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Cinema Briefing
Movie reviews by
Ian Flanagan
Ian Flanagan
 1 ½ (out of 4)
I can’t really say ENCORE when I wouldn’t even bother to stay for some severely superfluous post-credits moments put there to undo any sense of a sendoff this Last Gasp feigns commitment to. At least it wasn’t a fucking jukebox musical, and from that title it very well could’ve been. No, the third Venom is hardly anything at all — Andy Serkis’ Let There Be Carnage felt incomplete and underwhelming (just as it proved we were out of the worst of COVID times with its impressive haul in early fall 2021) but I’m already longing for that far less testing trifle, as at least the first sequel to 2018's Venom kept the B-movie charms in check and was ruthlessly cut. Even with silly symbiote horsepower, personally my goodwill is too used up to call this a pleasing parting in a run of anti-heroics that never had critics on its side but always the audiences — with consistent budgets of only just over 100 million, for putting up the lowest numbers of the trilogy the profits of The Last Dance still could have easily secured a needless future for Sony’s only non-Spidey attribute, regardless of Morb- or Madame-sized flops. Frankly this was worse than Morbius, which is insane given how likable the Eddie-Venom bond remains in their least lovable showing. Tom Hardy looks bloated, unhealthy and as Brock he’s just getting that paycheck but secretly voicing Venom in addition this whole time is mighty admirable. Michelle Williams, understandably, wouldn’t touch this franchise with a 10-foot pole at this point, I don’t believe there’s a single reference to her love interest, Eddie lost the girl in the origin story. Rhys Ivans as the hippie Dad scoping out aliens, Chiwetal Ejiofor playing generic hardheaded sergeant, an almost unrecognizable Juno Temple and her co-star Clark Backo as the caring scientists — at least no one became some last-minute hero or villain but the characterization is crazy bad, and it's not like the last one made you fall in love with Carnage and Shriek. Peggy Lu as the clerk Mrs. Chen from the first two movies maybe is the highlight returning character, how very sad. Anyway when this Last Dance drops the pretense of some grandiose bit of blockbuster science fiction, it only becomes acceptable putting the plot on the backburner for hippie family shenanigans and Las Vegas revelry. Cutting back to desert government facilities will take you right back to some bastardized 'big finale' like any other movie masked under resolution, about to bust out plenty of sequels coming off their Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare or The Final Destination or whatever fleeting finish can be immediately ignored if necessary. So if the throwaway leisure time is the good stuff, it make sense how slight each installment and now the whole pathetic trio has been — Venom is still funny and Hardy’s dynamic with his better half still makes up for so much of the man on the lamb nonsense this “movie” has to offer. Why not entirely ignore the tacky mid-credits tease in Let There Be Carnage that our pair had somehow landed in the MCU, since you just play it off here. The technical stuff probably shouldn't be so buried in this case, as this is one of the most poorly edited major movies I’ve seen in some time, not nearing Sony’s barrel bottom worst, Madame Web, but getting darn close. Freaking Kelly Marcel (who clearly met Hardy during her emergency rewrite of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson) has been writing and producing these movies the whole time, and otherwise has dipped her pen in schmaltz (Saving Mr. Banks sentimental, sanctimonious take on Walt Disney acquiring Mary Poppins), sultriness (Fifty Shades of Grey’s fundamentally not-so-freaky foolishness) and even a story credit for the long-winded, crudely indulgent Cruella (Emma Stone at her most unbecomingly exaggerated) before stepping into the director’s chair for the first time. Serkis and Ruben Fleischer might not have been hosts to so much more coherent, quality escapism, but they sure didn't offer regularly crumby, callous whiplash where the sum feels about as cacophonous as it is careless. This is low-rent moviemaking that still can’t handle its wide audience for mainstream, gutless, body-horror buddy-movie hijinks, and for its few full comedic moments it’s just not enough to offset wanting to be taken seriously enough while also refusing to outdo what little was memorable about the first two installments — although how could I not enjoy when a separated Venom hops from fish to frogs in a desperate running river chase to get back to Eddie. When you have to edit and write around your titular character's gruesome head-snacking for some edgy teenage dollars, you end up with movies that feel too screen-tested or not enough, where you can’t tell if shit was added or chopped or anything at all because it’s such a clusterfuck mess. With so many story inconsistencies and moments of excruciating expository excess it really becomes a challenge to settle into The Last Dance and not treat it all like a chore. God willing Kraven the Hunter isn’t perfectly putrid, which would make Sony three for three in 2024 comic book movie calamities — please just whip those animators into shape and complete the Spider-Verse trilogy so I can forget all this sinister sub-cinema.  2 ½ (out of 4)
Director Parker Finn has big plans for the SMILE UNIVERSE (spare me) but 2022’s Smile was nearly left to media purgatory, colloquially know as direct-to-streaming. Paramount switched the feature to a theatrical release last minute due to strong test scores AND YET, in spite of sizable turnout and enough word of mouth to ensure sequels, those darn cinemascores were low. How does the scariest mainstream horror flick, one of the most effective psychological / supernatural affairs in God knows how long, still leave the casuals unmoved? An ambitious follow-up was beyond question, box office aside anyone can tell you the chain curse premise is primed for installments and then some — Final Destination is currently getting a sixth this coming May, (almost 15 years since the last, at least the first two sequels were worth it), It Follows will become a pair once They Follow finally gets here, and both Sinister 2 and The (American) Ring have their plodding, inferior posteriors. These don't end well and never do, and ignoring that there’s seemingly no escape (perhaps the faintest chance of survival in this and It Follows, the primary victim of Parker's pastiche) Smile almost seems like it could go on forever. So instead of overlaying a formidable formula across as many movies until it gets old, Parker immediately high jumps from passing along paranormal predators to straight-up Freddy Krueger shit (Dream Warriors is also a much more illustrious influence). The parting seconds leaves me to assume a concert-crowd-sized plague of Smile-specter spectators is about to be unleashed for maybe the mass-suicidal flavors of The Happening’s B-movie extremism and hopefully some Body Snatchers-borrowed bananas paranoia in the third installment. As its own sequel Finn does a fine enough job, which is hard for me to say considering twists negating a decent chunk of the movie will always and forever drive me nuts. I can still mostly make out how the edges break between reality and this evil entity’s tricks, although for playing so many mind games it’s a shame this doesn’t make more sense — the original was clearly the more frightening, though Smile 2 masters a sort of sustained tension even when it’s all in your head, man. Of course sequels must go bigger, and the added oomph is justified as this invisible haunter might not be fucking with its victim in a variety of new ways like the stretch of Paranormal Activity flicks (pretty decent until the fourth one), since the glad ghoul itself admits it has been waiting for someone of influence, consequence or fame. The trauma-thirsty haunter yields more obvious themes as we swap an everywoman for the less preferred pop star played by Naomi Scott (the worst 1/3 of a terrible Charlie’s Angels reboot and an alright Jasmine in Guy Ritchie’s half-assed live-action Aladdin). Her character’s unverifiable psychosis is believed even less than Sosie Bacon’s therapist character due to a recovering addiction (the Smile spirit always felt like the devil on your shoulder à la some bad habit) but mostly for her coming off like a typically shallow prima donna. The film begins with a sharp simulated one-take that seals the fate of our ultimately afflicted cop friend (Perry Strong) from the first installment, a nice reversal on transferring the paranormal parasite via murder plus witness as we see in the hilarious imaginary scenario last time with Kal Penn. But other than the presumed taunt turning out to be a source of aid, there are not many special wrinkles — we slowly are fed a tragic backstory in which our lead woman unwittingly commited manslaughter, copy paste… The cheesin’ demon fucks with her while she loses her mind, goaded into burning bridges and escalating public humiliation, but the chills arrive with significantly less rapid elemental terror and even the comforting humor in between isn’t as reliable. Finn likes his distorted exterior shots and the score is more warped, unexpected minimalism, all stylistics articulations furthered from the first. Rewatching the original I noticed a foreign poster of Michael Ritchie’s 1968 debut Downhill Racer in the cop’s apartment — innocuous except that Ritchie’s third film after two Robert Redford projects, that skiing drama and a scathing political lampoon The Candidate, was 1975’s Smile, a semi-satire on teenage beauty pageants. Smile '75 has more in common with Smile 2 and all the confetti, glitter and parasocial problems that comes with pop stardom, but after going down a pre-Bad News Bears rabbit hole, Finn clearly just wanted to nod to a coincidental favorite more than indicate an actual influence. Smile 2 ultimately admits it can’t keep this shit up forever, and Parker swings for the fences as he forces us to cliffhang waiting on a third installment to see if the gonzo gear-shift panned out. Between Beetlejuice’s bummer of a late sequel and personally lacking the appetite for gore fetishism in the Terrifier franchise (and clearly Speak No Evil was going to be at best a tacky knockoff of the Danish original), it’s a sad time for the horror fan outside of The Substance’s stupendous synthesis. The Smile movies may boil down to It Follows for the less discerning, nonetheless this second take is a relatively robust set of freaky frightmares that tickled me even if it was unable to make my spine shiver as the familiar, nearly masterful first film solicited scene after scene. I was not laughing or singing praises with Joker 2 but Smile 2 had me grinning many a time, like when her backup dancers become a prowling ensemble straight from satan’s nightclub.  1 (out of 4)
“It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message.” Why not hold off assessing the billowing, flaming clusterfuck that is Folie à Deux and just discuss Todd Phillips — this guy is what liberals means when they say toxic masculinity, and that’s before you get to the depressed loner incel version of the Joker. Everything he does endorses the stink of man-child cinema without enough wit or anchoring comic talent to justify it, certainly not Ken Jeong or Zack Galifinakis... the latter couldn’t save his Planes, Trains and Automobiles for dummies Due Date, and the two together couldn't redeem much of the Hangover trilogy for that matter. That first 2009 hit was a zeitgeist-wrangling fluke just like Joker, and similarly both “franchises” now thrive via insults to the poor folks who gave a shit in the first place, all in the name of some kind of subversive, nasty nothingness, like The Last Jedi only more repugnant, somehow. He’s a crass, indulgent purveyor of lame male fantasies, his bread and butter still just a sadder shade of the Adam McKay, Judd Apatow and whoever was directing Seth Rogen’s stuff at the moment. At least they could actually make something memorable or regularly make you laugh. Road Trip and Old School are just paler National Lampoon knockoffs, School for Scoundrels isn’t far off… see his decently reviewed stuff is no different from most of his panned bunk — if Starsky and Hutch (transmuted 80s cliches lined with lazy improv) and War Dogs (like Lord of War, The Social Network and The Big Short had a collective miscarriage) can get a fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, oh boy I just don’t know how critics could be so easily swindled by a charlatan, a phony, a poor director — Joker, for me and many others, was accidentally good, carried like freaking Atlas by a gangled, giggly Joaquin Phoenix attaining peak method madness and earning him an overdue Academy Award. But there was no first prize at the Venice Film Festival this time, and there will be no Best Director nominations next year MR. PHILLIPS because (and I’m so curious if you know this yourself) but Folie à pee yew is a TURKEY, a really foul failure, a perfect exercise in second-hand embarrassment, cinematic detritus posturing as even more of an avant-garde affair than last time. Joker circa 2024 has a tripled budget seeing a fraction of the returns, so WB went from making at least 10x their investment to likely losing tens of millions at least, damn even the Hangover flicks were printing money through the third. This 140 minute massacre of your Monday matinee really does make you wonder if it was all a farce (no pun seriously), if Warner or Todd somehow insisted on dismantling the cult created by the first film with a feature length epilogue (one made up less of elaboration and more erasure) meant to metaphorically put the audience on trial right up there with Arthur Fleck. Lady Gaga has to stick her nose in things and in this putrid jukebox musical (I’d rather be watching Trolls, any of them) she’s somehow NOT doing most of the singing?? “And actuallyyy for art’s sake it’s best if your mouth is dry and you're off-key and, you know what fuck it who cares about tempo.” God save the editor of this epic junk as it bores the shit out of you in steadily unpleasant uncertainty, waiting for something to happen — when it does you wish it hadn’t, because it’s just more of the first film COMING FULL CIRCLE, oh I see the frat boy fancies himself a film festival frequenter now. You just want to tell Todd that, even though you may have enjoyed one of this film’s fantasy dream sequences for the decent song and a little violence and vindication (you know, like the first movie), YOU SUCK PHILLIPS. Your hackneyed effort, ironic or sincere, makes for such a mess that not even the greatest living actor on screen right now can do shit for you, so yeah no Best Picture nom this time, just humiliation to follow up your heyday. I don’t even know what to think — oh wow the psycho who murdered people he was murdered by a psycho SO POETIC. This film is somehow an airy, crunchy, cumbersome concoction of courtroom show, prison drama and musical theatre — was the Oscar winning composer of 2019 Joker Hildur Guonadottir, did she have a say in maybe not reciting "That’s Entertainment" five times? Sure, with those sick ARRI ALEXA IMAX cameras you can get a few decent shots since Phoenix + cigarettes + dancing is somehow all that apparently inspired this movie to begin with and you can’t argue with what you get. But the terrible Harvey Dent crowbarring, Arthur’s “I was gonna blame society but maybe I’M the one to blame” breakdown at the end, Gaga’s smugness and this interpretation of the character’s reversal on Harley Quinn typically getting used by the Clown Prince, the tasteless thematic dissection of mental illness (again) and a dimwit’s examination of duality — it’s such pugnacious, self-indulgent sophistry, somehow even more ridiculously edgy than where we left off. Why do the guards let him get a new suit after they beat him to a pulp, or let him cackle in the rain, or imply the prison rape, why? Why must this movie take you through every moment and character of the first movie? How little reason did Folie à Deux actually have to exist? The first film literally left you with “the end,” so the fact that Phoenix wanted to do something more "out there" is nice but this semi-gamble is simply asinine and alienating, especially as you drop projects with actual auteur’s like Todd Haynes days before production. Reboots aside, adjacent, outlier fans now solely have Matt Reeves' perpetually delayed Batman Part II to rest their hopes on.  2 (out of 4)
The legacysequel is already as tired as all the latest, laziest cinematic trends, the live action Disney reboots (Burton gets in some digs at the mouse despite just coming off Dumbo), the soulless spin-offs (he also had a firm hand in the Wednesday show), the prequel-sequels and whatever else have you. With Beetlejuice Squared, Burton seemingly could be making a sequel to any of his early, cherished features — this may as well be Edward Scissorhands 2, OK I admit it has gotta be a better bad idea than reviving Pee Wee or Mars Attacks. But this is no Top Gun: Maverick, this is like the straight-to-streaming sequel Coming 2 America, and I haven’t seen that Hocus Pocus sequel but it couldn’t have been far off either. I heard they cut Burton’s budget and weren’t even planning to show this in theaters, god ghouly gosh are you allergic to money WB? Something about this screamed Netflix (even without characters outright referencing it) and it’s because he actually wasted time making up for all the Addams Family projects he didn't direct? Whatever, so your new Winona Ryder (going from goth cutie to goth mom with permanent anxiousness plastered across her face) is Jenna Ortega, who of course Burton loves since she’s as gaunt, pale and passively pretty as his movies demand. “Oh no Helena they didn’t like me saying black people don’t fit my vibe… uh how bout the ‘soul train,’ eh? Nothing?” But between the heavy CGI in spite of a light budget and a meandering story that doesn’t lend itself to a full pitch let alone a complete narrative, it’s hard to get on board with what amounts to his most negligible endeavor in awhile, like almost grazing Alice in Wonderland awful — somehow Dumbo had more heart, Ms. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children at least had some stretches of novelty, Big Eyes was acceptable Oscar bait and both Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie (from silly TV adaptation to personal adaptation of a animated passion project) were obviously more attuned to Tim’s gothic gifts. Even after just few collaborations with Bruno Delbonnel, Burton’s movies started gliding by on a residual blue-grey glaze. The sum of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice falls well short of a full functioning motion picture, but Michael Keaton has some fun even if his colorful undead grifter was formerly a more memorable part of a better ensemble. Beyond writing so slight and telegraphed, this cast is rough, with Burton using stop motion to write around sex offender Jeffrey Jones' character, using the Charles Deetz’s death by shark attack to incite a laughably thin plot. Catherine O’Hara is always stealing scenes as the pricelessly prepossessed artist Delia, Ryder’s looking constipated, obviously Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are nowhere to be seen and Ortega, sorry dear but you’ve been typecast by twenty-two — there’s got to be more to this girl than bags under the eyes. Arthur Conti is the best of far too many villains when Beetlejuice is right there and you're utterly wasting both Willem Dafoe goofing about as a dead actor and the vengeful, cobbled ex of BJ incarnated by Monica Belluci, all too reminiscent of better Burton characters from Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride — same goes for Justin Theroux whose loathsome character is given scene after scene of grim comic nothingness. But Burton is still who he is — there’s enough mischief in the macabre, hell I’ll even call that Mario Bava/Black Sunday riff a stirring homage. If only this late sequel didn’t have to inherit, reinterpret or freshly exposit EVERY DAMN THING from the original movie without outright remaking it (so much lip-syncing! ooh that giant clay snake). All for a movie that is stretched, tedious, overpopulated and sorely lacking in the silly-spookiness that has made the 1986 original one of the enduring gems of Tim’s entire oeuvre. Of course I’ll take Ed Wood any day, and I feel as though his most recent to-be-topped near-masterpieces were Sweeney Todd and Corpse Bride. This is a sad retread, theoretically and sporadically amusing but largely a misuse of talent in the name of easy fall season bankability. As far as all-ages horror, (the mode that he prides himself on most, me I got a serious soft spot for Sleepy Hollow) Beetlejuice Beetlejuice could be so much worse, but if you want to let your kids get goosebumps you would never start here — despite any ultimate crossover to digital, you can easily use this and the original as a pretty stark, depressing before and after of the career of an emo filmmaker rock star. Not even Depp could've saved this (he may need saving actually), if Keaton somehow couldn’t.  2 ½ (out of 4)
If you were at all interested in how Ridley Scott’s prequel trilogy was working out, WELL FORGET IT! Hell, let me start off by maybe controversially admitting I admire the thoughtfulness and mystery of Prometheus and still do, somehow more than Aliens, sorry but enough of the James Cameron acolytes and apologists! It’s hard to love Alien: Covenant, the only entry I believe to be truly repulsive rubbish — it has the series’ most moronic cast of characters (all couples, coincidence?), almost exclusively CG xenomorphs, plus even faultier, even more pretentious philosophical, intellectual posturing than Prometheus. If Scott weren’t so hit and miss in his own right it would be hard to believe he had anything to do with Covenant, especially considering he’s got criticisms for all the Alien sequels past his personal high watermark, the original 1979 classic (c’mon it’s better than Blade Runner). But considering this is the first attempt post-Fox-acquisition, I can’t be too mad at the Mouse since 20th Century was clearly no stranger to the soft reboot. Under cuddlier stewardship, often it’s amazing how hard an R Alien: Romulus reaches for, still some of it is troublingly Disnified. The seventh installment is hardly the first Alien sequel to feel like a retread, it’d be weird if it DIDN’T when regardless of a few more deviations in the narrative DNA of Scott’s oft-debated prequels basically every successor has felt like the latest wrinkle on the recipe. No reason then to expect anything extra from director Fede Álvarez, who is at least a few leagues below the auteur status of Scott, Cameron, David Fincher and even the Amélie dude Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Maybe Fede will ultimately stand out by finally rejecting director’s cuts, or abstaining from posting deleted scenes released early on YouTube. Obviously one look at his debut (the Evil Dead revamp) and you can feel out exactly how Romulus will rub off — with that 2013 sorta remake of Sam Raimi’s classic, crafty, cacklingly-funny splatstick treats, Alvarez doubled down on the gore, young everyday characters and a portion of fan-service nose-thumbing. Álvarez’s first quasi-reinvention also similarly took place in a series full of one-off riffs on the same great horror idea (Dead by Dawn immediately ignored continuity and reconfigured the original, then Army of Darkness leaned deeper into comedy-heavy horror). Evil Dead For Millennials is far too joyless to make its grindhouse, possession-forward take on Deadites anywhere close to Raimi’s high-reward horseplay, and likewise Romulus lives in the shadow of its preferable predecessors, its a functional half-decent entry point for new fans shaking things up juuuuust enough for devotees. For Fede I would say Don’t Breathe has more economy, originality and clever thrills (let’s just pretend The Girl in the Spider’s Web doesn’t exist, AGAIN with the franchise refresh) but Alien: Romulus is his most handsome movie yet, finding him handing in sci-fi lighting arrangements worthy of Interstellar (or better) and production design reminiscent of the breathtaking retro-future/aged-tech atmospherics (almost to the point of textural fetish) of Blade Runner 2049, another late sequel that slipped from Scott’s creative grip. Though it harkens back to better days, all that Alien universe “porn” reeks of Disney’s assaults on your nostalgia through mood and feeling, but after the silent opening credits the movie only feels less and less like it’s been ripped from the late 70s. I hate that Romulus was the Marvelization of Alien (Whedon took it halfway there) but I also feel as if, like with Mission: Impossible, eating your own tail is just a product of existing for such a long while surviving largely only stylistic elements between installments to be excited about, with plot all but predetermined. I don’t think it’s too crazy to call a digitally resurrected Ian Holmes (why spend more time than a cameo’s worth on not even the same Ash from the original?) a glaring fucking error, as well as any of the other easy Easter eggs and streamlined decisions that make it feel like this comes with A Star Wars Story spinoff subtitle beneath. At its most intrepid and involving it fulfills pretty outstanding fan-fiction moments (45 years and no zero G? I don't mind a mu/th/erload of exploits), and because of the filmmaking craft the fan-fondling moments are all the more unbearable. Fincher’s notorious debut Alien 3 appears to be Romulus’s closest companion, with parallels from a thick-accented platter of xenochow, the moodiest, grungiest mise-en-scene you could muster and the unrelenting pursuit of the nastiest notion of a space slasher setup. Even though Fede is even edgier and less scrupulous than Fincher, even with MCU-tier swill holding it back, this flick somehow bests Fincher’s ugly, interminably repetitive initial trilogy capper — even the Assembly Cut of Alien Cubed doesn’t have quite as many gonzo gotchas or beautiful shots. However, for perspective Romulus doesn’t have an advantage over the stylized shlock that followed, the campy camaraderie from Joss Whedon’s insistent script for Alien: Resurrection — this new one rips off the surprise coda of hybrid abominations, but even superb visual effects circa 2024, that kooky fourth installment is more energetic, freakier, sustained by surer sequences and populated with more interesting people. I admit Cailee Spaeny must be our best lead player since Aliens (though she's sadly stuck with a dogshit ensemble), since Sigourney was a little too horny in 3 and is barely even herself in what might be Winona Ryder's show in Resurrection — as the best Ripley stand-in she outstrips Katherine Waterston from Covenant (saddled with a crap script and a deleted James Franco for a dead husband) and Noomi Rapace, the faith-fueled final girl of the best modern xeno-kino Prometheus. This is doubled-edged swords all the way down, highs and lows, my god this movie made me question my sanity before the end I’ve rarely been whiplashed or flip-flopped back and forth more as a movie went along, It made me momentarily feel like I didn’t even know what it means to like or dislike something… Beyond technical aptitude the film has pretty sublime spectacle here and there and twists on the Alien archetypes that make this something a little more than ‘79 for zoomers. But damn, tastelessly resurrecting Holmes digitally like Peter Cushing in Rogue One? Referencing basically every previous movie, even lifting whole scenes? A host of supporting players that can barely act? That one awkward, negligible exposition scene just there to acknowledge that the Ridley Scott movies happened? Tepid reflections on AI in a history of fascinating ethical dilemmas (that never stooped to ISN'T THIS, LIKE, A NEW FORM OF RACISM)? I feel like I could go on, suffice it to say there were myriad flaws that made me want to give up on this movie and nearly as many that eagerly found a way to win me back (That launch into orbit? Dodging acid blood in zero gravity? Goofy WTF genetic hybrids that make less sense than the end of Prometheus, following the nastiest alien birth you could ever ask for?). At least there’s no ‘plan’ about trapping the titular villain in a certain part of the ship and then blowing it out, although thems the brakes regardless. This third act is a reasonably scary crowdpleaser, redeeming sloppy humor, annoying background players even by monster movie standards, dimwitted nostalgic breaths and the quaint, rushed, compendium feel of the movie. It’s an anomaly, Alien: Anomulus, and even with slight box office waves we’re getting the direct sequel… Why does a franchise exclusively built around the mysterious "other" always end up the same same same? Why is the cosmic unknown so predictable? Maybe the stupid TV series Alien: Earth will touch on whatever Neil Blomkamp was up to for so long?  3 (out of 4)
“Dad I'm concerned, why are we making a movie about a teenage girl with a serial killer for a father prominently starring me, your teenage daughter?” So Saleka Shyamalan, eldest daughter of M. Night, appears a touch more talented than Ishana Shyamalan, who devised this summer's The Watchers the kookiest supernatural horror premise about evil woods and nocturnal people-peeping monster-voyeurs? The fuck? The younger Ishana served as a second unit director for her father’s last two films and directs her more pop-star-aspiring sister’s music videos. Saleka is more than commendable and thankfully her real-life persona bleeds naturally enough into this movie’s fascinating escape-thriller father-daughter dynamic. Based on the one featured single credited to her at least and the bits of performance onscreen, she has songwriting skills, and fine enough chops in acting and singing. Sure, she very nearly nepo-baby’s her way to commandeering the screen, her all too righteous character tailored for a prolonged Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. I probably prefer the philosophy and more airtight bottle structure of Knock at the Cabin, but Trap is arguably another step in M. Night’s revival — I say he’s still back baby, one more and it’ll be a renaissance. Such a comeback was hinted at in the farce-forward found footage thriller The Visit, still Trap is capably put together even if it’s too indulgent to be swift and tidy. Josh Hartnett’s hidden two-face is outta the stadium within an hour, and after exploiting the cold-blooded cat and mouse concert setting, the film leaves you wondering how they’re gonna fill up an act and maybe then some over the course of the extended finale in search of a climax. At its most lazy and regrettable, Shyamalan spins his wheels a little too generously with offscreen asspulls forcing you out of killer’s perspective merely for convenience. But gosh darn it, ignoring silly monologues and protruding plot contrivances, Trap is pure De-Palma-does-Hitchcock gratisfaction, M. Night’s Snake Eyes (from Gary Sinise’s POV in this scenario), a consistently absorbing, split-diopter-stocked, deeply Shyamalanian (peripherally Pennsylvanian) affair of less is more filmmaking wizardry, flat character oddities and some dodgy dialogue. All that backhanded praise is counterbalanced by the SHEER FLIPPING WILLPOWER of Hartnett, who even leaning completely into the campiest idea of the family man/secret serial killer dichotomy somehow comes out the other side incomparably unscathed, particularly when measured against James McAvoy’s mugging, untenable travesties in Split. Young Ariel Donoghue as the unwitting, holiday picture of a daughter sells the love, and the underappreciated Alison Pill as the suspicious madre also saves the day in more ways than one. For late summer servings this is one spicy meatball, a real old-school thriller that doesn’t require a classic M. Night last minute yank on the rug to be memorable or tie things together — the twists come along with delicious punctuality, as well as laughs genuine and unintended. It could’ve been sad or funny walking into a movie called Trap and getting stuck listening to a set of zoomer pop music, the kind with triplets or whatever, that garbage Ariana Grande sound. Trap does indeed smell a little fishy and is very nearly a bait and switch, but really its just good fun, making it the bees frickin’ knees after a mostly craptastic summer.  2 ½ (out of 4)
Deadpool 2 began with a simple “FUCK WOLVERINE” and things aren’t too different now… if you’re coming into the latest Deadpool flick for the clawed curmudgeon you may as well stick to The Wolverine, hell the only Huge Act Man X-Men movie worse than Deadpool & Wolverine is obviously X-Men Origins: Wolverine (a deservedly scorned spin-off with admittedly decent choreography if awful VFX), no bar to exceed considering Wade and Logan play odd couple for about four minutes together onscreen. As technically the first X-Men movie in the MCU, you can’t be too mad at it when there’s a dozen Easter baskets worth of stupid comic-nerd nuggets — for that specific cameo that’ll make you chuckle (for me it was rescuing Channing Tatum’s Gambit movie from the empty sea of developed and unrealized movies) this flick is like an upended cereal box. Akin to Spider-Man: No Way Home’s playfully unconcerned Multiverse-mucking, D&W has just as little actual story and likewise feels like a pure product rather than a real movie. However, even when 40% of the jokes are falling flat, Ryan Reynolds’ steadfast creative commitment ignites the third Deadpool with at least some marginal sense of unequivocal uniqueness, which is more appetizing than James Gunn’s own irksome irreverence, although Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 may be the only good Marvel movie out of their last seven or so. Deadpool & Wolverine may be a whopper of pound for pound entertainment value — it’s still hard to genuinely say it’s good. Wolverine is almost more sidelined than Godzilla in that last Kong mash-up, here though I understand more since it’s Deadpool’s unlikely franchise at the end of the day. Because the first film has terrible non-linear narrative structure with a pretty unsatisfying outline of an origin and a quickly outdated sense of what meta means, I think the third is just too double-stuffed with fun not to be superior, even if both are too insanely specific products of their cultural place to age gracefully. Deadpool 2 is the actual movie in the franchise, the bona fide blockbuster, the most seamless mix of impressive action sequences (David Leitch in the driver’s seat helps), crisper self-aware commentary, more effectively base humor and pinch of actual characterization. This movie still has the sword-swinging slapstick in effective bouts between our titular foul-mouthed, virtually unkillable mental cases, and you can’t help but laugh at some of Reynolds’ ridiculous wisecracks (or Hugh giving what he’d give Shakespeare) — next to the way this Cinematic Universe has insisted on one-liners and tension-eviscerating asides, Ryan relatively feels like a comic savant since too much of Whedon, Gunn and the new Spidey shtick has rubbed me wrong. The real victory is this is an authentic Deadpool movie — despite the way Fantastic Four and of course the rest of the X-Men are starting to seep into the cracks of the GRAND TIMELINE or whatever, you don’t even blink at the first R-rated Disney/Marvel flick by a LONG SHOT (the closest was a weak F-Bomb in Guardians 3), or wait around for MCU cameos when they could bring back Pyro, Toad, Juggernaut, Laura/X23, Tatum to finally play Gambit for Christ’s sake and throw in Wesley Snipes and Jennifer Garner as Blade and Elektra for respective good measure, needless as they are, then of course there’s Chris Evans’ sneaky cameo as Johnny Storm rather than Steve Rodgers, a crappy recurring joke turned a solid one. But what matters is that this actor/character switcheroo ties in COMPLETELY to the Comic Con craziness occurring just as this movie easily has the biggest opening weekend of 2024 — if Chris Evans can be both Captain and the Torch in our universe, than Downey Jr. can be BOTH IRON MAN AND DR. DOOM! FUCK IT FEIGE! Yes let us all forget the Kang fiasco which would have been shit even if Jonathan Majors hadn’t become a problem child and everything went according to “plan.” Fantastic Four now has the subtitle First Steps (what like they’re Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2?) because if Phase Four or Five will be remembered, if at all, it’s whiffed one-offs and really paltry, poorly considered attempts to slam the reset button on the MCU’s stalled out, inevitable entropy. The movie mourns the death of Fox in that evil manipulative arrangement of sentimental behind the scenes footage of better superhero movies Disney had no hand in — they’re flaunting and flexing their not so recently acquired IP harder than ever and this is just the start. I’m just so happy that by sheer financial calculus Feige has to bend over and take Reynold’s quips about Deadpool & Wolverine arriving at a “low point” in the series. That’s no joke though as the last one, The Marvels, in money or moviemaking, is just shit, worst ever for the brand, and even if this movie’s self-awareness about the drop-off since Endgame is a distraction of insincere “honesty,” it’s just delightful to witness onscreen. Fortunately Reynolds is just as inseparable from his character as Jackman form Logan or Downey from Tony… plus there’s that rando Peter (Rob Delaney), the elderly blind roommate (Leslie Uggams) and all the glib, giddy decisions making this a weirdly lovable trilogy contrary to the smarmy swill the first movie suggests on its own. D&W has reasonable respect for Logan (less for Logan, who is a different animal than we’ve seen before with the same grimaced redemption arc) and yet this second swan song, this meme-able encore (DID WE MENTION HE’S WEARING THE CLASSIC YELLOW SUIT OMG FINALLYYY) is just more gore and mockery and dumb needle drops — I almost don’t even need to mention director (and first-time writer, alongside four others, after twenty-five years of mediocrity exclusively behind the camera) Shawn Levy, most famous for the stinky Night at the Museum trilogy, one-off unfunny Steve Martin vehicles like Cheaper by the Dozen and the 2006 Pink Panther plus crappy crass but still sentimental comedies This Is Where I Leave You and The Internship. His latest era may be his best, as this is his third charming enough/“eh not bad” Reynolds collab in a row, rearing 2021’s late summer sleeper hit Free Guy and the sci-fi coming-of-age Netflick The Adam Project — which family friendly movie with a slavish religiosity toward Star Wars, 80s nostalgia and all forms of mainstream nerd culture would you prefer? Anyway, like Tim Miller directing 2016's Deadpool, there’s really no voice to make out here, and Levy is so tasteless you can’t even lament another director getting tangled up in the Disney turbines. With eight months after the embarrassment of The Marvels and eight months until Captain America: Brave New World (probably not the first on anybody’s anticipated list) this is a desert stretch for MCU disciples. Then we figure out what’s going on with that asterisk Thunderbolts*'s title before Fantastic Four seemingly directs us to two new Avengers only just subtitled Doomsday for obvious RDJ-related reasons and the unchanged Secret Wars in 2026. As someone totally finished with actually expecting ANYTHING of significance to happen (2020s MCU really is the true TV-identical serialization of cinema) I’m glad Deadpool & Wolverine took the tiresome, messy malarkey of cinematic interconnectivity to more pleasingly flippant and freewheeling places than Doctor Strange in the Mulitverse of Madness or any other failed attempt to widen this Universe’s reach since 2019.  2 (out of 4)
Can you really claim a plural title (à la Aliens) when your dumber sequel features half the cyclones spinning in 1996? Jesus, I don’t think there’s a single way in which this soft remake (so soft it's barely holding together) isn’t paling in comparison to the already pretty corny disaster movie thrills of the original Twister — trading “From the director of Speed” for “From the director of Minari” doesn’t make your affair classier, it just makes it a marvel of boredom and wasted effort in search of actual escapism, probably like watching real storm chasers. If you really were trying to correct certain things about the original, let’s play that game: sure swapping Twister’s crumbier cold open for an even more obvious investment in backstory makes sense, but the plot is utterly lost on Minari man Lee Isaac Chung, the removed antithesis to director Jan de Bont’s restless insistence. The first movie is all about them trying to get their little science balls into the deadly suck zone, in fact the ENTIRE MOVIE is just race to see who can get this dizzying data — it’s frustrating but you’re invested after all the spills and when they accomplish their macho meteorological maneuver it’s so rewarding, exciting, pent up and released like a theme park ride as DISASTER MOVIES GENERALLY SHOULD BE. In 2024 we would apparently rather drown in melodrama, the ‘dead friends’ kind rather than the ‘love triangle between my separated storm chaser wife and the therapist fiancé' routine. Believe me I can barely stomach when Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton are screaming about Daddy issues with a ‘nado just down the road, but that goop is still preferential. It can’t go without saying the action is either unimpressive or nonexistent — only one of its four or so major sequences involves some technical interaction between the practical effects and digital enhancements, and regardless any of the film’s unfussy spectacle still kinda sucks. Again it’s living up to no masterpiece, I can’t even say I even like Twister but when they have to drive a truck through a house they drive a truck through a fucking house. Twisters is so slick and phony, despite real locations and shooting on Kodak film — de Bont’s film had stunning aerial photography this movie can’t even come close to with today’s drone technology, ha maybe you should’ve handed this over to someone who knows their way around both shlock and new tech like Michael Bay. And although Twisters sidesteps any climate change rhetoric, the film still has to promulgate a message about evil lowballing profiteers pilfering storm-swept lands, something this shoddy script wants to play with morally but won’t commit to… Worse still, the reverence for nature is somehow diminished even when you account for how quiet Chung’s film is in contrast to 1996’s second biggest domestic feature (behind disaster maestro Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day). So what if Twisters features a scene at a rodeo, plays a couple country songs and refuses to let you forget we’re in the beautiful, scenic southern paradise of OOOOOOOOKlahoma where the cows go flying through the aaaiiiiiiirrrrrr. State pride aside Twisters has a smokescreen of authenticity, especially as it is carried by a crop of “rising stars.” Apart from professional third wheel Anthony Ramos from In the Heights (no mackin’ for you this time), we have Daisy Edger-Jones from Where the Crawdads Sing (her unreadable demeanor is forced to conceal some already communicated trauma and guilt), and Glen Powell (whom you rightfully and wrongly expect to save the day and the movie), of Top Gun: Maverick and Hit Man, as the thrill junkie YouTube personality with a degree AND a heart of gold, too charming and romantic to make into the simple clone of Cary Elwes' original antagonist — Lordy the way this movie tries to eliminate the ‘good chasers vs. bad chasers’ angle isn’t mature or realistic, the tiresome ‘modern moral grey’ is just another of this movie’s forgettable, inferior alterations. Even the 2nd act respite with our lead character’s accommodating Mom is worse — in ’96 Lois Smith offered superb presence and made you care about her character’s survival in a medical rescue moment. In the background no figures here have shit on the former, stupendous supporting ensemble spearheaded by Philip Seymour Hoffman and including Todd Field, Anthony Rapp, Alan Ruck, Jeremy Davies, Patrick Fischler, Sean Whalen and Joey Slotnick, just a king's ransom of "ah, that guy!" I can’t believe Joseph Kosinski is responsible for the story (and just just the story as he’s probably too busy directing F1), since Top Gun: Maverick is precisely the textbook Twisters doesn’t follow, namely an emphasis on cinematic realism, warm, genuine emotions, plus Powell as part of a greater whole rather than the only grace note, all in all the legacyquel with dignity. Chung is candid and clever as director, producer, cinematographer and editor of the Rwandan journey of liberation disguised as revenge saga Munyurangabo — regardless this felt like the Universal equivalent of an indie-to-Marvel one-step yes-man process, since hardly any of his sensitivities bleed through even the quieter passages. The disaster movie was my first love, yet it’s such a dilapidated, dogshit genre that, in hindsight, there are seldom few quality examples. Nostalgia carries The Day After Tomorrow far for me, War of the Worlds contains far too many other genres to include (but it’d be the GOAT far and away if you did), and similarly pandemic flicks (like Contagion or Outbreak) don’t quite qualify and maybe there’s more an argument to be made for harrowing historical features like Titanic or The Impossible or, ugh, The Perfect Storm, lame. As what one would call a desperate apologist for such saturated spectacle and waves of what-would-you-do-in-that-situation cinema, I’ll say the original Poseidon Adventure (and Wolfgang Petersen’s remake damn it!) represents what we crave, otherwise Deep Impact (gtfoh Armageddon) and Dante’s Peak (you can stay Volcano, whatever) are the only really strong excerpts from the genre of suffering as showmanship. Recent attempts to reclaim mainstream attention for popcorn apocalypses like Pompeii, San Andreas and Geostorm certainly don’t speak to a bright future. The fact that Twisters was maybe only a hair above the made-for-cheap found-footage-plus-tornado-twist Into the Storm is concerning, and frankly if I’m favoring The Core and 2012 above this new summer smash, something’s gone seriously wrong, not just with with critic’s giving this lousy, limp-wristed movie masquerading as a big budget blockbuster thanks to IP with nothing in common besides natural phenomena and a reference to their Dorothy machine. You can find more awe-inducing tornadoes in fucking The Wizard of Oz too. It’s amazing that the mediocrity of 30 years ago outstrips the well-received slop of today. I thought this would be an overnight shoo-in for disaster movie all-timer rather than a dud you can barely call a distraction — if you’re going to replace sequences of man vs. nature with cheesy character development, just make sure such a exchange in entertainment value is actually worth it.  2 ½ (out of 4)
This might be where I draw the line concerning my tolerance for dopey spin-offs that never should’ve never seen the green light of day. When X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Minions have more reason to exist than your apocalyptic prequel, it only goes to show that when movies branch from their franchises in the name of exploiting some pliable premise (or often exploring some specific character), the zoomed-in, scrutinized side-storying rarely amounts to anything worth the trouble to make apart from money. Even as a cash-in scheme they’re a gamble, there’s a reason X-Men Origins: Magneto became a full-on reboot, same goes for why there are only two Star Wars Story’s, and the one that killed them was Solo… just because the Conjuring series has made a ceaseless ruse out of this doesn’t mean everyone should PARAMOUNT! But anyway, I hate to admit, for being the lesser of three sci-fi horror-thrillers, A Quiet Place: Day One at least continues the tradition of great cut to credits parting moments. It exceeds at least the 2018 original in exploiting the modes of modern silent cinema with nods to magic and puppetry — but there’s no real challenge to communicate an alien invasion survival flick scaffolded by a joke plot. For spin-offs this was probably better than Birds of Prey but certainly similar, as Lupita N’yongo (doing her best as always) and her damn slice of pizza is just as annoying as Harley Quinn and her fucking breakfast sammich — at least it made sense why it was stupid in the Fantabulous whatever the fuck… but the Quiet Place series intently posits itself as artier mainstream horror, so NO don’t make your new wrinkle in the premise about some suicidal cancer patient trying to score some ‘za. Talk about diminishing your already diminished “installment.” It’s as if a professional production solely about the Twinkie subplot of Zombieland was worth planning out a whole trip to the movies. There are some neat, terse chase sequences, that first migrating scramble with thousands in the streets was taking a page from Spielberg’s War of the Worlds with little oners and plenty of dusty panoramic panic. But this non-story has nowhere to go, except past DAY ONE, EXCUSE ME there were at least two days witnessed here minimum, sorry whatcha gonna call the next one? This almost moves like a decent TV pilot no one picked up (wait for the Quiet Place streaming series, just guessing) — it’s almost respectable and utterly superfluous. For second time director Michael Sarnoski, there’s barely a hint of the same lovelorn despair translating from the quiet melancholy of Pig, ultimately there’s hardly a scrap of stylistic difference between this and Krasinski’s brief encounters of suspense and spectacle. Lupita is stupendous in spite of the shlock, but her support is just Sarnoski’s second collab with Alex Wolff, an under-present Djimon Hounsou (who recounts a way cooler, crazier ending to this movie in Part II, where 10 boats were massacred by our dangerous disabled invaders) and some coward (Joseph Quinn) whose not even as self-sufficient as his little pussy — why are nearly getting yourself killed to save a creature capable of making much, much less noise than you? If this is what passes for a blockbuster, let alone a horror-thriller monster movie (let me just forget this was once the date for the eighth Mission: Impossible) I may have to tune this shit out unless you give me a spin-off just about the cat.  2 ½ (out of 4)
Hey Pixar, any chance of a real renaissance or resurgence at this point? Calling anything they produce from here out “the best since Soul” wouldn’t mean much even if Inside Out 2 was an exceptional sequel — it isn’t though, just another entry of entertainment entropy they've regularly released since the decline, save an exception or two. At the end I hoped the credits-adjacent dinnertime zoom-ins ’n’ -outs of the parent’s own internal command modules would yield a great parting gag like the first Inside Out but nope, just more of “Wow isn’t anxiety annoying?” Is anxiety just a fistful of adderall and planning your day? In constructive life situations this new movie makes anxiousness look downright useful, though of course Inside Out 2’s thematic promise, like last time, is it takes the balance of ALL emotions (the good, the bad, the indifferent) to amount to a full person. This sequel feigns as new and different, aiming lower perhaps for the sake of keeping story potential alive for more sequels, but what’s the next step (OH God a Disney+ show??), what emotions could they add on top of the better additions like Ennui and especially Nostalgia as some closeted grandmotherly emotion for a rainy day, the best recurring bit. Pixar’s not going to get its hands dirty with sexual frustration and the temptations of substance abuse or some other deadly sin now are they, unless these flicks truly become message movies. Limiting children’s human emotion to five distinctly incomplete subsets was begging for an adolescent upgrade, so long as they retained enough heartwarming, psychologically healthy ideas and proper pathos — but Inside Out 2 doesn’t just talk down to teenagers, they’re shortchanging the kids as well. The original was so original it took seven suggested scripts for any production to began — this was already a concept too high for its own good whether it wanted to be or not, and if the idea of an Inside Out is the sum of riffing and pitching small concepts within the larger umbrella of insular insanity (probably how plenty of Pixar screenplays are pieced together) is this sequel honestly the best bundle of bits you got? For the sake of color let’s look at certain Pixar series — Toy Story is the flagship and, for me, without a weak one in the bunch, unless you count Lightyear and who does? Finding Dory was cash-grabby but has that sturdy center of sentiment and more than a few cute additions in character. Incredibles 2 was no doubt a flight of steps down from Pixar’s finest two hours but an intermittently awe-inducing follow-up. But Inside Out 2 is about as trivial as a Cars 2 (or 3, remember?) or a Monsters University, so inconsequential you don’t even need to see it, it may as well not even exist. And for puberty allegories I would honestly say both Turning Red (despite paling next to Encanto and Coco) and Brave were more agreeable, girls-will-be-girls one-of-a-kind affairs, the sequel isn’t even up to their most dismissed of COVID and post-COVID under-the-radar affairs like Luca or Elemental. Inside Out was the OG Pixar comeback, a renewing moment for their acclaimed invention and most literal emotional complexity — this has neither, just less enlightening gags and minuscule social insight. Of course I’m not upset that the more pointed growing pains episode of this now fresh series has you squirming, teeth on edge and collar pulled, but that’s also what you got last time when young Riley was formerly out of control of herself, manipulated like a marionette by her color-coated brain-bureaucracy. If this is a rebound outside of Disney finances, it’s a sad one — for me Soul is their closest and only scrape with cinema greatness in almost 15 years. Even 2015’s Inside Out isn’t quite as exceptionally clever as they say, like when Phyllis Smith’s Sadness has to explain every stage of abstract thought just so you understand one sequence of their mind-mission. Then there’s no Bill Hader as Fear (Tony Hale ain’t no bad trade) or even Mindy Kaling as Disgust from what I can tell (Liza Lapira instead), though Lewis Black, Smith and Amy Poehler exude earnest returning voice work. Maya Hawke has attempted to make a name for herself beyond identifiable nepo-baby status through 2023’s Asteroid City and Maestro but as the voice of Anxiety (and as far as redeemed villains go), it’s no character exactly destined to be anyone’s favorite. I just felt disheartened, as if, like the upcoming Moana 2 (formerly a show reworked into a theatrical sequel), this is a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency kind of project, where it’s about nothing more than the bottom line rather actual artistry. For Dreamworks’ parallel products, Trolls Band Together and Kung Fu Panda 4 demand less of you, deliver more dutiful distractions and are better for it — Pixar, meanwhile, is constantly betrayed by their pantheon-packed past, like having your darlings kill you. Somehow Orion and the Dark (and from the looks of it The Wild Robot) is finding Dreamworks accessing slip-on sincerity and silliness better than the GOAT. Albeit, from afar Pixar's next original project, Elio, appears too promising for me to neglect the studio’s still-lingering potential for a stunner. Especially following up Richard Kind’s heartbreaking bro for the ages Bing Bong, the second Inside Out doesn’t hit you right in the feels in any remotely comparable sense, and I rate my Pixar movies in no small part due to the tears they elicit. Regrettably, all the sentimental and psychological simplifications of Inside Out 2 may be messing with kids heads and hearts more than making sense of them, and Nostalgia will be the only reason this will ever be remembered. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
3 (out of 4) Despite the twilight years, George Miller has been maxing out hard between his most recent efforts, if you don’t count Happy Feet Two — between Mad Max: Fury Road, Three Thousand Years of Longing and now Furious: A Mad Max Saga, it’s kind of insane how much vehement electricity is retained in these films vibrant, lucid frames. It’s odd that even with only Fury Road for comparison, the 80-year-old’s latest still somehow feels like its almost from a different hand, like Miller passed the beloved, unsullied series on to some digitally minded hybrid of Lucas, Rodriguez and especially the Wachowskis — Furiosa is wild and consistently inconsistent, visually cut from a much cleaner shade of crazy, yet the world is so much more grotesque than you’re used to, full of maggots and nipple rings. This advancement of even more sensory, kinetic delirious craft doesn’t make this anything less than authentically Australian or somehow unworthy of the Mad Max legacy of truly dreamlike, depthless, unimaginable yarns of future mythos, all the fire, blood, dust and diesel one can handle from the derelicts down under. I’ve fallen asleep on this movie twice, and it’s because Miller can send you to your own desperate dreamland like no one else. The editing is crisp and roomy, the storytelling is even more roundabout and freewheeling than the original trilogy can prepare you for — for about an hour longer than the usual Saga, the structure is the only thing apart from the cartoon-caliber Fury Road aesthetic keeping Furiosa on its own slightly lesser echelon, this oxymoronic attempt to make the slightest entry the most epic. It all makes something of a more than complete world-building spin-off out of a cinematic franchise that never felt the need to explain itself or it’s situation, let alone bother to care about any continuity between each installment. Even in between my first-viewing naps I could glean how much politicking and pulling from every corner of post-pockyclips lore was happening, as the fifth Miller/Max motion picture incorporates the original’s simple revenge rev-up (and sweetness upended), the patience and payoff of Road Warrior’s iconography, Thunderdome’s gonzo, Spielbergian giddiness and of course Fury Road’s rabid, modernized, hard-R blockbustering about. All we needed was Mel Gibson, which would’ve beat a pointless blink-and-it's-done Max cameo considering there’s already diet Mad Max (Tom Burke) as Praetorian Jack. Anya Taylor-Joy, boy if I was only in 60% of my own movie, I’d bring the little girl (Alyla Browne) on the press tour or else feel the guilt of undue credit! She does her best Charlize (and Max) impression, mostly by looking the part with occasional digital assistance and also saying very, very few words. Australian native Chris Hemsworth inherits the film's charisma, and with a protruding prosthetic schnoz he’s absolutely ridiculous but never winking the way the later Thor movies would have him. There’s a new Joe, and a host of other figures vying for the memory halls of turnpike biker pageantry (I ONLY ANSWER TO THE OCTOBOSS) but there’s nothing close to the The Nightrider or Master Blaster here, no way, though it at least contributes to an already full catalogue of memorable psycho-gearhead-gangsters. I can’t believe this eighty-year-old thought he was gonna make more of these in the even that this DIDN’T flop so very hard over Memorial Day Weekend. But dismissive audience don't deserve better than even the weakest in the Mad Max series, which still amounts to a handsome if uneven excursion into peak apocalyptic franchises, Apes be damned and that’s a good set of movies overall… Like Sam Raimi with Evil Dead (well before the 2010s), the Mad Max movies are just so strange, intimate, home-grown and unfettered by commercial concern. Even if Furiosa is the least of a fantastic series, that still makes it the best movie of the summer and then some, believe it or not (had Hit Man hit theaters for real there'd be a different story). As someone who likes Fury Road a lot but never jumped aboard the ‘best of the century’ brigade, I will say if you crave ceaseless excitement Furiosa will not satisfy — there’s not an action sequence proper til an hour in, but when they get to the fireworks, despite the more insistent CGI (Fury Road had its share) the film is still a singular visual delight, like if The Wachowskis jumped directly from Speed Racer to this, the energy is that pinpoint and utterly berserk. Even if it only amounts to a meager but marginally mighty companion piece to Fury Road’s stunning display of pyrotechnic, acrobatic, automatic immediacy, this Mad Max Saga makes you hope the series either stops in its tracks right here or never makes its way into other hands, at least not of those in the Northern Hemisphere. The Garfield Movie 1 ½ (out of 4) When I was younger and dumber and thought I was funny or artistic, I wanted to make comic strips, or I should say I did after I won a contest in third grade wherein you had to fill in Garfield’s thought bubble with anything at all. He was smiling and reading a book on the couch, and having heard the word onomatopoeia recently in a movie or TV show (Hey Arnold! maybe?), I thought it’d be a clever juxtaposition to fill in the spelling bee answer and “wow I’m surprised the Teletubbies know that word” even though what, are there Teletubby novels? Anyway I was one of 15 or so out of 1500 (or was it 15000?) nationwide, so I won some gifts and books and started to read strips — never had the comic books obsession. Through the years it became one of those weird collections one attracts and accumulates, like Criterion’s for me now or the Pokémon cards I stopped collecting probably around the same time as Garfield knick-knacks. I regularly enjoyed what Jim Davis’ delivered, particularly the earlier stuff — by the time I started checking the funny pages I liked the most recent compilations but thought the current daily comics were a little lesser. The old Garfield was really fat, had no skinny legs and the tiniest of eyeballs. The modern output just doesn’t compare, and in general I realized Calvin and Hobbes was the finest of the medium, particularly because of its lack of commercialization to go with the wit, insight and beautiful artwork. In contemporary stuff, Pearls Before Swine perfected the snarky talking animals thing for the newspaper comics by the time it picked up a groove. Regardless of 2004’s Garfield or 2006’s A Tale of Two Kitties, I don’t feel as though my childhood was ruined by The Garfield Movie, not that the billionaire merchandising magnate Davis would give a fuck anyway. All I know is Chris Pratt is no Bill Murray even on that washed up fart's laziest Monday, trained animals are more impressive than animation of Illumination ilk and I’d rather have a plot of Odie and Garfield becoming friends during the course of some adventure (or destroy Dickens with prince and the pauper shit) over some mishap of farm animal romance, trite daddy issues as emotional tethers and endless non-sequitur gags. At least Odie's still the bro who knows better than his bully, master, co-pet, though the poor, lovable beagle is underutilized. Even to mix my one early nostalgia with my current kind (though Spy Kids probably paved the way), all the Mission: Impossible references are too much — despite Ving Rhames playing an anthropomorphized cow, he nonetheless remains the tech guy behind the middle act heist sequence. There's a moving train climax, Tom Cruise references and they even using the M:I theme overtly, it’s like being trapped in that one parody moment from Shrek 2 for 30 minutes. It was probably even worse than Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget's own heist-lampooning jail breaks, but at least there are some personal stakes — Garfield has no motivation here, nothing, it's not an origin story and outside of cute references in the film’s final moments to, you know, a more accurate, interesting display of what Garfield media is (imaginary scenarios, at least something with NERMAL PLEASE...) this movie is just a quell-your-kids affair and a shoddy one at that — Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4, as money-back-guaranteed general audience entertainment, will lap circles around this crap financially if not critically. This isn’t Disney or Dreamworks, it's DNEG whose only other full feature on their own is Ron's Gone Wrong (no comment) plus a few assists for Universal and Paramount. All I know is this fits every definition of weak children's cinema — The Garfield Movie is visually textureless, kinetically exhausting, of course soundtracked by Pharrell or worse and plagued by the dullest wisecracks I could imagine thought-bubbling out of the world’s most sardonic kitty. It’s like my seven-year-old self wrote this shit for school.  3 (out of 4)
I am about as wary as one can be regarding those few valuable Fox franchises Disney has to quietly reignite under the 20th Century Studios moniker — Alien: Romulus, sans Ridley Scott, will be another test for them, as will their incorporation of the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the fold of the waning MCU, beginning with Deadpool & Wolverine. Planet of the Apes, however, has an enduring legacy that almost outstretches every other film franchise apart from Bond or Godzilla. Until recently the original Apes sequels were foreign to me and frankly I can’t tell you how off-putting everything about Tim Burton’s quasi-remake was and remains, otherwise I maintained a relative fondness, short of admiration, for the reboot trilogy after seeing them each once in theaters. Like Mad Max’s pre-to-post-apocalyptic, continuity-unconscious set-up, Planet of the Apes always succeeded in some even hand of spectacle and speculation, often functioning best, to my mind, when the ideas you could strip from the premise (be it evolutionary, science vs. religion, Cold War parallels, Civil Rights parallels, animal rights OBVIOUSLY) were presented more conspicuously. The reason the 2010s Rise and Dawn so neatly update the Caesar revolution (directing us from the present to the early days of ape domination) is because unlike Burton there isn’t just a world of difference in visual effects, but character nudges its way front and center every time. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the ideal sequel for finding the moral balance between good and bad primates and humans — the subtlety is most agreeable, as is Matt Reeves suitably Nolan-esque trimmings. Unfortunately Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes doesn’t have as many scripted nuances, nor anyone behind the camera to impose a noticeable stylistic shift; from Rises’ bright San Franciscan setting to Dawn’s industrial feel and War’s wintry Great Escape, at least Kingdom’s forests and beaches are visually memorable. The best Kingdom can say is it dutifully fits into a distinct legacy with infinitely more room to grow and breathe than just about any other film-universe. While the original and its sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes take place about 2000 years in the future, the time-traveled line of continuity in Escape, Conquest and Battle encompassed 1970s modernity up to the concrete future of the 90s and beyond, with Rise and Dawn shaking the etch-i-sketch and War’s end inciting the biggest forward timeskip yet, a few hundred years after the death of Caesar. All to say, we’re FINALLY chronologically navigating the most interesting epoch in the Planet of the Apes storyline — the mysterious, mythic time when apes have eclipsed mankind’s own humanity and sapiens have regressed to voiceless, feral, flailing things. As opposed to early sequels positing the premise of a virus wiping out cats and dogs, with apes becoming the obvious pet-substitute (quickly skipping to subservient slaves all in about 20 years), the reboots used an alternate mutated virus (James Franco's cure for Alzheimer's) advancing apes and wiping out most of humanity. By War, they left Woody Harrelson (as our most prominent villain since the suit from Escape or perhaps the gorilla general in Battle) speechless as is LORE, and its funny how Kingdom already has to exclusively deal in the savage humans who can still talk while featuring almost fully talking apes, and to its discredit this 10th Apes adventure doesn't inherit the impressive, almost silent film qualities of Andy Serkis’ history-making trio of mo-cap turns. The original film has a twist that seems completely apparent on rewatch, but what makes that film great boils down to Cornelius (Roddy McDowell, the only fellow to play parts in all five original films, three as Cornelius and two then as the son Milo/Caesar) and Zera, played by Kim Hunter, the key to Escape’s funny, satirically serrated edge. We get a sympathetic ape here with a new Orangutan (Raka, though its hard to replace the mute bro Maurice from the trilogy) but his time is too short and leaves us with less interesting individuals. The brand new NOVA (“um it’s Mae actually”) becomes a proper sanitizing Disney decision, updating the all too sexualized 1968/70 turn by Linda Harrison and later the pure bimbo/Barbarella look of Estella Warren in 2001’s Planet of the Apes to cast, of course, someone far too attractive — at least Freya Allen's draped in more than ridiculously skimpy rags and the make-up team had her properly dirty even after a shower, oh her having lines and actual acting ability helps. But my cynical mind sees them place the fairer sex in a prominent second bill role front and center (contrary to more sidelined roles for women in last decade's installments from Frieda Pinto to Keri Russell to little Amiah Miller) for the sake of steering female viewership to a storied, male-dominated series, just like they've done with Star Wars media, oh and that last Indiana Jones too. And I’m sorry but this new guy Noa ain’t just no Caesar, the young Owen Teague just isn’t Serkis, and that makes quite the difference, that and the fact that this mo-cap technology looked just as good 10 years ago, which is to say the string of visual splendor does still extend. The longest Apes ever tries to make narrative moves with a long-dead Caesar but Disney only takes so many chances — this newer series has yet to get insane with time travel, even without cutaway footage to missing spaceships in Rise there's plenty enough room to pull a rabbit out your ass at some point: "break in case of Apes emergency." But there’s like 1700 Goddamn years of history before the events of the original, so possibilities are pretty endless, especially when we’re all just aping from the Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel (known in the UK as Monkey Planet) and nothing else but more incrementally low-budget and shiftily edited 70s sequels. For the nearly 30 year gap between the fifth installment Battle and Burton’s redo, many scripts and directors were thrown about, all culminating in an ironic rush job after decades of waiting. The new films have been more respectable on whole than even the most promising reboots of the late 2000s and early 2010s — if The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t so dumb Nolan’s trilogy would be very close, to a lesser extent so would Star Trek despite the fan-fellating of Into Darkness, but Craig’s Bond and X-Men would eventually shit the bed, and despite my problems with Kingdom, the Apes still have not. The fact that Mickey Mouse retained the ‘blockbuster with less action, more character conflict’ mantra of the earlier counterparts and added to the visual future-historical variety in any way (a high-altitude falconry tribe is enough for me), all while letting go of the past as these entries almost always do in their mostly standalone, loosely sequential from-scratch feel, is more than I could’ve hoped for from Disney in disguise. We could use more marimba-heavy throwback scores skillfully served by Michael Giacchino as in Dawn, frankly more of everything interesting in that movie would be nice — more distinct drama, themes, philosophies, ironies and relationships, though Kingdom has the muted spectacle down pat. So yeah if this movie felt like it was getting deep as it turned to full adventure movie by its most exciting 2nd act, I wouldn't call this easily the weakest of the reboots and yet, while I could lament that Disney will stretch this out like a taffy I say let them. Despite the guy behind the fleetingly favorable Maze Runner trilogy (Wes Ball's entire resume, though he will be adding The Legend of Zelda) at the helm, Kingdom's scope and temperament is proof enough of artistic integrity. As it stands the Planet of the Apes series could stand to take another 10 installments after this one. The fact that it put up real box office numbers over the star power of The Fall Guy, and both the star power and recognition right there in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, just shows you how fertile this IP still is.  2 (out of 4)
“I deliver hits for all you little people!” Not in real life sister. This is one had me at the premise alone: a behind-the-scenes action comedy with a noir twist? See, regardless of David Leitch — stuntman (five times for Brad Pitt) turned capable action blockbuster magic man — or even Ryan Gosling — the coolest cat in modern drama or comedy, I’m sorry between Drive, La La Land, Blade Runner 2049 and Barbie he’s already one of the new greats — you’d still have enough genre potential to immediately intrigue the likes of me and YET, given my pleasure is theoretically prerequisite, why does so little of The Fall Guy land on its feet or some other loathsome pun? I can’t help but feel mildly disappointed, seeing as this is guy behind Atomic Blonde, Leitch's vivid, punchy debut outside of a partial hand in John Wick alongside Chad Stahelski. I’d just care for more economy, seeing as The Fall Guy is too forgettable and fluff-festered to somehow cost 50 million dollars more than John Wick Chapter 4 and sincerely, how did The Lost City, hell even Argylle churn out more acceptably tongue-in-cheek romantic wish-fulfillment than a will-they-won’t-they between Gosling and Emily freaking Blunt? How does your romantic action comedy fail to adequately deliver any of its three intents? Thank God the closest to quota is the stunt department, as Gosling’s human test dummy (from “I Drive…” to “I Fall…”) is forced into many situations where the regular action hero wouldn’t be able give the thumbs up, let alone stand. Occasionally there’s a tangible toughness but thanks to a totally silly tone even the best fights and most impressive physical feats are stripped of their “reality” given the enterprise’s forced, farcical folly. But as far as stuntman odes, it’s ridiculous that The Fall Guy invests so gladly in celebrity worship — Leitch doesn’t prop up any stunt performers, the Ryan look-alikes are still in the wings just like any other action movie. You know what actually gave prominence and some representation to a stunt department? When Leslie Odom Jr. couldn’t take the heat, Mission: Impossible — Fallout went with stuntman Liang Yang for that immaculate, practically perfect bathroom fight sequence and considering it’s probably the best moment of fisticuffs in the last decade just furthers my point. But then, despite such a solid homage to honest-to-god hard-boiled pulp fiction in story alone, this is one of those tangled plots that pulls apart with one tug. I think the double entendre of the title had me too hopeful even if the story did indeed gestate from the neglected stunt double scenario to the doppelgänger dope hung out to dry as is one typical noir fashion. So it better be laughs shoring up an altogether theoretically winning, shareholder-assuring setup and ultimately generously unedited film. Sadly, even before you roll your eyes at the movie’s half-baked tinder hookup pretending to parody a sizzling summer romance, it’s just unreal how unfunny this movie is — the little in-between gags are the best things going, like the fruit platter, not tired Gen X pop culture references like The Last of the Mohicans and The Fugitive, how many can you squeeze in? There's also some appreciated but fundamentally obtuse satire of Hollywood’s many ills (Egotistical stars! Lazy writers! Bloodsucking producers!). The Fall Guy even looks good as it was shot on glorious film, continuing Leitch’s penchant for garish, brilliantly contrasted throwdowns — so the visually rewarding stunt movie with pretty good stunts (but only a fraction of the visceral, paranoid fantasy-satire of 1980's The Stunt Man), starring talented folks, poking fun of Hollywood evil NONETHELESS adds up to something feigning breezy good vibes when half the time it just blows. It’s enough to make you think of how many exciting original movies could’ve been flubbed or hampered by the slightest misconception, under- or overdevelopment. Leitch is no stranger to keeping things light, but the far too improvisational, slapdash, shotgun-splatter comedy script (by Hotel Artemis director/Hobbs & Shaw scribe Drew Pearce) doesn’t have a singular force of fun to smooth it all over. When your best gag is the Goose sniffling in his car blasting T Swift and your most standout sequence is his character zonked out on some spiked cocktail, kicking ass by muscle memory in dark light, maybe your boom-pow-haha script should have been treated to a proper punch-up. The “it’s complicated/situationship” side of things has whispers of restraint, class and charm but I was ready to puke after the third or fourth of those ironic, fake-sincere love monologues where the plain subtext is the film’s to-be-fulfilled yearnings. The Fall Guy is a little too eager to please everybody — I can’t even say it wasn’t entertaining enough or decently crafted because of course it was, Leitch's storied stunt performer/coordinator career of 30 years experience rubs off on his every project. That's why I hate to highlight how David didn’t suitably honor stunt performers, your own unsung heroes — sure Gosling, as the incel’s champion, is well-cast as a fellow buried in the background. But even the behind-the-scenes blooper bullshit doesn’t really exhibit this movie’s stunt team, just a shiny world record for car rolls — it’s a self-congratulatory piece of work but in reality The Fall Guy is Leitch’s weakest movie next to his Fast and Furious spin-off. This love letter isn’t really reverent or respectful through unbelievable thrills, or outpacing The Stunt Man’s Hitchcockian wrong-man-wrong-time or movie-about-movie fakeouts. Speaking of, this freshly sarcastic, nihilistic, postmodern infinity mirror of Hollywood on Hollywood hollowness/hallowedness isn’t nearly as memorable or honest as Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time, the Coen’s Hail, Caesar! or even Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. It’s only self-aware insomuch as it sets up screenwriting shortcuts. Because of a recent Disney schedule shakeup pushing back many a Marvel movie, the PRIME first weekend of May was left WIDE OPEN and here I was praying The Fall Guy didn’t utterly waste it. Unless you count pandemic outlier years like 2020 and 2021, not since since Mission: Impossible III back in 2006 has a Marvel comics adaptation not kicked off a modern summer blockbuster season, and it’s sad how certain I am that 2025’s Thunderbolts* will be the better time next to this hodgepodge of richer genres than it deserves to clad itself in.  3 ½ (out of 4)
Wow, a movie with brains, brawn, beauty and bite — first-time screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes is almost more deserving of adoration than Luca Guadagnino or Zendaya, and he's also penned Luca’s William S. Burroughs adaptation coming this year too. I have no notes, except of course I do they’re just rarely so glowing. Before Queer this November, I’ll be sure to revisit the so-called Desire trilogy (a spiritual one that is, with the swoony I Am Love, one of many Tilda Swinton/Luca combos, the sexier psychological ensemble drama A Bigger Splash all culminating in the rare James Ivory screenplay for the sublime Call Me By Your Name) but I managed to locate his debut The Protagonists and attempted to appreciate the macabre-obsessed pretense-overflowing mockumentary. What I will say is his second film, Melissa P., was so generous with the subsequent blowjobs I figured Challengers’ salaciousness had to be a bit more eloquent — those darn Italians! Even if he shares some of the same visual language as Yorgos Lanthimos for a peculiar European director’s accessible arthouse shenanigans (off-center low angle shots are a regular tell), this is Luca peaking out just as hard if not more than Lanthimos with The Favourite. He even gets to show Zack Snyder how slow motion can be used for good. Seeing Zendaya as producer only makes sense since the movie is tailored to her every need career-wise: a complicated character offers range as an amoral script refuses to draw Tashi as the victim or the good guy, and the whole affair makes her look sexy as hell. It’s a textbook star-making turn, more an exhaustive expression of talent than anything I saw in the MCU Spidey flicks or either Dune put together. Of course between this particular Team Edward / Team Jacob rivalry I’m guessing Mike Faist is the vampire, making Josh O’Connor the lone wolf — anyway I’m team Mike and I don’t think I’ll ever not be on that guy’s side after Spielberg let him show his stuff as Riff in 2021’s West Side Story. For O’Connor I believe Challengers is his similarly great moment of discovery, or when and where he shows what he’s made of as he didn’t have quite enough room to stand out in May December. This love triangle paradigm is off the charts dripping with the rizz famalam, the shared emotional elasticity ready to snap on a dime — The Dreamers wishes its sex movie magic were as electrifying or literary, and unlike Melissa P. there isn’t a single blindfolded penis to the mouth happening here. But if we’re talking film history likeness, of course this is closest to Woody Allen’s Match Point in that every atom of the technical filmmaking is clicking like clockwork but also there are meaningful metaphors are aplenty, it all becoming so much more about the characters and their mental romantic sportsmanship than swatting balls. However, unlike Woody’s Scarjo-exploit of pervert proportions, Challengers is a true sports movie despite the swinging dicks and Allen-level adultery, taking a subgenre without any real standouts (Battle of the Sexes, nah don't think so) and somehow besting other tired sporting events turned motion picture events like boxing and racing. It’s only too easy to say this is up there for possibly the best sports movie of the past 25 years AT LEAST, alongside cult favorites (I, Tonya, Moneyball), visionary heartbreakers (Million Dollar Baby, The Wrestler) and classic crowdpleasers (Ford v Ferrari, Rush, Cinderella Man and whatever recent Rocky movie they say was best, Creed was alright for my money) — I guess I need to see Miracle someday. True dueling spectacle is rarely divvied out with such visceral, verifiable grace and gusto. And there to help with such gut-busting, frighteningly frenetic energy and spiking testosterone is Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross selling you the sweetest study/workout beats you’ve heard in forever to make sure the mathematical, practically perfect editing and modern/classic cinematographic look results in masterly cinematic energy bursting from every aspect radiating from Kuritzkes’ dazzling screenplay, which takes on more chronological criss-crossing than fucking Oppenheimer. The structure lends itself to folding emotional revelations, blistering parallels and sharp, all encompassing themes, yet even if you shuffled the scatterbrained timeskips into chronological order, Challengers would still be an exemplary movie-as-living-novel miracle. When this slows down to just the actors, Guadagnino is checking the gate on indelible takes of palpable enthrallment, edge and exhalation. I would say this is Luca’s magnum opus by a long shot since for all of Call Me By Your Name’s beauty both scenic and sensory, Armie Hammer somewhat ironically spoils the tenderness and tears in retrospect. This comes out of nowhere since lately Guadagnino has decided to make such dour, brutal detours to fruitless horror revisionism in his interesting, frittering, boring companion piece / surely-not-a-remake of Suspiria, and likewise Bones and All with its cuddly cannibals and such. Between the left-field scares and leftover sex drive from his early career of aromatic, lovelorn repositories, Challengers is the finest mid-budget popcorn entertainment you could want, the most playful mainstream movie or the most approachable “independent” flavor feature in recent memory. Tashi just wanted to see some great fucking tennis and I just wanted to see a great fucking movie. I love when no one’s got it all but in the end we all get what we want. Challengers deals in all the dichotomies: talent and professionalism, love and lust, opportunity and chance, confidence and psychological torment, all of course in this game of romantic pursuit beneath the 1v1s, from “It’s about a relationship” also “decimate that little bitch.” What a blast. Any sex-averse zoomers, or conversely anyone actually sorry to have missed out on potential soft-core porn, go fuck yourselves.  3 (out of 4)
If any movie this year was gonna end up either shit or something else, it was Alex Garland’s Civil War, another troubling, transgressive ticket to the show for science fiction’s former friend, not a man for whom allegory has served well so far, and you’re swapping gender for today’s political climate of division? Godspeed Alex and God Bless America I guess (you dirty redcoat), but it beckons asking: “Back to the drawing board are we?” Let’s see, why could you need to return to basics, oh yeah maybe it was because Men was folk horror that was mostly just folked in the head, a symbol-saddled psychological thriller of mostly incomprehensible, unpleasant feminism for masochists. It was bound to split critics and audiences for its potently agonizing, confusing choices that need quite the defense of artistic freedom to have been made in the first place. Now that he’s dealing with a subject and situation that might have to result in some real ideological fallout for his creative decisions and, despite returning to near-future worlds with imminent crises to resolve (including the screenplays for Danny Boyle, that entails zombie apocalypse, a dying sun, attractive AI gone amok and swelling alien territory), still there’s a naggingly hazy notion as to what exactly Alex was trying to say here. Would he rather not get into election year conversations? To be fair April is juuuuust outside the realm where it would seem like some actual mainstream political moment like uh, Swing Vote? Purge: Election Year? Honestly I have no idea…. Back in the 90s there was a regular rotation of conspiracy thrillers echoing from the eras of JFK’s assassination, Watergate or the later days of the Cold War. So Civil War is a political film with few political notions, from a “message” perspective too cowardly even to completely hide behind Drumpf and the mass media’s proclivity for left-leaning thought. I imagine the film would make both sides mad for not going hard enough on any kind of insight — the world-of-tomorrow promises of science fiction still invoke his steady genre’s prescription for implication and finding some far-sighted truths from our present. Some may find Nick Offerman’s brief, pursed-lipped introduction to be indicative of Trump’s demeanor, or none at all. The orientation doesn’t exactly matter given the intimate scope of the movie, as is usually Garland’s liking — with six primary characters, Annihilation is probably as expansive an ensemble as we’ll ever see from him. Though just as entertainment — even if it’s quite difficult to see it as such — Civil War is a hearty, lucid movie, a return to form, an irresistible Heart of Darkness for the homeland building to a memorable, thrilling finale. A24’s highest budgeted fare almost doesn’t feel or look like it, and the man emblematic of the studio’s signature minimalism (Robert Eggers and others fall into a caveat, there are only so many hipster auteurs to emerge from their indie film renaissance) finds himself toying with dangerous ideas, and either the stubbornness or the frugality to exhibit his latest as merely moviemaking and nothing more. Sorry but I find more to enjoy and extrapolate from the manipulative interplay at the infancy of human-cyborg relations in Ex Machina, as well as the haunting hallucinatory excuse to contemplate first contact in Annihilation. Civil War does bear questions of conscience, or admits that journalism has no place for conscience — for a movie all about photography and crumbling empires, the near-future decay is convincing and Garland’s eye, sunken in steep, unshakable shallow focus (courtesy of longtime collaborating cinematographer Rob Hardy), can’t help but make the most of the perilous beauty and anarchic dissent of an imprecise American future portioned by what looks like possibly politically nonsensical lines in the sand. Civil War has commentary on inflation, mid-war morality and how hard it is to be blindly objective (both in film and in political coverage), plus the characters are memorable and acted with admirable, all-too-precise naturalism, particularly Kirsten Dunst’s haunted anchor. I couldn’t even recognize Cailee Spaeny — just like her breakout part in Priscilla, this girl’s entire visage is an agreeable, midcentury sort of template, the ideal everywoman. She shares the leading spot with Dunst (both Sofia Coppola veterans) who offers plenty of hardened caginess as the jaded war photojournalist begrudgingly escorting new blood through dangerous terrain. Wagner Moura, who is definitely not Pedro Pascal, might end up the more popular Spanish guy, and Stephen McKinley Henderson is like the new Morgan Freeman or something (not the token black guy I swear!), a remarkable supporting player for any situation from Manchester by the Sea to Dune to Beau is Afraid. Garland is apparently stepping away from directing for awhile to get back to screenplays — maybe avoid Danny Boyle as steward (Cillian Murphy is obviously okay in my book) and Garland could end up an even more productive Hollywood hack than however trapped he feels behind the camera. Civil War has the makings of one of 2024’s most interesting moments, if ONLY (if ANYTHING) the themes illustrated any kind of stance at all, and I’m a CENTRIST for fuck’s sake: as Dylan said “fearing not I become my enemy in the instant that I preach.” I still feel like for all your gifts and graces, you made the ultimate choice say oh well — such a casual, unexplained drop of the future-history event known as the ”ANTIFA MASSACRE” sums up this bloody Brit’s prodding (almost Anti-American) indifference rather well. See what you wanna see, hey maybe I will take a picture of your dead body for posterity… “What do you think?” is the thesis but I could ask you the same thing Alex. The ironic soundtrack choices — like executing prisoners of war to De La Soul — doesn’t really speak to neutrality or something nonpartisan, in fact these moments find the movie at its most detached. The flippant foil these juxtapositions elicit range from meaningful to moronic, weird for a movie that maybe fruitlessly is “trying to send a message home, some warning” or whatever. Civil War evenly balances the chaos and the quiet, especially with two almost nonsensically placed Suicide tracks. Maybe in the end it’s predominantly a cogent, clearheaded, dispassionate, disturbing thriller about how truly fucked our country is and how little idea we have of how bad it could get no matter how you vote. The built-in bothsidesism is cavalier and even obtuse, nonetheless Civil War is a near-excellent exercise in cursory poke-the-bear cinema, emitting a good deal of cult classic potential for those who will eventually use this as another object of explanation for what the last decade of politics has done to the collective psyche.  1 (out of 4)
I don’t see any reason to bury the lead: this is the worst superhero movie I’ve ever seen. In the last year alone we’ve had some truly awful, stinky contenders for the genre’s WOAT in the third Ant-Man and The Marvels, but this just takes the cake no question. I even went back to see how bad Catwoman is and sorry, at least all the other trash has some sliver of panache, especially Marvel comics’ baby step movies like Daredevil — speaking of it was nice to discover the impressively shot and edited Elektra spinoff is entirely underrated, so what if stakes are slim while characters are made room for? Blade: Trinity sucked and was a terrible first draft of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool shtick, but at least as an action vampire romp it offered some sleazy satisfaction, fuck even Howard the Duck has ILM making some anthropomorphic miracles happen and a few real laughs (plus admittedly plenty ‘so bad it’s good’ humorous exhalations). Once you’ve pondered the lowest of the MCU, even when you start taking into account the various other embarrassments around town — Suicide Squad, Dark Phoenix, Fantastic Four (2005 most of all, personally speaking), Amazing Spider-Man 2, Dawn of Justice, Green Lantern, the list goes on and on — I genuinely think this was the most irredeemable, unequivocally pitiful and pointless, dull, detrimental and moreover an insult to escapism. Supers took off in wake of the digital technology making it all possible, and despite a quiet year for the genre outside of Deadpool & Wolverine and a second Joker, 2025 has four MCU features plus James Gunn’s Superman reboot, so the itch will keep on scratchin’ or vice versa for as long as capeshit generally holds up its end of the bargain. The thing is, even the sloppiest stuff had its moments, an actor that made you care, a shot that interested you, a spectacular concept, fascinating ability, awesome sequence or storytelling decision that justified its existence. Perhaps it’s how much Madame Web fails to measure up to even the lowered standards of the Sony-Spidey legal loophole spin-off universe — Venom is no masterpiece but top of the heap, Morbius is overhated gothic goofiness that still hardly feels like a full motion picture, a lot like the even worse Let There Be Carnage. With the same writers (Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless) as Morbius and Gods of Egypt's watchable B-movie camp, I figured Web had a chance to be surprisingly slick even in the most superficial fashion. No, even with a premise ripped off from Next (a poor Philip K. Dick sci-fi riff with a poorer Nic Cage wig) and Final Destination, Madame’s ability of near-(fore)sight can’t settle on the setups and payoffs of manipulating the predestined present, and so the only chance at a flutter of an inkling of a thrill is thwarted by indecision and the worst heist movie logic (we can’t show the plan in action if it all works out! Only if something goes wrong!). For as unique as these horror-tinged hybrid movies are, this has no seat next to crud like New Mutants let alone Unbreakable or the first Blade movies. So yeah, this is the junkiest of junk, the least memorable moment in a wheelhouse that has been blurring by like some vomit-splattered carousel maxing out for some time, so it really takes a certain skillful laziness to be this daft, lifeless, fruitless and not even laughable enough to call it the schlock of the more modest early days of superheroes — Daredevil and Hulk at least were working through new waves of blockbuster attitudes and aesthetics, Evanescence notwithstanding. Madame Web has no style, no grace, nothing that could constitute a trip to the movies where you felt anything other than ripped off. When your villain’s motivation hinges on dream visions depicting superhero ladies that our zoomer supporting cast will one day become — Isabella Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Sydney Sweeney and all with prerequisite personalities (the nerdy one, the mean one, the shy one,) and a punishing dialogue dump to quickly run through their nothing backstories — you know this flick’s agenda consists solely of stringing along the Spidey-simps (holy crap are you future superhero too Emma Roberts, or are you just giving birth to one offscreen?). If only this movie could’ve been saved by midriffs or bearing the male gaze in mind (Sweeney in a schoolgirl outfit is somehow not the most provocative thing here), but beyond sex appeal this movie isn’t doing jack shit with a nearly all-female ensemble. No amount of girl power or female directors (one S. J. Clarkson) can atone for dogshit, same went for The Marvels — you’re not anti-feminist for hating this movie. Dakota Johnson’s done more reputable work than 50 Shades but this somehow feels even more degrading, like the paycheck must have made you as blind as the end of this movie where you’re Daredevil and Professor X in one — you ain’t no recent Oscar winner like Halle Berry sweetie, you might not recover from so big a misstep. Outside of the Grey notoriety, Madame Web is another embarrassing property to be tied down to, something like if K Stew went from Twilight to Charlie’s Angels, oh wait — all I’m saying is without a few key roles for Johnson in Bad Times at the El Royale and both Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash and Suspiria, there’d be no reason to say she should know better but damn she should’ve known better. The guy from A Prophet, Tahar Rahim poor fella, I’m sure he wishes there was something better to do with his time. Even DC was never this embarrassing. Without a post-credits scene (curious since a third Venom and Kraven the Hunter will keep Sony’s sinister dreams alive), still the movies leaves you with stubborn sequel-prospecting: “look what this potential set of character and series COULD BECOME!” Sure, but at no point over the course of the generous 116 minutes did you make that an enticing suggestion — the irony of a superhero story constructed on the idea of limitless futures and pissloads of possibilities is almost NEVER (not since Argylle LMAO) has there been a more embarrassing, disastrous franchise non-starter. Few major motion pictures debut so DOA. Argylle
1 ½ (out of 4) This antithesis to reinvention for Matthew Vaughn finds the British mischief proving yet again he shouldn’t be so adamant to cement his legacy with tongue-in-cheek spy spoofs — at this rate your movies will be long outlasted in memory by the likes of Charlie’s Angels for Christ’s sake (maybe even the new one, ew!), let alone Austin Powers or even Johnny English, and you’ll deserve it! Frankly, it was crazy that for three consecutive attempts to follow up the positive reception toward 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, not one has panned out critically, though I’ve never been shy to say I really enjoyed The Golden Circle’s dubious double-down as a direct sequel to an already cuckoo first go-round. But the prequel The King’s Man was much too serious and now, in quite a reactive move it seems, Argylle is all silliness, top to bottom — it’s his worst effort yet, finding his synchronized sincerity and smarm leaning almost exclusively in the direction of that maliciously edgier latter. Flattening fourth walls every other scene doesn’t confirm any kind of cleverness Mr. Vaughn. Argylle, despite some manner of novelty, drowns in overwhelming preposterousness, unable to surmount the compounding mania and mediocrity even with a passionate, properly curated cast and 140 minutes of naught else but twists on twists on twists — this picture-show pretzel is all knots, which would be OK if there was some genre realignment in motion, action tailored with elaborate, impressive stuntwork like any Kingsman riffs gets to eventually or at least some tickling of the funny bone since it's so freakin' goofy. Argylle isn't inherently unwatchable, but self-aware tripe is still tripe. If it takes five minutes to explain the linchpin reveal, it’s probably not justified it in the least. It’s hard to be subversive in the vein of Kick-Ass when you’re muffled to all the outlandishness a PG-13 rating affords — the revelations and ridiculousness and even the lightly redeeming romance are all dished out in half-measures. Bryce Dallas Howard (never seeming to top her breakout days in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and Lady in the Water) is our unexpected, passively past-resistant protagonist, Bryan Cranston is living out the evil shit as gladly as Catherine Hahn (the respectively duplicitous ma and pa), meanwhile Sofia Boutella has one great scene (still nothing close to the swords-for-legs showdown by the first Kingsman’s end) and Samuel L. Jackson’s reunion with Vaughn loses the lisp without gaining a smidge of character. Then Henry Cavill, as Howard’s in-fiction stand-in, is the closest to 007 fare he’ll get since he comfortably suited up for Guy Ritchie’s fizzy The Man from U.N.C.L.E., though he and his stupid hairline are not at all the protagonist marketing might’ve made you presume. Meanwhile Dua Lipa is momentary sex appeal with about as much screentime as she had in the trailer and finally, as the film’s savior (hardly enough to actually save it), the ensemble’s strongest link is the superb Sam Rockwell who I’d take in any form, any day. Stardust has a settling sweetness, X-Men: First Class is, to me, one of its genre’s best moments and Vaughn’s finest work seeing as Kick-Ass’s scabby subversion is not my cup of tea — but Argylle is soft, stupid and sure to avoid any actual risk in its irreverence. The real agent Argylle may as well have been the cat, and that CG puss could’ve been this movie’s crutch (like an extended Elton John cameo in Kingsman 2) but rather it’s the movie’s absolutely bargain bin visual effects and glossy greenscreening. Vaughn’s style is symmetrical, sharp and simple — without some convolution cornucopia of a script or a decent set to work with, this is all style minus any aesthetic worth ascertaining. Then you punctuate the bullshit with some post-credits scene tying this to the Kingsman universe... I'm sorry,did you learn nothing from the end of your last film, when you teased Hitler like he was Thanos? NO ONE CARES MATT, no one cares and you should know better. The Kingsman movies felt like enough to hang a franchise on, but we were clearly wrong about that and this would-be quirky paperback sleaze keeps even fewer of its promises, for instance that it would amount to direct, innocent fun. Argylle is taking that extra L much too literally, or should I say Vaughn is. Orion and the Dark 3 (out of 4) So I’d say Charlie Kaufman has made light of the loneliness and despondence of any age save for preadolescence — never too late! In what amounts to Dreamworks’ most daring feat in years in spirit and in substance alone comes a meta bedtime story with uncommon philosophical ponderousness and challenging narrative flimsiness rubbing against the grain of modern animation. We haven’t seen the rogue Kaufman screenplay outside of his own hands since, what, Eternal Sunshine? The fact that this is some Dreamworks Animation production is even more troublesome — how many kids are you gonna traumatize just so everyone’s turning their thoughts closer to the void of death? I jest, as for all his morose misery-mucking, few cinematic wordsmiths match his ability to scramble the intellect, needle emotion and elaborate on existence, and the way that this fits into animation’s annals (especially contrast to the mundane stop-motion mind-rape of his co-directed and completely written Anomalisa) is an unanticipated blessing and conundrum. Unfortunately, though this could curiously almost be mistaken for one of late Pixar’s finest efforts for maturity alone, there are indeed trademark Dreamworks shortcuts. First, most obviously, there's less inspired character design — the run of fantasy sleep characters (even more lightly detailed than the misfits of Inside Out or Rise of the Guardians) is a little too generic but just a product of the cheaper animation, apparently courtesy of the same folks behind the simple thick-lined style of Captain Underpants, which in all respect made the most of the potty-humored, “from the mind of a child” feel. More disappointing is despite Kaufman as sole screenwriter, lines as stock and standard as “hold on to your butts” sneak their way in, so no doubt potential greatness is on a leash. God, the part where Orion becomes a really prejudiced asshole isn't much more than a bland emotional conflict, so if you remove those few clichés that even the most shrewd self-awareness cannot erase or improve upon and beef up the wobbly second act, this would be its own compact masterpiece. For Kaufman, imposing on kids even more nihilism and heavier profundities on top of the fantasy yarn about overcoming basic phobic obstacles in daily life (or rather, MAKING THE MOVIE BETTER) would’ve just made things more devastating — there are really gracious sentiments regardless of him sucking his own dick a bit since he knows Netflix, Dreamworks or whoever is backing something superior to the usual lowest common denominator fare, something that eagerly ponders nothingness, generational inheritance and fear itself. This really must’ve been some kind of therapeutic comedown following I’m Thinking of Ending Things, seeing as Charlie sidesteps the archetypal animated zaniness to get too real about anxiety in its most innocent sense. See, even though it bows down to a certain cuteness, the voice cast is not overrun in celebrity nonsense and the thematic weight is virtually unparalleled for the brand — yes, this may be up there with the early Shreks, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon, with none of the franchise potential, like back when they made poorly received 2D animated movies that nonetheless undeniably rest among the brand’s surest artistic strokes: Prince of Egypt, Road to El Dorado, Sinbad and of course Aardmann assists like Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. But that unchecked box next to profitability meant an unceremonious Netflix dump (Ending Things too barely came to theaters, understandable in prime pandemic times), and any attempt to sweep this under the rug is lightyears more respectable than how they’re burying the direct-to-streaming Megamind sequel with little returning talent. But to fortify my defensive tone, it’s crazy considering he’s working with about 20 pages that this is just Kaufman riffing, trying to make something out of the grand adventure Orion and Dark are supposed to have in a blink of an eye before the credits roll, eyelids fall and its time for beddy-bye. But for pulling this right out of his ass 95% of the time, Charlie revels in the idea of spinning something for kids that ABSOLUTELY REFUSES to talk down to them even if the ‘story’ has to be solved by your grandson inserting time travel like he’s a Marvel Exec. This is a movie containing profound, productive ideas for the youngest among us, an intellectual commitment amounting to infinitely more than a simple capacity to distract some single-digit snot-nosed whipper snapper — Orion and the Dark sidesteps cringy first person perspective from frame one and breaks down the confines of conventional storytelling before the halfway mark. “You want me to end it with a dance party?” Kaufman can’t help but make fun of Dreamworks’ formulas while he fashions something much more meaningful out of his rendition. “The stories that make a difference are the ones that are true” pleas the daughter, from outside the frame narrative, to let Orion be scared, and as part of the audience you can’t help but be thankful that someone cares about screenwriting's effect on brain even more than the flashes of color and the whites of wide, sympathetic eyes. Somehow this standalone mini-miracle is worth weighing plenty of 2024’s remaining months against, and is easily the best thing Dreamworks has dished out since the first Dragon, next to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, maybe.  2 ½ (out of 4)
Without getting too white about it, I’ll simply say The Color Purple as musical (and directed by an African-American) doesn’t have much on a Jewish guy working out the same affair. I don’t know whether author Alice Walker signed off on the turnaround of her Pulitzer Prize winning 1982 novel, but she’s most definitely cool with this new one, which takes the tale’s persistent anguish and attempts to fashion some kind of holiday escape from the extroversion of the story-to-song translation. Personally, despite finding the well-cut trailers absurdly moving, the troubling sum of this film, while forcefully acted and home to some fantastic theater talent, is underwhelming in pathos — I’m sorry but if your adapted musical can’t even top the singular performance (the wonderful juke joint sequence) of the original movie, then why bother? When 2023’s Color Purple feels hymn-like or dreamlike, there’s a real, rapturous pulse beneath the direction of Blitz Bazawule in his second outing — but for the regular drama, or even just numbers requiring no dancing, no extravagance, this movie has jack shit on Steven Spielberg’s sense of gravity, composition and fitting the epic, despondent aspects of the novel to appropriately grand cinematic sweep. For sure, Colman Domingo is so good as Mister and looking uncannily similar to a young Danny Glover that he manages to top the 1985 turn. Corey Hawkins continues an auspicious career as a perfect Harpo and Taraji P. Henson is also pretty much the perfect choice for Shug Avery. Still in spite of very commendable work from Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks living and breathing Celie and Sophia respectively (they both, unsurprisingly, are the Broadway carryovers), there’s just so much emotional heavy lifting originally achieved through Whoopi Goldberg’s demeanor and Oprah Winfrey’s vigor. When you get to that dinner revelation and the long lost letters in Spielberg’s take, it feels so dearly earned, and here it’s “oh, already?” — turns out for as much as Steven was accused of softening the edges of Walker’s certainly more mature source material, this Color is pure plush with little tassels on the end, and so it turns out without illustrating the story’s pain properly, the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t so bright, and the tears don’t flow so easily, or at all. You can’t cheat your way around this particular narrative’s deliberate oscillation between agony and exultation. Cutting out that Christmas visit is strange — what, too dark for the same day you ask your loyal audience to show up? It's especially weird considering the tales allows for making white people look even worse than you are but seriously, why does this feel just shy of “why don’t we turn 12 Years a Slave into a musical?” I’m curious, but mostly doubtful about whether the NAACP will have any words about this particular Color Purple — I guess the racist white lady, the one omitted here, wasn’t enough to offset the fact that there’s nothing inherently sinister about showing black on black violence onscreen, especially when its inextricably ingrained in the story. And considering all the “positive” characters like Harpo and Buster and Shug’s husband, most of the “reinforcement of negative stereotypes” boils down to the literal villain: an evil step-dad plus the dad of the evil step-dad — what gives, or gave, almost 40 years ago? Spielberg’s Purple is not faultless but something wholly heartrending. Honestly, how is our juke joint moment here just lifeless outside of the big show? Maybe you shouldn’t be burying character and nuance when you could be fleshing out the novel’s illustration of the indispensable issues facing black women and the prejudices they encounter — I figured the bluesy song-and-dance could only extrapolate and empower the dramatic blueprint rather than hamper and reduce the narrative even further. Worst of all, not only is Barrino no match for Goldberg’s acts of uncontrollable meekness (Whoopi has an awkward cameo as midwife to her own former character’s birth), the soft-spoken Celie isn’t even revealed to us through narration, as would make sense given the epistolary nature of the story and the significance of the fractured correspondence between Netty and the Lord above — the songs should truly make sense her host of hardships, yet Celie is one of this adaptation's least considered characters. Then there’s the stage-to-screen stuff, apparently 13 songs were cut — killing our darlings are we? And this selection was the best? Of course there are the two original songs pining for an Oscar (indistinguishable to me, doesn’t really matter) but SORRY, Barbie’s got that wrapped up tight. This so-called Bold New Take is certainly new, but it’s dearly lacking sonic resonance, strong sentiment or any kind of spectacle, silly as that sounds — given how naturally Bazawule made something phantasmal from scratch in The Burial of Kojo, it's a shame his essential, spiritual immediacy has been shrunken and scattered. There’s one set most of the movie, so where’s another 90 million dollars of Warner Brothers' money going? It’s so funny that the studio was asking for some real names like Beyoncé and Rihanna to join the cast as the budget grew, and the best they got was H.E.R., no disrespect — no amount of celebrity power could replicate the 1985 version’s cathartic breadth and bitter grace.  3 (out of 4)
It’s rare that I review a debut unless it’s from some overzealous Hollywood actor or proven writer — having seen nothing Mr. Cord Jefferson has charged (namely The Good Place and Watchmen, sorry my TV interests practically don’t exist), nonetheless the winner of the People’s Choice Award at TIFF is no small thing in any year, and this time it bested The Holdovers and The Boy and the Heron. Should be damn good right? Regardless of festival fanaticism, American Fiction would’ve had me curious from its tempestuous high concept alone: an African American professor and novelist dumbing his efforts down to meet the pandering place where authorship, audiences and pompous middlemen publishers all compromise some intellectual equilibrium — if somehow Cord had come away with a less scrupulously conceived screenplay and screen-display (based on Percival Everett’s even more impressively culturally reflective 2001 novel Erasure, though I’m not reading modern stuff if anything either, sorry my narrow mind measures movies mainly), he could have possibly been accused of the same shady solicitousness the film goes to great lengths to satirize in order to stir up conversation. It may be the approachable version of both Spike Lee's brilliantly brazen, incisive, hysterical minstrel-disassemble Bamboozled as well as Ava DuVernay's anti-cinematic lecture come to life Origin. While this hit the People’s Choice Award requisites for the mixture of mischievous, politically provocative positing and feel-good, pathos-padded mainstream-primed fare, this kind of complete left-and-right-brain package doesn’t ask you to make personal or political compromises in order to enjoy, gradually outpaces your expectations just as you think you have the story’s angles all figured out. This meta-comedy-drama could have stripped a layer of self-awareness and maybe been better for it, but there’s no room to complain when American Fiction candidly invests in potentially trite but practically touching family dynamics with recognizable, relatable, flesh and blood figures within and without the family unit. Exceptionally vivid dialogue and an oscillation between bitter bite and quiet contemplation are met by every performer, particularly Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae and of course Jeffrey Wright, who after so long on the outskirts of many features finally feels at home in the spotlight. Sure, in classic left-wing demoralizing fashion, the white characters are drawn broad, senseless and stupendously out of touch — if its targets of clever dissection didn’t also include hypocrite liberals just like the last great satire of its kind Get Out, there would be a chink in Cord’s impenetrable armor. AS A WHITE MAN, I could laugh at all the jokes because I’M sooooo progressive, not mind-poisoned like closet racists or open ones. But even the cutesiest meta elements are well-realized, from his own Phucking Pafology come to life born from a fed-up imagination to a denouement seemingly inspired from Clue’s pick-your-own-ending freedom. There’s little cinematic craft outside of letting a fantastic, multifaceted screenplay sing for a very full less than two hours, and that’s more than alright with me. “It’s not supposed to be subtle” or whatever 'Monk' about his fake "urban" book, and the film itself has built-in excuses for its more mass-appealed race-baiting — the so-called skewering of Hollywood brown-nosing is more prevalent than its commentary on modern literature, and moreover the cultural frustrations expressed here are raw, real, and just the movie we need right now hehehahahoho. But seriously, this isn’t like Black Panther where the praise from white audiences is a foregone conclusion, a prerequisite out of fear of criticism reversed back — American Fiction is actually punchy and pure enough for universal cinema regardless of the specificity of its dissonant zeitgeist. The film pretends to be cuddly as a cactus, but it’s got a soft, chewy center outside of a provocative, pointed shell. Say what you will about its many-folded stances on the direction and authenticity of black art, this screenplay was the definition of tact, particularly in its standout conversational climax. American Fiction is a cunning movie that also feels like it could be something more, still the preference for emotional clarity and a familial reality (as opposed to occasionally plucking for lower hanging fruit of cheap racial shots) and speckled, tactile commentary make for a killer cine-cocktail.  2 ½ (out of 4)
Apologies aquapals but I don’t see how propping up Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires as some indispensable influence somehow makes your sloppy sequel redeemable, as if citing more creditable camp were a get-out-of-criticism-free card — when you’re promised that the follow-up to 2018’s Aquaman will be “even goofier,” you just get me too excited for something as uniquely dumb and casual as The Lost Kingdom. Not that I wouldn’t take James Wan’s horror-informed, Snyder-ascending sense of kinetic, shiny cinematic turbulence over just about any of the other more forgettable, flash in the pan, undercooked and under-thought DCEU fare that has led to this shameful, pathetic whimper of a finale, if you can even call it that. So yes, the second Aquaman is probably a hair or so better than Shazam: Fury of the Gods (remove a mugging Zack Levi and the skittles and there’s an OK movie), The Flash (something was clicking in the double trouble Ezra show, and similar buddy comedy crap happens here), and definitely superior to Blue Beetle, Black Adam, Wonder Woman 1984, even Birds of Prey and yes, most assuredly Zack Snyder’s untenable Cut of Justice League. Wan did just about as good a job as James Gunn (now the new messiah/Feige of whatever clean slate casts off with Superman’s latest legacy in 2025) did for The Suicide Squad, which was almost worthy of its own Deadpool-ripped Reddit-reeking irony and of course a marginal improvement over 2016's original abortion. I really don’t want to even comment on the artistic merit of BvS, I’ve tried to see why the cult is so fervent by way of the extended version but Snyderbros are their own special breed of stubborn, funny enough the frankensteined Joss Whedon version of Justice is somehow more approachable detritus. Man of Steel is arguably not bad in sum even if it gets bad, leaving only Wonder Woman, Shazam! and, of course, the highest grossing DCEU film with over with over 1 billy, 2018’s Aquaman, as the only installments in a 16-part series I could, with a straight face, say were pretty good, and even these finer cuts have their chewy bits. But personally the undersea undertaking is most forgivable… I never expected anything show-stopping, momentous or in any way climactic — it’s crazy just how standalone the EU entries became, as the original Aquaman was already rather untethered and still made references to Justice League. MCU’s one-offs literally require some moment of context within the brand, some stupid reference to the shared universe, and I used to think ignoring this in-film-shilling made DC stronger, and specifically the separated installments like Joker spoke to this potentiality — The Batman would be another more mature, quality exception if it weren’t the longest, lamest mystery movie ever to wear the mask of a detective caped crusader movie. After all these years of enjoying DC as the foil, the wild card, the crazy cousin to Marvel’s mightier cultural powers, I've finally witnessed the scope of Warner Brother’s failure, and not just because The Lost Kingdom punctuates a decade of filmmaking with Patrick Wilson snacking on a roach burger. Unfortunately, the incessant inanities save this one from total oblivion, as does some action showmanship, sincerely employed fantasy elements (like giant man-eating grasshoppers or an assistant cephalopod named Topo) as well as Wilson in probably his sixth collaboration with Wan — in addition to inciting the Saw franchise with Leigh Whannell and executive producing many sequels, he created the first two installments of both the Insidious and Conjuring series. There’s some overlap and regular enough acclaim for his horror movies that at least halfway earns the cult, Conjuring with its acting and period elements, and Insidious with a balance of the usual ghost-hunting with domestic disturbances and ethereal astral planes, so all I can say is the man knew how to either actually improve upon a sequel as with The Conjuring 2’s mastery of expectations or how to make the most of the inevitable with a less fondly remembered and yet different enough Insidious: Chapter 2. Point is whether you have him belting Elvis tunes to comfort scared kids, or antithetically playing subject to some Jack Torrence-level episode of supernatural takeover, Wilson is clearly the guy holding together Wan’s sequels, and The Lost Kingdom makes three for three. Wilson excels as straight man and fish out of water (“fucking surface-dwellers…”) whereas Jason Mamoa is too crass and quippy here as opposed to how roguish and intimidating he could be in the last, and it all evens out to some decent Abbott and Costello buffoonery between. The first act of this film is so rough at recapping events, establishing new threats and moving from very broad pee-in-the-face comedy to some sort of thematic mixer of tepid commentary on fatherhood and brotherhood (yuck!) to the whole Day After Tomorrow angle (wherein they’re scuba diving in minus 50 degree water) not so subliminally screaming some eco-exhale while functioning no less grotesquely as a dullard’s disaster movie on top of it all. The Lost Kingdom only made me smile during the Wilson-Mamoa team-up, and the rest of the movie’s madness is measured by greenhouse gases, cursed tridents and blood oaths rather rapidly coasting by in a colorful, damp fever dream. Unlike, say J-Law basically mercy killing herself in Dark Phoenix just to get out, Amber Heard, despite whatever heavily publicized off-camera complications, was not too absent from this movie and actually tried her best whatever that amounts to, and Nicole Kidman certainly shows up too. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was trying hard last time, and while I wish a villain elevated to primary bad guy from a previously secondary role (a rarity, can you name anything closer than Spider-Man 3?) made for a better role, he was serviceable even if mystical brainwashing doesn’t trump proper character motivations. This movie misses a touch of Willem Dafoe complete with tight hair bun but elsewhere a bolstered role for Randall Park thankfully doesn’t obviously pigeonhole him for comic relief as thoroughly as Ant-Man and the Wasp does. Speaking of Marvel, the plot of Lost Kingdom pretty much copy-pastes huge portions of Thor: The Dark World, it’s own decade-removed, mixed-reviewed sequel perfect for memory-holing. I have a soft spot still, carried over from my much fuller, more genuine appreciation for the first Aquaman — when this movie chases down the follies of cheesy, eager adventure movies that made 2018 float on, there’s enough corny, crumby fun (almost forgot that subsurface speakeasy with Martin Short) to call The Lost Kingdom a half-decent holiday flick, if you can stand the whiplash of an event feature that clearly went through the ringer in audience testing, only to be generally derided all the same.  2 ½ (out of 4)
Oh geez Bradley I hope they can forgive you for this one! Listen, I don’t care for Cooper’s rock star regress in his own A Star Is Born, the man's acting has never really done it for me outside of Nightmare Alley, Licorice Pizza, The Place Beyond the Pines, Rocket Raccoon and maybe the David O. Russell collaborations, oh wait that’s not a bad profile, never mind. But for a movie about Leonard Bernstein, this might as well have been called CAREY MULLIGAN: The Movie, because you remove her, and there’s no calculated Oscar contender/pretender to speak of. “You don’t even know how much you need me, do you?” Carey utter as Felicia Montealegre… Cooper has admitted an awareness to just get out of his co-star’s way, be it Lady Gaga or now Mulligan who singlehandedly holds this film together and, my word, she’s not even turning in her best work (Promising Young Woman? Wildlife? The Great Gatsby? An Education? Take your pick). She’s a heaven-sent miracle worker — "What have we got, cancer melodrama? No sweat." Regardless of reading across from Mulligan, Bradley had an uphill battle. Despite the assistance of controversially exaggerated prosthetic excellence (it wouldn’t be called antisemitic if that schnozz was a little more accurate), Cooper’s efforts add up to more than shy of a buck given a subject so many-splendored in his cultural significance. Cooper strives and struggles to marry his considerable abilities with a figure with whom he already bears a likeness but the mumbling, nasally 40s-diction is more distracting than protruding sniffers, bigger ears, bushier brows and a pronounced chin. Watching someone imitate an icon is one thing but self-direction to top it off is another level of butt-scratching high-risk low-reward tomfoolery that I can’t get behind — there’s this crazy secondhand self-awareness, this heightened hellishness to it all. I’ll be damned if I can name one single other self-directed biographical movie, unless Citizen Kane's allusions to William Randolph Hearst count. His ego feels fairly removed, more than I believe haters think (there's less self-consciousness than A Star Is Born), but man, when Cooper’s doing his sweatiest, most vein-throbbing baton-waving, he’s losing just about everybody divorced from some orchestra nerd pointing out a missed beat — you practiced years for these few minutes and this is it? As Laurence Olivier said to Dustin Hoffman (for Marathon Man), “My dear boy why don’t you just try acting?” But let’s just consider the facts, see if I have any questions: everyone hates this movie, especially those who haven’t seen it — for film twitter or zoomers this is Oscar bait in its purist distilled form, a vacuum for all things true concerning people let alone movies. With backing by both Spielberg AND Scorsese plus Netflix distribution, this is a real enough movie, one Steven even cued up for Bradley after an early screening of A Star Is Born (all told at least a decent update on the ’76 version, the trash one with Streisand and and Kristofferson). As much as I want to go to bat for Bradley, it’s hard to act as if Maestro is actually a home run or some misunderstood movie — we’re dealing with very textbook filmcraft. At its best it’s really evoking the desired style — the blockier B&W is a fairly brilliant simulation of the past, and even in modern color the distinguished makeup work still hold things up, not to mention the way the film mostly, wisely incorporates the prolific composer’s many compositions into the fray. It’s only cloying or deadening when they need to throw his influence right in your face, like that terrible not-quite-dream-scenario-homage to On the Town. The film has subtler ways to make note of Bernstein’s musical breadth without stooping to silly, showy theatrics contradicting the more insular, tasteful, patient moments in earlier life (aside from a few contemporary, far too fluid match cuts that could never pan out back in the day). Largely Cooper manages to extract some intimacy from a grandiose, drug ’n’ desire fueled life, so much so I can applaud the movie for getting deep into his pivotal, strained marriage considering all the extra-marital and extra-sexual affairs. But like, say, Mank, this is a film with fine dialogue, fairly faultless direction and by all accounts winning, well-worn acting that nonetheless feels like it needs to explore everything BUT the inner soul, like respectively what screenwriting or the composition process means in cinematic terms, what it feels like when “summer sings in you.” Cooper ain’t no Fincher for that matter. Not only can I accept more of this historical timeline ping-ponging — both Oppenheimer and Maestro use of color and lack thereof for future or past — but Nolan’s latest film was actually meant to “provoke questions” (as Maestro’s opening quotation from Bernstein indicates you were after) whereas Maestro is basically there to answer them, if well-dressed wiki-summary simplicity and bio bullet points is good for you. I’ve had it with the “new, unconventional” biopic ending up just as more of the same — for as much as Andrew Dominik’s Blonde leaves plenty to be desired (and is barely a biopic), that strange, sullen, schizophrenic style would’ve suited Maestro’s ode to a noteworthy jack of all trades. Cooper wants to be both reverent and critical but Maestro isn’t much of either — it gets very close to covering the “grand inner life“ that Bernstein had but the script can’t stop recounting his deeds and bringing up that crucial fill-in conducting job when he was 25. Still the screenplay is a palatable, pretentious portrait of the artist as a sorta gay man and at least the naturalistic, overlapping dialogue makes it more genuine for me, shedding stagey pomp and circumstance for more believable back and forth. My contrarian ass desperately would like to rally behind an unfairly maligned movie relatively full of graces, good performances and handsome technical attributes but Jesus, all the careful consideration in the world can’t remedy a life-snapshot that is inevitably forced, a little full of itself and somehow soundly un-cinematic. Once time takes Mulligan out of frame, there’s nothing left but that REM reference and continuing to watch Bernstein fuck around with his students. WHAT A LEGEND!  3 (out of 4)
WHO saw this one coming?? Seriously I want to know! How rare it is when a movie that not only sounded like a bad idea in conception alone but also looked fairly revolting from the previews somehow overcomes just about every limitation and apprehension. It's hard to believe Warner Brothers' Willy Wonka origin story is a children's musical light-years lovelier than Disney’s centennial piece Wish (maybe their worst Theatrical Animated Feature, like, ever) and a better squeeze of intellectual property than what anyone would’ve imagined the more soulful franchising, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, which lamentably does a good deal less to honor its celebrated progenitor. This severely this kicked the crap out of Tim Burton’s edgier yet more ‘faithful’ redo of Willy from 2005, the only comparison is swapping daddy issues for sweeter Momma’s boy weak spots. Sure Christopher Lee can do plenty with nothing but Sally Hawkins elevated Paddington (not to mention anything else she’s touched) and serves as a nice secret weapon here. I'm shocked how darn cute Wonka was, how delightful, if somewhat forgettable, the tunes (SCRUB scrub), how delicately fanciful Timothée Chalamet’s turn is, and most unfathomable of all: that miraculously Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa (just after a villainous turn in Paddington 2) didn’t Achilles heel the whole project, especially after painfully punctuating each trailer. But there you have it — I initially couldn't help but feel some certainty that director Paul King, relatively early into his career, was coerced by fat Hollywood checks to sell out, not unlike what Disney’s forced many MCU stooges to do — but no, the critical kindness (not to mention the fat box office haul) was actually earned because the man in charge is a great tactician of valuable children’s entertainment, finding himself ascending nearer to a correspondingly cinematic place akin to Roald Dahl as one of the key voices of youngster lit. Paddington is wonderful, 2 almost nearly as excessively charming, I don’t need to cite the sequel’s recent reign as the best-reviewed movie on Rotten Tomatoes to recall. Even his modest debut Bunny and the Bull makes something out of nothing through a rambunctious road trip format, showing his knack for the artifice of DIY VFX quite early. Since Bunny, King's immediate capacity for more "grown-up" humor has been filtered through a PG lens (siphoning none of the cleverness thank God) much like Lord and Miller bouncing between fashioning the hard-R hilarity of the Jump Street movies and the fetching, funny, tot-targeted flicks Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie. All the precise whimsy, dynamic enough musical numbers free with insistent melodies and amusing lyrics, even the little self-aware nods felt like reasonable evidence of a kid's movie that quickly, skillfully becomes an all-ages affair with equal measure in store for any lifespan. Wonka’s defiant, unfazed innocence, met with Timothée’s own winning efforts and face fit for all forms of cheek-pulling, sells the surface of holiday family fare that speaks directly to the light fantasy elements of the original film, that 1970s fluke still FAR and above this movie’s blindsiding quality. It’s not the emo, quasi-English garbage of Burton’s sights despite the London setting (though the odd steampunk magician mechanics have their place) nor does King feel the need to overload on nostalgic plucks and pokes at your memory. Other than Oompa Loompa refrains and “Pure Imagination” with inspired new verses, every song is original and pleasing, advancing story, comedy and fun, rarely reading as false, forced, too soon or too late. Other than some incredibly fine print, laundry stew, consumer-grade levitation and the occasional symphonic motif of an older musical theme — none of which it bothersome mind you — Wonka is like a vacation, “a holiday in your head” next to Disney's despicable, disgraceful pandering toward rabid Star Wars and Marvel devotees. Young Calah Lane as Noodle is winsome indeed as the major player next to Timmy, each of our trio of villains (Mathew Baynton, Matt Lucas and Paterson Joseph) is more deliciously diabolical than the next, hell the whole supporting cast, including Keegan-Michael Key’s police chief, Olivia Colman's even more evil Mrs. Scrubitt and her many prisoners, is nestled firmly in the enchantment. King even makes room for a regular, the titular Bunny from Bunny and the Bull Simon Farnaby — the hyper-sexual funny man is yet again a security guard like the Paddington movies, and he’s the face, or rather the silhouette, of one of this movie’s best gags. Sure there’s the occasional dud in the joke department but mostly Wonka’s confections courtesy of King are an unqualified treat, with visual effects only slightly overused but largely appropriately practical. The movie's darkness is mild as far as the delightfully knowing, mature-for-kids sense of the original goes (I could've done with even more underground chocolate mafia moments), and thankfully this Willy is not some stunted weirdo à la Johnny Depp’s shameful iteration, but a kid for life in the most exuberant, mischievous sense — the slight distinctions matter here, like worrying about undoing the mystery of the character to begin with, though the impish character retains a beaming ambiguity, more than the backstory bullshitting of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Shaping a dreamer rather than some creep with an affect does this movie wonders. If it’s reminding me of fellow Brit Joe Cornish’s exceptional young people’s feature films (Attack the Block, The Kid Who Would Be King) and evoking the spirit of Chocolat, that also doesn’t hurt. New kids classic? Maybe not. Biggest surprise of the year? I think so. What I’ve really learned other than sharing good things with friends is MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE THING ITSELF is this — don’t judge a movie on its trailer or theoretical desperation. For Dahl media, I couldn't dream of this rubbing up next to Nicholas Roeg’s heartily homespun, brutally British The Witches, Henry Selick’s stop-motion staple James and the Giant Peach, Danny Devito’s marvelous, masterful Matilda and Wes Anderson’s slightly too Andersonian Fantastic Mr. Fox (not to mention his now Oscar-winning adaptation of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar). If this recent Roald revival is worth anything, it's that this truly titillating, disaster-deviating prequel sits comfortably above less chancy modern adaptations (that should've sucked), particularly Robert Zemeckis’ inoffensive, CG-slathered Witches and the better-than-expected Matilda the Musical, a fine Broadway companion piece to the ‘95 gold standard. Then, after all that unspoiled goodwill, I wouldn’t mind SEQUELS to fucking WONKA? See, the imagination isn’t exactly 100% pure but it sure it scrumdiddly-oh scratch that.  3 ½ (out of 4)
It only took me until now to realize Todd Haynes hasn’t whiffed once or ever really come close, which ain’t easy for as many substantial risks in feeling and narrative the man is willing to take on the average project. Maybe Carol was secured by the wave of LGBTQ arthouse features of yesterdecade, but even that film, a splendid adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, is just a morsel of his tidy, intimate works of rascally transgression. His whole career is a wicked ride — Poison’s surqueerlism, Safe’s hypnotic hypochondriac disassembly (and first of many fruitful collaborations with Julianne Moore), the Bowie/Wilde/glam-rock zeitgeist kaleidoscope of Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven’s masterful modern Sirk-spin, I’m Not There’s profusely poetic rewrite on the rules of musical biopics (good luck with A Complete Unknown James Mangold), then after awhile Carol’s return to elegant, sumptuous melodrama was his last masterwork. More recently his ode to museums and silent films in the dual-deaf-child-odyssey Wonderstruck, the uncharacteristic legal thriller Dark Waters and the all too frontLOADED Velvet Underground documentary (the harshest way to say I wish the counter-counterculture essay was twice as long) seem to have found Haynes still prone to variety but with less to do with his place as one of Queer Cinema’s giants alongside Gus Van Sant. So yeah, when you lay it all out there, this quiet king’s latest film May December isn’t all that strange even for all its bizarre, cringe-inducing taboo-probing. Like many Haynes features it’s a dazzling dance of intimacy and showmanship, artifice and reality, though May December specifically proves to be gently haunting, imperceptibly, oddly moving and cruelly funny. It’s unclassifiably one-of-a-kind, not unlike a good deal of his filmography, particularly Poison and Goldmine, which simply couldn’t have been made by anyone else. There’s nothing hetero-divergent going on here, and while from afar this looks like a fresh finagling of the revivified melodramatics seen in Heaven and Carol, it’s really some giddily grotesque, almost subtly black-comic psychological thriller within an art-is-life-life-is-art satirical Hollywood exploitation piece exuding, for all its serenity, some seriously evil cosmic energy. But, like Sofia just did with Priscilla, the grooming is spelled out only from a removed distance, each film bathed in a trance-like haze, an unknowable kind of dark wish-fulfillment and moral trepidation. The grainy, soft-focused, beautifully blocked, warm and welcoming aura is obviously atoned with the stark-raving batshit-bonkers subject matter and the score’s Hitchcockian, almost ironically overzealous score, all the more eerie for how well it imitates the almost aggrandized, symphonic stylizing of long-past film orchestration. The cornucopia of cinematic meaning, extrapolated moment by moment, is unfathomable given the story’s sum — it seems like some disturbing exploitation/WTF cinema like Saltburn from afar, but even as May December sidesteps stupid, topical rich-rebuking, this movie has infinitely more to mull over inside the rigorously edited, gloriously acted fable on the ethics of teacher-student boundaries and real-life movie adaptations. Which brings me to my mildly sparring leads — my GOD, the fucking character dynamics move like lightning bolts, minute by minute you’re discovering things, shifting the sublime thematic detailing, your alignment of what the movie is and what you’re even watching adjusting scene after wonderfully executed scene. Moore is in her mode offering perhaps the best of at least five collaborations with Haynes — historically plenty of directors have had their reliable performing counterpart as creative pillar to lean on — John Waters and Divine, John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams, Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich — and Moore is Hayne’s mercurial, matriarchal muse. In May December she’s just so hearth-like and homey in spite of the disarming lisp and, after everything, makes you feel this woman could break down someone also calculatedly polite as Natalie Portman’s quietly vainglorious starlet playing doting detective. Despite Portman’s better, more recent turns like Black Swan and Annihilation, she’ll be more remembered for earlier days like Leon the Professional and the Star Wars prequels… maybe that’s better than peaking with Closer when she’s showing her ass, or Garden State showing her innermost insufferable hipster, or V for Vendetta showing her bald head, all part of her ascension to bouncing between Terrence Malick and the MCU — this is one of her moments, a defining career culmination. So much of the movie’s sometimes spiked satire stems from Portman’s character nestling into a psyche she isn’t prepared for and all the simple, inherent insensitivity of her presence within a dynamic as delicate as a family founded on a grown woman and a teenage boy and the mindfuck of sending their set of offspring through graduation. Not to de-emphasize a diamond in the diamond rough, Charles Melton may not have the illustrious resume but he is still the remarkable highlight, offering an all too human performance in a sea of vanity and posturing. Despite the victory laps for his illustrious co-stars in an already exceptionally stupefying film, Melton gives the most vulnerable, incredible performance of a man backed up with short-circuited development and long-term denial. This movie could make you think of anything, like the searing absorption of the other à la Persona or even topics of shirt-tugging discomfort and testy social edginess via Licorice Pizza (STILL the genders reversed is TOO DAMN EDGY) or just the strands of distanced investigative dismay within Spotlight or Day for Night's dismantling of Hollywood's carefully curated reality and twenty other movies not too far off on the cinematic maps and charts. Yet it was so singular, and for such an original movie steeped in seamlessly woven, film-history film selections May December had flavors I could not have expected. Though the threat of adultery looms there’s not one part of this story I could’ve predicted and yet never does the film betray its noblest aims, particularly equalizing empathy even for our most despicable characters, be it the naive or the vain. Notes on a Scandal wishes it were this incisive or challenging, this warped, twisted melodrama — despite May December's beautiful, nearly unclassifiable ambiguity it remains a completely unsympathetic, unsentimental rendition of the same story (the case of Mary Kay Letourneau look it up!) told in hindsight through an enigmatic, erotically charged psychological minefield, every little bit bearing sharp, reflexive, existentialist truths, subconscious insanity and really invigorating showmanship.  2 (out of 4)
Ridley Scott is 86 years old; this fact alone should outweigh the household name and imposing legacy, but hopefully Napoleon is proof enough for studios to stop handing him massive sums to produce such extravagant waste. The last man standing as far as grand-scale historical epics are concerned has rarely made it so clear he’s in need of a new outlet, and no I don’t mean Alien prequel sequels — at least 2024’s Romulus is under the command of someone else (though now, technically and treacherously, under the Disney umbrella). The Last Duel was a box office bum just coming out of COVID’s grip in late 2021, but it was one of his stronger affairs with the long past — his 1977 debut The Duellists is like an epic in miniature, and also his only other film set in the Napoleonic era, doubtless one of his best still, with an impeccably annoying Harvey Keitel keeping you on your toes. Outside of more recent, mostly biographical history in films like the horrendous crime against Italians that was House of Gucci, All the Money in the World’s Spielbergian sense of spinning something cinematic out of the unfilmable (though writer David Scarpa has hardly culled cinema out of ol' Boney, one of history’s most legendary backstories, so let us just see about Gladiator II), America Gangster’s bristling, terse stroke of crime cinema or the Bay-esque shrapnel of Black Hawk Down’s punishing survival war thriller, there’s only the capable Christopher Columbus feature 1492: Conquest of Paradise before the 21st century would see Scott’s five takes from further back — the good includes Gladiator's overestimated greatness and the aforementioned The Last Duel, meanwhile Kingdom of Heaven and Exodus: Gods and Kings, for all their minor crimes against the Almighty, are meaty, ambitious, heightened cinema and hell, even his insufferably serious Robin Hood had more identifiable visceral fortitude than 2023’s Napoleon. Run-ons aside, he really is like Ron Howard, constantly doubling up, bouncing from hit to failure, lowbrow to Oscar bait. Akin to a second-rate Spielberg, Scott is also a real genre schizo who can handle several spinning plates of film production and, in this particular case, I feel like the Paul Mescal-led Gladiator follow-up (due in one year’s time) has the larger share of his attention. So you’ve got a filmmaker who could barely match up to the genre’s last full, sincere efforts — Oliver Stone’s underrated Alexander and Wolfgang Petersen’s testy, tremendously entertaining Troy, both from 2004 while Scott was cooking up the lesser Kingdom of Heaven (by theatrical standards) — in tandem with one of the best working actors pretty plainly phoning it in, even in spite of the producer credit. Even worse for relative talent, Phoenix turned in a tenfold more committed, interesting, lasting showcase in Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid just this year. Probably not since Tom Cruise was supposed to be a one-eyed German in Valkyrie has a lead performance come off so plainly as actor in auto-pilot, with Joaquin turning in so-called efforts making his unsubtle sliminess in the original Gladiator look meek and mild. Some of Phoenix’s improvised takes are pedestrian, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do worse. All this for, in theory and not to downplay the untapped ground, the film project Stanley Kubrick once deemed would be “the greatest movie ever made.” As is legend, following the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey Kubrick went hard on pre-production for a Napoleon epic with loads of research, an intended Jack Nicholson performance and a finished script long since available to read, which Spielberg and HBO are at work translating into a miniseries not too far away. Unfortunately financing was pulled after the failure of the Italian/Soviet production of 1970’s Waterloo, a fairly consummate, slimmer spectacle famous for featuring the most extras ever put to film before or since, with stunningly accurate simulations of Bonaparte’s last battle, sandwiched between exiles. I’ll have to see what Stanley thought of that film, but he was not a fan of the recent Russian War and Peace, and was also quite critical of what many consider to be a paragon of early film technique, 1927 exactly, Abel Gance’s deeply French, languidly storied, sometimes ravishingly composed and committed five-hour-plus rendering of the first few epochs of Napoleon’s greatly discussed, astounding ascension. Kubrick, admitting the technical significance (the tinted images, swooping camera movements, blitzing editing and its futuristic, one-of-a-kind triptych tableaux finale keep it one for the books), would call the performances crude and other than those playing Napoleon as child (Edmond Van Daële) and adult (Albert Diudonnée) I can’t help but agree. Gance planned on making many more movies, and the historic scope Scott tries to cover here could’ve made it 10 hours in Abel’s perfect world. Needless to say, seeing as so surprisingly little has been made about him, Bonaparte's absence from media continually deepens a crater in historical cinema, a man whose storied-and-then-some life is supposedly ripe for feats of audiovisual inscription! This knowledge alone, let’s just forget that this is the closest thing we’ll get for some time to THE great film Kubrick had up his sleeve (probably because HE was at the helm), renders 2023’s Napoleon a crushing blow, despite Scott’s general aptitude for kinetic battle sequences and the patient, presumably anachronistic drama in between. I can’t be mad that the usual hard-R sex and violence now just makes me think of History Channel by way of Game of Thrones, as that’s always kinda been Scott’s thing in this particular arena and a dubious distinction of big 21st century epics. He may look to David Lean as a model but clearly from only so many vantages, in the same quote he says says this in regard to not letting epic qualities crowd character, because here it’s as if there were no figures in this period that mattered at all save for Nap and his lady. Maybe, if you really did something exquisitely emotional, tender and psychologically challenging, I or some actual history nerd could forgive all the political/military history/intrigue ignored for the sake of pathos. So despite Vanessa Kirby’s best efforts, her and Phoenix as siphons of this second-rate script cannot shape the warmest part of the cold, sullen artillery ace to anything traditionally satisfying. Let’s not show his trials, just how their life was shaded by vag — you know there are more to people than their relationships? The film has no time for other figures big and small in the political area, which is wasteful considering Napoleon had a host of enemies. Ultimately it doesn't matter whether you use love to redeem out titular emperor considering this movie also wants so desperately to paint Bonaparte as an unhinged toddler, like some carnival corner-guy's caricature of Trump. Hey I’m not French, and obviously this wasn’t as Frog-friendly as the 96-year-old homeland early-days epic all about the come-up and FRANCE, but considering Scott is English this is just plain RACIST! Even as a layman I know there’s more to one of the most talked about people ever than this shit — his short king charisma had to be real and you see none of that here because the narrative forgoes just about all of his development, and I would take a younger, radical actor at least for Act One instead of Phoenix in this case, even Timothée Chalamet for Christ’s sake. Then there’s all the weird humor and the tough task it becomes to differentiate between intended and not. “You think you’re so great because you have BOATS!” Is this supposed to feel like some ZAZ movie outside of the battles? As a pivotal revolutionary figure in any respect, there’s just something so empty about the scripting, so diluted in the grim photography (also a 21st century thing, also which Scott only helped normalize), so workmanlike about the acting, so cheap about this expensive Apple TV+ movie (regardless of ILM) and so cynical in its inaccuracies — even the primary poster has him cavalry charging, something the cannon commander really didn’t do. Blowing up the pyramids that the real Napoleon had more humbled respect for is the last and most prominent of the many sad, blatant inconsistencies at play. Master and Commander eats this shit for breakfast and Kubrick’s Napoleonic-era sub-in Barry Lyndon even moreso, that and probably any other film I referenced in this review. “Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the fuck up then.” — Ridley Scott You know what? I’ll just drop the subject.  3 (out of 4)
Ah, The Hunger Games, a world where not one person is skin and bones as far as the eye can see — where’s a skeletal Joaquin or Christian Bale performance when you need it? This was just about the only YA franchise to not only match Harry Potter money domestically but unbelievably outdo it — basically Katniss’s weakest day bested Potter’s average. Since the real cinematic stopping point for wizards is 2011 (God bless if, like me, you watched all three Fantastic Beasts waiting for ANYTHING), the Suzanne Collins’ adaptations themselves were the only worthwhile young adult series quality-wise too, taking cue from the Deathly Hallows trend of two-part finales, getting the most of their money just as other movies did at the time, your Twilights and Hobbits. Not undone by ripped-off, tangential, unfulfilled generic crap (Maze Runner, which doesn't justify its mysteries and Divergent, with little mysteries to speak of), The Hunger Games remains at the top of the teen dystopian dogpile — F. Gary Gray’s first film was budgeted modestly by Lionsgate (whose only other major, even more respectable franchise has become John Wick) and was a runaway success right out the gate — Catching Fire was greater than the original in profits and movie magic, elevating the first film’s template and stakes very comfortably while cleaning up the initial shaky-cam cinematography. It’s all about the Battle Royale-lifted structure for a PG-13 place setting, which lends itself to the least graphic sort of choppy violence, as well as easy commentary on politics, war and the human condition — all that discourse, satire, glam-rock pageantry and buildup to an extended early finale, as the formula goes. The games were usually half the film, making both sides of Mockingjay disappointing if you were in it for thrills, and even the themes became more forward and heavy-handed than before. All this to say, starting with Catching Fire, it’s been Frank Marshall (of Constantine, I Am Legend and another J Law collab, the sultry, self-possessed spysploitation film Red Sparrow) in charge. His return — and especially since he was unable to save the business decision products of parts One and Two of the original series’ conclusion — made me think of a David Yates-equivalent stooge about to work out some truly repugnant cash-grab like Fantastic Beasts (take you pick) after managing most of the main movies. But as individual installment no one asked for, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a damn engrossing watch, falling between the narrative riskiness and pontification of Mockingjay and the traditional satisfaction of the first two features. It works as bleak commentary, character-actor playground, escapist mini-blockbuster and decently involving long-form tragic romance. But speaking of unnecessary prequels harboring love story sap going on for way too long, more than anything this made George Lucas’s early episodes look even more hilarious because you know what? I actually bought this romance even as it fizzles out in seconds — Songbirds slyly accomplished more than Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith put together. By the last act of Episode III it feels like Darth goes from 0 to 100, from desperate wife-saver to yellow-eyed child-murderer, but here you may actually forget Snow's inevitable destination. I was just following Coriolanus and I’m not sure I buy that he’s super complicit — I get that the exhibition of underage blood sport hadn’t quite become this civilization’s Super Bowl yet and this guy is the smarmy asshole in the ad department throwing out crass suggestions disguised as noble ones (“uh... let’s care about the people!?”), to which the head honcho goes “hm...genius!" On those terms this movie is quite stupid but in the minutia of world-building, most of Panem’s corners are well-considered. Though it’s probably worse for pointing out, the reinforced cycles of violence and revolution felt pretty timely considering the recent eruption of Middle Eastern conflicts — even without Israel-Palestine for backdrop, these were always fairly odd, dour pop entertainment. I feel as if the weaker reviews are a result of a spacious, venturous Act Three, which cuts the games off and puts you through tests of patience if you didn’t care two licks about these newly developed characters. You may walk away confused as to if you really watched Snow (felt out by a talented Tom Blyth) become Donald Sutherland’s dastardly dictator (didn’t like that parting, inserted voice-over copied over from Catching Fire) or whether he was the prickly president all along, but this villainous rise is so honorably resistant to sticking to the trend of twisted empathy for antagonists that aren’t ALL bad IF they had horrible things done to them — Songbirds and Snakes almost becomes a neat psychological thriller on top it all by its final moments by way of well-employed ambiguity. Though representation is one of those cinematic brownie points modern movies love to earn, here it all fits — the young girl with Down syndrome Sofia Sanchez and amputee Knox Gibson make for believable tributes. Then Hunter Schafer looks so similar to Blyth that they’re dead ringers for siblings — as the most prominent transgender actress around, she passes and plays the posh part well, echoing Elizabeth Banks’ Effie. Peter Dinklage was delightful, did you expect less? Viola Davis was likewise hamming it up splendidly but the coup de gras was the hilarious Jason Schwartzman, who gave me six good laughs, every time cementing Ballad’s sharp, pre-aged/retro-future satirical side, possibly outdoing Stanley Tucci’s absurdly bombastic TV-guru turn, like fictional father like fictional son. Then from the clunky, chunky subtitle I expected some serenades, or at the very least a few ditties, and Marshall doesn’t deny you. Rachel Zegler’s lovely voice works much better belting Joan Baez-like folk songs rather than speaking with a suspicious twang. Whether lovely a cappella, country-eyed, hee-haw stomps or some just good-ol' banjo-backed blues, the needle drops are aces outside of her first cringy protest moment. I couldn’t believe this didn’t feel like some greedy, retreading franchise jumpstart — as far as I know there’s only one prequel Collins has penned, unless she decides Hamitch (Woody Harrelson onscreen) needed his own illustrated backstory called Sunrise on the Reaping. This Hunger Games has a registered maturity, profuse entertainment value and a story that doesn’t blow your mind in sum but twists and turns you around several times dramatically and emotionally before it’s done with you. All my indifference was contentedly washed away by Ballad’s considerable catchiness. |
Forthcoming:
Thoughts on Snow White Black Bag Mickey 17 Captain America: Brave New World Flight Risk The Brutalist Nosferatu A Complete Unknown Sonic the Hedgehog 3 The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Wicked Gladiator II Emilia Pérez Here Anora Megalopolis The Substance Longlegs Hit Man Dune Part Two Poor Things ... Follow me on Twitter @ newwavebiscuit To keep it brief...
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October 2024
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