Spectre was a weird James Bond movie. On the one hand, it seemed to be a farewell to Daniel Craig’s version of the character; Craig’s 007 falls in love with a woman (Leo Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann) and at the end of the film they ride off into the sunset together...
Imagine Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, only said shrinkage was of your own volition. You could willingly decide to become a miniature version of yourself, but why would any sane person do that? The selling point of such a bizarre life-changing experience is that as five-inch-tall human, you would literally use less resources, and thus all of your daily necessities and luxuries would cost next to nothing. If you never could afford living in a lavish mansion, now you can. If you always wanted a diamond bracelet or a yacht, now you could buy one for a fraction of the price. And hey, you’re helping the environment too! That’s the idea at the center of Alexander Payne’s Downsizing. This dark satire, directed by Payne (Nebraska, Sideways) and co-written by him and Jim Taylor, has the deceptive appearance of a quirky Charlie Kaufman-like sci-fi political tale, but it wastes its brilliant concept on a misguided, uninteresting story about a character you couldn’t care less about.
Can we put a moratorium on trailers using the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”? Now that we’ve gotten that bit of unofficial business out of the way, here’s the first full official trailer for Downsizing, the new film from Alexander Payne (Nebraska, The Descendants). We’ll have our review from the Toronto Film Festival later on, but until then, you can sneak a peek at one of the more puzzling films to premiere at this year’s fest.