July Movies Part 1: Fly Me to the Moon & A Quiet Place: Day One

Yes, my varied cinematic interests know no bounds. Today, I bring you two excellent movies, one a sci-fi horror, and the other a 60's romcom. Both feature charismatic actors giving dazzling performances, but if you're more into animals, both also feature prominent performances of the feline variety. Intrigued? I should hope so.

A Quiet Place: Day One: I have greatly enjoyed the Quiet Place franchise, movies about what happens to Earth after it has been taken over by an alien race with a superior sense of hearing. The aliens instantly kill any humans that make a sound, but otherwise cannot see them, so the first two movies followed the fortunes of a family with a Deaf daughter who could converse in sign language and were more prepared than most to handle this particular catastrophe. Well now Lupita Nyong'o stars in this prequel that takes us back to the very first day the aliens landed and the carnage they unleashed on the unsuspecting populace. More particularly, we see what they did to the island of Manhattan, which, as you can imagine, I ate up with a big ol' spoon.

Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski (John Krasinski does get a story credit), this movie does a wonderful job of imagining how the attack took place and how quickly humans realized the need for silence. It is an ingenious look at human adaptability and resilience (turns out thunderstorms and fountains make for excellent auditory camouflage), but also their innate decency and desire to help others. Yes, there's a lot of killing and jump scares, but this movie is also imbued with so much optimism and faith in the human race that it served as quite a balm to my jaded soul. Unsurprisingly, Nyong'o delivers a mesmerizing performance as a terminally ill woman with a service cat, who just wants a slice of pizza before the aliens destroy everything. She is ably assisted by Eric (Joseph Quinn), a British man who is in New York for law school and is absolutely friendless and alone as this apocalypse unfolds. 

This is a sad but somehow still weirdly hopeful movie and I was never bored for a se
cond. And there are some moving moments towards the end that genuinely made me shed a tear. The aliens get a lot more screentime than they did in the previous films, but they are deployed to good effect. The action sequences are tense and innovative, and as always, I greatly enjoyed how quiet the theater got as the entire audience felt afraid to breathe lest we disturb an alien around the corner. I love, love, love how these movies play with sound and silence, and this was a worthy prequel to show us how all of that began.

Fly Me to the Moon: If horror's not your thing, then surely a charming romantic comedy is precisely what you seek? Set in the 1960s, Scarlett Johansson stars as Kelly Jones, a brilliant advertising saleswoman, who is hired by the Nixon administration to improve NASA's public image and ensure they get enough public and congressional support to continue the Space Race and put a man on the moon. Channing Tatum plays Cole Davis, the NASA launch director, who is devoted to the Apollo program and is not too happy about this marketing woman with an elastic definition of the truth trying to sell his work to America. The two butt heads over Kelly's marketing tactics, but they are also two extremely attractive people who are definitely attracted to each other, so get ready for some real enemies-to-lovers intrigue.

The first half of the movie is all about the marketing shenanigans and motivations of our main characters. There's also a black cat that keeps running around the NASA buildings, which greatly worries the superstitious Cole. Then, Kelly gets told to prepare a Plan B, a fake moon landing set that can be broadcast if the actual moon landing fails. So, in the second half, we get to see how all of that pans out, with plenty of jokes that are sure to delight (or maybe anger?) conspiracy theorists. All along, costume designer Mary Zophres is doing phenomenal work, especially with Johansson's absolutely delicious dresses, while production designer Shane Valentino is knocking it out of the park with having to capture a 1960's aesthetic as well as bring the entire Space Program to life.

This movie is funny, moving, and honestly compelling if you're a space nerd who can't get enough about the Apollo missions. It captures the global collective awe at one of man's greatest achievements, but also manages to be super swoony and romantic. There are so many genres at play here, but director Greg Berlanti corrals everything together seamlessly, thanks to Rose Gilroy's script. Sure, it feels like there are some superfluous characters and some plot points that could be judiciously pruned, but I was too swept away by it all to notice. What can I say? I'm a real sucker for a romcom.