XXX Factor

After a multitude of lackluster features, M. Night Shyamalan has returned to form with his most recent, more independent style foray, 2016's Split – a horror/thriller with an unexpected. . . or should I say, an expected twist (could it be that there is no real twist?). Featuring a tour de force performance from James McAvoy, the talented actor takes on the role of a plethora of very different personas, as his character has more than twenty split personalities. Ranging from a lisping young boy and grand British dame, to a fashion designer and Christopher Walken-like New Yorker, one of his splits, Dennis, kidnaps three teenaged girls, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), Marcia (Jessica Sula), and Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) from a public parking lot. Claire and Marcia are, for all intents and purposes, the popular girls in school – the type of gals that most cling to and the rest hate, while Casey is a lone wolf and outsider, her unusual ways forcing her to the periphery of the mainstream.

A perfect case of ‘just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in’, John Wick: Chapter 2 starts off soon after the original feature. Starting with a video of Buster Keaton projected onto a New York City wall, Wick (Keanu Reeves) is like one of those silent film stars of the 1920s – though much more violent. A man of few words, he bumps, crashes and bangs his way through foes, a wandering ‘tramp’ with no true home, albeit, wealthier, better dressed and much more connected. Keaton, nicknamed "The Great Stone Face" has the same stoic demeanor as our protagonist – who, for the most part, plays things close to the vest.

We like to think of things in our lives as fitting into a nice square box. Everything has an order, with the structured days of the week to our routines fitting into this comforting perspective. We do not want to think of life as being random, chaotic and lacking a straightforward linear form – as it reminds us that things are not truly in our control. It is this linear way of thinking that is questioned in the 2016 cerebral science fiction film Arrival. Eric Heisserer adapts the text "The Story of Your Life" (written by Ted Chiang), placing it in the hands of talented French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve. Having a twofold narrative, the main portion follows the landing of twelve spacecrafts in random places around the world. With people beginning to panic and riot (as no indication has been made, either peaceful or otherwise), the government attempts to make some sense out of the unorthodox and exceptional arrival. Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) reaches out to linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a woman with immense knowledge of numerous dialects and written languages (and military clearance to boot). She leads a team along with physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), the Colonel, and several other military men who will record the data after they enter the hull of the dark, kidney-shaped foreign craft located in Montana.

The title of Hidden Figures, one of 2017's Academy Award Best Picture nominees, has a double meaning. Speaking to the mathematics that is at the heart of the space travel film, it more subtly references the story of its three African American female leads, who, despite playing a big part in Space Race history, have been lost to time. . . until now. Depicting the combative duality of the Cold War, writer/director Theodore Melfi (who adapts Margot Lee Shetterly’s book of the same name, along with Allison Schroeder) captures the essence of this complicated time. On the surface, it is America versus Soviet Union – funnelled through the propaganda-filled battle that centres around who will win the Space Race; though, more specifically, it portrays the civil rights battle, a world where, in 1961 Virginia, everything is still segregated. Written with deft precision, dialogue like "Civil Rights ain’t always civil", which is uttered by Levi Jackson (Aldis Hodge), succinctly represents this era; while a scene that appears towards the end, where mathematician Katherine G. Goble (Taraji P. Henson) hurriedly delivers some updated calculations for John Glenn’s (Glen Powell) all important mission – only to have the door slammed in her face after all of the white personnel have been ushered into the room, highlights the atrocities and unfairness of the era, while also showing how far we have come and how much farther we still have to go.

Upon first watching the visually arresting musical drama La La Land, I perhaps unusually thought about the excessive amount of traffic on the road. I surmised, macabrely, that the main characters of the film, who spend several scenes dancing on the streets of Los Angeles, would have likely been killed early on by a speeding car, making the whole motion picture a sort of life flashing before your dying eyes moment. My bizarre sense of humour aside, Damien Chazelle’s follow up to his 2014 drumming drama Whiplash is a mesmerizing story about following your dreams, reaching for the stars and fighting against the major hurtles along the way. Though, just because we chase said dreams, it does not mean that they are always attainable. At one point, our male lead, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), frustratingly complains of the Hollywood mindset: "they worship everything and value nothing".

The first stand-alone film in the Star Wars universe, Rogue One bridges the gap between episodes 3 (2005's Revenge of the Sith) and 4 (the original 1977 motion picture); it is also a movie that lives in the grey zone more than any other in the operatic space saga – depicting the complexity of the actions executed by the Rebel forces that are our protagonists. What we see is a complicated universe filled with spies, traitors and extremists – a place where no decision is an easy one. Our lead character, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), is a perfect example of this, for when she was young, her father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), a weapons developer, was forcibly taken by Imperial baddie Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) to finish work on the Death Star (the planet killer from A New Hope). This leaves the impressionable girl in the hands of a radical, ultra dangerous Rebel fighter by the name of Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who deserts her at the age of sixteen.