Weekend Watch: The Old Guard & Palm Springs
Some recommendations from this weekend's viewing choices
Welcome to the first edition of Weekend Watch! For this entry of the newsletter, I will be checking out TV series and movies to see (at home for now, but, when cinemas re-open, on the big screen) and reviewing them.
The Old Guard represents Netflix’s latest attempt to conquer a genre, and bolster its reputation as a provider of big-budget cinematic entertainment, albeit on phones, tablets and TVs. In this case, it’s a different take on superhero mythology, adapting Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez’ graphic novel series. Gina Prince-Bythewood is in the director’s chair here, with Rucka himself adapting the screenplay. Charlize Theron stars as Andromache of Scythia (you can call her Andy), who has been a warrior for longer than some civilizations have been around. Together with a group of comrades who are all blessed – or, as some see it – cursed with an inability to die. Sure, they can be badly injured, but they always come back. Andy, alongside Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), works as a mercenary, providing their skilled fighting services to anyone who can afford them. Yet they tend to focus on rescuing people, and, as we later learn, Andy has been affecting the world for the better most of her life, even if she mostly does it through being very good at beating people up/shooting them/attacking them with a big battle axe.
Though they’ve been in the world for centuries, they tend to want to stay off the radar – the trouble with living a long time means that people become suspicious of them, or too interested in them for the wrong reasons. Which is exactly what happens just as they discover a new immortal (Kiki Layne’s Nile Freeman, a US Marine who survives a seemingly lethal encounter in Afghanistan). The boss of a big pharmaceutical company discovers their secret and thinks they could hold the key to a whole new market in anti-ageing and other drugs. Cue trouble for our heroes as they become the targets for once…
Despite its deep background of source material to draw from, there is only so much you can squeeze into a movie, even given a two-hour-plus running time. And there are certainly moments where it all comes across as a set up for more films, an attempt to launch a franchise on a venue that hasn’t become known for that – see the fact that a follow-up to Bright remains in limbo. And there’s something a little less satisfying about a story that feels like the prequel to something else that might offer more fun. The characters, too, don’t really have the breathing room they might, sketched quickly with one or two nice touches (Kenzari and Marinelli’s characters, for example, met during the Crusades, on opposing sides, and have fallen deeply in love with each other).
Theron always brings her A-game, and while she might not have quite as much to chew on as Andy, she works with what she’s given and she proves she’s still got the touch when it comes to action. Similarly, Layne is the audience surrogate, allowing Theron and the others to info dump about their long-lived existence and push the plot along. The supporting cast fares less well; Chiwetel Ejiofor has a couple of solid scenes and Harry Melling (yes! Harry Potter’s Dudley Dursley) chews the décor as scheming CEO Merrick, resulting in more of a pouting teenager than a real threat, who hides behind disposable security guards.
Prince-Bythewood, however, deserves a lot of credit for diving into the sort of movie that boasts more action than anything on her cine-CV (though she’s been developing a Marvel movie for Sony and has been putting in the work on the small screen, directing series such as Cloak & Dagger and co-creating police drama Shots Fired). With The Old Guard, she proves she can marshal action, and carve out moments of reflection among the carnage, but the result often ends up feeling generic.
This will certainly fill a gap for those after some decent action, and a film in this particular genre that actually has its female characters to the forefront. It’s just a shame that it feels less like a contained story and more like the opening act of something bigger. And if the MCU (plus those who have tried to replicate its success), the first rule of superhero fight club is that you truly have to earn that out of the gate.
The Old Guard is on Netflix now.
I debated for a while about how to cover Palm Springs, which presents a challenge to those who are trying to recommend it. Not because it’s not good – it’s great, in fact, but because this is a film that demands you see it without knowing too much about it.
Which means I’m going to hold off on saying too much without offering a huge SPOILER WARNING here. I’d advise seeing the film – you won’t regret it – before continuing onwards.
On the surface, Palm Springs is your average rom-com. Andy Samberg’s Nyles meets Cristin Milioti’s Sarah at a wedding in the titular California desert community. It’s her younger sister’s nuptials and he’s dating the bride’s best friend. Neither seems like they particularly care to attend, and both are dealing with that in self-destructive ways. So far, so standard indie comedy. Yet you soon discover that there’s much more going on here – that this is actually a riff on the sort of time-loop hi-jinx that Groundhog Day perfected back in 1993. But, as with horror-comedy Happy Death Day, Palm Springs writer Andy Siara and director Max Barbakow are not content to simply coast on the concept. Instead, their film becomes a meditation on existence and loneliness, on nihilism vs. positivity. As the layers are peeled back – there’s a reason Samberg’s character is called “Nyles” given his depressed worldview having been stuck in the same day for seemingly years – the heart starts to beat.
Samberg is on good, goofy form (at least until he allows more serious moods to creep in, handling that with aplomb), but it’s Milioti who really makes the movie work, shading Sarah by using all of her impressive acting talents to keep it all grounded. Credit to the filmmakers also: for all its initial silliness, the film doesn’t skimp when it comes to more emotional moments. Plus there’s bonus lunacy from JK Simmons, but even his character is allowed a little depth later in the story.
It’s probably best not to peer too deeply into the logic, though it mostly holds up, and this is an impressive balancing act, laugh-out-loud funny at times, while making you care about both main characters’ fates and how they grow as people.
Sold for $17.5 million (and – fnarr – 69 cents) out of Sundance to become the most expensive purchase in the festival’s history, Palm Springs is currently showing on Hulu and at select drive-ins (you can find locations and buy tickets here) in the US and I will update the details once I learn when it’ll be in the UK. It’ll be worth it.