Carry-On

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler, Theo Rossi, Logan Marshall-Green, Dean Norris, Sinqua Walls, Curtiss Cook, Josh Brener
Running Time: 119 min.
Rating: PG-13

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

There's a scene in Jaume Collet-Serra's action thriller Carry-On where a case passes through airport security as a scan of its deadly contents appear in front of the shocked, panicked protagonist's screen. Scary newspaper clippings flash in our faces while he helplessly watches this weapon of mass destruction move down the conveyor belt. It's just one of the many entertaining and suspenseful moments in a plot best described as Die Hard meets Phone Booth meets the director's own Non-Stop. 

Whether this holds up on repeated viewings is almost beside the point since you'll have enough of a blast watching it once, as an unlikely hero squares off against a ruthless antagonist who thinks he has him wrapped around his finger. And by calmly exploiting this blackmailed airline employee's weaknesses to produce the vicious outcome he's hired for, he'll casually write off any potential deaths as collateral damage. Assessing his hostage is a loser who lacks motivation, he'll underestimate him, discovering that you really can't count on what someone will do in a perilous situation. The result is a cat-and-mouse battle of contingency plans and last minute improvisation, with both men maneuvering to gain the upper hand.

After failing to make the police academy, unambitious TSA agent Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) is going through the motions at LAX while his pregnant girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) holds an upper management position for the airline. Arriving late on Christmas Eve, Ethan requests supervising the baggage scan lane usually overseen by friend and colleague Jason (Sinqua Walls) in an effort to show gruff supervisor Phil (Dean Norris) he deserves a promotion. But this switch puts Ethan in the crosshairs of The Traveler, a nameless mercenary who leaves him an earbud to receive his instructions.

Ethan's informed by The Traveler that if he doesn't let a specific carry-on case pass through the scanner, Nora gets killed, leaving him with few options. Lounging in the terminal, this mercenary sees everything and communicates with a sniper, The Watcher (Theo Rossi), who's monitoring Ethan's every move, ready the pull the trigger on anyone at a moment's notice. Meanwhile, LAPD detective Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) is tying a double homicide committed by The Traveler to a tip about an airline threat, but faces bureaucratic resistance from Homeland Security. Torn between saving Nora or the lives of these passengers, Ethan will have to dig deep to somehow outsmart this sociopath before it's too late.

Considerable tension builds to how, when and by what means this mystery case will arrive in line and whether Ethan will wave it through, sacrificing hundreds of passengers' lives for Nora's. With The Traveler lurking and conversationally feeding demands into his ear, Ethan needs to stay calm and cooperative, all while subtly sending out distress signals for help. But The Traveler's a step ahead, emphasizing he's no terrorist, but a "facilitator" whose services are retained at the highest price by only the most dangerous criminals. For him, it's just another day at the office.

Egerton sketches out this portrait of a guy who's thrown in the towel, but knows he has to move up the ladder with a baby now on the way. More established in her career, Sofia Carson's Nora displays the patience of a saint, gently nudging him not to give up on his dream of joining the police force. It's a derailed goal we'll eventually get more details about, at least when Ethan isn't dusting off his track skills to frantically rush through the terminal. 

While it's not exactly fair to say Bateman's breaking type after already proving how much he can do, this is probably one of his bigger leaps to the dark side. He's still employing his dry comedic sarcasm, only now as a methodical killer whose conscience is clear of all moral responsibility. Characters like this have almost become an action cliché, but watching Bateman do it packs an extra punch since his trustworthy, everyman screen presence makes the underlying psychology of these scenes play differently than they otherwise would.

It takes a bit before Ethan actually comes face-to-face with Bateman's Traveler, who inconspicuously blends into the crowd with his black baseball cap and down jacket. But all hell breaks loose when that case arrives and the twists and turns start coming, like the addition of another major player, luggage tracker confusion, a thrillingly shot freeway fight and one of the more creative death scenes we've seen in a while.

Much of T.J. Fixman's script is built on characters remaining a step or two ahead as the story zigs and zags in increasingly improbable ways. But we're all in since Collet-Serra keeps things moving at a breakneck pace while the performances only further elevate it. What we're left with easily exceeds your typical Netflix action offerings, utilizing an inspired concept to successfully channel the movies it takes inspiration from.                                           

Tetris

Director: Jon S. Baird
Starring: Taron Egerton, Nikita Yefremov, Sofia Lebedeva, Anthony Boyle, Ben Miles, Ken Yamamura, Igor Grabuzov, Oleg Shtefanko, Ayane Nagabuchi, Rick Yune, Roger Allam, Toby Jones, Togo Igawa, Matthew Marsh
Running Time: 118 min.
Rating: R

★★½ (out of ★★★★)  

Simple, straightforward and addictive, it's easy to see how Tetris became such a phenomenon during the mid to late 80's video game craze. The story behind its development and licensing is lesser known, as director Jon S. Baird attempts to make sense of its complicated journey to store shelves. The latest in a string of biopics focusing on big brand products, the script stretches the idea of creative license to its breaking point, as even the actual participants have candidly implied in interviews that some of the events here are either heavily exaggerated or flat-out didn't occur.

Those watching Tetris with even minor background knowledge of the game's origins will feel those Hollywood liberties being taken, which is nothing new for the genre and certainly doesn't disqualify it. But there is an inflated sense of frenetic urgency surrounding this, possibly stemming from concerns that a movie about video game rights might prove too dry for mainstream audiences. This justifiable concern results in an overcompensation of sorts, as the film succumbs to some wheeling and dealing messy enough to give viewers whiplash.

It's 1988 and Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) of Bullet-Proof Software is in the midst of marketing his newest video game at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas when he notices another game called Tetris, created by Soviet programmer Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Yefremov). But while there Henk finds out that Robert Stein (Toby Jones) of Andromeda Software bought worldwide licensing rights from the Soviet government-owned ELORG. 

It turns out that Stein signed a contract with media magnate Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam) and his son, Mirrorsoft CEO, Kevin Maxwell (Anthony Boyle), enabling them to distribute the game in exchange for royalties. Unfortunately for them, Rogers also claims rights, having recently gotten another Mirrorsoft executive to sign off on the game for PC, console and arcade use. 

After Rogers proposes to Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi (Togo Igawa) that they co-produce the game for NES, the company's new Game Boy handheld device readies for launch, just as Sega and Atari also enter the fray. The battle between Rogers and the Maxwells come to a head in Moscow, as ELORG chairman Nikolai Belikov (Oleg Shtefanko) struggles to sort this out with the Soviet Communist Party and a scary KGB operative (Igor Grabuzov) breathing down his neck. Having leveraged everything he has on Tetris, Rogers needs a way to secure the rights and escape Russia alive, even while Pajitnov runs the risk of not seeing a penny from his own creation. 

Under ideal circumstances, a story based on real-life events this chaotic would be streamlined for viewers completely unfamiliar with what happened. And you'd figure that's a sizable majority, some of whom were likely prompted to check this out because it covers the origin of a popular, iconic video game they've played or maybe even grew up on. It's to the film's credit and detriment that it refuses to cut corners, giving us an agonizingly detailed look at all the business complications involved with the licensing. And are there ever a lot, with rights changing hands half a dozen times during about fifteen double crosses as Rogers desperately tries to finalize his deal. 

In a way, this turns out how many worried Ben Affleck's Air would, as both feature entrepreneurial disruptors bucking corporate culture to bring a game-changing product to the masses. Each comes with great personal and professional risk, but the key difference is that Tetris was getting released no matter what. Rogers saw an opportunity and pounced, while Sonny Vaccaro made his own by signing Michael Jordan to Nike. Without him there are no Air Jordans and the film goes to great lengths showing Sonny's vision for the brand. A game involving colorful interlocking blocks is a far cry from that, but it's still a commodity, and beyond Rogers staring at monitors in astonishment, we're rarely given glimpses into why he feels so strongly about it.

Regardless of Rogers' fascination with the game, Noah Pink's script effectively convey the stakes by showing the personal toll this obsession takes on his wife (Ayane Nagabuchi) and young daughters. But when the characters aren't bickering over contracts, it's mostly aiming to be a Cold War spy actioner, complete with a young Russian interpreter (Sofia Lebedeva), high-speed chases through the Moscow streets and even a Mikhail Gorbachev (Matthew Marsh) appearance. Of course, the Soviet leader knowing about the game, much less having a vested interest, requires a big suspension of disbelief. To Baird and his cast's credit, implausible moments like these do come across better than expected, even when getting lost in the minutiae of legal details. 

Moving briskly and incorporating a clever use of 8-bit animated effects throughout, Tetris ticks all the nostalgic boxes with its retro aesthetic and 80's soundtrack. It also contains a handful of solid performances, most notably from Egerton and some slightly lesser known faces. They carry this through some heavily comedic stretches before veering into dramatic territory that resembles a lesser Argo. Crafting a political thriller around the ownership of a video game was never going to be easy, but Tetris could have leveled up by instead exploring what actually went into its creation. 

Rocketman

 

Director: Dexter Fletcher
Starring: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Gemma Jones, Bryce Dallas Howard, Stephen Graham, Steven Mackintosh, Tate Donovan, Matthew Illesley, Kit Connor, Celinde Shoenmaker
Running Time: 121 min.
Rating: R

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)  

It was never going to be an easy road for Dexter Fletcher's Elton John musical biopic, Rocketman, especially following Bohemian Rhapsody, for which Rami Malek won the Oscar for inhabiting legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. And when considering the same director actually stepped to finish the latter film, it makes comparisons between the two especially unavoidable. But if all those criticisms that Rhapsody played as a paint-by-numbers biopic seemed unfair, that's because they were, rehashing the same old arguments everyone makes about the genre. 

Ignoring that biopics are supposed to cover the full scope and meaning of a figure's life, the complaints just never seem to cease whenever one is released, regardless of its quality. Whether it's manufactured outrage at a script daring to depict events either in or out of chronological order, including scenes that allegedly never happened, or even worse, ones that did. But what no one seems willing to admit is that the format has been around this long because when it works, it really works, and is usually only as compelling as its subject allows. It's also what the fillmaker chooses to do within that admittedly rigid framework that can make all the difference, with casting a bit more crucial than it would be otherwise.

By these standards, Rocketman, which was widely praised for sidestepping a lot of typical genre tropes, could still be considered a "standard" biopic, with the important caveat that we should probably start reassessing that designation as a compliment. It may finally be time to admit that biopics can be fun and well-made, especially when the very structure of this musical does as good a job as any of conveying the essence of that person. 

Despite some broad similarities in their outsized personalities and career trajectories, Elton John isn't Freddie Mercury and any film covering his life would have to be an entirely different animal. Elton might be harder to tackle since his music's been played to death for decades on end, with few clammoring for the onscreen dramatization of an artist who could be considered overexposed, at least compared to Mercury, who only now seems to be getting his due. If both performers had a flare for flamboyance and theatrics, that's the area where Elton was incomparable, with Fletcher wisely using that as the film's driving engine. 

Elton John might be the only artist where a full-blown, spare no expenses musical about their life scored to all his hits feels completely appropriate. It's what Across The Universe could have been if they didn't try to shoehorn a fictional story into the Beatles' entire song catalogue. This takes the opposite route, as Elton's songs legitimately feel like an organic extension of his life, inseparable from the journey we see unfolding in front of us. 

If it's less dramatically powerful than Rhapsody, that's only because of the tone of Elton as a person and artist, which Taron Egerton magnificently captures in a nomination-worthy performance. A staggering visual achievement loaded with dazzling musical sequences, it digs deeply into his drug use, conflicted sexuality and unhappy childhood, before settling on an ending that feels slightly less than what it deserves. But it's all undeniably in lock-step with Elton's entire persona and career, making it impossible to walk away without a greater appreciation of everything he's brought to the table. 

From an addiction rehab center, Elton John (Egerton) recounts the story of his life via flashbacks, all the way back to his days growing up in 1950's Britain, when the then-Reggie Dwight (Matthew Illesley) grappled with crippling shyness as a child, as well as rocky relationship with his strict, uninterested military father Stanley (Steven Mackintosh). Some relief comes in his bonding with carfree mom Sheila (Bryce Dallas Howard) and even more supportive grandmother, Ivy (Gemma Jones) over his burgeoning musical talent. 

After excelling at piano from an early age, Reggie starts playing pubs as a teen (played by Kit Connor), gravitating toward rock music before eventually landing in a band and getting signed to a label deal by cigar-chomping DJM chief Dick James (Stephen Graham). Re-christened as "Elton John," it's Reggie's  introduction to songwriter and eventual best friend Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) that causes his career to soar to unimaginable heights in the 70's, only to come crashing down when he enters a toxic relationship with manipulative and abusive manager John Reid (Richard Madden). Falling into an abyss of wild debauchery fueled by self-destructive drug and alcohol abuse, Elton must face his personal demons head-on in order to save both his life and career, and perhaps finally be at peace with where Reggie Dwight ends and Elton John begins.

Lee Hall's script is meticulously contructed around some of the artist's biggest hits, providing the soundtrack to the scenes and sequences of his life. The concept itself seems hokey on paper and shouldn't work, if not for the fact that the execution is virtually flawless.While it may be initially jarring to see Elton walk into rehab in a flamboyantly bright orange devil costume before we abruptly flash back to the 1950's with characters in the street singing "The Bitch is Back," it's definitely going somewhere. Fletcher really hits the ground running with this structure, which manages to hit on all the key points on Reggie's path toward becoming Elton, with each musical sequence perfectly encapsulating a specific snapshot in time. 

Movie musicals can be off-putting in the sense that they're not stage productions, nor should they be. So when a character spontaneously bursts into song it can fall flat on its face if the story, tone, direction or energy is off. There's a reason the genre isn't for everyone's tastes, and since it's so rarely pulled off successfully, it's easy to be skeptical. But this is one of the few recent ones that really gets it right, as there isn't a single song in here that feels squeezed in because they're due for a big number.

This is who Elton John is, and whether you're a fan or not, it's impossible to deny that this captures that in a bottle. His songs are who he is, making Fletcher's approach work in a way it probably wouldn't for other artists. But we get the impression that he considered himself a performer first, and what Egerton pushes through is that love of showmanship, which practically burns through the screen, making the fact that the actor actually does his own singing (really well) seem almost secondary. 

All this is evident in the film's most memorable musical sequence, when a then low-key Elton first taps into his larger-than-life persona and brings down the Troubadour with "Crocodile Rock," creating an electric atmosphere that just builds and builds, reaching a cresendo that literally lifts him and an enraptured audience off their feet. Brilliantly filmed and staged by Fletcher, it signals from that point on nothing will be the same for the former Reginald Dwight, as does a later underwater scene that visually juxtaposes the movie's title song with his suicide attempt. 

If Elton was the consumate showman, the artist component is best reflected in his friendship with collaborator Taupin, which went well beyond songwriting despite remaining completely platonic. As the only person who saw Elton exactly for who he was, it ends up being the only relationship in the performer's life that doesn't seem entirely transactional. Whether he's pining for love and approval from his parents or an emotionally and physically abusive manager. attempting to downplay his homosexuality in a failed marriage to friend Renate Blauel (Celinde Schoenmaker) Taupin's unwavering committment to this partnership during Elton's darkest days make their union the film's most memorable, if certainly his least toxic. 

Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody or the Brian Wilson biopic, Love and Mercy from a few years back, you don't get too much insight into the "process" of creating because this simply isn't that kind of movie, nor where the bread is buttered when it comes to Elton's career. What we do get are the emotional highs and devastating lows, which strangely seem to exist on the same plane because of Egerton's performance. The framing device of him telling his story from rehab works because the actor does legitimately play him as a spectator to his own life. In even the biggest successes there's this undercurrent of sadness that when combined with his startling resemblance to the real person and painstakingly accurate recreations of key moments (such as the Dodger Stadium performance), make for quite the experience. 

The ending's only flaw is it's one of those familar epilogues that updates you on the singer's life, which seems completely unnecessary unless you've been living under a rock for the past decade. It also looks like something straight out of a cheap TV special, ranking as one of the more forgettable of its kind and almost completely at odds with the visionary sequence preceding it (a mind-blowing recreation of his "I'm Still Standing" video). But this is actually a small complaint since that video will be remembered as the real closer anyway, as well as a reminder that Elton's journey, unlike so many of his contemporaries, will always be more closely associated with triumph than tragedy. But what's so suprising about Rocketman are the wild detours it takes in showing us how close he actually came to burning out his own fuse.

Eddie The Eagle

Director: Dexter Fletcher
Starring: Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, Christopher Walken, Iris Berben, Mark Benton, Keith Allen, Jo Hartley, Jim Broadbent
Running Time: 105 min.
Rating: PG-13

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

Besides being at the center of an inspiring underdog story that seems tailor made for the big screen, the qualities possessed by British Olympic ski jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards will be familiar to anyone who's ever seen an underdog sports movie. A person who's so singularly focused on achieving the impossible that they're not taken seriously in the slightest. They either have a lot of guts or are really dense, and through much of Dexter Fletcher's deliriously entertaining biopic Eddie The Eagle, our title character is confronted by naysayers informing him it's the latter. Whether that be a parent, his teammates or coaches, the one thing they can all agree on is that he's a lost cause. And while much of that is realistically warranted and grounded in concern for his safety, more of it has to do with how he looks and acts. Viewers who think they know how it's all going to pan out are completely right, mainly because it did actually happen and the scenario represents one of the most reliable and predictable movie formulas around. But when it's executed well, it's also really effective, and this is one of those great reminders of that.

As a young boy growing up in Great Britain in the 1970's, Eddie Edwards (Taron Egerton) always dreamed of one day competing in the Olympics. Awkward and hardly much of an natural athlete, he practiced various events in the backyard and around the house, frequently encouraged by his supportive mother, Janette (Jo Harley) while his hard-nosed father, Terry (Keith Allen) dismisses his Olympic dreams as a time waster. After succeeding as a skier as a teen, he sets his sights on the Winter Games, eventually taking an interest in ski jumping.

With Great Britain having gone decades without a ski jumping team and the British Olympic Committee determined to keep him out, Eddie begins training in Germany, where he meets former American ski jumping champion turned alcoholic snow groomer, Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman). Still bitter from his acrimonious exit from the sport, he initially refuses Eddie's pleas to train him, dismissing him, as an unteachable klutz. But Eddie's tenacity and the verbal abuse he takes from the more experienced Norwegian jumpers causes Bronson to take him under his wing, attempting the impossible in helping him qualify for the 1988 Winter Olympics. But what might be the bigger challenge is him being taken seriously once he gets there.

Even during a time when amateurs like Eddie could actually qualify for the Olympics, what he accomplished was pretty newsworthy. Then again, the sports movie template is built on true stories exactly like this, so while the amount of truth always varies, it all really comes down to the execution. This has a lot going for it, including some excellent early practice scenes establishing the young, awkward Eddie's Olympic fanaticism, seeking inspiration from books like "Moments of Glory" and "My Life in Ski Jumping," the latter being the memoir of Bronson's former, estranged coach, Warren Sharp (Christopher Walken). Once we get to the actual competition, the action scenes are well staged by Fletcher, at times even inducing a sense of dread as we look down through the eyes of this clueless rookie who's talked himself into believing he can jump from 40 to 70 and then eventually 90 feet.

More often than not, Bronson's job seems to be stopping this kid from killing himself, reluctantly and against his better judgment evolving into a coach and mentor. It's only upon realizing that with a lot work, he may actually have a shot. Sure to be overlooked, Mark Margeson's throwback musical score stands as one of the year's big achievements in marrying a film's era with its story and thematic content. Somehow sounding like a blissfully bizarre cross between Vangelis' Chariots Fire, Hans Zimmer's Days of Thunder and the theme from The Greatest American Hero, it's so steeped in the scores of that era that many will probably assume it was lifted from an 80's sports movie. That extra touch goes a surprisingly long way here, as it's tough to imagine certain scenes working as well without it in the background, or even in some more obvious moments, the foreground.

Disguised enough behind crooked eyeglasses and oversized clothes to bare a striking physical resemblance to the film's real life inspiration, Taron Egerton makes Eddie endearing, gutsy and likable, portraying him in the best tradition of screen sports underdogs. In the too few instances when the material calls for him to get serious, he proves capable of that as well. Playing a fictional composite of the real-life Eddie's various coaches, it isn't a backhanded compliment to say Hugh Jackman gives one of his more charismatic recent performances as Bronson Peary.

Effortlessly owning every scene he's in, it was a good move to cast Jackman and an even better one to completely ignore reality in favor of letting him help create this character whose relationship with the protagonist drives the story. He also has the film's best musical moment, when Bronson takes to the slopes to show his pupil and a shocked Norwegian ski team how it's done. Like most sports movies, it's usually as much about the mentor as his student and Bronson still has some demons to deal with concerning how his career ended, permanently damaging his relationship with his ex-coach. Of course redemption can only come through coaching Eddie.

Possibly the strongest aspect of the entire film is the fleeting acknowledgment, even made by Bronson himself, that this kid is in danger of becoming a joke, viewed as nothing more than a circus sideshow act to be laughed at by fans and the ratings-seeking media.  If he fails to deliver then his 15 minutes are up, and Olympic history won't look kindly on him, if at all. Briefly, the script explores this fascinating idea before safely retreating to comfortable confines of its formula. That's fine, but you can't help but think it's a reminder that as immersive as these sports movies are, there is a creative glass ceiling in place that very few have been able to shatter.

It's slightly disappointing when the screenplay leans more heavily on the comedic elements than the interesting implications of Eddie's popularity, but this just isn't that type of movie. That much is clear with the casting of Christopher Walken as Bronson's legendary Olympic coach. On one hand, his presence in any film is always a welcome event, but accompanying it is this undeniable expectation of weirdness. Surprisingly, there isn't too much of that here and he does a fine job in his one major dramatic scene, adding to rather than distracting from the movie's inspirational climax.

It's hard to find a genuine crowd pleaser that goes down as easy as this, and regardless of how many details or facts were adjusted along the way, whatever was done worked in terms of providing maximum entertainment value. Fitting comfortably in the wheelhouse of similarly themed sports films like The Rookie, Miracle, Remember The Titans, Invincible, Cool Runnings and the more recent McFarland, USA, Eddie The Eagle may even be a cut above a few of those, managing to get more little things right.

Whether it's the performances, the direction, the soundtrack or the skiing scenes, there are are many moments where you think it will take flight like it's protagonist, ascending to upper echelon of sports movies occupied by the likes of Rocky, Rudy or The Karate Kid. The story was certainly ripe for it and there's an artfulness in Fletcher's filmmaking that suggests that if the writers took things a little more seriously, it could have gotten there. And while that's an ironic criticism given its subject, I'm not completely sure this would be as enjoyable if it did. So what we're left with is a solid, inspiring mainstream sports movie that can be recommended with unqualified praise to basically anyone. And that counts for a lot.