‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ Is A Total Waste Of Time

Independence Day: Resurgence

Independence Day: Resurgence is a big, dumb, ridiculous disaster movie whose 2.5 stars’ worth of quality can be viewed as glass half-empty or glass half-full. Were you to concentrate on the inessential nature of its existence —literally no one was demanding this 20-years-on sequel— and the sloppiness of its writing, then this film is of lamentable quality. But were you to revel in its idiocy, its levity, its sense of half-the-population-of-the-world-is-murdered-but-carry-on merriment, then Resurgence can almost be recommended. It’s a crappy film, but what a crappy film!

Here, just as humanity is celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the events of the orig —coincidence alert— the aliens return! Humanity has spent two decades employing alien technology to create laser guns, warp-speed space-travel, and a moon colony, but this time the symbolic vessel-of-female-evil hurtling towards Earth is bigger and badder than before. Will mankind survive? Well, yeah, obviously. You saw the first one, right?

Once more, there’s planetary catastrophe, sciencey-sounding hypothesising, and gung-ho fighter-pilots sent on a “hail mary” at-the-ticking-clock-countdown-buzzer mission, with the fate of humanity in the balance. It’s essentially the same film all over again; characters openly say things like “back in ’96” and “maybe it could work again”. Instead of Will Smith punching an alien, Liam Hemsworth pisses on their ship and waves the bird. So, essentially the same film, just stupider.

And, therein, lies its charm. Or, at least, what charm Resurgence does have. There’s evidence that many involved are aware of the cinematic quality at play. “They always hit the landmarks,” Jeff Goldblum remarks, delivering his every expository line with wry pisstakery; with the same sense of satirical delight he brought to that Inside Amy Schumer 12 Angry Men remake. Charlotte Gainsbourg is just as good: her natural awkwardness and mannered delivery making her perfect for clumsily speaking action out aloud, for making the gasped horrors of extinction-level events sound like mildly-delightful tea-party banter.

There’s a whole bunch of dull handwringing between a boring Aryan power-couple (Hemsworth and Maika Monroe) in a long-distance relationship, and Travis Tope as nerdy-BFFz trope lusting after a barely-written top-gun pilot played by Chinese starlet Angelababy. But there’s also old —and, like, old— characters returning wackier than ever: Brent Spiner and John Storey as old queer scientists who even get to (gasp) hold hands for a moment; Judd Hirsch a garrulous Jewish-dad stereotype who actually says “whaaaaat, the world has to end for me to get to spend time with my son!”; and Bill Pullman as the ol’-Pres from the first film who’s been made hearing-voices crazy by his last-time-around alien contact.

Pullman shows his craziness by being unkempt and unshaven, and my favourite moment of the film —I literally yelped with delight when this happens— is when he shows up for a final kamikaze mission all cleaned up; meaning, with 10 minutes left until planetary annihilation, he stopped for a shave and a haircut. There’s also some rag-tag orphans, an African warlord who murders aliens with knives, Jessie Usher as an angry black man, and a space-defence program which seems to be dictated by nepotism; everyone involved the kids of important people.

Such a space-defence program is a US-Chinese co-production, which, well, isn’t even symbolism. The naked capitalism on display in Resurgence is somewhere between galling and audacious. It’s a work of cynical sequelisation that openly acknowledges its own lack of artistry and ambition. In the wake of the glowering Batman v Superman, something this abhorrently cheesy has a kind of charm. Like, it’s a total waste of time, but that’s only a problem if you don’t have time to waste.

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!

If a baseball film demands a baseball metaphors, then Everybody Wants Some!! should be a home-run. It finds Richard Linklater making a spiritual sequel to his iconic last-day-of-school retro-’70s classic Dazed & Confused; a film that introduced the world to such self-evident truths as Matthew McConaughey being a vessel of pure cinematic charm, and Ben Affleck being a dick. Where Dazed was set at the end of high-school, Everybody Wants Some!! is set at the beginning of college: in those days when students have arrived, but classes haven’t yet begun; those days —that daze— of parties, bonding, and initiation rites. This is, of course, where his beloved Boyhood just left off; and Linklater has based the film, in part, on his own experiences, meaning this vision of Texas in 1980 will have time-capsule details and the melancholy of nostalgia. Linklater should knock this right out of the park, no?

Except, for the first half of Everybody Wants Some!!, you’re stuck in the company of moustachioed, macho blowhards bustin’ balls and chasing tail; this yet another film about a crew of dudes looking to get laid any which way. Put a positive spin on it, and it’s, perhaps, a portrait of outdated machismo; a time capsule from a back-in-the-day when bros had to drive around yelling pick-up lines at girls from the passenger side of their best friends’ ride, not just via Tinder. With the women reduced to sexual-conquest status, it’s a little too accurate, too icky, in its depiction of dated social-mores, making you wonder if this return to the diamond will make Everybody Wants Some!! Linklater’s biggest swing-and-a-miss since his 2005 Bad News Bears remake.

Except, then two things happen: first, these baseballers actually play baseball; Linklater gazing on at the rituals of practice —the blue sky set against the green grass, the players both individuals competing against each other and a collective working together— with an unironic poetry that, in contrast to the rote keg-party hijinks, feels sublime. And then there’s the arrival of an actual female character, Zoey Deutch playing the legit love interest of white-teeth’d lead Blake Jenner. When they start to hang out, flirt, and talk, it’s Linklater doing what he does best: boy meeting girl, conversation flowing, ideas floated, the future opening up with possibility. Were this some other filmmaker, you’d be shocked that a bawdy college bro-com turned existential-conversation-piece midway through. But with Linklater, with Everybody Wants Some!!, it only feels overdue, and a little too late; the possibilities left hanging in the air more interesting than the opening hour’s dick jokes.

MUSTANG

In a tiny Turkish village on the Black Sea, on the last day of school, five adolescent sisters pile into the sea in their school uniforms, playing and wrestling amongst themselves, and with boys! Such an unfettered display of youthful joie de vivre —and nascent female sexuality— incites a moral panic amongst the local yokels; and soon the girls are locked up in their family home, dressed in sensible brown sacks, their flowing tresses (this is the #1 great-hair movie of the year) tied up and covered over. They’re set to be trained in the arts of womanly subservience by their grandmother, then married off, one by one.

There’s a lot to like about Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut film —the echoes of The Virgin Suicides, the handsome photography, the wailing Warren Ellis score, the righteous feminist spirit— but, sadly, the film also submits to screenwriting of moral simplicity and emotional manipulation.

It’s a sledgehammer-subtle parable on the rights of women in Turkey; a once-progressive country being dragged backwards by a rise in Islamic conservatism. Just in case you missed the symbolism of the family-home as a prison for women, their evil uncle literally puts bars on the windows and locks on the doors. Just in case you missed that their evil uncle is evil, it turns out he’s not just an old scold, but an incesty rapist. And, just in case you were started to feel defeated by all his patriarchal oppression, there’s an inspirational-jailbreak finale that feels, stylistically, like it’s summoning an ’80s action movie. In the face of an unstoppable tide of feelgood, evil uncle is left only to fist-shake in the escapees’ wake; Ergüven’s film feeling, ultimately, as much like fantasy-fulfilment as socio-political stand.

THE WAIT

When The Wait begins, Lou de Laâge shows up at an imposing Sicilian mansion, where she’s been —or so she says— invited to stay over the Easter weekend by her boyfriend. Only, she arrives in the middle of a wake. Despite evidence that matriarch Juliette Binoche and various servants are in mourning for her boyfriend himself, Binoche insists that her son is actually coming, and the young girl need only wait. If you’re the kind of logically-minded viewer who will grow apoplectic that de Laâge doesn’t simply just say “um, Giuseppe isn’t answering his phone; he’s not, y’know, dead is he?” and save us all a bunch of time, then The Wait isn’t for you.

But if you’re a fun of elliptical narrative, sustained mood, and straight-up art cinema, then The Wait is a pure delight. Piero Messina is making his debut, but having served as AD on Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be The Place and The Great Beauty has clearly served him well. His film is a catalogue of incredibly beautiful images: Messina showing an eye for composition, the contrast of light and shade, and the glory of underwater photography; gazing on both his lead actors and the food they prepare with a sense of rapture. There’s little meaningful dialogue, but Binoche —at once warm-hearted and menacing— is magnetic; and the abundant Catholic iconography puts grief in a greater cultural context. Here, you get the sense that Binoche isn’t waiting for her son’s arrival, but his resurrection.