A tense new 'Quiet Place' movie

 

  Did we really need a prequel to 2018's clever, scary A Quiet Place, which had a sequel in 2021?

  Probably not, but we have one now, and director Michael Sarnoski, who debuted with the impressive Nicolas Cage movie, The Pig, makes the most of it. Sarnoski overloads A Quiet Place: Day One with stomping, leaping aliens, and turns his plot into a swift straight-line affair, sustaining high-pitched tension throughout.

   I wouldn’t say the movie is a classic of its kind. But Sarnoski, with help from his creative sound design and effects teams, fills a fleet 99 minutes with the high-anxiety stress movies such as this are meant to deliver.

  Day One begins with a title card informing us that the daily noise level in New York City averages 90 decibels, which explains why aliens attracted to loud sounds might seek it out. The aliens don't tiptoe around, either. Their screeching and smashing ways boost both the city's and the movie’s noise levels.

  Any success the movie attains qualifies as improbable. We don’t know what the invading aliens want or why they've come. We’ve seen computer-generated urban destruction before, and we know the alien MO from previous movies. 

    Fortunately for Sarnoski, the urban setting provides a new playground for the aliens. A scene in which ash-covered New Yorkers walk zombie-like through streets evokes memories of 9/11, one line in the grim poetry of destruction.

   Dropping an animal into the mayhem might seem like a cheap bid for sentiment, but Sarnoski fully embraces it. A pet cat — cutely named Yoda — belongs to Lupita Nyong’o's Samira, a hospice patient with terminal cancer. 

    Samira can't beat cancer, but maybe she can outlive the alien onslaught, and, at least, save her cat.

     Samira soon meets a fellow traveler. Dazed and bewildered, Eric (Joseph Quinn) follows Samira despite her desire to be left alone. The two develop a relationship, and a major set piece involves Eric's attempt to secure a transdermal fentanyl patch to relieve Samira's pain.

    And, yes, without many words, the actors must use their faces in the ways silent film stars might have. Nyong'o proves more than up to the task.

   Attempts at humor are marginal. Samira introduces a running joke about her desire to find a slice of New York pizza, which she prizes above any other variety, a subject audiences can debate on their way to the parking lot.

      As fast as the movie moves, there's still time to wonder about a few things. Why, for example, does Eric never remove his tie, even amid so much physical trauma? What keeps the white of Yoda's fur from ever seeming dirty?

     I've read that Yoda is played by two cats that prove that some cats do have nine lives — at least in movies that are less committed to pinpoint logic than to maintaining the intensity that results from knowing terror is seldom more than a beat away.

Nicolas Cage's deep dive into isolation

 

     When Nicolas Cage plays a depressed man, sadness rolls off the screen like a heavy fog. 

   You'll discover this if you see the simply titled Pig, the story of an Oregon hermit who truffle hunts with a pig that lives with him in an isolated cabin in the woods. The man -- we eventually learn that his name is Robin -- treats the pig as a household pet, sharing food with the animal who sleeps in a small bed next to his.

    Initially, Pig looks as if it's going to be a strange wilderness saga about a wounded man who has withdrawn from society.

   But, no. Thieves burst into the cabin and steal the pig, presumably because premier truffles can be so valuable.

    Until then, Robin has dealt only with Amir (Alex Wolff), a young man with the demeanor of a small-time hustler. Amir acquires truffles from Robin in exchange for supplies and resells them to upscale restaurants.

    Once the pig is taken, Robin and Amir head to Portland where Robin demonstrates how determined he is to retrieve his pig.

   If you've seen some of Cage's recent work, you may find yourself thinking that you've stumbled into another revenge saga in which Robin will slow burn his way toward an explosively violent finale.

   Director Michael Sarnoski has something different in mind. He begins a journey that takes Robin from a private fight club where he allows himself to be beaten for money to an exclusive restaurant specializing in molecular gastronomy. 

    Robin's takedown of the restaurant's chef (David Knell) is delivered by Cage with so much insight and conviction it's scary. 

   Questions emerge: Who is Robin? What tragedy reduced him to his current state? And what future does he have -- if any?

   Cage finally encounters the man who may be the source of his troubles (Adam Arkin). Turns out he's Amir's father.

    Cage could have loaded lines such as "I want my pig" with sneering ironies, but we don't know quite how to read a man who sees himself and perhaps the rest of the world as doomed. Cage never winks at the audience or undermines the truth of Robin's loneliness. He makes it seem like an honorable choice.

    Although some of Pig can be viewed as a satire about upscale food fetishism, it comes across as muted and doom-struck, full of felt sorrow for characters who begin to realize what their lives have become. Robin already knows. 

    Looking so grungy and battered you half wonder whether he might have been arrested for vagrancy on his way home from the set, Cage creates a memorable character, particularly when you consider the kind of notes Pig could have sounded.

    Just as important, Pig proves smart enough not to italicize every unexpected turn. Pig doesn’t earn trust by trying to make us feel better; it earns trust by not being afraid to dive deep into Cage's character and the fallen world he inhabits.

Heroism on a bad day in Boston

Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg reunite for a look at the Boston Marathon bombing.

Patriots Day reunites director Peter Berg with actor Mark Wahlberg for a look at the horrible April day during which the 2013 Boston Marathon was disrupted by terrorist bombings.

Berg, who directed Wahlberg in Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon, approaches the story from two mostly compatible directions: On one hand, he's writing an ode to the city of Boston. He's celebrating the strength and good will of the city's ordinary residents. He supplements that ode to Boston with a police procedural about the frantic search to find the two bombers, who fled the scene of their foul handiwork.

Tense and well-edited, Patriots Day focuses mainly on a slightly disaffected Boston sergeant (Wahlberg) who, at the picture's opening, receives a kind of punishment assignment: He must serve in uniform at the finish line of the marathon, a job he regards as the equivalent of penance. He refers to his uniform -- not usually part of his detective's garb -- as a "clown suit."

Naturally, Wahlberg's Tommy Saunders gets more than he bargained for when a couple of bombs, planted in pressure cookers, turn a day of celebration into a day of bloodshed and grief.

In this case, Wahlberg portrays a character whose personal struggles really don't amount to much; Tommy grumbles about drawing uniformed duty, but he's basically a good-natured policeman who loves his city and his wife (Michelle Monaghan). Wahlberg certainly knows this character, and inhabits him with ease.

We also meet a variety of other characters. Kevin Bacon plays the FBI agent heading the hunt for the bombers from a Boston warehouse; John Goodman portrays the city's police commissioner.

We also meet a young couple (Rachel Brosnahan and Christopher O'Shea) who become victims of the bombers, as does an MIT security guard (Jake Picking) and a young Chinese app designer (Jimmy O. Yang), whose car is hijacked by the bombers while they're on the run.

Khandi Alexander has a brief, but entirely compelling, scene as the woman who interrogates the wife of one of the bombers (Melissa Benoist). Why Alexander doesn't find work in more movies remains a mystery to me. She's terrific here.

Meanwhile, J.K. Simmons suffers from no such shortage of exposure; here, he portrays a Watertown police sergeant who winds up with one of the bombers hiding in a boat in a Watertown driveway.

Themo Melikidze and Alex Wolff portray the two brothers who carried out this monstrous act, setting off a tidal wave of heartbreak in what should have been a day of pure excitement.

Berg focuses on the chaos and impromptu heroism that arose along with the professionalism that it took to keep the situation under control.

If you're looking for nuance, it's probably best to look elsewhere. Patriots Day offers straightforward storytelling with an emphasis on down-to-earth patriotism.

But the real point here, I think, is to salute the working people of Boston as the heart and soul of a badly wounded city. Put another way, you might summarize the whole of Patriots Day by noting that Berg seems to be bringing us one simple message: "This is what we mean by Boston Strong."