Leading up to the release of 28 Years Later, a movie that was poorly promoted and suffered a 70 percent drop at the box office in its second weekend, the only information that was really emphasized was that most, if not all, of the movie was shot with iPhones. Not exactly like Sean Baker’s Tangerine, which had half a dozen smartphones loaded up with some consumer grade software; this was 30 or 40 iPhones screwed in a semi-circle around this zombie, that zombie, that anonymous Brit, all of whom were about to be stabbed, spayed, eaten alive, or all three. Although the cast wasn’t promising—all unknowns except Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes, and not even a cameo from 28 Days Later star Cillian Murphy—Danny Boyle’s a fine director; well, he’s not bad, I certainly wouldn’t say that. I liked 28 Days Later, but I only saw it once, probably 20 years ago, and frankly, I liked Yesterday more than anything else he’s done. Trainspotting doesn’t do it for me.
Neither does 28 Years Later. Boyle’s aesthetic and taste in music not only suck, they’re stuck in the mid-1990s; he and Guy Ritchie should get together and co-direct a movie, you never know, the universe may implode. 28 Years Later is more schtick: hyper cutting, awful radio metal, and dialogue that’s barely decipherable, not because they’re British, but because Boyle thinks he’s shooting an episode of 120 Minutes for MTV. The movie opens with a room full of kids watching Teletubbies, only for all of them, and the lone adult, to be devoured by a massive and grotesque zombie. 28 Years Later has all the emotional depth of a Mountain Dew commercial, and its iPhone cinematography isn’t the future of moviemaking. Maybe in other hands; but Boyle doesn’t know (or can’t afford) to properly light his actors, and even when Ralph Fiennes shows up as an iodine covered medicine man (the zombies hate iodine), he can’t save the slog; the male lead isn’t an “unknown,” he’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson, an actor I’ve seen many times and never remember.
28 Years Later is no marvel, technical or otherwise; it looks just as cheap as the stuff Blumhouse produces, and I’m not sure there’s much of a “universe” to develop out of the relatively contained original. And there’s zero attempt to top, for example, Cillian Murphy running through an eerily empty London; there isn’t really an attempt at anything spectacular. The movie starts at full tilt, lets up, and gets back drilling at exactly the pace you expect. No surprises. Not exactly “revolutionary.”
I wasn’t planning on seeing Joseph Kosinski’s F1 (marketed as F1: The Movie), but last Friday, it was playing at just the right time, at the best theater in Baltimore, the Senator. Anything looks great there, especially in wide screen. Judging from the trailers, this $300 million behemoth at least looked and sounded like a real movie, a sad and scary rarity for Hollywood in the 2020s; that mostly means the actors are lit properly, but there’s also a sense here that this is what American movies of the 2020s should look like, not underexposed gray sludge; this is a link in our missing history. Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick didn’t look this nice, not even close, but for whatever reason, F1 gleams; the photography is so beautiful you not only forgive the movie for its completely predictable plot and character beats, you embrace it for those exact clichés: this is what Hollywood has done best for over a century.
Brad Pitt’s a far better movie star than Tom Cruise: the latter can’t do anything real or small anymore, his face is mostly plastic, and he’s chained to safe franchises like Top Gun and Mission: Impossible. While he may have embarrassed himself on Oprah and become a global punchline in 2005, Cruise—as far as we know—never did anything like Pitt on the plane with his kids and ex-wife Angelina Jolie. You can read an official report of what happened—screaming, lots of alcohol, physical violence—but, somehow, Pitt was never caught in the #MeToo vortex. Like Emile Hirsch, who physically assaulted a woman in 2015, Pitt went on to star in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and ever since, he’s played the same character: he’s Cliff Booth in Bullet Train, in Babylon, in Wolves, and now, in F1.
Well, good. Booth is a great character. Cruise rarely plays great characters anymore, he’s almost always himself now; it’s been a long time since Born on the Fourth of July, Magnolia, and Tropic Thunder. I’ve seen several people say that F1 is proof that Pitt has “lost it,” with zero charm or charisma left. Total bullshit: he’s the cornerstone of the movie. It’s hard to think of another movie star that would be as effective as Pitt is in the role; it’s Old Hollywood in every sense, with character arcs and beats that have been familiar since the 1930s. For whatever reason, fewer and fewer filmmakers are able to speak this language in Hollywood, and just as independent cinema continues to languish, big-budget movies are losing their soul, or at the very least, losing sight of their purpose.
You get a sense that just as executives are too cowardly to take any risks, many filmmakers look down on the conventions they’re expected to conform to, and the expectations that come with “a major motion picture.” Celine Song’s Materialists cost $20 million, but one of its cast members, Dasha Nekrasova, said that money was tight and “it’s just really hard to make a major motion picture right now.” Wardrobe was underfunded—on a romantic comedy. This can’t last. F1 may feel like relief, but there’s nothing else on the horizon that promises real Hollywood thrills: excitement and entertainment without surprises, made on a grand scale. Money will save Hollywood filmmaking, not iPhones.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits