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Filtering by Category: movies

Let the Children Lose It, Let the Children Use It: The Martian, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Good Matt Damon in The Martian. (Aidan Monaghan/20th Century Fox)

Good Matt Damon in The Martian. (Aidan Monaghan/20th Century Fox)

"There are a bunch of severe psychological effects that would happen to someone being isolated for almost two years. And also the anxiety and stress of being on the verge of death from various problems for so long—most people would not be able to handle that. The loneliness, the isolation, the anxiety, and stress—I mean, it would take an enormous psychological toll. And I didn’t deal with any of that. I just said like, 'Nope, that’s not how Mark Watney rolls.' So he has almost superhuman ability to deal with stress and solitude.
"And the reason I did that was because I didn’t want the book to be a deep character study of crippling loneliness and depression—that’s not what I wanted! So the biggest challenge were the psychological aspects, and I just didn’t address them and I hope the reader doesn’t notice."

— Novelist Andy Weir, to Ars Technica's Lee Hutchinson, last year.

"Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie."

David Bowie, "Starman," 1972.

My review of The Martian, screenwriter Drew Goddard and director Ridley Scott's inspiring and so-good-I'm-mad-it's-not-great adaptation of Andy Weir's superb novel, is up at NPR now. Further Reading: My interview with Martian star Matt Damon for Air & Space / Smithsonian.

Pop Culture Happy Hour No. 259: Mr. Robot and Title Sequences

Chris Klimek

I am always grateful for an invitation to rub elbows with the Pop Culture Happy Hour crew. All your favorites are there around the table this week: Intrepid host Linda Holmes! Indefatigable regular panelist Stephen Thompson! Inexhaustible other regular panelist and Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon!  And then there's me. The four of us merrily dissect the paranoid charms of Mr. Robot, showrunner Sam Esmail's much-discussed USA Network series about a brilliant but also probably off-his-rocker sometime-vigilante computer hacker involved in an anarchistic conspiracy. I think I got to say more or less everything I meant to about the show, though none of had seen the season finale when we recorded the episode, as it had not yet aired. Wait, no: I didn't mention how clever I think it is that we, the audience, are cast as the hacker's paranoid delusion. In voiceover, he addresses us as "you" while acknowledging that we're imaginary. Smart.

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I'm Interviewing Matt Damon

Chris Klimek

I'm a big fan of Andy Weir's debut novel The Martian. I was actually listening to the audiobook on the day in April when I visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where the book is partially set. (It's also set in space and on Mars.) I was out there doing some reporting for my day job wit Air & Space / Smithsonian, and it was in that capacity that I got on the phone this week with Matt Damon, who plays the story's protagonist, stranded astronaut Mark Watney, in Ridley Scott's film adaptation, due out Oct. 2. The film hasn't screened for critics yet, but the fact its release date was moved up by nearly two months suggests the studio is convinced it works.

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Period Piece: The Man from U.N.C.L.E., reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer (Daniel Smith/Warner Bros.)

Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer (Daniel Smith/Warner Bros.)

I'm a sucker for sixties spy shit, and that Guy Ritchie's new big-screen version of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is, unlike most reboots of stuff from the period, actually set in the period is a big selling point for me. It luxuriates in the clothes, cars, and music of the era, updating only the sexual politics. My NPR review spends an unlikely sum of real estate discussing Dirty Dancing.

It's Clobberin' Time: Fantastic Four (2015), reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Stan Lee & Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four No. 1 hit newsstands on Aug. 8, 1961.

Stan Lee & Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four No. 1 hit newsstands on Aug. 8, 1961.

Because it comes from a promising young director and features a strong cast, the third attempt to turn Marvel's proto-super-team The Fantastic Four into a hit movie franchise turns out to be the most disappointing yet. My NPR review is here.

The Spies Have It: Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

The Mission: Impossible film series is 19, long enough in the tooth for its earlier installments to start to acquire the same time capsule effect that makes me love even the worst James Bond movies. I watched Brian De Palma's 1996 Mission: Impossible the night after I saw the new one, subtitled Rogue Nation, and John Woo's barely-related 2000 M:I-2, the night after that. Yep, blockbusters are different now.

Trying to articulate just how was part of the chore of writing my NPR review of the fifth impossible mission, from Jack Reacher writer/director Christopher McQuarrie. Short version: I liked it. But I had more thoughts about it than I could shoehorn into the review, so here're a few outtakes.

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Requiem for a Middleweight: Southpaw, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Like Robert De Niro and Daniel Day-Lewis before him, Jake Gyllenhaal transformed his body to play a boxer.

Like Robert De Niro and Daniel Day-Lewis before him, Jake Gyllenhaal transformed his body to play a boxer.

Those who're skeptical of the doctrine of self-mastery through sweat probably won't find much to hold their interest in Southpaw, a boxing melodrama so old-fashioned it's almost new. But I dug it. If my NPR review contains slightly fewer cliches than the movie does, it's not because I took a dive.

Cut to Black: The Dissolve, 2013-2015

Chris Klimek

I just got home from attending a two-week criticism institute, wherein I was one of 14 working arts journalists, aged twentysomething to fiftysomething, to benefit from the instruction of critics for The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Guardian, and other influential publications. That's where I was on Wednesday morning when I got a mass e-mail from Scott Tobias indicating that The Dissolve was shutting down, effective immediately. In its two years of life, that site had firmly established itself as the best place on the web to find smart, enthusiastic, formally inventive writing about movies new and old, famous and obscure. I'd declined a review assignment from Scott only days before, citing my wall-to-wall schedule during the institute.

Scott's e-mail came just as I was heading into a session on restaurant reviewing conducted by Sam Sifton, the Times' food editor. I've always had a chip on my shoulder about food coverage. I don't usually read it, and I often find it precious and/or pretentious when I do. To me at least, it's obvious that food is not art. Yes, it's an important component of culture. Yes, cooking is an admirable skill. But a meal cannot express emotion. An entree cannot communicate an idea. There are sad songs and sad paintings, but there are no sad foods, unless you're buying your dinner at a 7-Eleven.

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