Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/955503
maltatoday SUNDAY 18 MARCH 2018 42 This Week "WHAT did you eat?" are the un- likely opening lines of Alex Gar- land's latest foray as writer-director, following on from his debut Ex Machina (2014), which swam in similarly high-concept territory to startling effect. Uttered by the portly and hazmat-burdened char- acter actor Benedict Wong, here playing an interrogator to Natalie Portman's Lena as she offers up the frame story of this unsettling tale, it feels like a throwaway, even banal question for a film that places so much stock in its exquisitely de- signed weirdness. But upon a second viewing – made all the more handy for us here in Europe, where the Paramount Pictures production was carted off to Netflix at the last minute – it becomes evident that the act of eating is actually a crucial thematic concern for the film, and that kind of formal economy – such careful choosing of words and where they fit in the story – is a testament to Garland's intellectual rigour – per- haps not coincidentally, a former novelist who made his name with the 90s cult classic The Beach. As in Jeff VanderMeer's source novel, biological determinism takes precedence over hokey ideas of human agency and – especially – heroism as filtered through the Hollywood machine. So that eat- ing is a crucial concern, as are diseases and the natural world's uncanny ways of mutating and surviving when hemmed in by ad- verse or alien limitations. In what is perhaps the only weak spot in an otherwise bold and challeng- ing film – so much so that it feels like a studio-imposed tack-on – its opening frames offer up some- thing of an omniscient explana- tion of what we're about to see. An asteroid crashes into a lighthouse, subsequently creating a large-scale mutation in the surrounding land- scape that the Southern Reach – a mysterious government organisa- tion – has failed to understand, again and again. One of the casualties of this trial- and-error plunge into the unknown is Kane (Oscar Isaac); a military sergeant who is charged with going into the so-called "Shimmer" with a team. The last surviving mem- ber of his team, he returns to his cellular biologist wife Lena (Port- man) a year later, utterly changed. So changed, in fact, that he barely seems to recognise her, or even grasp human concepts as basic as a "bedroom". After he falls gravely ill, he is rendered comatose and forci- bly removed to the Southern Reach, where he lies in a coma while Le- na is left in quarantine. She soon discovers, through the Southern Reach's taciturn psychologist Dr Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that another mission into the Shimmer is being planned; this time staffed with an all-female crew including paramedic Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson), geomorpholo- gist Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novo- tny), and led by Ventress herself. Reasoning that there's very little IN CINEMAS TODAY Embassy Cinemas Valletta Tel. 21 227436, 21 245818 Tomb Raider (3D) (12A) 10:25, 13:40, 16:10, 18:40, 21:10 Peter Rabbit (PG) 10:00, 12:10, 14:20, 16:35, 18:50, 21:00 Red Sparrow (15) 15:05, 18:00, 20:50 Black Panther (12A) 10:30, 14:30, 17:30, 20:45 The Shape of Water (15) 10:25, 13:30, 16:05, 18:40, 21:15 Mary Magdalene (12A) 10:30, 13:30, 16:05, 18:40, 21:15 Valletta Living History (U) 10:00, 10:45, 11:30, 12:15, 13:00, 13:45, 14:30 Eden Cinemas St Julian's Tel. 23 710400 Black Panther (12A) 11:20, 14:30, 18:00, 20:45, 23:10 Father Figures (15) 11:35, 14:00, 16:25, 18:50, 21:15, 23:40 Fifty Shades Freed (18) 14:05, 16:20, 18:45, 21:05 Game Night (15) 14:15, 16:30, 18:40, 20:55, 23:10 I, Tonya (15) 14:00, 16:25, 18:50, 21:15 Mary Magdalene (12A) 11:30, 14:00, 16:25, 18:50, 21:15, 23:45 Maze Runner: Death Cure (12A) 14:20, 17:55, 20:50 Peter Rabbit (PG) 11:40, 14:10, 16:25, 18:40, 20:55 Red Sparrow (15) 14:20, 18:00, 20:50, 23:40 The Greatest Showman (PG) 11:45, 14:05, 16:20, 18:35, 21:00 The Shape Of Water (15) 14:30, 18:00, 20:35 Tomb Raider (12A) 11:35, 14:00, 16:25, 18:50, 21:15, 23:30 Empire Cinemas Bugibba Tel. 21 581787, 21 581909 Red Sparrow (15) 11:00, 14:00, 18:20, 21:15 The Shape of Water (15) 10:40, 13:30, 16:05, 18:40, 21:15 Black Panther (12A) 10:15, 14:00, 18:30, 21:15 Mary Magdalene (12A) 10:45, 13:30, 16:05, 18:35, 21:05 Peter Rabbit (PG) 11:00, 13:45, 16:30, 18:40, 20:50 Game Night (15) 11:10, 13:35, 16:15, 18:30, 20:45 Tomb Raider (3D) (12A) 10:45, 13:35, 16:05, 18:35, 21:05 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ SHIMMER ★ ★ ★ ★ SHARP ★ ★ ★ SHINY ★ ★ SHAKY ★ SHITTY FILM By Teodor Reljic A memorable metamorphosis ANNIHILATION (16+) ★ ★ ★ ★ Murky waters: Tessa Thompson and Natalie Portman in Alex Garland's Annihilation Alex Garland's loose and challenging adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's cult novel is a jolting and refreshingly brainy slice of sci-fi horror that will linger in the memory With teeth: Portman pokes a hybrid monster