ARRIVAL: It's About Time

Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writer: Eric Heisserer
Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg
Runtime: 116 mins.
2016

Director Denis Villeneuve, a rising awards darling whose work consistently elevates the scripts that he chooses, specializes in atmosphere. Villeneuve's movies creep forward, slowing down the onscreen activity, forcing us to occupy the experience of his characters. In a feat of uncommon wizardry, Villeneuve's movies become increasingly riveting as the pacing slows. Arrival is not only the perfect movie to reap the benefits of Villeneuve's talents, but Eric Heisserer provides him with a screenplay that he need not elevate because it's exactly as good as he is.

After a series of impressionistic flashbacks establish the main character, Louise Banks (Amy Adams), the film jumps straight to the point. Aliens have come to Earth in the form of twelve pitch black ovoid vessels that hover silently above twelve apparently unrelated parts of the world. Louise, being one of the planet's great linguistic minds, has been summoned by the American military, as embodied by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker). Her goal, a challenge that stretches across the entirety of the film's 116 minute runtime, is to learn how to communicate with the aliens well enough to pose the all-important question: Why have they come?

OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL - Most Improved

Director: Mike Flanagan
Writers: Mike Flanagan, Jeff Howard
Cast: Annalise Basso, Elizabeth Reaser, Lulu Wilson, Henry Thomas, Parker Mack
Runtime: 99 mins.
2016

Movie sequels have problems. Books and video games can often equal or even improve upon their predecessors, but a follow-up to a film typically signals a death knell. I suspect it has something to do with the purity and rigorous structure of cinematic storytelling, though there is a precedent for films that improve upon the formula offered by their franchise starter. Movies like The Dark Knight, The Godfather Part II, or even Final Destination 2 started with something special, and made it better.

I've been racking my brain; I cannot think of a single instance of an awful movie that made a great sequel. That's why, as far as I'm concerned, Ouija: Origin of Evil is an unprecedented historical event.

I've found a graphic that maps sequel quality as against the quality of the original, measured by Rotten Tomato scores. It's a flawed metric, but as good as any for making some sort of objective data set. Here's the chart. I've marked in red where Ouija: Origin of Evil would land if included.

Here's a link to the chart if you want the bigger version. That's a Rotten Tomatoes net improvement of 75%. The only movie that even comes close is The Wrath of Khan, and that differential is 42%.

OUIJA: Bored Game

Director: Stiles White
Writers: Stiles White, Juliet Snowden
Cast: Olivia Cooke, Ana Coto, Daren Kagasoff, Bianca A. Santos, Douglas Smith, Shelley Hennig, Sierra Heuermann
Runtime: 89 mins.
2014

Ouija is a movie in which you get to watch characters floss on two separate occasions. Ouija is also rare in that 80% of its title is comprised of vowels. I'm stretching for interesting factoids, but I've quickly run dry. There are probably about twenty collective seconds of good movie in here somewhere?

Ouija belongs to the unfortunate pantheon of films based on board games, so the creative team should be given a bit of leeway for being shackled to that premise. It's unclear whether director Stiles White and co-writer Juliet Snowden shat out the quickest most slapdash film that would still satisfy their corporate overlords, or whether they were actively trying to subvert their thankless task by crafting the most unappealingly cliched movie they could muster. Either way Ouija amounts to a feature length toy commercial, even going so far as having a character toss out the plasticine line, "They sell these things at toy stores," as if it were pertinent to the spooky situation. Indeed, the game is so lazily mythologized that the characters rattle off the sacred rulebook by memory, and are punished mightily for breaking them.

DOCTOR STRANGE: Misery Acquaints a Man with Strange Bedfellows

Director: Scott Derrickson
Writers: Jon Spaihts, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Rachel McAdams
115 mins.
2016

The Marvel juggernaut has become such an entrenched cultural institution that any commentary comes with baggage. Part of me loves the cavalcade of colorful superheroism that hits our multiplexes several times a year, and part of me is disturbed by Marvel's safe and easy placating approach, a dilemma I wrote about at some length a few weeks ago. Doctor Strange is yet another perfect embodiment of that dynamic. We have yet another endearing story with incredible atmosphere hobbled by safe narrative choices and tepid drama.

Doctor Strange is about a white man. The whitest of white men, Benedict Cumberbatch. After suffering a crippling accident that precludes him from going any further in his career as a hotshot surgeon, he has lost his sense of purpose. His journey in search of healing leads him to one Ancient One, as portrayed by Tilda Swinton, and this whitest of white women proceeds to instruct this whitest of white men on the practical value of Eastern mysticism.

I'm being glib, but the racial politics of Doctor Strange aren't great. When your story about the power of Eastern cultures has three white people as its central figures--Mr. Strange, Ms. One, and Mr. Kaecilius, the rogue villain--it's clear that you're not fully or properly engaging with the subject matter. Marvel made some strong moves with genderbending and pivoting certain characters' roles, but they try to cover over the whiteness of their movie with a few lampshading lines of dialogue, and that's not good enough.