A film that truly merits being experienced on the big screen, Annihilation begins with a fairly straightforward setup. Lena, played by Natalie Portman, is a former soldier who's now a biologist teaching at Johns Hopkins University, and her husband, Kane, played by Oscar Isaac, whom she met while serving in the military, has been missing for the past year. What Lena doesn't know, however, is that Kane was part of an expedition sent in to investigate an incident at Blackwater National Park, the site of an asteroid impact three years earlier, resulting in an anomaly that has been swallowing up the surrounding land.
When Kane mysteriously reappears, Lena's first reaction is that she can now breathe a sigh of relief. Little does she realise that it's only the beginning of a larger mystery. And when her husband's health takes a sudden and rapid turn for the worse, Lena is brought to Area X, where she meets psychologist Dr. Ventress, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, and the all-female team of scientists, Josie (Tess Thompson), Anya (Gina Rodriguez) and Cass (Tuva Novotny), who are set to enter the anomaly — dubbed "the Shimmer" — next. Hoping to help her husband, Lena volunteers to go in with them, and that is where Annihilation really takes on a life of its own.
Told from Lena's perspective through a flashback structure that sees her recounting her ordeal to a group of men in hazmat suits, the story follows the five women as they enter the Shimmer, tasked with making their way to the lighthouse where the asteroid first struck. Of course, it doesn't take long for their mission to go awry. And as they begin experiencing strange phenomena like memory gaps and encountering lifeforms that cannot be explained by science, it soon dawns on them that the fate that befell the previous expeditions could very well befall them too.
To reveal anything more about the movie's plot would be to spoil the creepy surprises and reality-altering revelations that Garland has planned for viewers along the way. Just know that you really haven't seen anything like this film. From its body horror set-pieces that will make you squirm in your seat to its fantastical imagery, there are many ways that Annihilation carves a niche for itself. And even though its thoroughly bizarre and mesmerizing climax relies too much on questionable CGI for its own good, you won't be able to look away for a second.
Some might be quick to judge this movie as "feminist sci-fi." But if that implies that the film has some kind of agenda, or that it can't be enjoyed by men and women, then that couldn't be further from the truth. What Annihilation is, however, is smart sci-fi filmmaking that's equal parts thrilling and introspective, the likes of which challenges the status quo. And in a time when distribution deals are being decided based on potential box office receipts, it's exactly the type of movie we need more of right now.
Whether he's scaling the Burj Khalifa or hanging from the outside of an Airbus 400, Tom Cruise is no stranger to danger. However, for his latest role, Cruise plays a man whose real-life exploits were just as daring as any stunt he himself ever committed to film.
In American Made, Cruise re-teams with Bourne Identity director Doug Liman to play Barry Seal, a talented airline pilot whose career path takes a sudden and dramatic turn, when a CIA operative by the name of Schafer, played by Domhnall Gleeson, approaches him in an airport bar one night in 1978. Noting Barry's penchant for smuggling Cuban cigars, Schafer makes Barry an offer he can't refuse, handing him his very own aviation operation in exchange for his services flying reconnaissance missions over Central America.
As the 1980s roll around, we watch as the nature of Barry's assignments for Schafer becomes much more hands-on, and he goes from merely flying over hostile territory to being the CIA's man on the ground, routinely delivering under-the-counter payments to General Manuel Noriega in exchange for valuable intel, and smuggling Contra fighters into the States for combat training. But it's the allegiances Barry forges along the way — when Uncle Sam isn't looking — that prove the most lucrative, especially the fast friends he makes with Pablo Escobar and the founding members of the Medellin drug cartel, helping them to ferry kilo upon kilo of their product into the U.S.
Needless to say, it all has to catch up with Barry at some point. But much to his surprise — not to mention the chagrin of the numerous State and Federal law enforcement agencies pursuing him — it takes eight long years for that to happen. In the meantime, Barry is allowed to essentially grow his operation unabated, eventually adding a small fleet of planes and a small crew of hand-picked, trusted pilots, and continuing to rake in bag after bag bursting at the seams with cold, hard cash — more than enough to keep his beautiful and supportive wife, Lucy, played by Sarah Wright Olsen, and their three young children living comfortably.
It all adds up to Cruise at his charismatic best, and even though the script by screenwriter Gary Spinelli can seem a bit scattershot at times — feeling more like a series of loosely related vignettes rather than a tightly woven narrative — Cruise is always on-point, bringing his multimillion-dollar smile, cooler-than-cool aviator sunglasses and trademark persona to the proceedings. Much like how Barry refers to himself in several scenes as "the guy who delivers," so too can the same be said of Cruise, who consistently delivers a likeable and winning performance as a man equally flummoxed by his own successes as the people around him.
With its light-on-its-feet mix of espionage, humor and action, the result is one part biopic and one part geopolitical history lesson, all wrapped up in a retro aesthetic that utilizes archive news footage, a period-appropriate soundtrack and VHS-quality home video confessionals to tie everything together. Is it a fair assumption to state that American Made substantially fictionalizes the real-life Seal's story, retrofitting it to suit Cruise's strengths as one of Hollywood's longest-running and most bankable actors? Probably so. But if the ultimate goal was to make a starring vehicle for Cruise to shine in, then consider it mission accomplished.
