The Adam Project: Impact of Time Travel on the Family

Just saw the The Adam Project, a pretty good time-travel movie on Netflix.  Here's a pretty much non-spoiler review:

Adam from the future travels back to 2022, meets his younger, 12-year old self, and enlists him (his younger self) in preventing their father, Louis, from inventing time travel.  If you think that set-up invokes all kinds of time-travel paradoxes -- starting with wouldn't his younger self remember all of this, and wouldn't that create a distortive loop that would upend his life -- you'd be right.

I've found you can pretty much divide time travel stories into those that respect and attempt to deal with these kinds of paradoxes, and those that don't.  12 Monkeys, the 1995 movie, would be an example of among the best attempts to deal with the paradoxes, as would Déjà vu in 2006.  I usually don't waste time critiquing turkeys of movies and TV shows, so I won't mention the far greater number that ignore or don't bother to pay much attention to the paradoxes.

I said The Adam Project was pretty good, because it at least acknowledged some of the paradoxes.  But its solutions were just hand-waving -- saying if a character disturbed time in such and such a way, it would be ok because -- and didn't really supply an explanation.  The net result: it was enjoyable as time travel movie, but not great, and its real strengths reside elsewhere.

Those would be in the family story, buttressed by two very talented stars -- Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner -- who act great and play Adam's father and mother.  Walker Scobell as young Adam was also quite good, and Ryan Reynolds as adult Adam was ok (Tom Cruise was originally supposed to play the part, back when the movie was first conceived in 2012).   All of this added up to the sacrifices made by Louis being meaningful and even memorable.

So ... if you're devotee of time travel, as I am, see the movie.  You'll enjoy it, even if you're not rewarded with brilliant renditions of the paradoxes.

                                                        a little time travel story -- free

The Americans: True and Deep

The Americans, with Keri Russell as one half of the Soviet sleeper spy couple so deeply undercover in Washington they're more American than most of us, debuted on fx last night.  It was superb.

First, about Keri Russell, there are two interrelated things about her past as an actress that make her appearance in The Americans especially interesting.  She is best known for her breakthrough Felicity roll a while ago,  one of J. J. Abrams' early series about a college student.  And Abrams' next series was Alias, which featured Jennifer Garner not Russell as graduate student turned spy, but which had a major continuing storyline about a Soviet agent under cover in the United States - Sydney Bristow's (Jennifer Garner's) mother, Irina/Laura.   I like these sort of complex prior histories to television series.

In Alias, the Soviet spy (played by Lena Olin) was married to an American spy (played by Victor Garbor) - all powerfully acted, by the way.  In The Americans, both Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) and her husband Phillip (Matthew Rhys) are Soviet spies, and their acting is top-notch.  In fact, just about everything in this series seems to be, so far.  Plot twists, unexpected bursts of action, frank sexually vivid (not quite explicit) language combine with the acting to made the premiere never a dull moment.

Russell, especially, has a way of getting just the right pitch in her voice.  When her husband, wanting to show her a little affection and getting rebuffed, protests that he's her husband, Elizabeth responds "is that right?" with just the right slight cutting sarcastic edge.  This is because their marriage is their job as spies, not a true aspect of their lives.  But, as William James the American psychologist noted more than a century ago, when you go through the actions of something, often enough, you begin to grow real feelings for those actions, too.

Elizabeth and Matthew have been at this for more than a decade.   They have two children, a daughter age 13 and a son a little younger.  So of course they have some real feelings.  It's just that, at the beginning of the show, Matthew is more in touch with them than is Elizabeth.  But that changes at the end, in a sequence of events which show that, as much as Matthew has become a truly happy suburban American father, he's still tough as nails underneath.

The one part of the premiere episode that jangled a bit is the FBI guy who moves next store.  This can't be coincidence - which Elizabeth and Matthew seem to realize - but so far the show is playing it as coincidence one-hundred percent.  I expect we'll find out before too long what's really going on with the neighbor.

There's also great 1981 scenery, with talk about Reagan as a lunatic from the Soviet perspective, Walter Cronkite on television, and all sorts evocative 1981 music.  At this point, The Americans is looking to easily be one of the best new shows on television, with only The Following as any real competition.

                                                           

Covert Affairs on USA Network

Covert Affairs checked in with a strong pilot on the USA Network last night.   The series stars Piper Perabo - said to be the new Julia Roberts - as new CIA agent Annie Walker.  She does have a lot of Julia Roberts, her beauty and smile, and also something of Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow in Alias, one of my all-time favorite series due to its Chinese box-in-a-box complexity and style.   Bourne Identity producer Doug Liman is producing Covert Affairs, so it also has a lot of the style and pace of that fine movie, too.

The pilot had car chases and pursuits on foot you don't often see with such power and speed on television.   The plot had some good twists and supporting acting, including Anne Dudek (best seen on House) who plays Annie's older sister, Kari Matchett (best seen, at least in my view, on ABC's Invasion a few years ago) who plays Annie's boss, and even Clarke Peters (The Wire, Treme) as Annie's professor.   Christopher Gorham as Auggie Anderson, Annie's bright, young, blind colleague was also pretty good, and the character is refreshing.  No blind detective on television has been as compelling as Longstreet, from back in the 1970s, so it will be interesting to follow Auggie's role on the show.

As Auggie tells Annie early on, the CIA lifted its hiring freeze after September 11, so most of the people at Langley are new hires and young.    They're also often involved with each other - Kari Matchett is problematically married to Peter Gallagher's character, head of Annie's division - because that way secrets can (usually) be kept a little safer, at least not likely to be divulged to a reporter or worse, an enemy agent, during pillow talk.    We'll no doubt see that proposition sorely tested during the series.

Annie's heart was broken right before she joined up - and that was indeed her motive for becoming an agent - but the guy is still watching over her, stalking her, who knows about his ultimate intentions.

More than enough story, color, and action to keep me watching.

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book