LITTLE FISH (2021) – Love Story Amidst Deadly Virus Tells Somber Realistic Tale

With a pandemic now a universally shared experience, it’s relatively easy for a film like LITTLE FISH (2021) to resonate so effectively with today’s audiences, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a really good movie. It is.

LITTLE FISH is the story of two twenty-somethings Emma (Olivia Cooke) and Jude (Jack O’Connell) who meet, fall in love, and get married, but unfortunately for them, it’s at this same time that a deadly disease breaks out across the world, one that robs people of their memories until they eventually forget everything. When Jude begins showing symptoms, Emma rallies to save her husband, but as they find out, it’s seemingly a losing battle.

The “little fish” in the title refers to identical tattoos Emma and Jude have on the their ankles, a symbol of their relationship, since when Jude proposed, he didn’t have a ring, and so Emma said “buy me a fish.” So, they bought a goldfish, and later memorialized the moment with the tattoos.

LITTLE FISH resonates both with its pandemic angle and its memory loss disease, which mirrors Alzheimer’s, except in the movie, the disease affects people of all ages. Sometimes it happens over time, but for others, the memory loss is much quicker, sometimes instantaneous.

LITTLE FISH tell a somber love story. It has a sharp screenplay by Mattson Tomlin, based on a short story by Aja Gabel, that creates two realistic characters, thrusts them into a believable tragic situation, and then leads the audience on a journey of hope that in their guts they know is a long shot at best. The dialogue is also on target. Tomlin also wrote the screenplay to the recent Netflix sci-fi actioner PROJECT POWER (2020) about a pill that gives humans super powers and starred Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I liked LITTE FISH much more than PROJECT POWER.

The two main characters Emma and Jude are expertly acted by Olivia Cooke and Jack O’Connell. In fact, I was first interested in this movie because I enjoy Cooke as an actor and wanted to see her latest project. Cooke was a regular on the above average TV show BATES MOTEL (2013-17), also playing a character named Emma, and she was also memorable in a pair of horror movies, Hammer Films’ THE QUIET ONES (2014) and OUIJA (2014).

As expected, Cooke is outstanding here as Emma. She and Jack O’Connell get most of the screen time, and so it’s important that they have some chemistry, and they do. They genuinely seem like a couple in love and theirs is a moving love story. As things continue to grow worse, things become more painful, because you just don’t want to see these things happen to them.

And there are a lot of painful things. They sign up for a controversial cure which Jude learns is not a medicine but a surgery where a needle is stuck directly into the brain. This changes Jude’s mind about taking part in this trial run, but later when his symptoms get worse, he changes his mind only to find out he’s now been rejected for surgery. Instead, using a video posted online by a doctor, they debate whether to try the procedure at home.

They also witness their best friends Ben and Samantha going through the same ordeal, and in that relationship, things come to a head when Ben doesn’t recognize Samantha and attacks her with a butcher’s knife, mistaking her for an intruder.

And later, when Emma begins exhibiting symptoms herself, the situation grows almost unbearable.

Even though this one is a slow burn, director Chad Hartigan keeps it compelling enough throughout. I never lost interest.

There are a lot of memorable moments. Jude takes to keeping photos of Emma handy with her name on the back so he knows who she is. When he leaves home he needs his address written down so he doesn’t get lost. Memory tattoos become a thing, as people take to having relevant information tattooed on their bodies.

The film is also neatly framed from beginning to end, with opening shots and closing shots that bring the story full circle.

LITTLE FISH impressed me throughout. It’s definitely worth your time. But you will want the tissues handy.

It’s somewhat of a tearjerker, and I suspect tears will flow, enough perhaps to fill a fish bowl.

—END—

READY PLAYER ONE (2018) – Cinematic References Best Part of this Fantasy Tale

I’m not a gamer. I don’t play video games, and I haven’t read the book  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and so my interest in seeing READY PLAYER ONE (2018) the new fantasy adventure by director Steven Spielberg, was purely for cinematic reasons.  That’s right. I saw this one simply because I wanted to see the movie.

So, as a movie, how does READY PLAYER ONE size up? Not bad.  For the most part, it’s a fairly entertaining two-plus hours at the movies, even if it’s telling a story that is about as compelling as a game of Donkey Kong.

The best part of READY PLAYER ONE is all the cultural cinematic references. After all, where else can you find King Kong, MechaGodzilla, and the Iron Giant all in the same movie?  Where else can you have your characters enter a world based on Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980)?  The answer is READY PLAYER ONE! These and other references and nods [including to ALIEN (1979) and LOST IN SPACE (1965-68)]  are what kept me most interested in this movie, long after I lost interest in its story.

Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) lives in 2045, a time when life is so hard people need to escape from reality, and they do so by entering the OASIS, a virtual reality world created by the brilliant James Halliday (Mark Rylance) where pretty much anything can happen. You can be whoever you want to be and do whatever it is you want to do. So, Wade plays in this video game world as a handsomer version of himself known as Parzival.

Halliday has since died, but he’s left a challenge to all the players in the OASIS: he has left three keys inside his virtual reality world, and the player who finds all three keys will unlock the game’s secret and become controller of the entire OASIS.  Wade and his friends make it their goal to do just that, but they’d better hurry because an evil company led by a man named Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) has other ideas.

And that’s the story.  This one’s certainly not going to win any awards for Best Screenplay, that’s for sure.

Visually READY PLAYER ONE is a lot of fun, and Spielberg keeps the action fast, bright, and playful.  I have no problem with this part of the movie.

The cast is okay, even though they don’t have a whole lot to work with. Tye Sheridan is decent enough in the lead role as Wade/Parzival, but the character as written in this movie is rather dull, and Sheridan doesn’t really bring this young man to life.  Both his parents have died, yet this grief barely resonates in the story.

Olivia Cooke fares better as Samantha, who becomes Wade’s best friend and eventual love interest.  Samantha is also a kick-ass character who is much more interesting than Wade.  I like Cooke a lot and have been a fan since I first saw her on the TV series BATES MOTEL (2013-17) and also in the Hammer horror movie THE QUIET ONES (2014).

Ben Mendelsohn plays the cardboard villain Sorrento who acts like he walked out of an old Scooby Doo cartoon.  Mendelsohn played a much more effective villain, Orson Krennic, in ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016).

I did enjoy T.J. Miller as Sorrento’s henchman I-ROk, as he provides the film’s best bits of comic relief.  Miller was recently in DEADPOOL ((2016), but I always remember him as Hud, the frightened yet frequently hilarious guy behind the camera in CLOVERFIELD (2008).

Mark Rylance, either hidden under lots of hair or CGI effects in the OASIS, is quiet and unassuming as the gaming genius Halliday, but Simon Pegg as Halliday’s business partner Ogden Morrow is little more than an afterthought.  These two fine actors really don’t get a whole lot of chances to do much in this movie.

The screenplay by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline, who wrote the novel, is straightforward and pretty much tells a by-the-numbers plot.  Teens have to save the world from an evil meddling company while learning about the man who created their favorite game and about themselves as well.

At times, the film feels like a cross between TRON (1982) and WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971). In fact, it’s been reported that Spielberg had approached Gene Wilder to play Halliday, before the iconic comedic actor passed away.  Its nonstop video game landscape is mixed with a syrupy sweet nostalgia tale that makes for lightweight fare, as opposed to a hard-hitting fantasy adventure.

There’s not a lot of memorable dialogue either. And the action scenes, while visually stunning, were pretty tame.

READY PLAYER ONE is chock-full of fun cinematic, video game, and cultural references, especially from the 1980s, and it’s a treat for the eyes, as it’s full of colorful alternate reality landscapes, but its story is meh and often falls flat.  For example, for nearly its entire 140 minute run time, we are immersed inside its virtual reality world, yet at the end, we are treated to a message that says the real world is still more important and interesting, which after all that came before it simply sounds hollow and forced.

READY PLAYER ONE is a colorful diversion if you have 140 minutes to spare.  If not, feel free to spend some time outside instead.  In the real world.

—END—