Netflix And Chill: Atlas (2024)

It would be nice to have a week when some movies don't feel all about A.I. They're either using A.I. as a threat (existential, physical, or both) or they are put together in a way that has people being far too quick to accuse the film-makers of using A.I. to bash together their slick, but ultimately empty, feature. Atlas falls into both of these camps, from the online discourse I have seen about it. I actually think it's a decent little sci-fi action movie, however, and those looking to insult and dismiss it are being a bit harsh. I may well forget all about it within the next six months, but I don't regret having watched it just now.

Simu Liu plays the big baddie here, an A.I. being named Harlan Shepherd who sees the end of humanity as the solution to all of life's major problems. He may not be completely wrong, but plenty people want to stop him. Heading to the planet where he has based himself after fleeing Earth, Atlas Shepherd (Jennifer Lopez) is the one person who has been trying to warn everyone around her of just how dangerous Harlan is. Whatever attacks are planned, Harlan will always be a step or two ahead. Unwilling to use tech that can be all-too-easily hacked, Atlas is forced into a difficult situation when the soldiers around her are quickly taken out of action. Yes, she has to clamber into a mecha-suit that has a built-in A.I. core. Can Atlas trust the tech around her? Can the tech adapt well enough to the situation to truly help our leading lady? It's not hard to see where things will go, but it's a pleasant enough journey as we head to the predictable third act.

Written by Leo Sardarian and Aron Eli Coleite, this checks every box that you expect to be checked. Thankfully, it has a cast that are all capable of carrying viewers through the weaker moments, has an impressive visual palette throughout, and Lopez has enough screen presence to hold your attention while she spends a lot of time panicking while confined in an unwieldy mecha-suit. Liu is an impressive and plausible villain, Abraham Popoola is a decent secondary villain, and Gregory James Cohan is a good choice for the voice of the suit. While both Sterling K. Brown and Mark Strong are always welcome, both are largely wasted in their supporting roles.

Director Brad Peyton can do well with silly and spectacular entertainment, as he has shown with the likes of San Andreas and Rampage, and a few other less successful outings, but this shows that he can handle more serious fare equally well. The premise is still quite silly, at the heart of it, but it's all crafted with enough seriousness and attention to detail to draw viewers into the world and keep them invested in the plot. The script sets everything up with an impressive economy, and Peyton uses the framework to deliver a satisfying smorgasbord of fireworks and meditative moments. 

I am once again in the minority here, a lot of people have rushed to declare this as yet another stinker from the Netflix movie stable, but there's nothing here that made me angry, and I was never bored. Compared to the last Netflix movie I watched with J-Lo in the lead role (The Mother), this was a pleasant surprise. It didn't stop me from wishing for the day when we'll stop having so many movies focused on the looming threat of A.I., but it entertained me well enough for most of the 118-minute runtime.

7/10

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American Fiction (2023)

I remember a time, back in high school, when I had to write a book report. I thought I did a great job, I worked on it for a long time, and I felt happy with the end result. The teacher handed the report back to me and told ne I had to redo it. Now, I cannot recall how well my original piece was then (I vaguely remember citing specific examples from the text and trying hard to write a proper report, as opposed to a plot summary, but maybe it wasn’t good), but I can tell you what happened next. I felt that I had already put enough time and effort into something I had to completely rewrite. I decided to multi-task during my lunch break, delivering a page or so of what I considered to be absolute twaddle, phrases that my friends and I were laughing about as  I wrote them down. That second incarnation of my book report received depressingly positive feedback, and that is when I realised that you sometimes need to write what people are expecting from you, rather than your absolute truth. It may have also started me on the path away from academia, and the conformity required until you make a unique impact that cannot be ignored.

While this may not seem connected to American Fiction, it really is. This is the tale of a black American writer (Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, played by Jeffrey Wright) who finds himself struggling to sell books in a market that he doesn’t want to be a part of. Resenting the label of “black literature”, with the stereotypes and “trauma porn” often contained within it, Monk seems destined to maintain his integrity at the expense of any major sales opportunities. Until he plays a big hole on everyone, writing a novel full of the kind of garbage that he hates to read, and using the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh. It is, of course, a huge success, and it just gets more and more praise as Monk tries to make it, and his character, more and more like the content he is mocking.

Based on a book, “Erasure”, by Percival Everett, this is a hell of a directorial debut from Cord Jefferson, who also adapted the source material into screenplay form. Picking at the frayed strands that have been woven together over centuries to make the mixed and vibrant quilt of the USA, nobody here is looking to offer easy answers to things like racial profiling, white guilt, the intersection of art and commerce, and the permission to use the lives of others as inspiration for creative endeavours, among other topics broached. But sometimes you don’t need, and may never get, definitive answers, especially from art. Sometimes it is enough to ask the questions.

Wright is brilliant in a lead role that feels like just the thing he has been long overdue. His character is bitter and acerbic throughout, but he has extra pressures on him, as well as a number of valid points about what he sees going on around him (all underlined by the fact that his joke starts to look like it will be an unstoppable success). There’s a great supporting cast, all holding their own alongside Wright, but other highlights include Sterling K. Brown (a gay sibling working through his feelings in a very different way), Erika Alexander (as Coraline, a potential love interest, but also a reader who has enjoyed previous books written by Monk), John Ortiz (an agent who disapproves of the new book until it gains major traction and sales interest), and Issa Rae (as a successful author, Sintara Golden, who seems to write the exact kind of material that Monk cannot stand). There are also excellent turns from Leslie Uggams (an ailing mother), Myra Lucretia Taylor, Raymond Anthony Thomas, Tracee Ellis Ross, Keith David (basically a cameo, but some Keith David is better than no Keith David), and Adam Brody.

Funny, thought-provoking, moving, and somehow galvanized by the fact that it springboards from a very observable reality all around us, American Fiction is a superb blend of satire and pathos, and I am all the happier if it gives a well-earned boost to the profiles of everyone involved, especially Wright.

8/10

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Hotel Artemis (2018)

We've had a lot of great action movies in recent years, and a number of them have taken the time to at least hint at an unseen criminal world running parallel to our own. Hotel Artemis is another film along those lines. It's a blend of sci-fi, action, and standard thriller stuff. It's not great though. Unfortunately, it struggles to even be good.

Jodie Foster plays The Nurse, the woman in charge of the titular building. It's a safe haven for criminals, an exclusive medical facility that has some hard rules in place for the safety of everyone who comes and goes. If you're not up to date with your subscription payments then you can't get in. You can't bring in weapons. And you don't hassle the staff (Foster and her right hand man, Dave Bautista). Of course, these rules all start to be broken on a night when one man (Sterling K. Brown, in a lead role that feels very much like a supporting one) turns up, wounded brother in tow, after a botched robbery. There's a riot in the city causing problems, a couple of other residents (Sofia Boutella and Charlie Day) not getting along too well, a wounded cop (Jenny Slate) in need of assistance, and a surprise visit from the wounded owner of the establishment (Jeff Goldblum).

Hotel Artemis is so close to being a good film that it's almost frustrating to consider how much it misses the mark. The cast are all very good, and very good in their roles (even Charlie Day, who I like in comedic work but sometimes seems miscast when in more serious roles), the hints at the unrest going on in society are intriguing, but never developed into anything more worthwhile, and the few scenes that show the more badass characters actually being badass are fun (although Bautista is sorely underused, and when will Sofia Boutella be given the action movie lead role that she deserves?).

Writer-director Drew Pearce spends far too much time showing that this is his first feature, and that most of his written work used him best as part of a team of creative minds working towards the same goal. There's a damaging lack of focus, an unearned confidence in the dialogue scenes (Foster and Goldblum may be enjoyable to just listen to as they speak but they still need to be given more than the cheesy and clichéd dialogue that they're given here), and a general inability to give any of the main players material that is worthy of their talents. I also had an issue with the way we were given the rules of the hotel, only for them to be broken with far too little time or pressure applied to the decisions.

Take a bunch of lesser-known names and this movie becomes a straight-to-disc time waster. With this cast, however, there's really no way it can be viewed as anything other than a disappointment. The only person who comes close to being used well is Boutella, and even that feels too little too late, in an action sequence during the third act that puts her front and centre.

5/10

You can buy the disc here.
Americans can buy it here.