Ready Player One

First Hit: Entertaining visual story into a possible future filled with a decayed reality and virtual fantasy.

Steven Spielberg knows how to create complete stories on the screen. I never leave a Spielberg film with questions, and this film does the same. He always provides a full story. This is one of his strengths and much of the time it is the small details that ties the knot on the bow. Spielberg also knows how to relate with young actors to get the best out of them. However, his obvious strength is the visual rendering of the story in an impressive pictorial way, and he does it again in this film.

This story takes place in 2044 and the world and its resources are falling apart. This is rendered impressively by the vertical stacking of mobile homes in a way that shows both ingenuity of the owners and slum like conditions in which they exist. Most people have given up hope and the few scenes displaying this poverty is enough. To escape their lives, people put on virtual reality (VR) headsets. In their VR world, their lives are given a new level of purpose and dreams. Through their avatars, they can be what they want to be and participate in the games and different worlds as they wish.

Halliday aka Anorak (Mark Rylance) is the creator and maker of the most popular game, Oasis. He’s a bookish man, who does not relate well with people although his business partner Ogden Morrow, aka OG, (Simon Pegg) seems to create a place and space for Halliday to flourish.

Before Halliday’s death, Halliday decides to create a contest that, when a gamer finds the three keys hidden deep within Oasis, the winner will receive the golden egg. This golden egg includes owning and running the company that makes Oasis as well as unfounded riches.

A competitor company IOI (Innovation Online Industries), run by Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), wants the golden egg so that his lagging company can reap the fruits of Halliday’s work. To do so he hires lots of people to be avatars with one goal; to help him find the three keys and to obtain the golden egg.

The film’s main character and hero is Wade Watts, aka Parzival, (Tye Sheridan) who is smart, kind, thoughtful, and an excellent Oasis player. Wade’s parents died years ago and he lives with his aunt and her wildly erratic husband. In the VR world Parsival’s best friend is Aech, aka Helen, (Lena Waithe). On his trek to find the first key, he helps out Art3mis, aka Samantha, (Olivia Cooke). He does this because he thinks her avatar is beautiful and believes they connect at a deeper level.

Together Parzival, Art3mis, and Aech work to solve the puzzle's problems and find the three keys. Along the way they are joined by other players who carry the same ideals.

This film spends more time in the VR mode than reality mode, however the switches between the worlds was done in a wonderful way. The switches make sense. There are also scenes when there is a belief that a character thinks they’re in reality mode, when they aren’t.

The best part is that the team working with Parzival are strong and interesting in both reality and VR modes. Both worlds created by Spielberg are wonderful in that they are realistically flawed and complete. The visuals are not so overladen and overdone that they overwhelm the film and story.

Sheridan was excellent as Parzival, the films main hero. He makes an excellent Clark Kent type character. Waithe as Aech was so much fun. As a male avatar, she was wonderfully strong and compassionate which reflected her deeper reality character as well. Cooke was great as Art3mis. Her bad-ass avatar character belied her reality character of being insecure. Pegg was wonderful as OG and his kindness carried through the film. Rylance was sublime as the quirky, lost, smart creator of Oasis. His social ineptness was perfect. Mendelsohn was very good as the villain running IOI and wanting to be the top dog. Zak Penn and Ernest Cline wrote and engaging screenplay effectively rendered by the inimitable Spielberg.

Overall:  This is a film the audience can sit back and simply enjoy the ride.

Mud

First Hit:  A well-crafted film with excellent performances.

Where “To the Wonder” tried to show love and didn’t speak about love, “Mud” evoked a story around what love can drive people to do or not do.

This film evoked the feeling of Arkansas, the difference between town people and river folk, and how love can confuse young and old alike. We’ve got two young boys Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and his close friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) finding a boat in a tree. It got there through one of the horrific storms that come through the south.

While exploring their new found treasure, they run into Mud (Matthew McConaughey) who has commandeered the boat for his own purposes. Listening to him talk you get a sense that he skirts the truth while embracing wives tales and superstitions when they serve his purpose. He convinces the boys he’s there to meet his love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) whom he’s loved his whole life.

He’s also hiding out because he killed one of Juniper’s boyfriends for hitting her. Now the boyfriend’s family and police are after him for revenge. Ellis has an idealistic view of love and it is congruent with the devotion Mud has for Juniper. However his mom Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson) and dad, Senior (Ray McKinnon), are talking divorce and Ellis sees his life falling apart. He’s a strong willed kid and when he stops a guy from pushing a girl he likes by hitting him, he becomes enamored and hopes she like him. He and Mud connect in this way.

This film is not fast paced and, at times, I wanted it to make it go faster, but then I exhaled and let the film continue its elegant unfolding.

Sheridan was sublime by evoking strength, compassion and mindfulness. He was extraordinary. Lofland was equally superb and as a friend to Sheridan he was perfect. I would be surprised if I learned they are not real life friends as well. McConaughey was amazing. As his recent films have shown, he’s really choosing parts that work for him and that he can bring good things to the director of the film. Witherspoon is great in this role because it reminded me of the intensity and power of her early “Freeway” role. I loved her in that film and can still feel the intense scenes with Kiefer Sutherland. Paulson is really good and I loved her presence in the film as the woman struggling and needing to change her life. McKinnon is good, especially as the film moved on. Sam Shepard (as Tom Blankenship) is strong as Mud’s closest friend and surrogate dad. Michael Shannon (as Galen), Neckbone's uncle and caretaker was really good and it was good to see him in this role. Joe Don Baker has a minor and pivotal role as the father of the man Mud killed. Jeff Nichols wrote and directed this film with patience and a great eye for bringing out the south.

Overall:  Although slow at times – it was well worth it.