#he looks like michael sheen robot in passengers

[jevilowo]

Watching Emesis Blue finally and

WHAT DO YOU M E A N, "SWORDVAN IS COMING THR *illegible*

[michaelsheenpt]

Michael Sheen Only Wants To Play Bizarre Characters, And We Should Respect That

Hollywood’s preference for neatly categorizing the legions of good-looking thespians that grace our screens every year is fairly obvious. We used to silo the men and women who are cutting a check for acting out fantasies in theaters and on TV as either movie stars or dramatic actors. The former was the hook that studios hung tentpole blockbusters on: charming, impossibly masculine, glamorous, famous as much for their real-life personas as they were for the characters they played on screen. The latter? Those were the Oscar-winners, the critical darlings, the Jeremy Strongs making bold choices, begging directors to tear-gas them on sets in the name of storytelling.

The divergent path has merged some over the years. There’s no clear, defining line separating bankable talent from actual talent. Chris Evans can brandish a shield in Marvel behemoths one second, then don an unkempt beard and heavy demeanor for a limited drama on Apple TV+ the next. Jon Hamm, who rose to fame playing an arrogant, adulterous ad executive in ’60s era Mad Men is now one of the most unpredictably exciting comedic actors in the game. Chadwick Boseman brought a royal Wakandan superhero to life in Black Panther, but he’ll also probably take home posthumous awards for his brilliant turn in an August Wilson adaptation this year.

In Hollywood, you can now be both a movie star and a serious actor, which is what makes Michael Sheen even more interesting. Michael Sheen is decidedly not a movie star. He’s also Welsh, which means he likely doesn’t sport the kind of ego that would make him capable of attaching gravitas to his acting career. He has 93 credits on his IMDb page. He’s played former British Prime Minister Tony Blair thrice, earning awards recognition for his impersonation in the Helen Mirren-starring The Queen. And he’s lit up the small screen with guest stints on everything from 30 Rock to The Good Wife.

Michael Sheen is, by all accounts, a serious, or at least seriously talented, actor. But he’s also weird as f*ck. I hope he’ll take that as the highest of compliments because it’s the truly bizarre character actors that should be propped up on a pedestal. That’s what Sheen really is: a character actor in his prime, a fearless conqueror on-screen, blazing a path by brandishing his quirky habits and secret love for creating chaos while leaving behind a scorched Earth of conventional conformists in his wake. He’s not like the other girls, and that’s become more apparent as time drags on.

My fascination with Sheen’s filmography began, to my shame, late in his career. His current gig is playing an irresistibly charming serial killer and lauded surgeon named Dr. Martin Whitly on Fox’s Prodigal Son. Perhaps the best praise I can heap on Sheen’s performance is that it convinces me to tune into a network drama every week, a rare feat in the age of streaming. But even that adulation doesn’t paint the whole story of what Sheen’s doing on that show.

Sporting the kind of knit cardigan Ransom Drysdale would be envious of and a crop of wild, grey-dusted curls with just enough kink in them to hint at the perverted madness housed underneath, Sheen’s Whitly is charismatic, comical, and shockingly likable. His unnerving ease at see-sawing between philosophical convos on life and love with his son Malcolm (the excellent Tom Payne) and pragmatically outlining how to dismember a body is at once jarring and, oddly, mesmerizing. Sheen plays him as a perpetually amused psychotic genius, an Einstein whose intelligence is so far above those that keep him captive, it’s almost a joke. And we’re in on it, as the audience, gleefully cackling when Whitly gets overexcited about consulting on the most gruesome homicide cases or, even more disturbingly, momentarily forgetting he once stuffed a woman into a box when he shares a tender exchange with his son. And Sheen embraces the strangeness of the man, rejoicing in his eccentricities, adding a musical flair to every “My boy,” he greets Malcolm with and relishing the more awkward moments by exploiting their inherent comedy. Really, when has a slow-rising hospital bed and distasteful Stephen Hawking joke been funnier?

Lest you think playing a serial killing diva was the most oddball acting choice Sheen has ever made, may I point you to the rest of his film catalog. There’s his mustache-twirling clichéd villain in Dr. Dolittle. The eerily robotic bartender of Passengers. The long-haired alpha Lycan of Underworld. The Tony Blairs (all three of them) and the heavily-bronzed game show hosts of Quiz. The Hot Tub Time Machine hating settling soul mate of Liz Lemon in 30 Rock.

And then there are a handful of performances that live in my own brain, rent-free, like when he played Aro in the Twilight series. Other actors would’ve balked at the challenge of turning a 4,000-year-old Italian vampire riddled with boredom and consumed by unchecked power into something more than just a two-dimensional, cartoonish stereotype, but not Sheen. No, while Robert Pattinson flaunted his constipated sullenness and Kristen Stewart fidgeted and fought to make her character likable, Sheen basked in the camp of it all. He over-enunciated, he exaggerated Aro’s mercurial nature with rapid eye movement, twitchy physicality, and shrieking giggle fits. In the franchise’s final film, just before a climactic battle is set to take place, Sheen throws the atmospheric tension every other actor in the scene has worked so painstakingly hard to build into turmoil. It’s like watching Georgia O’Keefe destroy a room full of paintings, or Heath Ledger’s Joker burn a mountain of money, and it is glorious.

In Tron: Legacy he plays Castor, a maniacal nightclub owner with a consuming love for theatricality. As his guests fall into his well-laid trap, he dances and kicks and shuffles and shouts, wielding a neon-tinted cane like a Barnum and Bailey’s ringmaster and a slicked-back shock-white hairdo that turns him into an analog-style Bowie wannabe. His accent careens into the absurd, from high-pitched lilts to German parody to something I can only describe as Marvel supervillain Arnim Zola on steroids.

In Neil Gaiman’s Amazon Prime comedy Good Omens, Sheen played the anxiety-ridden angel, Aziraphale, a heavenly kiss-ass who befriends David Tennant’s demonic Crowley, and together, the two try to save the world. Playing the more uptight celestial being might not be as fun for any other actor, but Sheen has a hell of a time, dealing nervous spasms and twitchy eyeballs and exaggerated gulps with such a heavy hand, you can’t help but feel sympathy for the straight-laced seraph.

And just when I was ready to conclude my research, feeling quite confident dubbing Sheen’s extensive resume as one of the wilder, diverse acting careers in Hollywood, I stumbled upon Michael Bolton’s Valentine’s Day Special on Netflix. It’s here that Sheen truly goes above and beyond in the name of weird, playing a Bob Fosse parody named Carl Flossy: a gruff, chain-smoking choreographer whose manners are as coarse as his constantly-displayed chest hair. Shouting obscenities at Bolton as he tries to map out a musical dilly that will convince punk kids that old-time rock-n-roll is, in fact, badass, Sheen’s growling criticism and shouted anger is muffled only by the ever-present cigarette dangling from his mouth. He’s an aging Guido-type with an open-neck satin shirt, and inflated confidence, and a mysterious way of drawing out the best in his dancers, one that usually involves throwing the nearest folded chair.

he’s such a well-respected actor who’s worked with Tim Burton, Woody Allen and Ron Howard. I suppose that’s what’s so great about Sheen’s career so far. He’s happy to sacrifice whatever level of stardom and recognition he may have been afforded thanks to his talent and good looks for something even more elusive that blockbuster fame and Academy trophies: the unique ability to disappear into even the most bizarre of characters; to convince audiences he’s no longer Michael Sheen, affable Welshman and ex-husband of thee Kate Beckinsale, but instead, an amalgam of the oddities and freakish individuals he plays on the screen. Michael Sheen might, in truth, be as weird and out there as the characters he inhabits. That’s what makes him great.

FOX’s ‘Prodigal Son’ returns on Tuesday, January 12.

SOURCE

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[muslim-flint]

If one were to watch a Michael Sheen thing what should one watch after Good Omens?:)

ohhhhhh honey

if one desires to experience the FULL whiplash, they might want to start with the show Masters of Sex. it's a period drama show set in the 50s, about Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson, and the groundbreaking research they made about sex. Bill is Michael's character.

you're gonna love him, you're gonna hate him, you'll want to punch him in the face almost every single time he opens his mouth and it's gonna be DELIGHTFUL. it's not on Netflix, but it is on streaming : try the website dwatchmovies.net

(tw for nudity tho, quite obviously)

now, i haven't seen this yet (if you're one of my followers, anon, you might have heard me bitch about my broken laptop this last couple of weeks). but for Thirsting Purposes, i've been recommended to watch the third movie of the Underworld saga. sexy ass werewolf who looks like he hasn't slept or showered for the last decade, probably smells like a rain-wet dog, and he looks like This

so, y'know. bon appétit

he's a MINOR character in this but i have to mention the movie Passengers cause it's the first thing i've ever seen him in, and he plays a robot there, Arthur. gosh I love him

LOOK AT HIM HE'S SO CUTE. A H

aaaaaaa and OF COURSE you HAVE to see the bake off show thing he's been in. if you go on the "ask" tag here on my acc i think you'll find it after scrolling down a little. he's just so funny and SOFTE in it, and also peels a fucking onion with a potato peeler, which i'll never forgive

I would expand the list, but i haven't seen anything else or know too little about the rest of the stuff he's been in. hope this will sustain your wishes tho, anon

[upstartgeek]

livenudebigfoot replied to your post “passengers good omens au where they both wake up at the same time and...”

crowley strikes up a friendship with michael sheen-bot because ~this is all he can have~ and meanwhile aziraphale's like "i can't believe we're the only two people alive and he'd still rather date the robot who kinda looks like me and also has no lower half"

aziraphale: i’m getting so bored i have no idea how to fix this arthur what do i DO??

crowley: i’m so fucking lonely i can’t stand it arty what the fuck do i do???

arthur, who’s been listening to these two idiots slow-burn for 2 years straight:

[amaizemag]

Movie Monday: Passengers

By Tahreem Alvi.

If you live an ordinary life, all you'll have are ordinary stories.

Happy Movie Monday friends! Today I am going to be sharing the film Passengers with you, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt! Now before we delve into this #MovieMonday let me just say I had no idea what this film was about before watching it. I honestly thought it was about time traveling or something and was very, very confused when I found out that there was no such thing happening in this film. Despite my utter confusion in the beginning, I quickly caught on to what the film was actually about and thoroughly enjoyed watching it even though it may seem quite cliche at times.

*Now warning!! I may have spoiled something in this article. I didn’t think I did but after re-watching the trailer I realized that I revealed something but also didn’t reveal something and it’s quite hard to explain how, sooo if you wish to continue on reading be our guest, but if you find yourself with some information you wish you didn’t know then maybe it’s best to avoid reading on.*

Passengers starts off with Jim (Chris Pratt) who is on a journey amongst many other passengers through space towards a new home. Jim’s pod malfunctions and he awakens 90 years too early. At first Jim tries everything in his power to get his pod to put him back into hibernation but the technology on the ship won’t allow him to do so. Everyday Jim wakes up alone, spends the day alone, and falls asleep alone, having no human interaction except for a human looking robot bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen) who urges Jim to stop sulking and actually enjoy living life on the ship.

Now the ship being very high-tech has a lot of interesting features, Jim decides to take Arthurs advice and for a bit things don’t seem as bad as they actually are. However, time begins trickling away and the days seem more unbearable then ever, Jim begins finding himself even more alone and decides he’s going to do something about it. What he actually does though…

Jim does something everyone low-key wants him to do yet doesn’t want him to do and to figure out what it is you’re going to have to watch the movie yourself! Or if you’re like me and like to spoil movies for yourself sometimes, you can read the whole plot on wikipedia but I highly recommend going into watching this film assuming it’s about time travel and then later finding out it isn’t. 10/10 would recommend!

Yeah, I know this movie may seem like your basic sci-fi film, the same old thing over and over again and well you’re not totally wrong in thinking that. There are some intriguing aspects to it that make it different from what you’ve already seen but then again it isn’t all that spectacular either. Regardless of that I really did enjoy watching it and if you’re looking for a good film to watch and don’t care about cliches or overdone sci-fi then you’ll really like it!

You can check out the trailer for Passengers here!

Peace & Luv,

Tahreem ♡♡♡

Photo: Columbia Pictures (2016)

[sfdfmoviereviews]

Passengers (2016)

HOLLYWOOD. IN.SPAAAAAAAACCCCE.

Director Morten Tyldum gives us the starship Avalon, a big spiral thing full of passengers in suspended animation on their way to the colony world of Homestead II. When damage to the ship awakens colonist Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) ninety years before it is due to arrive at it's destination, Jim must cope with the loneliness of being the only person on a gigantic cruise ship in space. His growing despair is tempered by his fascination with the sleeping passenger Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), whom he inevitably cannot help but wake. What follows is a bunch of drama, because that two hour running time needs to be filled with something. SPOILERS HO!

The basic premise of Passengers- that the vastness of space puts someone in a position to do something terrible to someone else because that is what their sanity demands- is a strong one. There should be ample opportunity for character study and psychological drama, if only the narrative takes an unexpected route. That is not what happens. Instead, Passengers plays out all too predictably, and ranges across genres to do so. Once Jim does his Terrible Thing, we get what is essentially a chunk of romance, with Jim and the understandably-but-tediously grumpy Aurora embarking on a by-the-numbers relationship, replete with banter(tm) and montage. Aurora inevitably learns of Jim's subterfuge, and the ensuing fallout plays out as little more than the world's darkest comic-misunderstanding. Nothing needs to be resolved however, as the film conjures up Lawrence Fishbourne to convert it into a thriller, in which Our Heroes must race to save the ship from it's own bad design. Nothing is actually concluded for these boring people, the film simply contrives a series of events to avoid resolving any of the things it hasn't actually managed to get around to doing.

A film such as this depends strongly on how well the protagonists are realised. With this in mind, please refer to this poster for the film:

Those are the neutral faces of two well-loved celebrities. They are not doing anything or saying anything. In essence, that is Passengers. Both Aurora Lane and Jim Preston are so blandly average that the only impression they leave is one of screen writing theory. Aurora has her life ruined against her will, and so she is... angry? She's angry and sad sometimes, then she's really angry, then plotting happens and characterisation is academic. She's nominally a writer, but her prose is so clunky it's laughable. She never lets anyone in, which we learn from a goodbye video message from her friend telling her she should let people in or something similarly generic. Unsurprisingly, the role is a waste of Jennifer Lawrence's talents. Jim Preston is a little better, largely because we see more of his despair at the start of the film, before it has become tedium itself. For those of us used to seeing Chris Pratt as a lovable buffoon/that guy in Jurassic World it's a pleasant but unstimulating surprise.

Design is oddly present in this film, largely because it is so boring that there is ample time to admire the scenery. The Avalon is very much a constructed environment in the vein of a mall or a cruise ship or a casino. It is 'luxurious', which is to say the furniture looks expensive and inoffensive. It's fascinating to absorb as the product that it is, and fun to speculate on how much it might be driving the madness of our heroes ( or would be if that madness were interesting). Michael Sheen has a fun turn as a robot bartender called the Michael-Sheen-a-cycle Arthur, and you may while away the minutes to the end credits wondering just how he works. You can also try to figure out what that window in the fusion reactor is made of if you like.

While possessing great potential, Passengers is only worth seeing if you are a completionist fan of the genre or the cast, and not worth paying for at the cinema.

Tim

P.S, I saw this at a thing organised by the Auckland Sci-Fi Meetup group. If you are a nerdlinger in Auckland and would like to meet similar cool folk you should totally join.

P.P.S my girlfriend came up with ‘Michael-Sheen-a-cycle’ and I’m hoping he plays more robots so I can keep using it.

[briangroth27]

Passengers Review

In Passengers, Jim (Chris Pratt) and Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) wake up 30 years into a 120-year trip to a colony planet and can’t reactivate their cryogenic sleeper pods. As the two fall in love, it becomes increasingly apparent there’s something wrong with the ship and they have to save it, or they and the 5,200-something other passengers and crew will die. This is a good hook, but the film has taken a critical beating since its release just before Christmas. I enjoyed it, though there's definitely a moral question to the film that could either spin things into creepy territory or inspire your compassion (or at least understanding) for the choices made by one of the characters. Your enjoyment of the movie may rest entirely on how you feel about that particular plot point, but I think you’ll definitely leave the theater thinking about what you’d do in these characters’ shoes, and that’s great.

Pratt and Lawrence had good chemistry and were both very good (as are Lawrence Fishbourne and Michael Sheen in smaller supporting roles). Aurora could’ve used a bit more introspection from the writing to balance out the internal monologues (and screentime) we get from Jim, but I felt like we knew both of them well enough to empathize with and understand them. Aurora could’ve also been given a little more to do in the climax, but I get that her skill set as a journalist didn’t lend itself to repairing a failing spaceship (so maybe write her a different one…more on that below). I do think her character was underserved, but not enough to make her one-dimensional or to seriously hurt the movie (and again, Lawrence is good with what she’s got). Michael Sheen makes a great character out of a role that could be very limiting—the ship’s robot bartender—and Lawrence Fishbourne gets a brief but challenging role as one of the ship’s crew who may not have much time left. I haven’t seen desperation from Fishbourne often, and I liked how he played it here.

The ship—the Avalon—looked realistic, appropriately ultra-high-tech, and very cool. Likewise, the special effects were definitely convincing. The humor in the first parts of the film gave it a nice sense of levity, while the third act has solidly increasing danger. The story's pretty simple, and that's fine. Not everything needs to be a complex conspiracy or epic tale told over a trilogy. This is a one-and-done “people vs. the elements” movie and it's all the better for it. I think they should’ve pushed the release date back a month or two, because opening a space movie the week after Rogue One was not the shrewdest box office choice. Fellow sci-fi genre film The Space Between Us gave Star Wars a wide berth by moving closer to Valentine’s Day and this should’ve followed suit.

Passengers is a solid sci-fi movie with an interesting moral question at its center. I definitely think it’s worth a watch, and I’d be interested to hear how you respond to the central moral dilemma.

3.75/5

  MAJOR SPOILERS...

The trailers are very misleading, and that may have put off anyone looking for a straightforward romance in space. There’s not a larger “reason they woke up” and I’m not sure why that line was in the trailer. The concept has enough of a hook without it, and it lends the movie an air of expectation for some grand conspiracy or meaning, when really it’s just about what two people will do to survive.

The twist—that Jim wakes up due to the ship’s damage and then, a year later, wakes Aurora on purpose—seems to be the big sticking point of the film for many. I don’t agree with his choice, but it’s an interesting ethical question: waking her up sentences her to death of old age after a life alone with him since they're 90 years from their destination, but if he stays by himself, he will kill himself due to the isolation. Ignoring the fact that it takes both of them to save the ship by the end, if you could radically change the course of someone’s life to save your own, would you do it? It’s true Jim robs Aurora of her choice in waking her up and I understand the revulsion that comes with his decision: what he does is not OK. However, I don’t agree with the reviews that claim the movie doesn’t treat this like the awful mistake it is: there’s plenty of time spent with Jim alone as the seclusion slowly drives him to the point of attempting suicide and the film never lets him forget what he’s done. It’s always treated as a big problem and it does have real ramifications: he knows the implications of what he did and doesn't like that he did it, while she's justifiably pissed and horrified. When she tries to murder Jim for what he’s done, he accepts it and the movie never allows him to self-righteously admonish her for that. Aurora doesn’t forgive him until he’s forced to sacrifice himself to save everyone—she had truly fallen for him in their year together—and again, I think the movie played that very well. Even after he’s saved the ship and she’s saved him, the movie throws another curve ball to deny Jim some twisted “reward” of Aurora’s love: they discover that with higher clearance, they can convert the medical bay pod into an emergency cryo-tube, and Aurora is given the decision to leave him or stay.

I wish they’d shifted to her point of view almost completely once she found out (and even before then, it would’ve been fun if Aurora wasn’t what Jim expected at all, to comment on the validity of “love at first sight”). There are bits of what she feels—while she jogs, she literally can’t escape his apologies over the PA system in the ship, for example—but I wanted more, especially right before she tried to murder Jim and once they’d established themselves living apart. We knew Jim so well that the movie makes its biggest mistake in not letting us get to know Aurora too. How does she think she’d handle such extreme isolation had she woken up first? She suggests waking the crew up at one point to help, but that moment of desperation leading her to make the same move Jim did is glossed over. They also could’ve had her come to a place where she could forgive Jim before he got to play hero and save the whole ship (perhaps she’d have done the same thing he did), diving into humanity’s more forgiving side as well as its desperate one as part of the need for companionship the movie explores. I would’ve understood and been satisfied whether Aurora got into the medbay pod or stayed with Jim, but I think we should’ve seen her making a diary entry or something to see her thought process on choosing to stay rather than playing it like a surprise to Jim (again, too much from Jim’s point of view). I almost wonder if we were kept so much in Jim’s frame of reference to keep him from becoming the truly despicable bad guy he could’ve been had we gotten inside Aurora’s head after she found out. If that was the case, they should’ve trusted Pratt to do his job and remain sympathetic (and to his credit, he does) while allowing the audience to fully assess the situation. Regardless, I think we should’ve seen things from both their perspectives to retain Jim’s self-loathing acceptance that what he did was wrong as well as gaining insight into Aurora.

The Bitter Script Reader worked out a way Jim and Aurora could share the medbay pod and make it to Homestead 2 alive, and I think that could’ve been a nice coda to the movie. It—and the way the movie actually ends, with Jim and Aurora living out their years onboard together and dying before the ship gets to Homestead 2—are far better options than the apparent original ending, which sounds awful. Let’s not accidentally slaughter everyone on board and then populate a planet via incest.

Despite their chemistry and the believability with which Aurora falls for Jim—and I did believe he truly fell for her too once he got to know her—the romance was spoiled for me by knowing what he’d done. I understood their love, but I wasn’t rooting for it; the facts that he’d fallen for her writing rather than her and woke her up on purpose kept me from fully investing in their love story. That said, I think it would’ve been much worse had the audience not been in on the secret until a third act reveal: showing his time alone on the ship in a flashback montage wouldn’t have been nearly as effective or as emotionally resonant as experiencing it with him in “real time.” I’d have come away hating Jim had they gone that way.

There are ways they could’ve softened the morally sticky aspects of this. If Jim had known her before—if they were married, for instance—then you could play much the same moral quandary of waking her up or not and you’d dodge the “fell in love with her writing and her pretty face” issue altogether. If, again, Aurora had been something totally different than Jim expected, they’d have undercut the Snow White/Sleeping Beauty syndrome and I don’t think the romance wouldn’t have been as off-putting to some because you could comment on that sort of presumptuousness. At the very least, they could’ve swapped their professions. If Jim is the reporter and Aurora the engineer—and Jim has access to the instruction manuals for the pods, as he does in the movie—it’s conceivable he could follow instructions to initiate an emergency wake-up call in her pod with the hopes that she can restore both their pods once she’s awake. His first thought upon realizing what’s happened is to wake up the crew to do just this, but he can’t access the crew sleep pods. In this scenario he’s not a drowning man grabbing the nearest person and dragging her down with him, he’s a drowning man grabbing the nearest lifeguard. When she can’t put them back to sleep, you still have the implications of him losing his bet that she could help…but maybe softening the moral quandary isn't the point.

Maybe the writers don’t need us to keep liking Jim the entire movie and didn’t want to go for the easy answer, or even a softer question. They certainly didn’t choose the method of sharing the medbay pod and just getting older on the ship rather than dying there, opting for an all-or-nothing life together or apart. I don’t think you have to agree with—or even like—the central characters of a movie to make it a good or interesting film, and waking up a total stranger who can’t help you to survive beyond basic human interaction is definitely the hardest and most morally gray choice. I think it's a great question that challenges the audience by asking us what we'd do. So, ignoring the fact that if he doesn't wake her up, he kills himself and then later everyone dies due to the ship’s damage (and no matter what, he can't save the ship alone), what would you do in his shoes? Do you keep to yourself and very likely eventually commit suicide? Do you transport someone to the deserted island with you? What would you do in Aurora’s shoes, suddenly woken up and then lied to while you fall in love?

I think if I were in his shoes, I’d try my hardest to not wake anyone up. There’s a lot of reading to do (at least the life stories of thousands of people on board, if not a full library), so that’ll burn a few years. Does the Avalon have a tv/movie library? I’d teach myself new skills. I’d write. A lot. There could be an alternate take on this story where the settlers reach Homestead 2 and discover the tales whoever woke up early wrote; maybe letters to them, maybe adventures he or she had saving their lives while they slept, maybe fiction that could only be inspired by the things they saw on the trip, which no other human will see. Anyway, I tend towards being a loner most of the time as it is, but I can’t imagine a lifetime without seeing or talking to anyone ever again. According to isolation experiments, humans can’t handle being alone for very long. Would these activities be enough to keep me from committing suicide? Would a robot bartender be enough to avoid that fate? No matter what, I couldn’t forgive myself for stranding someone else. In Aurora’s place, I’d be furious. I don’t think I could kill the person who woke me up either, but I’m absolutely certain I’d be angrier than I can ever imagine being. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t get into the medbay pod fast enough, but I’d also wonder if leaving the person I’d fallen in love with alone for the rest of their life is a hellish thing to do, even if I only met them because they woke me up. Would that be like killing them, since they’ll probably go insane from the isolation? What if their solitude causes them to wreck the ship somehow, endangering everyone’s lives again? Should you be responsible for keeping someone sane and alive when they put you in that position to begin with? I don’t think so, and I’d probably get in the pod.

 What would you do?

[marshreviews]

Passengers

You can't get so hung up on where you'd rather be, that you forget to make the most of where you are.

How can two of the movie popular young actors today have zero chemistry?

Much like space itself, Passengers is cold and devoid of human life and personality. I mean, the performances are fine. Chris Pratt does his thing that we love him for. And Jennifer Lawrence is as good as ever. But, they don’t mesh. And the early surprise (can we call it a first act twist?) certainly didn’t help them.

I’m not sure how, but I knew where the movie was going the moment I saw the trailer. It’s the final shot where Pratt tells Lawrence that he has something to tell her. It’s like, duh, of course he’s going to wake her up because he gets bored and lonely after a long period of time. Oh, spoilers. But like, if you haven’t seen this yet that’s your problem. And face it, you probably were not planning on it.

So that’s it. It’s a bit creepy and uncomfortable in the way he starts watching her and falling in love with the idea of her. And the movie never really comments on that. There’s a lot to say, but it’s so excited to get its two sexy young people together, it glosses over how weird that is. They’re on spaceship headed to a new planet, 120 years away. Jim wakes up far too early when his pod malfunctions, then realizes he has 90 years of alone time. Eventually, he wakes up a beautiful woman, Aurora, they fall in love, she finds out he did that to her and she’s reasonably pissed.

And up this that point, it’s pretty entertaining. Maybe not fantastic, but entertaining. She comes into his room and just beats the shit out of him. And Jim takes it because he knows what he did was horrifying. Then the second act ends with another twist, that I won’t tell you. But its’ so off-putting and bad that it sends the whole movie down the drain. The ship is in danger and is malfunctioning to the point of losing power. Passengers then stops dead in its tracks to talk about how to fix it and give the answers and exposition. It’s so poorly written that this section is almost laughable. The climax is fun, as they fly about the space on a tether, like a sexy version of Gravity. But most of the movie looks and feels like two people running around an empty shopping mall.

There’s so much that does go right in the movie, it’s almost a shame that it can’t nail the ending. To be fair, I’m too sure where it should have gone after she finds out he woke her up. Because that doesn’t really work no matter how it plays out. A satisfying ending is needed for this type of movie, but there’s no real way to get there. A sad ending would have been a letdown, but the happy one they wrote didn’t work. I can’t think of anything better, but then again, I’m not being paid to.

It should be noted how excellent Michael Sheen is as Arthur the robot. 10/10 for his performance. It’s so funny, but in a flat and humorless kind of way.

It’s not outright terrible, but it is not good enough. This was one of my most anticipated movies this year because it was filled with things and people I love: space, claustrophobia, Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Lawrence Fishburne. But now that I’ve seen it, it didn’t work. It’s a fantastic idea and but one that needed more work. Morton Tyldum is still an extremely talented director, but the script does it no justice. In space, no one can hear you be disappointed. 6/10

[ryanmeft]

Passengers Movie Review

Two people end up stranded on a vessel traveling 120 years to a new world and a new life. Their cryo-pods go kooky, they wake up early (cue ominous music)...90 YEARS early. Alone together on this ship, there are lots of interesting directions the story can take. It forgoes all of them, and what's more, piles on needless action sequences and gags prompted by questionable excuses of plot, under the (perhaps not unreasonable) assumption that audiences will stop paying attention if there are no jokes or things exploding for ten consecutive minutes. It has charms, to be sure, but they simply don't add up to much.

There's not much to the plot other than what I described above, but there are a few twists the trailer doesn't reveal which I kinda have to, and I'm going to do so now; you have been warned. Chris Pratt plays a mechanic named Jim, who wakes up early due to a malfunction of his pod. He spends a year on the ship, turning into a Geico caveman, unable to get back into stasis. It turns out space is a final frontier of new advances to everything except our pesky need to divide up by class, so he spends this time eating bland food-as-blocks, though he does manage to break into one of the suites. Opportunities for comments on class divisions are studiously avoided.

(NOTE: spoilers for the next umpteen miles). Nevertheless, I was interested, and even more so when Jim "meets" Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), a passenger still asleep. The trailers make it seem like they both wake up accidentally, effectively obscuring the film's best idea, and its last good one: Jim, succumbing to loneliness, wakes her up himself, depriving her of whatever life she intended to lead on her new planet. He talks the android bartender (Michael Sheen) who rolls along like a Rock 'em Sock 'em Robot, into keeping this secret.

At this point, the film could have done so much. It could have become like The Shining in space, focusing on the horrific thing Jim did. It could have shown them growing old together, philosophizing, perhaps with Jim never revealing his horrible secret. Instead, they eventually reconcile, and the film implies they do grow old together but never shows us this, since focus groups would no doubt inform the producers that everyone wants to stare at a youthful Pratt and Lawrence. (END SPOILERS)

Speaking of staring at Pratt and Lawrence: one of the things that jumped out and smacked me across the face repeatedly, clearly the filmmakers' goal, was that Jennifer Lawrence looks good in a bikini. And in a track suit. And a skimpy black evening dress. And yoga pants. Yes, I know blockbusters sell sex, but the objectification of Lawrence in this film reaches ludicrous highs even by those standards. It doesn't even make sense in a story context, as we're expected to believe Aurora (whose full name even sounds stripper-ish) has gone on a 120 year trip and not brought one pair of sweatpants or a single t-shirt. If they absolutely needed eye candy (and the focus of Rodrigo Prieto's otherwise-excellent camera work leaves no doubt as to their intentions) they could have at least distributed it more evenly. Pratt, though, is allowed to wear grimy t-shirts and jeans with only a couple gratuitous beefcake shots, and despite being as red-blooded an American male as the next guy, I ended up ridiculously uncomfortable with just how much Lawrence is put on display.

The plot is one of those things that used to be wonderful putty in the hands of visionary short story writers like Robert Heinlein or Ray Bradbury, who would have taken it as a golden opportunity for whimsical flights of prose or meditations on the nature of humanity. In Morten Tyldum's hands, it is stretched out to the point where filler is inevitable, and becomes an action-adventure. I felt something when Aurora (ugh) and Jim were alone, talking about the universe, or conversing about weighty topics, but those moments are precious few, sort of like, well, safe harbors in space. Most of the time, the film goes for cheap gags and overly dramatic action. Laurence Fishburne even waltzes on late in the film to fulfill the sci-fi cliche about black characters.

The script for the film, by Jon Spaihts, has been bouncing around since 2007, which seems to have been plenty of time to boil all the risk out of it. At times it is sweet, and at times it has some fascinating visuals, but the total result feels impatient, frivolous, and minor considering it has all of time and space to play around with.

Verdict: Average

Note: I don’t use stars but here are my possible verdicts. I suppose you could consider each one as adding a star.

Must-See Highly Recommended Recommended Average Not Recommended Avoid like the Plague

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[petelanemoviereviews-blog1]

Passengers (2016)

“Don’t tell Aurora I woke her up.”

Certainly not a bad movie but multiple glaring issues prevent it from becoming great.

Premise: Jim Preston is a passenger aboard the starship Avalon on its 120-year journey to the distant colony planet called Homestead. All of the inhabitants of the ship are asleep in suspended animation but Jim is awakened 90 years too early due to a malfunction. After a year alone, Jim decides to wake up a beautiful woman he has been obsessing over, Aurora Lane. The two eventually fall in love, all the while trying to find save the ship from destruction

Directed by Morten Tyldum (The Intimidation Game) and written by John Spaihts (original Prometheus script, Doctor Strange, the upcoming Mummy reboot), Passengers probably won’t be remembered a few years from now but that doesn’t mean it isn’t somewhat enjoyable. The script (for the most part), acting, and effects are all fantastic. The main issues mis-direction of the lead and the fact that the film can’t decide if it’s a romance or a suspense-thriller.

The biggest issue the film suffers from concerns the male lead, Jim Preston. As much as I love Chris Pratt, I don’t think he was right for the role. While he does bring some charm and humor, I don’t feel the character was originally written as a Chris Pratt-type guy. There are some creepy moments involving this character. For instance, while making up his mind whether to wake Aurora up he obsesses over her, hovering over her pod and reading all about her. The way this is handled in the film almost seems like something out of a horror movie. There are a few more scenes like this later in the movie and they all feel out of place especially with Pratt in the role.

The film asks the question; What would you do in this situation? Would you wake someone else up, effectively dooming them as well just so you could have someone else there to suffer with you or would you just end it by spacing yourself? Preston confides this in his only companion, a robot bartender played by Michael Sheen, who doesn’t give him clear answer so he does it. It isn’t Preston’s right to do this. When Aurora finds out and explodes on him; it’s like we’re supposed to feel sorry for him. Aurora is the victim in this movie and the film never accepts this fact. By the end of the movie, it’s more like Stockholm Syndrome in Space rather than Titanic in Space, the latter of which is what the film tries to be.

Despite this glaring moral issue that is poorly executed the film does have its strengths. First off, Pratt and Lawrence work well together for the most part and I’d love to see them do another film together. At times both of their acting is a bit wooden but this isn’t such a big deal. Michael Sheen does a fine job as the robot bartender. Laurence Fishburne shows up about halfway into the movie. For some reason, I felt his role mirrored his character in Predators. Andy Garcia appears in the very end for about five seconds and has no lines. This role should have been given to an extra and not an actor of his status. I’m pretty sure his role wasn’t drastically cut or anything.

The effects and sets are pretty spectacular. From the opening, we get a sense of how vast and empty space is. There’s no one around for trillions of miles and the film does a great job at getting that through. It is clear that the makers took great care in designing the ship Avalon. It almost feels as if you could board it tomorrow and take a trip to the stars. Everything has a stainless steel, clean look to it. Many of the sets seem to be lifted directly from Stanley Kubrick films. The bar that Sheen’s robot character runs looks nearly identical to the one in The Shining. Some of the other sets look exactly like those in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  If someone dirtied up these sets, they could probably be reused for a Dead Space movie adaptation.

There are many well directed scenes in this. There are some beautiful shots throughout the movie. Around the third act, there are some pretty thrilling moments, but it’s still pretty predictable as a whole.

In conclusion, if you took 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cast Away, and Titanic and combined them, you’d probably have something like this. Probably a better movie but still something similar. This is not a great movie by any means but it isn’t awful either. Score: 6.5/10

[fatfreddysreviews]

Passengers

As entertaining and fun as this movie is, at the core is a very strong moral and ethical dilemma – should I or shouldn’t I?? Live alone for the rest of my life or share it with someone who I think will be perfect for me? Even if this person winds up being my soul mate and the love of my life, the trade-off is that the person doesn’t live the life they planned, they’ll live the life I made for them.

Quite a heavy concept but for me this was the crux of the movie, Chris Pratt’s Jim wakes up 90 years before he should have from his hibernation sleep en route to his new home on Homestead Colony.

Unfortunately for him, a stray meteor has breached the spaceship’s shields and has caused a malfunction in the ship’s operating system, meaning he’s the only one who wakes up and what’s worse, he’s still 90 years from arrival, which clearly ain’t going to work. Being an engineer, he sets out to ‘science the shit’ out of the situation, much like Matt Damon did in the Martian. However, there’s only so much he can accomplish and the main area he needs to get into is completely sealed, and he can’t get in.

The only other ‘living’ creature is Arthur, a robot-waiter (played brilliantly by Michael Sheen) who becomes his confidant. After about one year alone, life is becoming quite unbearable and there’s not a lot more Jim can do to overcome the loneliness. Even the space walks he takes cannot make up for being alone. He comes very close to committing suicide by opening the air hatch and being blown into space. His not doing this leads him to stumbling over a bottle and landing next to the pod of a fellow traveller, Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence), and he’s transfixed. He does some research on her (she’s a writer who’s looking for a new challenge, Earth wasn’t enough) and he’s smitten by her beauty, sense of humour and personality. And this leads to the moral dilemma – improving my life means ruining someone else’s – which is the dilemma faced by Jim.

At this stage, you’re rooting for Jim because he’s a nice guy trapped in a situation not of his making, and you can see the conflict he’s facing but he can’t take it anymore, and who can blame him? But on the other hand, you’re saying “don’t do it man, you’re destroying her dreams and she’s going to find out!!”, but you know it’s going to happen. Even the non-human Arthur is questioning this decision.

Now Aurora is going through the same process as Jim, but at least she has someone to help her out in her initial confusion. Jim is feeling great because Aurora is exactly the type of person he was hoping she’d be, and they are getting along really well, love seems to be blossoming for these unfortunate lovers. Of course the truth has to come out at some stage, but Jim wasn’t prepared for the when (just as he was about to propose) and how (Arthur spills the beans, as Jim said there were no secrets between them, when previously he had asked Arthur to keep a secret, so in is cyborg mind it was all sweet). Obviously she’s furious, as her dreams of being the first writer to write space travel, have been destroyed by Jim’s selfishness.

So now our star-crossed lovers aren’t talking to each other, in fact there’s quite a lot of hostility coming from Aurora, but this where things get interesting, as another pod opens early, this time one of the crew. This happens just in time, as numerous systems begin to fail at the same time, putting the safety of the ship, passengers and crew. So now the three who are awake need to work together to figure out what’s wrong and then how to fix it. This isn’t helped by the fact that Mancuso’s (Laurence Fishburne) pod somehow malfunctioned, making him terminally sick, so he has very little time left before dying. Now Jim and Aurora are left alone and need to work together to save everyone, and in spite of what he did to her, it’s clear she really loves him, demonstrated by saving his life by grabbing him from space (to save the ship, he has to go outside the ship to open a hatch, but he’s blown out to space and cannot get back) and then putting him the ‘medical pod’ that resuscitates him.

Of course they end up together and the final shot is of the ship arriving at its final destination, there’s a message from Aurora and a tree that Jim planted for Aurora has grown to become a forest, which is what greets the passengers and crew.

Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama

Watchability factor: 4.5/5 – I really enjoyed the movie, it had a good mixture of action, humour, and drama, and the actors were fantastic. I will definitely watch this movie again.

Standout performances: Chris Pratt, again, is excellent (I’ve said this in previous reviews and I’ll say it again). He imbues Jim with a sense of despair but with a layer of honourability that still makes you root for him, even when you k now what he’s doing is terrible. Jen Lo is a great actress and her magnetism comes out really strongly in the movie and the chemistry between Pratt and Lawrence is palpable, there is a clear attraction and they obviously got on really well from the interviews I have seen. Michael Sheen’s robot is an important cog in this complex machinery but on top of that there are great special effects and the sets are amazingly realistic and just add to a great movie.

That’s all folks.

[fanslabyrinth]

Passengers

Very curious. I came out of Passengers thinking that I’d had a pretty alright time having seen a pretty bad movie. Aside from being confused about what kind of movie it wanted to be, there was also a good portion of heinous writing, dodgy visual effects and bloody awful music. So, to borrow a metaphor from Jennifer Lawrence’s hack journalist script of cliches, why didn’t that sink the ship?

two and a half out of five

Maybe there is some inherent fun in a space romp. The plot-hole laden premise of Passengers is that a spaceship transporting 5000 passengers and a handful of crew people in hibernation towards an Earth colony some 120 years away has started to malfunction. It begins with a random mechanic waking up 90 years too soon with no explanation - this is Jim (Chris Pratt). The good-ship Avalon is running entirely on autopilot, and no amount of automated luxury services or even information sources are able to help with Jim’s predicament. Alone and wallowing for about a year, he makes the desperate and frankly creepy decision to awaken a fellow passenger from her slumber, Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence); Jim had stumbled on the young, wealthy and ambitious writer in her sleeping pod and has spent much of his isolation by her side, lusting for an imagined life and romance with the beauty. That Jim is absolutely responsible for Aurora’s now certain lonely death aboard the Avalon is a secret only shared with the ship’s single robot with a human face, Arthur the barkeep (Michael Sheen, who is pretty annoying). As long as Jim’s moral slip-up is kept quiet - oh, and the ship doesn’t blow itself to smithereens - love can blossom between the two.

So yes - corny, creepy and a touch confused. Is Passengers meant to be an Interstellar level prestige sci-fi? Director Morten Tyldum - Oscar nominated for The Imitation Game for some reason - seems to think so; there are these stretches of cerebral cinematography a la Kubrick and plenty of musings about loneliness and human life, all as if Passengers has something important to say. It’s fine, to me anyway, that it doesn’t, and it should be blatantly obvious in the presence of such lame action and thoughtless romance, but I would have liked if the director had enough gall to keep it meaningless, and to relish in the silliness. For example, late in the piece I broke out into church giggles - in a flurry of sirens and debris Aurora and Jim hurry into the engine room to look for “something that is broken...” - cut immediately to Jim looking at something metal and Aurora screaming “is it broken?” - how great would that have been if Tyldum had intended for that to be hilarious rather than by accident? And, crucially, any hopes your picture has for poignancy and greater meaning come its conclusion are immediately dispelled when the credits are coupled with a truly appalling Imagine Dragons original song.

More troubling, perhaps, is that in playing the film straight and serious it would appear to condone Jim’s actions, without which there would be no film but that are undeniably messed up. Yes, the loneliness must have been unimaginably tough in this imagined universe, but it to awaken Aurora and for romance to inevitably ensue plays towards a kind of male privilege outlook that feels icky, and was only really superficially dealt with later in the story - what stopped him from defrosting two kids and a puppy while he was at it?

That the film can get away with such poor judgment at its helm is due in no small levels to its main players. These are the kind of stars whose acting can go unappreciated because of the distraction that is their charisma - yes, Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence often appear on the screen in some iteration of what we know Christ Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence to be, but that doesn’t mean that it is without work. Lawrence in particular is given much of the inane quasi-philosophical dialogue that she miraculously is able to sell as if it might be profound, and the pairing of stars here makes for a natural, easy and likeable chemistry. Minus a brief montage of Jim’s year of loneliness and poor hygiene, they are always attractively dressed and handsomely photographed, and that doesn’t hurt.

Passengers presents its audience with many a problem, both in troubling themes and misguided filmmaking. In my case, as a film it at least seemed to make the effort to dance around the edges of these problems with some nice performances and a kind mindless vapid and digestible plot development. At its worst it is irksome, pretentious and lazy, but I guess at its best it is a shiny distraction.