The Fifth Wave

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: J. Blakeson/Chloe Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Maria Bello, Ron Livingston, Alex Roe, Maika Monroe and Nick Robinson

The Fifth Wave, based on the story of the same name by novelist Rick Yancey, is a hodgepodge of sci-fi movie plots welded together that work story-wise but is incapable of making the audience forget any of the films it shamelessly borrows or steals from. Films that immediately come to mind when watching Blakeson's film are: Independence Day, District 9 and the various movies about young people uniting to resist oppressive overlords, such as The Maze Runner and Divergent series. There isn't anything inherently wrong with a pastiche but The Fifth Wave (the title kept reminding me of The Fifth Element. Maybe someone will make a sci-fi movie called The Fifth of Jack Daniels) doesn't fuse what it plunders into anything original or thrilling. And what's worse, the movie seems like another greedy producer's calculated attempt to create a franchise cash-cow. And to give this franchise-manque credibility, some considerable talent was recruited; Chloe Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber and Maria Bello; who have all acquitted themselves better elsewhere.

Has anyone noticed that in ALL alien invasion movies these days, we seem to see the same kind of massive spaceships floating menacingly in the skies above Earth? We see the same here though I noticed Blakeson was very sparing in how he deployed shots of the alien ships. Maybe the producers are saving more detailed images for the sequels they hope to mid-wive from this flick.

The whole plot can be summarized succinctly: aliens, referred to as Others, invade Earth, wreaking havoc in successive waves. One wave knocks out electricity and power, another visits Biblical-scale destruction across the planet in the form of literal waves; tidal waves, which is followed by the lethally mutated spread of the Avian virus, which is in turn followed by the alien infiltration of the human species while the last involves the use of children to carry out the mass extermination of humanity. A young woman named Cassie Sullivan (Chloe Grace Moretz) struggles to survive after her parents die in the initial waves. Her attempts to reach an air force base where her brother and other children have been taken for battle-training meet with danger, as she befriends a young man who displays superhuman fighting skills. Cassie manages to unite with her brother and the other children after they discover their military leaders are in fact Others who have recruited them for their plans of global conquest.

That is the story in its semi-concise form. The story does come with romance. Cassie is the focus of a triangle that includes her classmate Ben Parish (Nick Robinson) and Evan Walker (Alex Roe); said young man with extraordinary fighting abilities. The other burgeoning romance involves Ben and a tough, goth-ish girl named Ringer (Maika Monroe); who handles a gun as well as her army instructors.

About half-way through the film, it becomes clear the filmmakers want to ride the Hunger Games/Divergent/The Maze Runner wave of films about young people fighting totalitarian forces. I guess this attempt to draw young viewers makes sense but it really seems like a cheap and easy way to market future installments. I have to say I can't stomach many more of these films but then again, only young tastes count here, I guess.

It seems pointless to expect a movie like The Fifth Wave to be logical or uniformly plausible since the movies it sometimes mimics, like Independence Day, can't be troubled to play by the same rules. What bothers me about the aforementioned movie and Blakeson's film is what I call the Bumbling Advanced Civilization Syndrome. An alien race masters interstellar travel; overcomes all the paradoxes and problems of Einsteinian physics, arrives on Earth with superior weapons and the means to destroy the planet; only to suddenly become thwarted by the relatively primitive human race. If one has the power to create tidal waves that tower above coastline hotels and London Bridge and the means to knock out power world-wide, why does it suddenly have problems wiping out a survivalist village, particularly when it knows its location? Instead, it sends Others-controlled army soldiers to gun down the inhabitants of said village. Very sloppy and inefficient for an advanced alien race, que no?

One character says destroying the Earth isn't part of the Others' agenda, as they need our planet mostly intact. Okay, but if you've already wiped out most of the human race without destroying ALL life on the planet's surface, how hard would it be to wipe out the survivors? It does make sense that an invading alien race would employ an electromagnetic pulse to knock out our power, inundate the planet with quasi-natural disasters and create a pandemic to wipe out humans but I don't think it would suddenly be troubled by those same creatures when the resistance cells are comprised of children and teens.

Suspending disbelief and every mental faculty, one should still find the story thrilling but it didn't take an alien intellect to see where everything was headed and how it would get there. The movie became dull and I did little to resist the sleepy fairy that coaxed me into a brief state of drowsiness.

Mr. Blakeson, you'll forgive me if I don't bother seeing the sequels. The Hunger Games series satisfied any and all desires I had to see films like yours. But I'm sometimes stubborn and if a movie weekend happens to be painfully wanting, I just might pay to see A Fifth Wave sequel. But then again, I resisted The Maze Runner and Divergent follow-ups so I know my will power hasn't weakened.

The key word here is resist. If a determined unit of tykes can resist an alien invasion, I can resist a franchise. And I won't even need an M-16.

Clouds of Sils Maria

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Olivier Assayas/Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloe Grace Moretz, Lars Eidinger and Johnny Flynn

Clouds of Sils Maria, Olivier Assayas' exploration of an aging actresses anxieties and insecurities, is intellectually satisfying and symbolically rich and though not a great film, it commits to stimulating our minds and features some terrific performances.

Assayas' film is a story within a story and his deliberate attempt to dissolve the barrier between the two leaves us wondering if an actress' life and a role for which she is famous have coalesced to form a powerful but disturbing reality.

Inhabiting this role is the venerable Juliette Binoche, an actress with limitless talent who proves to be the most appropriate casting choice; her real-life acting career is also subject to the unforgiving ticking clock the film industry creates for actresses who face obscurity or oblivion in middle-age.

Binoche plays Maria Enders, an actress of international renown who has been offered a part in famed playwright Wilhelm Melchior's play; Maloja Snake. En route to a tribute honoring the literary figure, she learns of his sudden death, which occurred while hiking near his retreat in the Tyrolean Alps.

Maria earned a measure of fame for having played a character in Melchior's famous work; a play (and subsequently a film) about a middle-age female executive who falls in love with a young woman employed in her company. The relationship becomes a psychological melee as the younger woman indulges in manipulative head-games. As her middle-age anxieties leave her emotionally vulnerable, the older woman becomes the younger woman's pawn, which ultimately leads to her suicide.

Maria's performance as the younger woman became a touchstone for other actresses taking on the role. The new production calls for her to play the older woman's part, which she approaches with trepidation. And like the fictitious, mature woman in Maloja Snake, she is feeling acutely aware of her age and is fearful of the role, which she sees as a confirmation of her worst fears.

Maria's personal assistant/friend Valentine (Kristen Stewart), is with her at all hours of the day, reading lines and attending high-profile functions. As the two women rehearse Maloja Snake dialogue, their relationship begins to mirror the play. Assayas ensures the play's dialogue and Maria and Valentine's conversations become almost indistinguishable, thereby creating a continuum where fiction and reality co-exist.

And as the women become emotionally involved in the play-reading, Maria sees Valentine's interpretations of the characters as callow ravings while Valentine begins to reel from Maria's oppressive anxieties.

The title of Melchior's play refers to an uncommon meteorological phenomenon whereby clouds creep through a mountainous Alpine pass like a snake, hence its name. The peculiarity serves as a metaphor (in my interpretation) for the stealthy advance of old age; how it happens upon one like a slithering reptile. To witness the phenomenon is a figurative acceptance of one's mortality.

While the production approaches, Maria and Valentine watch films of the play's co-star, Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz) in preparation. Jo-Ann is a young star who draws tabloidy attention and who sometimes stars in bloated Hollywood blockbusters. Maria and Valentine attend a screening that stars Jo-Ann in her latest movie; a silly super-hero genre flick that may resemble something Maria once performed in in her younger years but now mockingly scorns. While Maria scoffs, Valentine is aware of Jo-Ann's widespread popularity and reminds her that the young actress is now the reality that won't go away.

The film is essentially is three parts. In the first, we see Maria as media darling, her feminine sex appeal still volcanic and vital. In the second, we see her undergoing a physical transformation; she is shorn of her pretty locks; a cosmetic harbinger of sexual decline and a prelude to a literal and metaphorical menopause. And the third, we see Jo-Ann subjected to fierce media attention; fleeing paparazzi and maneuvering her way through a scandal involving her new boyfriend. While the young actress' life is of keen interest to the media, Maria finds herself to be a marginal figure in Jo-Ann's dramas. As we watch the two women seek refuge from paparazzi in an escaping limousine, Maria is almost left behind. The scene is an effective depiction of Maria's inevitable obsolescence as a star and her imminent exile from the media epicenter she once occupied.

Assayas' film is about the terror of growing old and the film industry's low regard for actresses who have reached the middle-age ceiling. It is interesting that Maria isn't able to see the Snake until later in the film, when she finally accepts the wrenching reality of aging.

As the film captures Maria in different stages of aging, the characters themselves represent women in the respective stages: Jo-Ann is as Maria once was; a confident, cocky ingenue maybe slightly contemptuous of her elders; Valentine is the middle-ground between the young and old; one too old to be young and too young to perceive the metaphorical Snake while Maria's middle-age is the final stage; the accelerated slide to dotage.

Binoche is no stranger to nuanced material and she handles it with consummate skill, as we might expect. It is a delightful surprise to see Stewart and Moretz in an Assayas film; their presence shows both actresses are eager to take on more challenging roles and they acquit themselves quite well.

Assayas' narrative structure is compelling and clever; the play within a play within a movie works famously and manages to sustain its coherence.

Though the film is pleasing to the mind, I didn't find it absorbing. It should be seen for Binoche's performance and the interplay between she and Stewart and its astute commentary on the film industry's attitudes about women. The film works but falls well short of greatness, in spite of its ambitions. If nothing else, Assayas can be commended for engaging our minds, if not entirely our hearts.

The Equalizer

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Antoine Fuqua/Starring: Denzel Washington, Marton Czokas, Chloe Grace Moretz, Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo

What is there that Robert McCall, the mysterious habitue of a neighborhood cafe and employee of a home improvement store can't do? He dispenses health tips to his fellow employees, helps train an overweight co-worker for a security guard test and generously offers inspirational, you-can-be-whatever-you-want-to-be advice to a call girl seeking a better life. He lives his life in an orderly manner that would make most obsessive-compulsives shudder. Not enough for you? Well, he also has little patience for the profanity his Home-Mart colleagues utter and chides them for their junk-food intake. The man is so good and straight he urinates holy water.

Oh, and one more thing; he can also thrash (to put it mildly) a room full of Russian underworld slimes who threaten his call girl friend Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), with a frightening array of martial arts and weapon skills and can repurpose mundane home-improvement merchandise for lethal ends.

Can such a man possibly exist in this world? In this dimension? In director Antoine Fuqua's (Training Day) world, he can.

The Equalizer, Fuqua's monumentally silly action flick, is enjoyable at times but if gritty realism is your thing, then brother (or sister), you've come to the wrong place. It features yet another character so common in multiplexes these days; a seemingly ordinary man who happens to be a former CIA operative; one who has retained his deadly training.

Denzel Washington plays the aforementioned Robert McCall, a man with god-like unflappability who lives alone and leads a life that is deceptively prosaic. He works a shift at Home Mart while his insomniac evenings leads him to his local cafe, where he habitually occupies the same seat and drinks tea made from a teabag he carries on his person. McCall arranges the book he brings along, the silverware and his napkin just right; leaving nothing to casual randomness. His book is The Old Man and the Sea; a selection chosen from a 100-Novels-Everyone-Should-Read list that his former wife worked most of her way through. He chats about Hemingway's novel with Teri, who like McCall, is a cafe regular.

After seeing Teri sitting at the counter on consecutive nights, McCall discovers she is being pimped by a Russian scumbag named Vladimir. Ever the paladin, McCall offers to buy Teri's freedom from Vladimir after he sees her battered face following a beating she suffered at the Russian's hands.

McCall bravely enters Vladimir's office one night to bargain; offering a hefty sum. Vladimir and his minions are naturally contemptuous of McCall and his offer. Before McCall leaves the office, he locks the door then scans Vladimir's men in an almost-scientific manner before unleashing death; sparing no gruesome or sadistic means to accomplish his bloody goal.

McCall's brutal dispatch of Vladimir and his men comes to the attention of their boss, who deploys another heavily tatooed Russian named Teddy (Marton Csokas) to find the man responsible for the carnage. Teddy's specialty is troubleshooting for the underworld overlord and he executes his mission in a psychotically impassive, amoral and vicious manner, suffering no impediments.

The film becomes a cat and mouse game between Teddy and McCall that proceeds in a predictable, mechanical fashion until the preposterous final showdown inside the Home Mart, where Teddy's thugs hold McCall's fellow employees hostage. Once McCall arrives, you can guess the rest.

The one and only scene I found deliriously entertaining was McCall's confrontation with Vladimir and his men. The fact that he actually times the violent bloodletting speaks volumes about his obsession for order. Alas, the rest of the movie is what it is.

I can't account for the casting of Melissa Leo and Bill Pullman, who have brief, thankless and bland roles as McCall's former associates. As talented as Denzel Washington is, he is no stranger to slumming, but this script is even more of a slum-stroll than he's accustomed to. Chloe Grace Moretz's role as the hooker-with-musical-ambitions is as thin as frost while Marton Csokas' tattooed torso probably has more detail than his character description.

As always with films like The Equalizer, absurdities in narrative and character are taken a bit too seriously. The film could have used some of the self-aware silliness we find in The Expendables series.

Hey, at least we finally have a hero who reads books! Why has that never happened before? I guess it's pretty tough to imagine Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzeneggar or Bruce Willis cracking the spine of Don Quixote--one of the other books McCall enjoys in the cafe.

Was I mistaken in believing a sequel was hinted at? Why bother speculating; it's as certain as a sunrise.

If I Stay

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: R.J. Cutler/Starring: Chloe Grace Moretz, Mireille Enos, Jamie Blackley, Joshua Leonard and Stacy Keach

Based on the novel by Gayle Forman, If I Stay is a tardy arrival in the Summer movie season but not too late to provide teen movie audiences a needle full of sentimental syrup with a supernatural chaser to top off the fix. I avoided a blogpost for The Fault in Our Stars; the Summer's other teary bacchanalia featuring teens dealing with loss. I found it an unchallenging target though R.J. Cutler's film is pretty weak prey too. I figured I couldn't let both films escape my clutches.

I came expecting a movie but got an ABC Family drama instead. Nothing in the film is terribly upsetting; any 6-year-old could watch the film with his or her sleep patterns undisturbed and intact.

The story is rather simple. Mia Hall (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a promising cellist hoping to study music after high school. Her parents (annoyingly played by Mireille Enos and Joshua Leonard), who are irritatingly hip and maniacally supportive of her musical dreams, gave up their own respective musical dreams to marry and raise a family.

Chloe meets the heartthrob of her school, named Adam (Jamie Blackley). He is first seen walking through a school hallway in slo-mo as the female students swoon and cast coquettish looks his way. Mia is surprised to find herself being wooed by the young Adonis.

The fact that Adam fronts an rock band with big time ambitions is supposed to be a sharp contrast to Mia's passion for classical music. As one might divine from the plot description, the couple's disparate musical aspirations cause friction, which tests their relationship and their career goals.

A dramatic plot wrinkle unfolds on a snowy day as Mia's family are critically injured in a car accident. Mia finds herself wandering frantically around the accident site, trying to learn the fate of her family, only to find she is now a spirit. She sees her unconscious body being wheeled into an ambulance, which she follows to the hospital. As she learns the devastating news about her parents and brother, family friends and relatives arrive at the hospital to lend support.

The story then becomes a will-she-or-won't-she-survive weepy while narrowing its narrative focus to her relationship with Adam.

I can't say I was bored with the film but I was hardly sitting wide-eyed and attentive. The film really boils down to a half dozen or so confrontations between Mia and Adam in flashback, which are supposed to lend the movie a kind of urgency that never really feels all that urgent.

If I Stay is a film that allows female teens a romantic escape; one that asks would my dreamboat visit me on my deathbed and risk his dreams of stardom for little old moi? I wish the film had the fire of The Spectacular Now, which felt true to teen life with all its awkwardness, doubt and confusion. Cutler's film bears some of those qualities but they feel artificial and forced.

This is Cutler's first feature film. He is better known for his documentaries The September Issue and The World According to Dick Cheney. He brings a documentarian's matter-of-fact narrative approach to the film, which is by no means bad but the film never frees itself from the chains of straight-forwardness and stubborn attachment to emotional surfaces.

I found it implausible that someone who just lost her entire family in an auto accident (sorry about that disclosure) would be so concerned about her loverboy's presence in the hospital.

I also found it puzzling that someone like Stacy Keach would be cast in such a one-dimensional role as a grieving grandpa. He was recently seen in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For as one of the city's slithery creeps. I wished I could have switched his character in that film for his character in If I Stay. Wouldn't that give the film just a dash of delicious darkness and danger? No? Oh, well.

The film concludes with some more of that hokey, divine light stuff, which should comfort movie-goers who find If I Stay emotionally harrowing (a demographic I wouldn't care to meet). I think I liked Chloe Grace Moretz more as an ass-kicker in Kick-Ass and as Stephen King's Carrie. She will have better roles and better opportunities to flower as an actress. For now, let's forget about this one, shall we?