By Eric Valentine
Fifteen years ago at the Oscars, Best Supporting Actor winner George Clooney and star of the film “Syriana” used part of his acceptance speech to make a political statement. Sensing the annual backlash against the Hollywood elites from some collective societal grouping of like minds (usually a conservative collective, but not always), Clooney went pre-emptive. He said Hollywood is often accused of being “out of touch” and then went on to note a few instances of when filmmakers broached important subjects no one was talking about. He said, firmly, “I’m proud to be out of touch.”
Well, with the early spring award show fast approaching like a reliable garden of irises, along comes a film that won’t be winning any Oscars—most likely—but is proof that some Hollywood filmmakers are not out of touch.
“The Adam Project”
Who needs Marvel, DC and Indiana Jones when you have movies like ‘The Adam Project’? OK, before I lose you, let me categorically declare all modern action flicks need Indiana Jones.
A lesser known film—notice how I lean toward ‘movie,’ not ‘film,’ to describe TAP—called ‘About Time’ is the only time-travel script to seamlessly blend the suspension of disbelief into its plot. That’s not because it avoids science—although less is more when it comes to time-travel movies. Rather, it’s due to tripling down on emotion, specifically love and how family and time always complicate it.
But Ryan Reynolds’ and Jennifer Garner’s new movie comes close, and in the same way, although it doesn’t entirely avoid the complication of explaining both little and big time-travel-dilemma questions, like … Never mind, since none of us can know our future, I’m not going to SPOILER ALERT this for you. <–And that’s sort of a spoiler alert dad joke you’ll come back and applaud me for after you see TAP.
If I didn’t have you at Ryan Rrre—then just know Mark Ruffalo has a supporting role. Other than a Marvel movie here and there (by the way, they are sometimes good movies, they just don’t make me suspend disbelief much), Ruffalo in a supporting role is almost a guaranteed excellent film. It’s hard to think of an actor who can play both an Olympic heavyweight wrestler (Foxcatcher) and a down-and-out music producer (Begin Again) within the same 12-month span. But Ruffalo did.
So, who needs Marvel and DC films? Not indie filmmakers as far as I’m concerned. If I had a few bitcoin for every futuristic zombie apocalypse witchcraft karate short I’ve seen made by indie filmmakers, I’d be able to fund an indie feature film. Even when you do it well, you do it well (for an indie film). And that’s not good enough if your dream is to one day quit your day job.
Why do I bother penning my opinion here? Because a lot of aspiring filmmakers and existing ones will be coming to the Valley soon—happy film festival week!—and audiences need more than superheroes to—once they suspend enough disbelief—aspire to. They need to see real heroes, ones that make you enroll enough emotion into a film to do what the greatest stories make us do—live life more empathetically. Emotional story—it’s literally what dreams are made of. And it’s also what makes us real.