The latest film releases include The Creator, Saw X, Fair Play, and Dumb Money. Weighing in are Christy Lemire, film critic for RogerEbert.com and co-host of the YouTube channel “Breakfast All Day, and Amy Nicholson, host of the podcast Unspooled and film reviewer for The New York Times.
The Creator
John David Washington plays a former special agent who hunts down the creator of a super-advanced AI, which has been weaponized to kill off humanity. It’s directed by Gareth Edwards.
Lemire: “I’m extremely mixed on this. It is spectacular to look at. It is visionary in some of the imagery that we see. It’s the future in Los Angeles, 2065 is the year. A giant nuclear bomb has been detonated in the center of Los Angeles, and it's supposedly the fault of AI. We exist in a world in which humanity and artificial intelligence have coexisted side by side for decades.
… The idea of John David Washington being this reluctant, stoic father figure having to shepherd this creature, and evolving, is totally derivative and we've seen it done so many times. And there are moments that are eerie and unsettling. And that first hour is very tense and the world-building is really cool. … The more you get into it, it really really drags and it becomes so clear how insubstantial this film is.”
Nicholson: “This is a science fiction AI movie that really doesn't have anything to say about AI. Really, its main point is: AI, they care too, they have feelings, they have empathy. And that's about it. It doesn't really engage with tech or design. … Gareth Edwards is trying to … just make a classic war movie about the … specifically American war industrial complex in our never-ending war on terrorism.”
Saw X
In this 10th installment of the franchise, main antagonist, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is facing his own mortality.
Nicholson: “I do not like watching the flaying, but I actually have always dug the ideas in Saw that exists between the carnage. That Jigsaw is this moralistic, aging, terminally ill cancer patient who wants to teach people to value life by trapping them in situations where they invariably die. … I do enjoy the downtime scenes between the killing where Jigsaw and Amanda check in with each other about their intentions. There's actually one, maybe even two if I'm being very generous, good twists.”
Fair Play
A couple begins an intimate relationship at a cut-throat hedge fund and end up competing for the same job. The woman gets it and jealousy ensues. This stars Phoebe Dynevor from the series Bridgerton, and Alden Ehrenreich, who played Han Solo in the movie Solo.
Lemire: “My mom would have called this kind of thing good trash. … It’s juicy and it’s sexy and it knows what it is. … Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich are young and in love, in love with danger, and having sex in public, and they work at this horrible hedge fund where everyone's out to get each other, and she gets the promotion that he really wants. And it's about how that dynamic really drastically changes.”
Nicholson: “I liked this movie when I saw it at Sundance. And when I saw it again, I thought, ‘Oh, I love this movie.’ If you're listening to this and you’re like, ‘I don't have empathy for finance people, who cares.’ Yeah, this movie doesn't either. There's a part where they really established how this world is driving everybody crazy and the competitiveness of it.
The arc that this couple goes on is huge. It's disastrous. But it is made up of … small and true moments of jealousy and cruelty and people who can't and won't come out and say what they're really feeling. Yeah, gender does factor into it. … But it's not in these ways that are patronizing. … These characters make choices that are surprising and they really are agonizing to watch.
… This is just a vicious little erotic thriller that I cannot recommend enough. … Erotic, I mean like it's in the Fatal Attraction sense. It starts out hot, but then when people stop taking off their clothes, it's because horrible stuff is about to go down.”
Dumb Money
This is about the GameStop stock-pumping incident from 2020, when fans of the struggling store chain wanted to keep it from shutting down, so they bought a lot of stock, foiling the plans of hedge funds.
Nicholson: “What this movie is really digging into is: Is there a chance to make America live up to this claimed ideal of being a place where everyone has an equal opportunity to make a fortune? If you're listening to this and yelling, ‘No, we absolutely don't,’ this movie does not disagree with you. But it is such a terrific watch. It's really steeped in the internet, memes, and catchphrases and deliberate misspellings. ”… You really get the vibe of flashing back three years .. to what feels like a period piece about a country that is just losing its mind. So everybody's having a blast doing that.”
Lemire: “It's a very vivid snapshot of a place in time in our recent history. And it gets its arms around this complicated thing. … We see what happened with this stock through various people's eyes and perspectives. And you can relate to all of them being isolated during early COVID. … And this thing was galvanizing at a time when people need is something like that.”