A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, March 16, 2025

The Gorge (Scott Derrickson, 2025)

Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy in The Gorge

Cast: Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu, William Houston. Screenplay: Zach Dean. Cinematography: Dan Laustsen. Production design: Rick Heinrichs. Film editing: Frédéric Thoroval. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross. 

The Gorge is a horror/sci-fi thriller so formulaic that although it has a screenplay credited to Zach Dean, it could have been scripted by AI. The heroes are a couple of loners played by Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, who predictably fall in love after being on the opposite sides of the titular chasm that separates them. The villain is the military-biotech industrial complex, personified by Sigourney Weaver, who seems to be making a late career out of movies about supersoldiers. None of it makes much sense, but if you want a movie that just chugs along filling time, you could do worse. 



No comments: