The Last Days on Mars

Ruairi Robinson, 2013

IMDB

2/5

On paper, The Last Days on Mars is a movie that I probably should have liked more than I did. A group of space explorers, led by Vincent Campbell (Liev Schreiber), stumbles upon an organic microbe on Mars that infects the astronauts and basically turns them into space zombies. Just the idea of space zombies is great. Not done a lot, a variation from the saturated horror sub-genre.

But Last Days is a film that's just lacking. Definitely not from a production standpoint. It's always amazing how, even bad space movies, always seem to have really elaborate production design. The spaceship and it's surrounding areas looks and feels authentic. You never are thinking that it's just a group of actors in space-suits sweating their asses off in a desert in Jordan (where it was actually filmed). You discover that their clock has basically run out on their mission, leaving them with an experience but with nothing really tangible in terms of a monumental discovery. This displeases them, particularly Kim (Olivia Williams). She was clearly hoping to be one of the explorers to really find something to bring back to planet earth. Something that would give them immortal status in the science world. When Marko (Goran Kostic) discovers microscopic life in the lab, he secretly dips out to get more samples. At this point the film really has you locked in, eagerly awaiting to see what is in the petri dish.

But the film becomes a far cry from Alien. Weak script is really to blame. This is a group of scientists, and nothing that ever really comes out of their mouth feels very scientific. When Vincent is lowering himself into a sinkhole, he sees some stalagmites. You would think his assessment of the organic matter would solicit some intelligent response, but instead he says something along the lines of "whatever it is, it's alive". Oh wow. Even Avatar managed to provide significantly more sophisticated dialogue when you were in that alien world. The film never manages to carve out it's own niche. It just becomes another horror film of the scary thing picking everyone off without any twists and turns. The film does manage to weave together an interesting conclusion. This is definitely a film that could be added to a list called "Bad movies that could have good sequels".

Spotlight

Tom McCarthy, 2015

IMDB

4/5

There are some films that have a sole purpose. A sole purpose to highlight a particular moment in time, a notable event of sequence of events. Spotlight is one of these films, fulfilling a duty to highlight the Catholic sex abuse scandal of the (year) that was uncovered by the Boston Globe. When new editor Marty Baron is hired from Miami, he immediately starts to put pressure on the staff to maintain core readership. He urges the Spotlight investigative team to focus on some accusations of local priests abusing boys. When they start to realize that there is some validity to the accusations, he urges them to follow it higher and higher - not really concerned about which powerful figures he angers along the way. The fact that this is going on in the city of Boston adds even more weight to the scandal, as half of the city is Irish Catholic and holds their Priest's in very high regard. 

The Spotlight team itself is a showcase of solid acting by Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, John Slattery and Brian D'Arcy James. There is such balanced chemistry between them all, it's just alluring to watch them all just work their craft. Perfect casting decisions in that regard. Stanley Tucci is also remarkable as attorney Mitchell Garabedian. They are all laser focused on the task. Some of them working longer hours than others. Some of them having families to go home to, some of them choosing career over family. But they are all thorough. 

They manage to maintain their journalistic professionalism while also taking the abuse claims to heart. When Matt Carroll's (D'Arcy James) character is scouring through the pages of the Catholic directory and discovers that one of the "treatment centers" is around the corner from his house, he realizes how close to home this problem really is. It is not wrong to draw comparisons of Spotlight to All the President's Men. They are both serious films, impactful in nature, covering scandals that everyone was already knowledgeable of. Both films feel academic to a certain extent. They both remind us of the importance of whistle-blowers in American culture. But sometimes its a film's duty to simply highlight a negative event in history. This way it will have it's place in cinematic history. And as the Spotlight staff realizes, some things should not go unnoticed. No matter how big the cages are that are about to get rattled. Spotlight isn't a movie filled with stylistic flair. It's a movie, completely serious in tone, with a job to do. And just like the Spotlight team, it maintains that steady pace until the job is done.