Cowperthwaite, Gabriela

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    ‘I.S.S.’ Review: Ariana DeBose’s Turn as a Space Warrior

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    The actress stars in this low-wattage thriller about Russian and American astronauts facing off aboard the International Space Station.Three Americans, three Russians and one exceedingly cramped office hovering 250 miles above Earth — what could possibly go wrong? Given the typical genre coordinates, the 95 minute running time and historic hostilities between Russia and the United States, the more relevant questions here are when and how quickly and entertainingly things will go kablooey in “I.S.S.,” an enjoyable, low-wattage thriller set on the International Space Station.There are nothing but bilateral hugs and smiles when the space newbie Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) arrives on the station, having been shot into the story on a Russian Soyuz rocket. She and another American astronaut, a smiley family man, Christian (John Gallagher Jr.), have caught a ride to the station, where she’ll be studying mice or “my little guys,” as she cooingly calls them. Like a character’s early reference to the station’s life-support system (if it stops humming, uh-oh), these helpless creatures — soon seen floating tails-up in a container — are early warning signs that something will be disturbing the relative peace very soon.The movie — written by Nick Shafir and directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite — flashes its wailing red alarms early and often. The space station itself — a cluttered warren with tangles of wires, claustrophobic chambers and eerily weightless bodies — makes a convincing pressure cooker. And Cowperthwaite, who’s worked in nonfiction and fiction (she’s best known for her doc “Blackfish”), clearly maps the tight quarters straightaway, which adds to the ominous atmosphere. By the time a Russian colleague, Alexey (Pilou Asbaek), gruffly tells Kira that “it does not end well,” all this foreshadowing has certainly piqued expectations.What follows is consistently watchable and sometimes tense but, despite some twists, largely unsurprising. After the introductions — Chris Messina plays the third American, Gordon — and the assorted personalities and relationships have been sketched in, the movie gets down to genre business with some worrisome red-orange flashes on Earth. Communication failures ensue, as do the progressively more fretful faces and soundtrack music. The two crews close ranks, with the Americans retreating to one corner to sneak worried looks at the similarly alarmed Russians, who include Weronika (Masha Mashkova) and Nicholai (Costa Ronin).As things go bad and then seriously bad, Cowperthwaite keeps the pieces efficiently shuffling to and fro. She plays with constricted spaces, adds surveillance imagery to amp the disquiet and routinely folds in shots of both outer space and of the orbiting station. This reminds you of the setting’s exoticism and complements the slow-boiling sense of peril, including the obvious unease building in the characters’ head space. (The cosmic imagery also reminds you of how routine persuasive digital special effects are now.) Even so, despite the far-out milieu, the unfolding drama could have easily been set in a submarine — or any other constrained place in which characters have been assembled to prove the best and worst about humanity.DeBose, who’s best known for her powerhouse turn as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” makes a convincing narrative axis. The performer’s warmth and charisma nicely offset Kira’s guardedness and outsider status, and that combination makes the character seem more complicated than the bit of back story she’s been given. It’s clear from the get go, from all the close-ups and hovering camerawork, that Kira is the hero of this adventure. In the end, the biggest mystery here is precisely what type of space warrior — a Sigourney Weaver in “Alien” or a Sandra Bullock in “Gravity” — she must become in order to get the job done.I.S.S.Rated R for violence. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Our Friend’ Review: Lean on Me

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Our Friend’ Review: Lean on MeJason Segel is the ballast that keeps this soggy drama from sinking completely.Jason Segel and Dakota Johnson in “Our Friend.”Credit…Claire Folger/Gravitas VenturesJan. 21, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETOur FriendDirected by Gabriela CowperthwaiteDramaR2h 4mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.As with any bad movie emerging from someone’s real-life tragedy, “Our Friend” is almost more painful to critique than to watch. Based on Matthew Teague’s raw 2015 article detailing the decline of his wife, Nicole, from ovarian cancer, this drippy drama presents precisely the kind of prettified portrait of death that Teague’s candid writing sought to rebut.Packing roughly 14 years into a ruinously nonlinear timeline, the director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (whose nonfiction skills would seem perfectly suited to this material) strains to pin down emotions that reconstitute with almost every scene. Watching Matt and Nicole (Casey Affleck and a charming Dakota Johnson) process Nicole’s 2012 diagnosis, argue in 2008 over Matt’s job as a war correspondent and deal with an infidelity in 2011, the movie’s splintered chronology keeps us at arm’s length. As a consequence, Nicole’s suffering — she’s bedridden one minute, brightly playing charades the next — is drained of the force to wound us.[embedded content]The only constant is Dane (a perfectly steadfast Jason Segel), the friend of the title and the family’s glue. Counselor, housekeeper, babysitter to the couple’s two small daughters — he’s indispensable and unfathomable, moving in to help and staying more than a year. His selflessness is as astonishing as Matt and Nicole’s casual acceptance of it, his motivations a mystery perhaps only the audience cares to solve.It’s not the only puzzle in Brad Ingelsby’s frustratingly vague script, like why is Nicole’s family — who supposedly prompted the couple’s move from Louisiana to Alabama — not more involved? And how could an article that grappled openly with the horrors of terminal illness grow into a Lifetime-ready weepie like this?Our FriendRated R for distressing language. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      When Some Critics Reject the Film That’s About Your Life

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhen Some Critics Reject the Film That’s About Your LifeAfter Hollywood optioned his devastating essay about his dying wife, Matthew Teague vowed the movie would do right by her. The reviews landed like a gut punch.Matthew Teague in Fairhope, Ala.: “I wanted my wife’s legacy and memory to be one of enormous respect.”Credit…Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesJan. 20, 2021Matthew Teague is a journalist who’s traveled to remote corners of the world for stories. He covered C.I.A. operatives in Pakistan, famine in Somalia, double agents in Northern Ireland. But his greatest work may be the essay he wrote in 2015 for Esquire magazine, titled “The Friend.” Teague dedicated some 6,000 words to the arduous two years he spent caring for his wife, Nicole, who learned she had terminal cancer at age 34.The essay told the story of her deterioration and death through the prism of their friendship with Dane Faucheux, a rudderless soul who came to visit the Teague family for Thanksgiving and ended up staying for two years to care for the couple and their two young daughters. Besides winning a National Magazine Award, the essay connected Teague to readers in ways his dramatic reporting from Afghanistan or Sri Lanka never did. They shared their own painful stories with such overwhelming force he was often “struck dumb” by the response. To this day, he receives impassioned, heartbreaking letters.Hollywood, too, quickly came calling.And Teague, now 44, knew the drill. Two of his previous pieces were optioned by various producers, but no movies were ever made. He vowed things would be different this time.What he didn’t account for was just how cruel Hollywood can be when a movie does come together, an experience he is still coming to terms with.First he tried his hand at writing the screenplay himself. When that didn’t work (“I realized I’m too close to this,” he said) he signed on as an executive producer and worked closely with the writer Brad Ingelsby (“The Way Back”) to craft a film that both depicted the realities of death and celebrated the life that came before.Soon a cadre of well-known actors (Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, Jason Segel) descended on Fairhope, Ala., to portray the Teagues and Faucheux. Gabriela Cowperthwaite directed the actors in scenes shot in the hospital where Nicole was treated and in a home just three doors down from the Teague residence. (The family still lives in the same house. Teague has remarried and now also has a 3-month-old son named Wilder.)Dakota Johnson and Casey Affleck as the Teagues in “Our Friend.”Credit…Claire Folger/Gravitas VenturesToggling between past and present, the script jumps headfirst into both the nastiness of cancer and the banalities of married life, presenting a portrait of a family that is both completely recognizable and terrifyingly unique. Young women are not supposed to die of cancer in their home while their small children are in the next room.But fueled both by the profound reaction to his essay and by his career as a journalist, Teague was wedded to authenticity.“The gist of it is I wanted my wife’s legacy and memory to be one of enormous respect. I didn’t want to mishandle it,” he said. “And I have a mission to tell the truth about that time and everything that came from it.”There are parts of Teague’s original essay that made it directly onto the screen: the doctor’s words when he revealed Nicole’s diagnosis (“It’s everywhere. Like somebody dipped a paintbrush in cancer and flicked it around her abdomen”), the friendship between Teague and Faucheux, and Nicole’s dying wishes (jumping in a downtown fountain with all her family and friends, becoming the grand marshal in her town’s Mardi Gras parade). “What her life lacked in length, it made up for in height,” Teague wrote in Esquire.The more visceral parts that, in part, made the essay so memorable were omitted: specifically Teague’s role in the grotesque art of wound-packing and the physical horrors that accompanied it.“There are things that I can write about in print, and people can absorb and find to be honest,” he said. “Yet, if you see it onscreen, people are going to throw up their popcorn and run from the theater.”Yet, despite his carefully calibrated work, success in Hollywood is never a guarantee.The 2019 Toronto Film Festival accepted the film and gave it a coveted opening-weekend slot.Seated inside the Princess of Wales Theater, Teague was a flurry of nerves, held together only by sheer will and the help of a friend and fellow journalist, Tom Junod, who was also the subject of a Hollywood movie, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” about his unlikely relationship with Fred Rogers.“It surprised me how emotional I felt watching it,” Teague recalled. “But what really took me aback was how emotional the audience was. There were a lot of people feeling a lot of things. So I felt like I had done right by Nicole.”The actress Kristen Stewart was seated behind him, and hearing her sniffle was additional affirmation everything was going to be OK. There were audible sobs from the audience, a standing ovation and a trip to the stage, where the cast answered an earnest flurry of questions. “There was nothing but love from that audience,” Teague said.Johnson, Violet McGraw and Jason Segel as the Teagues’ friend, Dane Faucheux.Credit…Claire Folger/Gravitas VenturesBut when he returned to his hotel room later that night, early reviews from the trade publications landed like a gut punch. The Hollywood Reporter called it “out of touch with the very emotions it desperately tries to evoke.” Variety took issue with turning his “devastating essay” into an “inspirational group hug.” In that review, the critic Peter Debruge commended the actors’ performances but wrote, “So much of the unpleasantness has been scrubbed from the picture, until what remains is precisely the kind of dishonest, sanitized no-help-to-anyone TV-movie version of death that inspired Teague to set the record straight in the first place.”Today Teague still bristles at this criticism. Despite spending years in newsrooms and understanding the role of critics, this particular critique rings as unfair.“I had just come from a room full of people who had never read the essay, didn’t know anything about the essay and just took the movie on its own terms and found it to be very moving,” he said. “So to have my own story used to beat up my own story was really painful.”Cowperthwaite felt the wrath too, saying the early reviews “just took the wind out of me.” But the director, who has made four films including the BAFTA-nominated documentary “Blackfish,” has had more experience handling criticism. “It’s just one of the suck-it-up truths behind our industry,” she said. “It never doesn’t hurt, but I think the longer you are in this creative world you learn to metabolize the pain more quickly.”For Teague, the critiques felt unfair, but more important he was worried about the effect they would have on the fate of the film. Movies like “The Friend” enter festivals with the hopes of securing a hefty distribution deal, and the early trade reviews carry outsize import when studios and streamers are determining what to buy. Would the film find a home with initial critical response so tepid?“I was in a panic because I didn’t know what was going to happen to this thing that is so precious to me,” Teague said. “Are we sunk? Are people going to get a chance to see it?”Reviews did improve. In Vanity Fair, Katey Rich wrote that the film “finds a more thoughtful way through the sort of story that often feels rote onscreen, regardless of how devastating it can be in real life.” Its Rotten Tomatoes score is now hovering around 80 percent fresh. And the producer-financier Teddy Schwarzman said the film left the festival with four offers, though an official deal wasn’t announced until January.Delayed because of the pandemic, the film, now titled “Our Friend,” will now debut Friday in theaters and on demand.Teague is using the experience as a growth opportunity in his career as a journalist. “The glare of public criticism has helped me be more aware of how frightening and helpless a story subject can feel,” he said in a follow-up email. “It’s easy to forget that, even for a writer who prizes empathy. Sometimes even a brief story — or a hastily written review — can break someone’s heart for a long, long time.”Yet, he hasn’t given up on Hollywood, either. The writer recently returned to the screenwriting game and adapted his 2003 GQ article about the over-the-top war games in North Carolina into a mini-series called “Pineland” that is now being shopped around.“It’s not a gentle industry,” he said. “But it has nothing on journalism — my first love — for hard knocks.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More