Drive in Saturday Tuesday Movie Review Double Feature: “The Creator” and “A Haunting in Venice”

This weekend I went to the Malta Drive-in rather than my regular, The Jericho due to the movie selection. Malta has two screens, but no ice cream (other than novelties). So off the bat I was a little cranky. Add to that the double edge sword of the first movie starting at 7:00– double edged because on the plus side, that’s early enough for me to stay for both movies, but the reason it starts at 7:00 is that the sun is already down. Boooooo.

Anyway, I stayed for the double feature. First up was The Creator, a movie I knew next to nothing about going in. Actually that’s not quite right. Because I’ve seen Blade Runner, Star Wars, Rogue One, Frankenstein, Skyfall, Apocalypse Now, The Terminator, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and read 1984 and at least have a familiarity with Isaac Asimov’s, I Robot, I knew all I needed to know. Really, I’m not sure what ground this movie covered that wasn’t already covered by Blade Runner, but with something like a Death Star thrown in. And, oh, are the humans the good guys or the bad guys?

Artificial intelligence is quickly emerging as a part of our lives and a real issue for everything from law to philosophy. There’s room for artistic exploration for sure, but movies have been dealing with thinking robots since Metropolis. The Creator is much less about issues that we are confronting with artificial intelligence right now, or will be in the very near future, than it is another science fiction war movie wherein the aliens (in this case, robots) are “the other.” So, I guess add in Avatar.

If you’ve seen all those other movies, there’s really no need to see this one.

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I liked the second movie better— A Haunting in Venice. Agatha Christie. Hercule Poirot. Kenneth Branagh as Poirot, Tina Fey as a character based on Agatha Christie, and Michelle Yeoh as a fraudulent medium, AKA Mrs. Body. That’s basically all you need to know about this one. You either like this type of movie (I very much do), or you don’t, and if you don’t you won’t get much out of seeing it.

Actually, this one is a little unusual. In essence, it’s the second haunted house movie I’ve seen at the drive-in this year, the other being the forgettable Haunted Mansion. Both, to some extent, dealt with the belief in the supernatural. In Haunted Mansion, the supernatural was real and belief in itself was presented as a virtue (as it was in another of my drive-in movies this year, The Nun II). In this one, Poirot continues to encounter convincing signs of ghosts and magic and has to keep reminding himself that it all must have a rational explanation. Of course, it all has a rational explanation, which he figures out and explains at the end of the movie.

What’s unusual, not so much for Agatha Christie movies, which are not supernatural, but for movies of this time, is that belief is not a virtue. It’s an impediment to figuring out what’s actually happening. Belief leads to death. This is the most rationalistic movie of the summer. That’s another reason I liked it.

I also liked it for its views of Venice. I’ve been to Venice once, and any reminders of it are most welcomed. I once saw a movie called, “A Haunting in Connecticut,” that showed little if any footage of Connecticut. Not entirely sure why the fact that the story took place in Connecticut was important enough to make it into a four-word title. But Venice is almost a character in this movie, and thankfully we get to see a lot of the city.

I liked the movie, but it was flawed. Maybe I need to watch it again, but I’m a little unclear on how Poirot put it all together. He explains, at the end, what all happened and, of course, whodunnit, but I’m left a little fuzzy as to what were his breakthroughs. Not a fatal flaw.

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So, being able to stay awake for two movies was a treat, though not quite enough to make up for the lack of ice cream. It’s also worth mentioning that the whole evening was warm enough for me to keep my car windows open. I’m not sure how many more nights I’m going to get like that. Hopefully I’ll have one more next Saturday…

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Postscript: After writing the above, I learned that The Creator’s director, Gareth Edwards, actually directed one of those other movies I listed— Rogue One. Rogue One is a much better, and much more innovative movie. I guess he was copying himself.