Gonzalez, Eiza (1990- )

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    ‘Ash’ Review: Deep-Space Horrors

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    In this sleek film by Flying Lotus, Eiza González plays a marooned explorer haunted by the killing of her crew mates.The high-concept sci-fi horror film “Ash,” a hazy story about an amnesiac deep-space explorer who awakens to discover her entire crew was killed, is light on answers but heavy on style.The movie begins with a staggered Riya (Eiza González) surveying the mutilated bodies on the cold minimalist floors and walls of her interstellar outpost. There is an unexplainable gash on her forehead and a robotic system alerting her to abnormal activity happening around her. She and her crew members arrived on this distant planet — a craggy world curtained by cobalt-blue shadows and white embers — in search of a potential new home for mankind, but found something far more sinister. If only she could remember what happened.Though not as adventurous, “Ash,” from the musician-turned-director Steven Ellison, known as Flying Lotus, conjures comparisons to “Alien” and “Mission to Mars.” Its futuristic science: a terraforming planet, celestial alignment, parasitic beings — is equally wonky. Because the fractal script doesn’t aim to provide explanations, this film can be confusing. But that incomprehensibility is part of its aesthetically alluring package.By applying psychedelic medical patches to her neck, Riya is able to channel gruesome memories in loud drips and booming drops, releasing a wave of scratchy, blurred frames recalling melted faces and stomach-churning scenes set to Flying Lotus’s brooding score. When another voyager (Aaron Paul) arrives, this incites further questions whose revelations inspire a grisly third act freak-out; the mesmerizing barrage of gore makes for a memorable display.AshRated R for bloody violence, gore and language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Television

      How ‘3 Body Problem’ Created a Spectacular Disaster, With Strings Attached

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      Technical artists used a combination of digital and practical effects to slice an oil tanker into pieces in the fifth episode. Here’s how they did it.It begins slowly, almost soundlessly. As an oil tanker glides through the Panama Canal, the flow of a hose slows to a trickle. The hose has been sliced in two. Then the man holding the hose falls apart, his body severed at the knees and waist. Strands of nanofibers, each a hundredth the thickness of a human hair and strung across the canal at its narrowest point, knife through the ship, cutting smoothly through walls, through pipes, through flesh and bone. The sundered ship fans out like a deck of cards then collapses, smoldering. Every soul onboard — a thousand people, many of them children — has been killed.This harrowing sequence occurs in the fifth episode of the first season of “3 Body Problem,” the new Netflix adaptation of a popular science-fiction trilogy by the Chinese author Liu Cixin. Occurring in the first book, it lasts just a few pages and as a plot driver, it is minor. (The ship is destroyed to obtain a hard drive containing messages from an alien race.) But onscreen, as a marvel of televisual imagination and an example of a seamless integration of practical and computer-generated effects, the scene is unforgettable.“It’s basically an egg slicer going through this big tanker,” Stefen Fangmeier, a supervisor of visual effects, said. “You’ve never seen anything like that.”In the episode, nanomaterials created by Auggie Salazar (played by Eiza González as perhaps the world’s most beautiful materials physicist) are employed to deadly effect. To understand how the science might work, the series creators — David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo — consulted Matt Kenzie, a physics professor at the University of Cambridge whose father had worked with Benioff and Weiss on “Game of Thrones.”Together they imagined how nanomaterials that don’t yet exist — or exist only in minute quantities in carefully controlled lab conditions — could be deployed. The goal wasn’t necessarily realism — “It’s a science-fiction show, so in some cases the fiction has to take precedence,” Kenzie said — but a sense of plausibility given current technology.“You try not to veer into things that just look wrong or cannot be possible,” Kenzie said.The opening moments of the sequence depict the nanofibers slicing through first a hose and then the man using it.NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘I Care a Lot’ Review: The Art of the Steal

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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 storyCritic’s Pick‘I Care a Lot’ Review: The Art of the StealNasty people do terrible things in this wildly entertaining Netflix caper about guardianship fraud.Rosamund Pike in “I Care a Lot.”Credit…Seacia Pavao/NetfilxFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETI Care a LotNYT Critic’s PickDirected by J BlakesonComedy, Crime, ThrillerR1h 58mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Bookended by towering stilettos and a guillotine-blade bob, Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) strides through “I Care a Lot” with the icy confidence of the inveterate fraud. Her racket is guardianship: identifying powerless retirees, having them falsely declared mentally incompetent and herself appointed their legal conservator.A network of enablers — including an unscrupulous doctor and an oblivious judge — grease the grift as Marla and her personal and business partner (Eiza González) happen upon Jennifer (Dianne Wiest). With a healthy nest egg and no apparent relatives, Jennifer is a “cherry”; and one chilling, all-too-believable sequence later, she has been secured in an assisted-living facility and her considerable assets liquidated. Marla, however, is about to discover she has messed with the wrong old lady.[embedded content]An unexpectedly gripping thriller that seesaws between comedy and horror, “I Care a Lot” is cleverly written (by the director, J Blakeson) and wonderfully cast. Marla is an almost cartoonish sociopath, and Pike leans into her villainy with unwavering bravado. And Wiest is sly perfection: Watch as Jennifer, drugged and smirking, spits an unprintable curse at her tormentor before putting her in a headlock. But it’s the introduction of an inscrutable Russian gangster (Peter Dinklage, all cool intelligence and wounded-puppy eyes) that gives Marla a worthy foil and the plot a reason to climax.With its ice-pick dialogue and gleefully ironic title, “I Care a Lot” is a slick, savage caper with roots in a real-world scam (as an episode of the Netflix series “Dirty Money” recounts). An overlong, somewhat mushy middle section made me fear Blakeson was losing his nerve. I was wrong.I Care a LotRated R for killing, cursing and elder abuse. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More