Movie Review Time

Star-studded cast and Oscar-winning director power dramatic A House of Dynamite

Rebecca Ferguson in A House of Dynamite.

Photo courtesy of Netflix

Director Kathryn Bigelow has had two distinct phases to her feature film career. From the early ‘80s to the early 2000s, she made movies for the masses like Near Dark, Point Break, and K-19: The Widowmaker. But that all changed with the 2008 release of the Iraq War film The Hurt Locker, for which she won the Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture. Every movie of hers since then has leaned hard into real-world drama, including the new A House of Dynamite.

Instead of trying to understand past events, this film imagines a scenario that is still frighteningly real: Nuclear war. As the story begins, it’s discovered that a missile has been fired in the direction of the United States from close to the east coast of Asia where China, Russia, and North Korea connect. The unattributed weapon is at first thought to be a test, but when it continues on a path toward the U.S., people at all different levels of the U.S. government try to figure out how to stop it and what to do if they can’t.

The same story is essentially told three different times, changing the perspective to different officials in multiple locations around the country. They include people at an Army missile defense base in Alaska, led by Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos); the White House Situation Room, led by Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson); a top brass video call featuring General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) and Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris); and, naturally, the President of the United States (Idris Elba).

Directed by Bigelow and written by Noah Oppenheim, the film is an extremely tense experience as it juggles the personal and professional lives of many different people. The sense of duty that each one of them feels in serving their country slowly turns inward as they understand that a major American city could be wiped off the map, an event that would almost certainly trigger World War III.

Bigelow and Oppenheim do a fantastic job of serving the bigger stars in the cast, as well as the supporting actors who may not be as well known. A normal film would be able to take more time to establish the various characters, but the intensity of the plot lends extra meaning to every moment, allowing the audience to connect with everyone more quickly. It’s not at all difficult to put yourself in the shoes of those in the film who desperately try to get in touch with loved ones as the threat becomes larger.

Telling the story three times from different perspectives not only allows the audience to understand who all is involved in such a world-changing event, but it also shines a light on the strengths and weaknesses of each department. How accurate the film is to what would happen in real life is debatable, but the film gives off an air of legitimacy in how it depicts the actions of the various players.

Given the structure of the film, there’s no one star, but each of the main actors does a fine job in bringing their characters to life. Ferguson, Letts, Harris, and Elba are the most compelling in their roles, but other people like Jason Clarke, Greta Lee, Malachi Beasley, and Jonah Hauer-King do a lot with their limited time on screen. The cast is so packed that someone like Kaitlyn Dever is given only one small, albeit impactful, scene.

The ending of the film is likely to be divisive, but it only serves to underscore the idea that no one can truly know how to handle an existential threat like nuclear war. The military and the government can simulate and prepare all they want, but it’s only when things go to hell that anyone can tell if they’re able to meet the moment.

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A House of Dynamite is now playing in select theaters. It debuts on Netflix on October 24.

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Movie Review

Spielberg-inspired movie The End of Oak Street is a dino-snore

Photo by Daniel McFadden

Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in The End of Oak Street.

Steven Spielberg is the iconic director of the last 50 years, so it’s no surprise that many other filmmakers have borrowed from his classic films. But most of the time those come in the form of references or homages, not straight up theft, which is what it feels like watching The End of Oak Street play out in front of your eyes.

Set in the early 1980s in an idyllic suburban neighborhood of an unnamed city, Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are parents to two teenagers, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). They’re also possibly heading toward divorce, as Audrey is secretly writing a novel with a thinly-veiled plot about their life, and Brian is cagey about having to earn extra money with a pizza delivery job.

That all gets put on the backburner when a mysterious event takes their entire neighborhood back to the time of dinosaurs. Armed with little more than a shotgun and sledgehammer, Audrey and Brian do their best to keep the family safe in their house. But the longer the ordeal goes on, circumstances force them out onto the streets and into the increasing danger that’s all around them.

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, the film tries immensely hard to be like the Spielberg movies its filmmaker clearly adores, but fails at almost every turn. It never earns the broken family in ‘80s suburbia vibes that were prevalent in E.T., going all in right away in the opening scene with a neighborhood block party that feels forced. Other elements like a bully who has it out for Brian, the family dog that disappears, and an angry neighbor come across as the tropes they are and not as organic parts of the plot.

When it finally gets to its dinosaur sequences, they pale in comparison to those found in Jurassic Park. The strange manner in which the dinosaurs appear is a big part of that, but the action involving them forgoes ominous moments that could build tension for those that play up gore in an unexpected way for a PG-13 movie. Many of the attacks have so little emotional meaning that they come off as comical, which is entertaining but in a hollow way.

As if those weren’t enough, Mitchell — perhaps at the behest of producer J.J. Abrams (who made his own Spielbergian film, Super 8) — tries to honor Spielberg in other ways. Just like in Jaws, he employs the use of a split diopter lens, which keeps characters in both the foreground and background in focus. But instead of using it judiciously, it’s brought out in three separate scenes, including a laughable one with the four family members where it turns into overkill.

Hathaway, coming off of a role in The Odyssey that could earn her an Oscar nomination, is the best part of this film. But even her evident skills are dragged down by the ridiculousness of the story, which requires hysterics that even she can’t sell. McGregor can normally be counted on for a good performance, but he gives several line readings with strange cadences that make his already-underwritten character come off worse. Stella and Convery are okay, but their roles are unmemorable overall.

Mitchell and his team can never settle on exactly what type of film they were trying to make, and so even though The End of Oak Street has a few moments that work, they’re surrounded by many others that don’t. In trying to emulate Spielberg — there’s even a blatant Back to the Future (produced by Spielberg) rip-off towards the end — all Mitchell has done is show how difficult it is to be the master.

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The End of Oak Street opens in theaters on August 14.