Sky Yang | Through the Shattered Lens

Anniversary begins with a party. Ellen Taylor (Diana Lane), a professor at Georgetown University, is celebrating the 25th anniversary of her marriage to Paul (Kyle Chandler), a restauranteur. The family has gathered at Lina and Paul’s ocean-side mansion. Daughter Cynthia (Zoey Deutch) and her husband Rob (Daryl McCormick) are environmental attorneys. Another daughter, Anna (Madeleine Brewer), is a performance artist who is very close to the youngest child, teenage Birdie (McKenna Grace). Finally, Josh (Dylan O’Brien) is the only son, a struggling writer who arrives with his fiancée, Liz Nettles (Phoebe Dynevor).

Ellen immediately recognizes Liz as a former student, one who wrote a dissertation advocating for a one-party state. At the time, Ellen called out Liz’s totalitarian ideology, to the extent that Liz accused Ellen of bullying her and ended up transferring to a different college. Now, Ellen is not happy to discover that Liz has written a book called The Change and that Josh has abandoned his own “sci-fi trilogy” to help Liz out with her projects. Liz is polite to Ellen but, before she leaves, she gives her future mother-in-law a forced hug and says, “I’m not scared of you anymore.”

From there, the film jumps forward from year-to-year, from gathering-to-gathering. Liz’s book is a best-seller that soon sparks a movement. Ellen watches in horror as her neighbors start to fly Change flags (which is the American flag, with the stars in the center). Josh goes from being awkward and dorky to being arrogant and finally threatening. With each year, the Change becomes more powerful and more menacing, until eventually Paul can’t even stand outside at night without a drone warning him that he’s violating curfew. Anna becomes a fugitive while Birdie tries to find her place in a rapidly changing world. The tragedies that follow all feel inevitable.

Anniversary is definitely an uneven film. Some of the performances are better than others. Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Dylan O’Brien, and Phoebe Dynevor all give excellent performances. If nothing else, this film shows that Dylan O’Brien may be one of the most underrated actors working today. At the same time, Madeline Brewer goes so over-the-top that I was almost relieved when Anna had to go into hiding and Zooey Deutch is let down by a script that doesn’t seem to be quite sure what to do with her character. There are a few moments that are a bit too heavy-handed for their own good and the viewer is sometimes left to wonder if the film has the self-awareness necessary to understand that the Taylors, with their combination of wealth and radical chic politics, are often their own worst enemies.

That said, Anniversary is definitely a film of the moment. There are enough brilliant scenes — like a meeting with two “census takers” that gradually turns menacing — to make up for the scenes that don’t work. It’s best moments have an undeniable power in which the viewer realizes that the film’s melodrama is far more plausible today than it would have been in a pre-COVID era. The scene where Paul is told that he is violating curfew would seem heavy-handed if not for the fact that, in 2020, we pretty much saw the same thing happening across the country.

Some online critics have complained that The Change’s ideology is purposefully left vague but that misses the point that most successful movements actually are vague about the details. (Historically, most American third party movements tend to fall apart as soon as they start taking actual policy positions.) The Change becomes powerful specifically because people can view it as being whatever they want it to be. Whereas some people might see it as a return to a “simpler” time, others will view it as the warmth of collectivism replacing the frigidity of rugged individualism. The Change is all about vibes and paranoia, the feeling that people are being left behind by the system and the only way to solve the problem is for everyone to embrace The Change without question. The thing that all the followers of The Change share is a belief that dissent cannot be tolerated.

Anniversary is a crudely effective film, one that shows a small act of revenge can grow into something much larger. It was overlooked when released but it still carries a powerful punch.

In some other galaxy, a bunch of annoying farmers are living on the moon of Veldt. The evil army of the Motherworld, led by Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), wants to conquer the moon and steal all of the grain for themselves. A bunch of rebels — including a long-winded former general named Titus (Djimon Hounsou) and painfully dull former solider of the evil empire named Kora (Sofia Boutella) — are on the moon and help the farmers prepare for battle. And then the battle happens and the movie ends and somehow, it takes more than two hours to tell this extremely thin story.

Admittedly, I have not seen the first Rebel Moon but I doubt it makes much of a difference. I’ve seen enough science fiction movies and enough Zack Snyder films that I feel like I can follow this sequel without having seen the first film. In fact, the only question that I have as a result of not seeing the first film is whether the absolutely ludicrous flashback to Kora’s past was lifted from the first film or was it specifically shot for the sequel? The flashback reveals that Kora became a rebel after her mentor attempted to frame her for the murder of a good space emperor and his family. I have to admit that the overwrought, slow motion-heavy flashback did inspire a few chuckles on my part. There was an orchestra playing in the background of the scene and they continued to play, even while the emperor and his family were being murdered. You have to wonder just what exactly the musicians were thinking while all of that was going on.

As for Rebel Moon Part Two, it has some nice visuals but the story is a mess and there are some moments that simply leave you wondering whether to laugh or sigh with frustration. There’s the fact that the fearsome imperial spaceships are apparently fueled by men shoveling coal into a furnace. There’s the fact that fearsome imperial space laser gun takes forever to aim and fire, presumably to give the rebels time to sabotage the ship. (That seems like a pretty big design flaw.) There’s the fact that the evil empire turns out to be so inept that it’s hard to feel like the farmers really needed to spend as much time training as they did. By the end of the film, I felt like I probably could have beaten up the evil empire single-handedly. They just weren’t that impressive.

The main problem is that the farmers were kind of annoying and, even when they finally did fight the evil empire, it was still hard to feel that they still didn’t have any control over their own fate. First, they were being ordered around the bad guys. Then, they were being ordered around by Titus and the rebels. Titus, himself, is one of those annoying characters who can’t ever say anything without turning it into a speech. On the one hand, Titus insists that the farmers don’t have much time to get ready. On the other hand, Titus continually wants to waste what little time they have by giving a monologue. Kora, meanwhile, rarely speaks. This has less to do with her being a strong, silent warrior and instead it’s all about her not really having much of a personality.

The majority of the film’s runtime is taken up with the battle and it’s hard not to notice that for all of the explosions and presumed death, most of the main characters somehow manage to survive. It left me thinking about we were supposed to celebrate the survival of the Daily Planet staff at the end of Man of Steel, despite the fact that thousands of others undoubtedly died while Superman and General Zod were ripping apart Metropolis.

To be clear, there are quite a few Zack Snyder films that I really do like. I am not, by any means, an anti-Snyder person. I thought Sucker Punch was a masterpiece. I admire and respect what he did with Watchmen. I’m not a fan of his work with the DCEU but then again, with the exception of the first Wonder Woman, I’m not really a fan of anyone’s work with the DCEU. The important thing is that I think that, with the right material, Zack Snyder can be brilliant and I love the fact that, even in his lesser films, he still goes all out to bring his vision to life. As a director, Snyder is not scared to go over-the-top with sweeping, dramatic moments. He’s someone who understands that movies — especially action films — should be big. But Rebel Moon 2 never really works. If anything, it sometimes feels like Snyder on auto pilot. I’ll always be willing to take a chance of Zack Snyder but I hope that doesn’t mean having to watch Rebel Moon 3.