Passengers (2016) - Pratt and Lawrence shimmer in high-quality sci-fi entertainer

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+ Best Space Movie of the Year

The two superstars are the one and only attraction on this poster for Morten Tyldum's Passengers

Some time in the future, space ship Avalon is transporting 5,000 passengers to a colony on another planet when a mass of comets interfere with its technology, resulting in the awakening of two passengers 90 years ahead of time.

The actuality of what happens is more complicated but shouldn't be revealed here.
Passengers, written by Jon Spaihts (Doctor Strange (2016)) and directed by Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game (2014)), is a huge star vehicle that works; it is extremely entertaining and beautifully done, both in terms of its prop and set designs, - the Avalon is a very cool spaceship! - CG effects, photography, by Rodrigo Prieto (Argo (2012)), and fine score by Thomas Newman (Mad City (1997)).
Chris Pratt (Jurassic World (2015)) and Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook (2012)) are both very easy on the eyes and adept at playing both the fun, romance and drama that fill out their parts here, which tackles basic human needs, resources and weaknesses. Passengers may look somewhat like another Gravity (2013), - two major Hollywood stars are all alone in trouble in space, - but this is another beast, a more intimate, dramatic (and romantic) and less suspense-driven story. Michael Sheen (Kill the Messenger (2014)) is good as the droid bartender, and Laurence Fishburne (Apocalypse Now (1979)) is equally well cast as a crewman.
Sure there are things in the movie that might seem a bit stretched in hindsight, but, pivotally, it all seems to go down without issue during the journey. And Passengers takes us on an entertaining journey with its fair share of wow moments and a pair of lovely lead stars, SPOILER and affords us an uplifting and lovely happy ending that I cherished.

Related posts:

Morten Tyldum: 2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
The Imitation Game (2014) - Great Cumberbatch, good movie  
Headhunters/Hodejegerne (2011) - Norwegian craftsman Tyldum's thriller springboard

Watch an official trailer for the film here

Cost: 110 mil. $
Box office: 237.1 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[Passengers premiered in the Fox Theatre, Westwood, LA December 14 and runs 116 minutes. The script was written in 2007, and Emily Blunt and Keanu Reeves were previously in talks to star. In an interesting gender divide - which doesn't cause enraged headlines or nervous chatter - Lawrence was reportedly paid 20 mil. $ and 30 % of the profit if the film breaks even, whereas Pratt reportedly 'only' netted 12 mil. $. Filming took place from September 2015 - February 2016 with additional shooting in September 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia. The film opened very soft to #3, behind holdover hit Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and fellow newcomer Sing, and 14.8 mil. $ in North America, where it remained in #3 for 4 consecutive weeks before leaving the top 5 and has to date grossed 90 mil. $. Passengers has just opened #1 in China, which will prove a crucial market for it. Passengers is rotten at 31 % with a 5 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Passengers?

Headhunters/Hodejegerne (2011) - Norwegian craftsman Tyldum's thriller springboard

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The slick, original poster for Morten Tyldum's Headhunters

QUICK REVIEW:

Roger is just 1.68 meters tall; he cheats and steals art pieces, beside his headhunting job, to fund his consumerist high-life. A candidate for a job owns an expensive painting that Roger now decides to steal. But this candidate is more dangerous than expected.

Headhunters is an exciting and handsomely produced romantic action thriller, based on Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø's (The Leopard/Panserhjerte (2011)) 2008 novel of the same name.
Once the hunt really gets started, the film gets unnecessarily gross. And the girlfriend's loyalty throughout the film is more than a little incredible. But Headhunters is still a very finely chiseled thriller with a somewhat surprising ending, SPOILER in which Roger leaves 'the game'.
It is written by Ulf Ryberg (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest/Luftslottet som Sprängdes (2009)) and Lars Gudmestad (The Orheim Company/Kompani Orheim (2012)) and directed by Norwegian shooting star director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game (2014)), who is now in pre-production with a thriller, Pattern Recognition, and a supernatural series, Counterpart.

Related review:

Morten Tyldum: The Imitation Game (2014) - Great Cumberbatch, good movie

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Morten Tyldum's Headhunters

Watch the English-subtitled trailer for the film here

Cost: 30 mil. NOK. (around 4 mil. $)
Box office: 15.3 mil. $
= Big hit
[Headhunters is the highest-grossing Norwegian film of all time, (although a Swedish-Danish-Norwegian-German co-production, it is mostly a Norwegian film.) It was a big hit in Norway, where 557k paid admission. It has gotten great reviews and several award nominations and a few wins. It made 1.1 mil. $ (7 % of the total gross) in the US.]

What do you think of Headhunters?

The Imitation Game (2014) - Great Cumberbatch, good movie

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Benedict Cumberbatch stares you right in the face on the poster for Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game is the much-hyped top-grossing independent movie of 2014, 8 times Oscar-nominated and starring one of the most happening actors alive right now, England's Benedict Cumberbatch (Hawking (2004), TVM).

Alan Turing is the arrogant, quaint mathematician, who claims that he will build a machine that can crack the Germans' enigma code during the distressful time of WWII. As Turing fights for his project, there is another code to be broken as well: the code of Turing himself.

I'll let it be said right off that the film is another Oscar favorite this year (like Birdman (2014)), which doesn't live up to its hype, and if it isn't clear to most people now, perhaps, then I think it will be clear in a few years, once the awards season dust has settled, so to speak.
The Imitation Game is a good period war movie that lives on mainly two qualities: Firstly, the great story at its core: Turing. Secondly, Cumberbatch's serious, transmorphing performance as him. While lots in the man's life has been polished and made easier to understand for a mass audience in 114 minutes' time, Cumberbatch has on the other hand been allowed to run wild with a deep-felt and unabashed characterization, which is the film's main selling point, and will quite likely earn him his first Oscar statuette in a couple of weeks' time. [Post-note: It didn't: Eddie Redmayne instead won for portraying Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014).]
Other distinguished performers here include secondaries Rory Kinnear (Cuban Fury (2014)) as the detective that gets a whiff of Turing's secrets, Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)) as his superior Menzies and young Alex Lawther (X+Y (2014)) as young Turing, who is stunningly close to Cumberbatch's portrait.
In the up-played part as Turing's friend Joan Clarke, Keira Knightley (Pride & Prejudice (2005)) does well but is basically second banana. - Her Oscar-nomination for this supporting performance (her second after Pride & Prejudice) is a bit hard to understand, and definitely shouldn't wind up giving her her first statuette.

Benedict Cumberbatch by the cinematically enlarged, redesigned 'Bombe' decode machine for Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game

The details:

The film is based on the first sold feature script of young screenwriter Graham Moore (Pirates vs. Ninjas (2005), short), who also, amazingly, has been Oscar-nominated for this job. (The script was a Blacklist favorite in 2011.) The complexity of Turing and his math gets washed over here and cooked down to a kind of motto which is repeated by different characters at different times in the film. But the story of the film and its success is so good that scores of audiences and critics won't recognize its dubious reconstruction of Turing, which you can read about towards the bottom of this page.
Together with a visual and score side (by Alexander Desplat, also Oscar-nominated) that both are neat but nothing particularly outstanding, Imitation Game comes off somewhat dusty and old-fashioned, perhaps also because it follows the towering Oscar-winner of last year, the sensuous, emotionally overpowering masterpiece 12 Years a Slave (2013).
But even comparing it to more related fare like Ron Howard's great mathematician biopic A Beautiful Mind (2001) or the recent British home run period biopic The King's Speech (2010), The Imitation Game simply falls short.
It is the English-language debut of Norwegian director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters/Hodejegerne (2011)), who should have given more of a damn of all the well-meaning forces undoubtedly securing that he "got it right" here with this heavy, important material, and instead have given us a bit wilder version of Turing's life. Incredibly, though, even Tyldum is Oscar-nominated for his direction.
At its core, the film presents a startling and incredible story; at its best, it is about how much of the 'great war' and the fate of much of Europe was controlled by mathematicians and statistics in a room in England. - That is new to the screen and mind-bending 'news' to boot. Turing's sad end, condemned for his homosexuality, ending his own life, becomes a a tragic end-note instead of a serious aftermath, the natural 3rd act for the film about his life, which might have made it excell. This doesn't happen.

Oscar-nominated, beautiful Keira Knightley, second banana in Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 14 mil. $
Box office: 134.6 mil. $ (and counting)
= Huge hit
[The Weinstein Company struck gold once again by purchasing the movie for 7 mil. $ for US distribution (the reportedly biggest sum paid for a foreign film ever), where it has made 69.8 mil. $ so far (52 % of the total gross). It premiered at Telluride, played at Toronto, and premiered in Europe at the BFI London Film Festival. It still has just over a dozen countries yet to premiere in, including, most prominently, Japan.]

What do you think of The Imitation Game?