention spans. But is there a moral value to that, really? Perhaps not. Still, I find myself far more impressed with pacing that can keep us in rapt attention while still allowing the story to breathe. It is possible.

I cannot deny the clever wit in the writing, though. Even while I was finding myself overwhelmed with this movie’s aesthetic of sensory overload, it regularly cracked me up. Just the sequence where the robots turning off the world’s wifi causes the collapse of society—I don’t want to spoil it, but suffice it to say, I found it very funny. There were several moments when I really laughed pretty hard.

The Mitchells vs the Machines also has a massive lineup of famous talent among its voice actors: Danny McBride and Maya Rudolph as Rick and Linda Mitchell; John Legend and Chrissy Teigen as their social media-perfect neighbors John and Hailey Posey; Eric André as Zuckerberg-esque tech mogul Mark Bowman; Fred Armisen and Conan O’Brien as different robot voices. They are all fine; truth be told, they could have cast complete unknowns in these roles and it would have made no difference. The one possible exception is the inspired casting of Oliva Colman as the villain, the “personal assistant” program who refuses to accept becoming obsolete and takes over all the world’s computers. She never changes from being a simple face on a smart phone screen, which allows for a lot of great sight gags.

I wonder what kind of licensing deals they got for product placement in this film? There’s an entire sequence in which the Mitchell family battles an army of Furbys. Did Hasbro get money for that? Does the fact that the product’s inclusion trades on nostalgia more than anything else make any difference? I did enjoy the sequence, in any case. In the same sequence, the Mitchells are met with another army of kitchen appliances that all have “PAL” microchips in them.

It really should be noted that, my many criticisms aside, The Mitchells vs the Machines succeeds at a kind of casual inclusiveness rarely seen in any movie, but especially in an animated feature. Katie Mitchell (voiced by Abbi Jacobson), the aforementioned queer protagonist, looks white on first glance but is still clearly a multi-racial character: all characters are rendered as the race of their voice actors, so her mother (Maya Rudolph) is a person of color. Their neighbors, the Poseys, as a Black family. There are even subtle hints to Katie’s queerness throughout the movie; I kept wondering about the rainbows in the quasi-fantasy sequences about her (which are references to her interest in digital art) and whether or not they signified anything. A single line near the end of the film pulls it all together, the kind of line that in any other movie would have felt shoehorned in, but here was what tied together a bunch of details already seen.

In short, the writing in this movie is unusually skilled and nuanced, not to mention frequently hilarious. I just felt the movie got bogged down a bit by throwing way too much onscreen at once too much of the time, but maybe that’s just me.

Spoiler alert! The Mitchells adopt a couple of robots.

Overall: B

NOBODY

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Here is a movie that is absolutely everything it promises to be. No more, no less. That basically makes it impervious to criticism, because the people who aren’t interested in this kind of movie won’t bother, and the people who are, will be thoroughly satisfied.

Or perhaps, like me, they simply like the actors in it. Bob Odenkirk is on the scene with Liam-Neeson-in-Taken vibes—Neeson was 56 when the first film in that franchise was released in 2008, creating a surprising comeback as an “aged” action star. Odenkirk is 10 years younger than Neeson, born in 1962, and thus 58 in this movie. Well, actually 57, given it was filmed in the fall of 2019. Ah, those innocent times.

Anyway, Nobody isn’t exactly covering new ground here. Taken aside, Nobody might also not exist if not for the John Wick films, released in 2014, 2017 and 2019 (when Keanu Reeves was 50, 53 and 55). It seems Odenkirk is coming along just when it’s clear we have an appetite for movies about middle-aged men who can take a severe beating but can still kick ass themselves.

And I won’t deny it: I have that appetite. Honestly, among these three men, Neeson is the least compelling as an action hero. Reeves plays the part of John Wick with the stony stoicism the role calls for, but there’s something about Bob Odenkirk that makes this kind of role just a little more fun. This is a guy who is very much playing against type, as we’re used to seeing him as a bit of a weasel. In Nobody, he has a vaguely defined sleeper-agent kind of past, has been living a humdrum and routine family life for a couple of decades, and has his passion for the work he used to do unlocked again.

To be fair, this is a guy who still exercises. When we first meet him, he’s doing regular pull-ups, usually while facing a bus stop advertisement for the real estate agent that is his wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen). He jogs. For your average 57-year-old, he’s very much in shape. He’s also kind of a schlub, an everyday joe who goes to his job where each day just blends into the next.

So now let’s get into the several things I do love about Nobody, which takes several turns just to the left of where you would typically expect a movie like this to go. Hutch’s home is victim to an attempted burglary in the middle of the night, a desperate Latino couple in over their heads. Even when Hutch has the upper hand he reacts to the situation with such shocking restraint, his neighbors and coworkers think of him as weak. But, then he discovers one of the few things they stole was his young daughter’s “kitty cat bracelet,” and that sets him off to get it back. (Sound familiar? Back to John Wick and its revenge-for-his-dead-dog territory.)

What’s to love about that, you may wonder? Actually, that the Latino couple are a bit of a misdirect, as they have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It’s when Hutch is taking the bus home itching for a fight that things really get set into motion. A group of rowdy young men climb onto the bus looking for trouble, and Hutch welcomes it with open arms, ultimately getting himself in the sights of the Russian mob.

And even at a tight 92 minutes, Nobody takes maybe a third of the movie before things get exciting—and quite violent—which gives the story setup some time to breathe. There’s no denying this is a hokey movie, but at least it has some character development. I am so tired of movies that jump right into rapid-fire action at the expense of story, and this is an antidote to that.

Also, it’s truly delightful to see Christopher Lloyd—now 82 years old—in a supporting role, as Hutch’s dad. It’s great fun when much older actors still have the strength for roles like this, because they can move seamlessly from “old and frail” to badass, which is exactly what Lloyd does in this movie, joining in the fun for an elaborately choreographed gun fight in the last act. You like watching middle-aged men kick ass? Well, Nobody throws in the elderly for good measure!

We’re also treated to RZA in that last act, after he appears only as a voice over a CB radio in a couple of earlier scenes, apparently in hiding after whatever kind of lethal partnership these three had far in the past. This shared background of theirs is never really given clarity, and if RZA is to play a key character, I rather wish he had a more substantial—and more easily decipherable—part in the film.

I do love the everyday-person looks of the characters, though. Even Connie Nielsen, while still beautiful, actually looks the age of her character. Hell, Christopher Lloyd is so old and bald now he kind of looks goofy. All of this adds to the ample charms of Nobody, which really doesn’t have a shred of originality to its plot, but easily sails into our hearts thanks to the boundless charisma of its cast. It’s incredibly violent and bloody and panders to America’s fetishization of guns, and still everyone involved seems effortlessly to make it a blast.

This movie is both exactly as corny as it looks, and better than it looks.

Overall: B+