August Movies Part 5: The Magic Faraway Tree & Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

August is nearly at an end, but did I cram in a few more movies to finish out the month? You know I did!

The Magic Faraway Tree: Let's get this out of the way first. This is expressly a movie for people who grew up reading Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree series and have extreme nostalgia for it. Or for people who have very small children who believe in fairies and enchantment and would be captivated by this film. Otherwise, just move along, you're not going to remotely understand why I watched this film.

Directed by Ben Gregor with a screenplay adapted by Simon Farnaby, this is a very silly but charming movie that fully taps into the nostalgia of Blyton's novels but tries to drag them into our modern age. Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy play Tim and Polly, a couple that live in the city with three children (played by Delilah Bennett-Cardy, Phoenix Laroche, and Billie Gadsdon) but then uproot the family and move to a desolate barn in the countryside when Claire quits her job and Tim decides that what they need is "the simple life." As you can imagine, their modern children who are very used to having cellphone signal and Wi-Fi are horrified by this turn of events. That inability to access technology, however, is what is needed for these children to decide to amuse themselves by heading into the Enchanted Wood and go up the Magic Faraway Tree, where they will meet Silky (Nicola Coughlan), Moonface (Nonso Anozie), Saucepan Man (Dustin Demri-Burns), Dame Washalot (Jessica Gunning) and all the rest. 

No, I'm not having a stroke. Again, if you read these books, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about, but otherwise, just stop reading already! I have to say, none of the characters are exactly how I pictured them from the books, but the set-up of the Faraway Tree itself made me instantly flashback to being a little child who was delighted by the idea of sitting on a cushion and getting pulled up into its branches, then climbing a giant ladder to get to whatever magical land was at the top of the tree that day, and then coming back down by sliding down the Slippery-Slip that runs all the way down the inside of the tree. God, it was all so charming. 

The movie itself feels like a very British pantomime, and every actor seems to be dialing it up to a 100. Garfield is ridiculously lovely as the father figure though, and while he doesn't feature for much of the film, every time he's on screen, I couldn't help wishing this guy did more romcoms; I could watch him all day long.  Overall, did I think this movie was particularly good? No, it was entirely too cheesy for my liking. But did it absolutely unlock a primitive part of my brain that had been locked away since childhood. Hell yes.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die: Directed by Gore Verbinski and written by Matthew Robinson, this is one of those increasingly shocking things in our current filmmaking times: a thoroughly original movie not based on any existing IP. Instead, it is a gleeful and almost Matrix-y bit of science fiction that tackles the problem of AI and social media addiction. What more could you want?

The movie opens in an LA diner when a seemingly crazy man (Sam Rockwell) storms in, claims he is from the future, and needs to recruit a group of people from this diner to help him prevent the creation of an AI that destroys humanity in his future timeline. He is strapped to a bomb and will blow everyone up if they don't do as he says. Also, this is the 117th time he has delivered this speech to this group of people, because every previous attempt he made has failed; he has yet to find the right combination of people who could help him on this mission. It's very Edge of Tomorrow, and I was here for it.

The subsequent cast of characters that he recruits are a great group. You have two teachers, Mark and Janet (Michael Pena and Zazie Beetz), a grieving mother, Susan (Juno Temple), an Uber driver, Scott (Asim Chaudhry), and a woman who is literally allergic to technology, Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson). As the movie progresses, we will flashback to understand how technology has specifically been ruining each of these peoples' lives, and what they will now be able to contribute to this insane mission to save the world.

I can't give away more plot because you have to let the whole wacky thing unfold for yourself, but it's brilliantly inventive and compelling. This is exactly the kind of scaremongering I want to see from Hollywood about how technology is going to destroy us all. The third act does go a bit off the rails with the AI plot, and you will start to wonder exactly how high the screenwriter was when he wrote this script, but it's still a thoroughly entertaining and engaging movie that will legitimately make you laugh out loud with its audaciousness. There was a major plot twist that I saw coming from a mile away because of the way that a certain scene was filmed, but it was still fun to see it unfold. I love a time travel movie and I hate AI, so inject this movie directly into my veins.