"The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for": Project Hail Mary

This is the second movie made from one of Andy Weir's books, after 2015's The Martian. The settings are different, but the plots are similar: someone faced with a near-insurmountable problem he has to science his way out of. The stakes are a little higher in this one: The Martian's Mark Watney was an astronaut stranded on Mars all by his lonesome, who would have starved had the world not pulled together to rescue him. In contrast, Hail Mary's Ryland Grace has to solve the problem of an alien "astrophage" that is colonizing and dimming the sun, the consequence of which will be the freezing of Earth and the extinction of the human race and all life on the planet if he cannot figure out a way to stop it. 

(Yeah, no pressure, right? Also, another similarity is the main character: a Competent White Guy. Of course, Andy Weir is a White Guy, so that's what he wrote. The layers surrounding this are an entirely different conversation, however, one I am not having right now.)

I saw this film in a giant IMAX theater, and let me start by saying it is gorgeous. The colors are crisp and clear, and the practical sets--there doesn't seem to be much CGI in this, except obviously for the exterior space shots--are well designed and much appreciated. It's a good thing Ryan Gosling makes an excellent Ryland Grace, the science teacher forced into the role of astronaut and savior of humanity (and other beings) because he is on the screen nearly one hundred percent of the time. It's a very good performance throughout. Unfortunately, the Academy tends to overlook lead actors in SF films come award time (although with Michael B. Jordan's Best Actor win this year for Sinners, one hopes that might be changing), but I wonder if the studio will make a push for a Best Actor nomination for Gosling next year. As far as I am concerned, his performance deserves it.

I am aware there's been some rumblings about inaccurate science in this film. In particular, PZ Myers at Pharyngula tossed off a disgruntled--nay, disgusted--post on the subject. (Short version: the premise is garbage and the movie is fucking stupid.) Of course, this view is perfectly valid, as he's looking at the film from the perspective of a scientist and evolutionary biologist. I'm sure movies such a viewpoint can approve of are few and far between. 

However, that's not how I'm looking at it. Look, I read a lot of SF every year, and I've resigned myself to the fact that nearly every science fiction book and story I read is going to have inaccurate science, to a greater or lesser degree. I'm personally fond of space opera stories, and one of the central tenets of that genre--FTL travel--is not allowed by the laws of physics as we currently understand them. That doesn't stop me from loving well-written space operas (a recent example: Claire North's fantastic Slow Gods, with her extradimensional "arcspace"). My "fucking stupid" boundaries are different than PZ's, but I definitely have them. (Just ask me how stupid Independence Day: Resurgence was. 🙄)

For me, however, this film does not cross those boundaries.

That's because the plot of Project Hail Mary and the story are to me two different things. The plot is A to B to C, this happens and causes D effect, and then E happens; or, X problem pops up and is solved, leading to Y problem, and then the big ZZ problem at the climax. But that's not the story.

The story is this:

1) Ryland Grace's friendship with Rocky the alien; and 

2) As a direct result of that friendship, how Ryland grows from a milquetoast, non-confrontational, even cowardly person to a person who will take his ship to rescue his friend, his own life be damned. 

That's the story, and Project Hail Mary delivers.

Viewed from this perspective, the movie is as much a character study as it is an SF blockbuster. I mean, you have a guy who is terrified at the idea of going into space, who is so scared that during the flashback scene after the scientist on the three-person Hail Mary team is killed, and Ryland is the only one availble to meet the extremely tight launch window--never mind that he's not an astronaut--and if he refuses he is literally dooming the human race to death in thirty years--even then, he says no over and over again, stating "I don't have it in me," and they have to chase him down, drug him, and drag him aboard the Hail Mary. (Which is not a great look for the mission commander, but really, what else could she do? She was also trusting Ryland not to slit his wrists when he woke up aboard the Hail Mary and realized what had been done to him.) 

But as one of the key lines in the film proclaims (paraphrasing): "You can be brave if you find someone to be brave for," and this is what happens to Ryland Grace. His relationship with Rocky (I'm almost cringing at the thought of calling it an "alien bromance," but that's exactly what it is), enables him to first, solve the astrophage problem; and secondly, after he and Rocky part and Ryland realizes the solution to the problem will infect Rocky's ship, strand him in space, and lead to his slow death by radiation exposure and starvation, Ryland makes the film's central choice. He loads his data and the engineered astrophage predators onto four probes (named John, Paul, George and Ringo after the Beatles) and sends them on their way to Earth; and knowing he doesn't have enough fuel to get home if he goes to rescue Rocky....he takes off to rescue Rocky anyway. 

Personally, I can overlook a lot of bad science for a story like that. Yes, Ryland, you did have it in you after all.

This film is a box-office hit, and it deserves to be. If, like PZ Myers, you can't get past the bad science, that's fine. But I think you're missing out on someting special.

 

At the Movies: Superman--All of the CGI, (Almost) None of the Heart

 

I must preface this by saying that I have not seen most of the recent Superman films, including the nearly universally derided Man of Steel, blasted for its indifference to civilian casualties during the battle sequences. I have seen Christopher Reeve's original Superman, widely regarded as the best, but that was years ago. So I suppose one could say that I am coming to the franchise and character with fresh eyes, my opinion unaffected by reactions to the previous iterations, able to judge this film on its own merits. 

Unfortunately, this film, while hopeful and uplifting in some ways, suffers a basic flaw that cannot be worked around: it was made in the age of superhero bombast and CGI spectacle, when films have to be bigger! badder! louder! with exploding third acts and ever larger, nastier monsters! And it really suffers as a result. At least James Gunn had the sense to get rid of the origin sequence entirely; so, after a rather inspired Star Wars-like crawl explaining who Superman is and why, three minutes ago, he suffered the first defeat of his life, our initial glimpse of the titular hero is of him crash-landing in the snow on the Antarctic peninsula where the Fortress of Solitude is buried, and Krypto the Superdog coming out to rescue him. 

(Krypto is one of the best things in the movie, but like everything else, his portrayal eventually goes waaaaayyy over the top.)

Much of the tension in this film is derived from the inherent conflict of the main character: an alien being, essentially a god, is let loose on Earth, and despite his obvious desire to do good and help people, the people of Earth might not want his help, and regard his assistance as interference. (And sure, people can be stubborn and stupid like that, rejecting help they clearly need, but it's still their choice.) This is made clear in the film's best scene: an interview/argument between Clark Kent and Lois Lane (who, in another modern twist, not only is aware of Superman's dual identity, but has been dating the two of them for months). Lois warns Clark that he might not like the questions she is going to ask. Sure enough, he does not, as she digs into why he took it upon himself to stop a war between two neighboring (fictional) countries, without even attempting to go through diplomatic channels. His defensive rejoinder, "People were going to die!" may have been true, but it also brings into view the double-edged sword of his existence: the fact of a godlike alien being who can do whatever the fuck he wants and nobody can stop him, and what if he decides to do bad things, or at the very least presumptuous, unnecessary things, instead of what he thinks are good things? 

(This was actually the premise of a film I watched several years ago, Brightburn. I suspect I would have an entirely different view of that movie today if I revisited it.) 

This scene was the best part of the film, precisely because of the ethical and emotional conflict, but also because it had no special effects and was allowed to play out the length it needed to be without rushing. Which brings up my biggest problem with this movie: the overwhelming CGI. Now, I realize in this age of $200 million (or more) superhero films, CGI is a necessity. After all, we presently don't have alien or genetically engineered actors who can take on these roles. But the computerized special effects in this movie were pretty much overwhelming from beginning to end, from the Fortress of Solitude's popping out of the Antarctic ice to Superman's fight with a gigantic Gremlin in the second act to the Green Lantern's awful fake-looking ooze (that particular CGI element was not good at all, almost as bad as Nathan Fillion's blond bowl-cut wig) to Lex Luthor's pocket universe with its multicolored "proton river" that Superman tumbles through holding an alien baby for freaking ever, to Superman's fighting a longhaired voiceless clone of himself, a fight that seemed to go on for hours; to the black nanite stream that Lex Luthor's henchwoman the Engineer pumps down Superman's throat and into his lungs in an attempt to suffocate him, which he pulls up in an icky black rope out of his mouth; to the "dimensional rift" that threatens to cleave Metropolis in two, toppling thinly disguised New York skyscrapers like dominoes, and then after it is shut down the halves of the ruined buildings are put back together, which seemed to me to be supremely useless, as their stuctural integrity is now completely wrecked; to Krypto's spinning through the air like a furry top, chomping on the drones Lex Luthor was using to direct his Superman clone; and I could go on and on and on. All this over-the-top spectacle left almost no room for the film's needed emotional beats, and those that were there got short shrift. In particular a scene between Superman and Pa Kent that should have been the heart of the film, when Clark's adoptive father impresses on him that his choices are what matter, not his bloodline, and states how proud he is of his Kryptonian son, was cut abruptly short. This scene should have been slowed down and allowed to breathe, and instead is rushed through so Mr. Terrific can yell for Superman's help.

(And may I say that the message Lex Luthor discovers when he raids the Fortress of Solitude, the message from Jor-El and Lara that Superman never heard the latter half of until now, is completely repulsive? His Kryptonian parents sent their baby to Earth to ostensibly "do good," but said "good" was supposed to consist of a) Superman's conquering and ruling the entire planet; b) taking on a "superharem" of unwilling human women; and c) raping and impregnating said harem so the Kryptonian genes wouldn't die out. And Superman doesn't even react to this, or rather he reacts only to the first part and not the other two, as in "MY FUCKING PARENTS SENT ME HERE TO DO WHAT?" Hell, the villain of this movie recognized the horribleness of this statement more than the supposed hero.)

Watching this well-intentioned but misguided mess of a movie actually made me rethink a film I saw earlier this year, Marvel's Thunderbolts*. Now, lest I sound hypocritical, Thunderbolts* is not CGI-free (although it reportedly had more practical effects than is usual for Marvel nowadays). However, the effects took a back seat to the fully realized, if entirely dysfunctional, characters and their relationships. Also, at the climax, the non-superpowered Yelena Bulova took down the villain by recognizing and acknowledging the conflict within him and telling him he was not alone (to be fair, the "villain" Bob was a half-hearted villain at best, nothing like Lex Luthor). Thunderbolts* is not top-tier Marvel, but comparing it to Superman levels it up several notches. 

I will say that David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult were very good in their respective roles as Superman and Lex Luthor, and Rachel Brosnahan made for a nicely updated, modern Lois Lane. (Corenswet, in particular, almost looks like he could be Christopher Reeve's son.) Unfortunately, the scant few minutes of real emotion that float to the top of the swirling sludge of CGI bloat (and then are sucked right back down again) do not a satisfying film make. 

Of Music and Monsters: Sinners

 

The two movies I've seen so far this year have been just so-so. I won't name them--the second one was so mediocre I didn't even bother to write about it. This film, however, made me sit up and gasp. Short, non-spoilery recommendation: Sinners is a goddamn masterpiece, and you should go see it.

 

I'll get the obvious out of the way: yes, it is a vampire horror movie. Yes, the vampires stick to classic undead rules: they only come out at night, they can't stand garlic, and they have to be invited in. Yes, the third act does get violent and gory in all the standard vampire ways. 

But.

What writer/director Ryan Coogler does leading up to that third act is nothing short of remarkable. To begin with, the film is set in 1932 Mississippi and has a majority African-American cast. This setup makes the viewer think the characters are existing in a horror movie before the bloodsuckers even appear on the screen, and the film deals with how white people are worse than vampires. To be fair that context/commentary is certainly there, but it's not really what the film is about. It's not even about the vampires, for that matter. They're the monsters that our protagonists have to fight off until dawn, but they're not the central theme of the film.

Sinners is about music. 

This is made clear in the film's opening titles, which discuss two things: folklore about "haints" or the undead, focusing on Irish and Indian stories specifically, and the power of music to "tear open the veil between living and dead, and the past and future." All these things play vital roles in the plot, and in the fact the latter is the focus of the film's most jaw-dropping scene, which I will discuss later on. 

After those title cards, we open on a young black man driving a Model T to a church. He gets out carrying the snapped-off neck of an acoustic guitar, and we see he has four gory gashes--the claw marks of some nasty creature--across the right side of his face. He goes in to face the preacher, who is apparently his father, and the preacher breaks off his sermon and confronts his son, demanding he drop the guitar neck and give up what his father calls "the devil's music." The boy hesitates, unwilling to give up the remnants of his guitar, and another title flashes on the screen: "one day earlier." We then go back in time to discover what led up to that moment. 

This young man is Sammie Moore, an up-and-coming blues guitarist, who is meeting his cousins Smoke and Stack, identical twin brothers (both played by Michael B. Jordan) just returned from Chicago (there's a throwaway line about them working for Al Capone) with a lot of possibly ill-gotten money, wanting to open a juke joint. They meet with a smarmy, condescending white guy to buy an abandoned mill for their juke joint--this is the kind of guy who denies that the KKK exists anymore, which you know right away is a damn lie--and then the two brothers split apart to recruit musical talent, food workers, and other volunteers from the community to open the juke joint that night. Along the way, Smoke meets up with the lover he left behind, a root worker living in the woods named Annie. 

The juke joint does open that night, but we know all is not going to be well because of an interlude scene: a white guy running across a field as the sun is setting, with suspicious puffs of smoke rising from his back and shoulders. He runs up to a cabin, says he is being pursued by Indians, and asks the homeowners to take him in. They agree, and the husband hustles the man upstairs while the wife stands guard at the door with a gun. Three Indians--Choctaws, if I remember correctly--do indeed show up, asking if the woman has seen or is harboring this man. The Indigenous monster hunter (and how cool is that? They deserve a story of their own) starts to press the matter, but as the sun has now set completely the Indians back off and leave. The woman then goes upstairs to find just who they have let into their home--a vampire, who has just turned her husband. 

Meanwhile, the juke joint has its grand opening, and the black community in the town comes to celebrate. We are introduced to several more characters, including Hailee Steinfeld's Mary, the lover Stack left behind. (Mary is no morose pushover grieving the man who left her; in fact, she proceeds to read Stack the riot act about his abandonment.) This middle section of the film concentrates on the juke joint and its music, celebrating the blues and giving a few hints of early rock and roll--and then Sammie gets up to play an original song. This sets the stage for the film's most astonishing scene, which illustrates the title card: "music so powerful it tears open the veil between the living and the dead, the past and the future."
 

Because as Sammie plays, this is exactly what happens. As the camera weaves between the people on the floor, an African drummer and dancer, in full native regalia, appear. Next is a black man holding an electric guitar, obviously meant to represent Jimi Hendrix. Then we see a deejay spinning an LP, and a rapper holding a microphone. All the while the camera moves around the room and illuminates these representations of black music, past and future, in a seemingly one-take shot which must have been stitched together but certainly doesn't look it. It is one of the most incredible scenes I have witnessed in any film. 

But Sammie's magic also draws the vampire seen earlier, named Remmick, and the two people he just turned. The bloodsucking trio shows up at the juke joint's door, asking to be let in. Smoke and Annie are summoned, and they refuse to let Remmick in (they don't know he's a vampire just yet, but he's setting off all sorts of alarm bells, particularly for Annie). The three retreat into the woods, and Mary makes a fateful decision: she offers to go talk to them, as she says they're bound to tell her more about who they are and why they're here than Stack. 

Well, you can guess what happens. Mary is turned and comes back to the juke joint, getting in without much trouble. She seeks out Stack and takes him to one of the upstairs rooms to fuck, which of course turns into her ripping his throat open and sucking his blood. Sammie, hunting for Stack, opens the door and sees them going at it. Then Smoke charges in, too late to save his brother, and shoots Mary. The bullets don't bother her, of course, and after proclaiming "We're going to kill y'all" she runs out the door, leaving Stack to die in his brother's arms. 

That breaks up the party, and the vast majority of the attendees leave to go home, marching right into the clutches of the waiting vamps. After a bit Stack wakes up, leading to a harrowing scene where he confronts Smoke on the other side of the closet he has been locked into, taunting him. He crashes through the door and nearly kills poor Sammie, but Annie, who has finally realized just what they're dealing with, douses him with her version of holy water, and he runs away into the night. 

This leaves a core group of characters inside the building: Smoke, Sammie, Annie, and a few others. Now the challenge is to simply survive the night inside the juke joint and resist the temptations and manipulations of the vampires outside to invite them in. This takes various forms, including one Chinese woman's husband saying he will leave to visit their daughter in town, implying he will turn and/or kill her if his wife doesn't come to him; and Remmick's urging Smoke to step out and join them, claiming that becoming a part of their vampire "community" will free him from the bigoted society he currently lives in. 

(Really, this would be quite a temptation for a black man in Jim Crow Mississippi. To have a chance to live forever, free and powerful, and likely taking revenge on the white people who have so tormented you? Smoke eventually refuses, but you can see him thinking about it.)

(This also leads to another music scene, as Remmick has his newly-turned group dancing to Irish step music. The sight of a bunch of bloodied vampires having a little party of their own in the woods, cheering and stepping to a fiddle, a banjo and a guitar, would seem incongruous to say the least. But it's all a part of the theme of music, how powerful it can be and what it can do for you, that runs through this entire movie.)

 

Inside the juke joint, the tension rises as the characters argue about what to do. In particular the Chinese woman, Grace, is reeling with grief and horror from her husband's being made a monster, and worry for her daughter. She insists they should fight the vampires, despite everyone's efforts to talk her down. In the end she is the one who breaks the logjam, screaming, "Come on in, motherfuckers!"

 

Of course, they do. 

 

This is the climactic, bloody fight scene of the third act, with the vampires overwhelming the people inside. Smoke ends up fighting his undead brother, and while we don't directly see him killing Stack (this will be important later) we assume that's what happens. Meanwhile, Sammie crawls out a window, carrying his guitar and pursued by Remmick. The master vampire wants to use Sammie's power to return to Ireland (it sounds like he was banished to this country centuries ago), and he corners the kid in a pond out back. Sammie busts up his guitar and stabs Remmick with a piece of the wooden body (hence why he is carrying the broken-off neck later on), but he doesn't quite hit the heart. But Smoke, appearing in the nick of time, does. This fight happens just before dawn (and you would think vampires would have a built-in sunrise detector, since after all the sun, y'know, kills them, but maybe they were just overwhelmed by the hunt), and the sun rises over the battlefield, burning all the vamps to ash and leaving Smoke and Sammie alone with the blood and guts and the few remaining human bodies. 

Said body count is going to rise a lot higher, however, because just after dawn the smarmy white guy who sold the brothers the property in the beginning (remember him?) shows up with his KKK bros, intending on burning the place. Needless to say, after the night he had, Smoke is in no mood for this bullshit. (In fact, Remmick had warned him this would happen.) Apparently Smoke fought in World War I, and he kept a couple of machine guns from the war--and when the white lynchers show up, he proceeds to lay waste to them, mowing them down in a hail of bullets. The sight of Michael B. Jordan just massacring the bigots seeking to murder his friends provides the biggest catharsis of the entire movie (with the possible exception of the final scene). Unfortunately, Smoke is shot by the head Klanster and dies there as well, with his last sight the ghost of Annie and their baby, who had apparently died years before. 

So this leaves Sammie the only survivor, and as we circle back around to the opening scene, we see Sammie driving his Model T Ford out of town, still clutching the neck of his guitar. This would be a fine ending by itself, but wait! we're not done! A few credits run, and a post-credits scene starts playing: exactly sixty years later, with an aged Sammie (played by real-life blues guitarist Buddy Guy) playing a show in Chicago. After the show, he is told two people want to see him, and the bouncer says, "I told them to come on in." And who should show up but Stack and Mary, still undead and unchanged. 

 

As we find out, Stack survived because Smoke could not bring himself to kill his brother, even knowing what he was. Smoke extracted a promise from Stack to leave Sammie alone. The vampire, knowing Sammie does not have long to live, offers to turn him, but Sammie refuses. He takes out the guitar he had painstakingly rebuilt on the broken neck he carried away, and plays the same song he played before. Then as the two vamps turn to leave, Sammie asks Stack if he ever thinks about that night. Sammie says he remembers it at least once a week in his dreams, and wakes up soaked in sweat. Stack replies that even though it was the last day he was alive, and the last time he saw the sun, "for those few hours, I was free."

 

Now that, my friends, is a post-credit scene done right. It ties everything together: characters, theme, and music. (Obviously, this film's soundtrack is incredible. It was done by Ludwig Goransson, who among other things composed the music for The Mandalorian.) This is, by far, the best movie I have seen this year, and it will be up for a slew of Oscars if there's any justice.

Ten More Bodies Than You Actually Need--Mickey 17

 

I've read the book this film is based on, and while I realize print and film are two very different mediums and what works in the former won't necessarily translate to the latter, there is something to be said for trying to preserve the coherence of the original book if possible. That didn't happen with this film, I don't think. 

That may have something to do with the director, Bong Joon-Ho, and his instincts for social satire, which were ramped waaaaaaayyyy up in this movie. Well, he did pay for the rights, and he can write his film however he wishes. The question is, is this a good movie in and of itself, or in comparison with the book? 

I'm not sure it is, by either metric. 

First, to enumerate the good things: Robert Pattinson is excellent in this film. He plays against himself in portraying both characters--the sweet, earnest, dimbulb Mickey 17 and the murderous, assholish Mickey 18--and pulls off both characterizations. (The director added ten more clone-deaths to the total, for no reason that I could see, given the book is called Mickey 7.) Steven Yeun is also good as Mickey's "best friend" Berto--Timo here (although I wish Mickey's punching Berto out at the end had been kept from the book). Naomi Ackles was okay as Nasha, even if she wasn't given all that much to do, and the director definitely pulled his punches with the three-way sex scene.

And then there's Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette. 

Look, those are two fine actors, especially Toni Collette. The problem, for me at least, is why they're there. Kenneth Marshall was the commander in the book, but he definitely wasn't this failed former Senator and thinly disguised Trump clone (which maybe isn't fair, as this movie was obviously filmed long before the election). Their whole over-the-top storyline of husband-and-wife cult leaders colonizing a "pure white" planet (which made me wonder how the African Nasha and the Asian Timo even made it on board the ship in the first place) was a very ill-fitting and clumsy slather over a straightforward sci-fi first contact story. 

Which would be fine if the satire was worth the extra slather. However, I don't think it was. Toni Colette's character is obsessed with making "sauce" for her dinners, and ends up chopping an alien appendage to do so. This is not only disgusting, it's dangerous--I mean, let's chow down some alien DNA without investigating what it's going to do to the human body, why don't we! Meanwhile, Senator Marshall is trying to con sweet-talk his colonists into starving themselves and practicing abstinence to make the colony work (a bit of business that had way more play in the book, but which is pretty much glossed over here). In the final confrontation with the alien pillbugs called the Creepers, Marshall leaves the colony ship to meet the leader and gets blown to smithereens by Mickey 18, attempting to stop the imminent war between the species. Again, this is not what happened in the book--Marshall is alive at the end of the novel, and Mickey pulled off the con of making him think the Creepers had taken the nuclear bomb that was supposed to end them, to force a detente between humans and Creepers. And in the book, there was nary a chopped-off Creeper tentacle to be found. 

So it sounds like I'm saying "read the book, don't bother with the movie."  Well, from a science-fiction viewpoint I am saying that. I think this would have been a far better film if the original plot points of the two Mickeys struggling to hide themselves and both suffering from starvation, and the escalating tensions between humans and Creepers, had been more closely adhered to. At the same time, I know many people love Boon Jong-ho's commentary on classism and capitalism in his films and his instinct for social satire. 

In this case, this makes the book and movie Mickey 7 (and again, the extra 10 Mickey deaths were simply unnecessary) two very different animals. Overall, this is probably something that Snowpiercer did better (while spawning a very good TV series to boot). Robert Pattinson's excellence in the title role notwithstanding, this film fell a little flat for me. But if you like black comedy and your satire very over-the-top, you probably will enjoy this.

Movie Review: Furiosa, a Mad Max Saga (The War Rig Rides Again)

This film is the prequel to George Miller's stone cold classic from nine years ago, Mad Max: Fury Road. This is the continuing saga of Max in Australia's post-nuclear-apocalypse wasteland, but the previous movie introduced the iconic character of Furiosa, portrayed by Charlize Theron, whose backstory we get here. Because Fury Road was in many ways more Furiosa's story than Max's, George Miller decided to tell the story of her growing up, being kidnapped from the Green Place, her fight for survival in Immortan Joe's Citadel and her attempts to get back to her home. 

The first thing to note about Furiosa is that since Miller decided not to de-age Charlize Theron and cast two different actors instead (Alyla Browne in the first two "chapters" of the story, when Furiosa is ten or eleven-ish, and Anya Taylor-Joy fifteen years later, which takes place an unspecified but not very long amount of time before the events of Fury Road), both actors nail the part. They look enough like each other--both have the same sharp-chinned, heart-shaped face--that you can imagine both Browne and Taylor-Joy growing up to be Charlize Theron. They also, since Furiosa doesn't have much dialogue, tear you to shreds with their wide-eyed gaze. 

The other character of note is Chris Hemsworth's Dementus, a rival wasteland warlord to Immortan Joe who is both unhinged and "crazy like a fox." I can see why Hemsworth took this part--it's about as far from Marvel's Thor as it is possible to get. Dementus has more dialogue in the film than nearly everyone else combined, and he spits out his combination of crazed, erudite, and over-the-top lines with scene-chewing glee. 

Unfortunately, there are a couple of plot holes in this one I feel compelled to pick at. The biggest one is after Dementus leaves Furiosa at the Citadel as part of his bargain with Immortan Joe, she is put with Immortan Joe's "wives" (also known as reproductive sex slaves). She manages to escape and after cutting her hair disguises herself as one of the Citadel's War Boys, eventually falling in with Praetorian Jack, the driver of the War Rig before Furiosa herself. This is years later as her hair has grown out again, but at the climax of the movie Immortan Joe doesn't recognize her or seem to notice that the younger version of Furiosa escaped? Dementus also had that problem, not realizing until the last confrontation that the steely-eyed, grease-masked warrior pursuing him is the child he kinda-sorta rescued years ago and called "Little T." But Furiosa's face is distinctive enough that both of them should have known who she was. Also, one of the reveals of this film is how Furiosa lost her left arm, but following the torture scene where Dementus strings her up by said crushed left arm and drags Furiosa's lover Jack to death behind a motorcycle, she seems to have the apparent superpower of being able to chew her own arm off while simultaneously keeping herself from bleeding out? (Followed by a nasty scene of maggots writhing at the end of the stump, thus explaining why she didn't die from a massive infection.)

Technically, there is a bit more CGI in this film, as opposed to Fury Road which was almost entirely practical effects, and nothing like the metal guitar guy in Fury Road whose vehicle was stacked ten feet high with speakers. Dementus does get a six-wheeled rig that can roll right up the sides of steep sand dunes, and Praetorian Jack's war rig is even longer than Furiosa's. The editing is also nowhere near as tight as Fury Road's (editor Margaret Sixel rightly won an Oscar for it). I didn't miss Tom Hardy's Max in this movie (we will not speak of Mel Gibson) as both Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy held my attention as the title character, and I enjoyed finding out more about the sometimes batshit crazy wasteland world. 

I saw this on an IMAX screen, my second such experience this year after Dune Part Two. This time I was able to get a seat near the top (for IMAX, nosebleed seats are definitely the way to go). This film was loud enough that I stuffed my fingers in my ears at several points, and the theater irritated the hell out of me by showing thirty effing minutes of previews before the film I had paid fifteen dollars to see actually started. This pointless annoyance did not engender any urge to see the objects of said previews, with a possible exception of the fourth-wall-breaking Deadpool & Wolverine. 

Altogether, this film did not scale the heights of Fury Road, which is a masterpiece. However, it is worth watching on its own terms, and I expect to buy it on Blu-Ray when it is released. If you can, see it on IMAX, as you can really get the sense of the blasted, collapsed, dying world these characters are trying to survive in. 

Review: Damsel

Damsel is a Netflix fantasy film that takes the "damsel-in-distress" cliche and turns it inside out: Elodie, as portrayed by Stranger Things and Enola Holmes star Millie Bobby Brown, not only saves herself and brings about the downfall of those who tried to murder her, she does it without a romance in sight. She fights the dragon to save her sister, and in the memory of all the other innocent girls who have been sacrificed to the creature over the years. 

Needless to say, Brown is the best thing about this movie. She saves herself through intelligence, tenacity and planning, not so much physicality, even though she wields a sword at the end. (And her character has a fair amount of upper-body strength, as evidenced the first time we see her, when she is chopping up firewood and splitting fairly thick logs in half with an axe. This comes into play with the ordeals that follow, which include her pulling herself out of a cave via a dangling rope and using a crown abandoned by a previous sacrificial princess to climb a cliff face studded with crystals.)

Unfortunately, the plot has a fair amount of holes in it, of the kind which propel the action along fine while you are watching it, but make no sense at the end. For example, the island kingdom of Aurea sends out people each generation to find outland brides for its princes--three of them--because this is the price demanded by the island's resident dragon after a long-ago king slew her three infant dragonets just as they were hatching. This has been enabled by the kings and queens of Aurea for generations, and in fact the hapless Prince Henry, who our protagonist Elodie is unwittingly roped into marrying, protests when confronted that after he has worked his way through his three sacrificial lambs, he will be free to "marry who he wants." This is of course sick, and there is nothing at all redeeming about Henry or his mother the queen (played by a rather wasted, if suitably nasty, Robin Wright)--the viewer is happy to see them get their comeuppance at the end, when the dragon burns down the castle. But I wondered: why in the heck didn't the dragon do that in the first place? 

(The answer, of course, is if she had, we wouldn't have a story.) 

As far as that goes, the dragon is not a terribly sympathetic character either, even though Elodie sort-of befriends her and exposes the deception she has labored under for all those generations. You see, she demanded sacrifices of "royal blood," and to fulfill that demand, the kings and queens of Aurea devised a workaround ritual at each wedding--the new bride's and groom's palms are cut and their blood minged, so when the brides are thrown down into the dragon's cave (and that fall alone, frankly, should have killed them, breaking their legs and/or backs, taking them out long before the dragon got to them) they smelled like royalty. Which is plausible enough, I suppose, but it doesn't change the fact that the dragon has been hunting those girls down and killing them for generations, exacting a revenge far beyond the original offense. (In fact, one scene has Elodie finding a cave chamber where all the previous girls have written their names on the wall, and there's at least thirty or so names there. The cave is also riddled with skeletons and charred bodies. The fact that the dragon is pretty much absolved of all this at the end left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. The dragon also kills Elodie's father after he changes his mind about what he has done and lowers himself into the cave to rescue her, and Elodie says nothing to the dragon about this. I mean, really?)

Another thing that bugged me is when Elodie went back into the cave at the end to rescue her sister and picks up her father's sword to fight the dragon, the dragon doesn't, you know, stand back and flame her? Instead she allows Elodie to get close enough to do some damage with said sword? I kept thinking, for crying out loud, why are you letting this puny human run up to you? Especially when earlier in the film the dragon pursued Elodie down the cave tunnels and sent gouts of flame after her (which also should have killed her, sucking up all the oxygen). Of course, this was the third act final confrontation, and we had to have a bit of suspense here, but it seemed way too transparent and manipulative to me. 

(The dragon is voiced by the great Shohreh Agdashloo, late of The Expanse--which frankly you would be better off watching than this--and the creature CGI wasn't too bad, considering how much there was of it. The cat-and-mouse scenes in the cave with Elodie and the dragon are well paced and shot, and are the best scenes in the film.)

To the extent that this film impresses, Millie Bobby Brown carries it. Angela Bassett is completely wasted in a thankless role as Elodie's stepmother, which is another thing that bugged me--you've got Angela Fucking Bassett in your movie and don't use her? *headdesk* It was a pleasant enough way to pass a Saturday night, but I'm glad I didn't see it in the theater. It's already fading from my mind, and I'm not going to remember it at the end of the year (unlike, say, Dune: Part Two, which I saw on an IMAX screen and loved). 

If you subscribe to the "stars" ratings theory, this would come in at two. Barely. It was okay, nothing more. 

At the Movies: Thor: Love and Thunder

 

Thor is the first MCU character (so far) to have a fourth solo movie, a development that can be attributed to director Taika Waititi's reinvention of the character last time out in Thor: Ragnarok. (A post-credits card promises "Thor will return," but I can't imagine they'd do it unless Waititi was at the helm.) This movie carries on the freewheeling, metal-edged snarkiness of its predecessor (to a well-chosen and edited soundtrack of Guns n' Roses instead of Led Zeppelin), with a villain (Christian Bale's Gorr the God Butcher) who is set up with a fairly solid motivation for what he's doing and a surprisingly emotional payoff at the end. And, of course, Natalie Portman returns as Jane Foster, in a "Mighty Thor" storyline that's a direct lift from the highly regarded comics run.  

While I was watching this, something occurred to me that I should have realized one or two movies back, or maybe from the start. As a character (at least once he gets over the hubris and arrogance of his first movie and the depression engendered by the events of the Avengers films), Thor is a decent and kindhearted person....who isn't terribly bright? He really needs the counterpoint of a smart and diabolical bastard like Loki to keep him on his toes. (Since Thor now has a huge "RIP Loki" tattoo on his back, we know he has no idea that alt-Loki is tangling with the Time Variance Authority and rampaging through the multiverse.) Korg, the rock monster played by director Waititi, tries to fill that role for him but comes up short. Tessa Thompson's Valkryie, now King of New Asgard, is smart and acerbic enough (and not diabolical, at least not yet) to be a good foil for Thor, but she has her own problems in ruling over the Asgardian survivors. 

Jane Foster could have taken over that spot, but (and this is not a spoiler, or shouldn't be, as again it comes from the comics) she has Stage 4 cancer which is kept in abeyance only by her proving to be worthy and taking up Thor's busted hammer Mjolnir, and even Mjolnir isn't enough in the end. So yes, Jane dies (and in the last post-credits scene, is welcomed by Heimdall into Valhalla), but she is definitely not fridged, as she makes the choice to become the Mighty Thor one last time and help Thor stop the God Butcher. I imagine this complete character arc is part of what lured Portman back to the role. This Jane is shown to have moved on and lived a fulfilling life post-Thor (even as he knew exactly how long he'd been apart from her, down to the month and day), and she speaks about how much it meant for her to be able to wield that hammer, even if she initially sought it out to save her life (or at least postpone her death). 

We get the requisite Marvel CGI-heavy third act fight scene, of course, but Taika Waititi succeeds in turning this on its head as well. I'll try to be vague here, but let's just say that the stakes set up with Gorr's opening scene and the renewed Thor/Jane romance pay off with an ending built around emotion rather than pew-pew fighting. It's definitely one of the best endings of a Marvel movie, now that I think about it. It also provides Thor with a new sidekick going forward (played by an adorable India Rose Hemsworth, Chris Hemsworth's own daughter). If there will indeed be a fifth Thor movie, presumably she will be involved. 

(Also, even if Valkyrie doesn't yet find her queen, Korg gets his Korg-ian husband at the end. And Heimdall's kid names himself Axel, after Guns n' Roses' lead singer.)

This movie has a tight, lean two-hour runtime, and even if I don't think it quite scales the heights of Thor: Ragnarok, it's the best Marvel film I've seen so far this year. (It's certainly better than Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, which twists Wanda Maximoff's character abominably. The director, Sam Raimi, either didn't watch WandaVision, didn't understand it, or didn't give a shit.) My rating:  Four mini-Mjolnirs. 

At the Movies: Dune

 

I'll preface this by saying that I have not read Frank Herbert's novel. I did see the 1984 adaption, mainly for the shot of Sting wearing that green winged jockstrap... 

...and mercifully managed to block out everything else. So I came to this movie fairly unspoiled, although I have gleaned the basics of the plot over the years just from what's been written about the book. 

The main reason I wanted to see this movie was the director, Denis Villeneuve. He directed a bonafide SF classic in Arrival, and I am also very fond of his Blade Runner 2049 (which puts me in the minority, I believe). This movie reminded me a bit of Arrival, especially in the beginning, but as the film progressed I realized it was more like Blade Runner 2049, with its leisurely pace and scenes that are allowed to breathe. (This is not to say boring, at least for me. I wasn't bored by Dune, any more than Blade Runner.) I'm wondering if the same cinematographer was used for both, because a lot of the shots were constructed in similar ways. I know some people were complaining about his insistence that Dune should be seen on the big screen, but in this case I think he was right. I can't imagine trying to watch this movie on a tablet or--heaven forbid!--a phone. The way the shots are set up, emphasizing the terrible beauty of Arrakis with its endless dunes rolling over the horizon, the huge ships of House Atreides that fill the screen from corner to corner (and that gorgeous shot of the ship coming out of the water on their home planet), and not to mention the scene of the worm rearing up out of the sand and staring Paul down...this film is made for the big screen. 

This movie is nearly three hours long. I didn't look at my watch once all the way through it, and I didn't fall asleep. I guess it could be construed as slow, but to my way of thinking it was more deliberate. The director clearly knew where he was going and was confident enough in the material to take his time getting there. Timothee Chalamet, of course, was top billed as Paul Atreides, but in a sneaky way, Rebecca Ferguson's Jessica was really the protagonist. It was her scheming and insistence on bearing a son in defiance of the Bene Gesserit, and that son apparently being the culmination of their centuries-old breeding program, that set everything in motion. 

The only thing that bugged me about this movie was the sound mix. It was...less than stellar, shall we say? I always stick my fingers in my ears through the previews before any film, because in almost every theater I've been in, they're just so damned loud. I don't expect to do that with the feature itself, but I did with this one, in several spots. Fer gosh sake, people, when putting this film together did no one say "dial it down a bit?" The soundtrack was excellent, dark and brooding synthesizer-based music that complemented the story perfectly, but it overwhelmed the dialogue in a couple of places. I've already made up my mind to buy the Blu-Ray when it comes out, but I'll also be looking forward to the subtitles to catch what I missed. 

For my money, this is the SF film of the year so far. I hope it does well and Denis Villeneuve gets to make Dune Part II. 

At the Movies: Black Widow

 

 

While I'm happy that this film's opening seems to be a success ($215 million is nothing to sneeze at, especially in this sort-of post-Covid era), while I was watching it I thought, "This is a few years too late." Knowing Natasha's fate in Avengers: Endgame casts a pall over the entire movie, and the post-credits scene brings it home. 

(Yes, I'm still mad about that. That creative choice, to put no fine point on it, was stupid. Natasha worked her butt off post-Snap to keep the Avengers together, while Clint Barton was running around playing vigilante and murdering people, and she's the one to sacrifice herself? Fuck that. I don't care if Hawkeye had a wife and kids he would presumably be reunited with if the Snappees were returned. Stark Industries could have supported his family if need be.)

Now: SPOILERS follow.

 Unfortunately, a good part of this film seems to exist to set up Natasha's younger adopted sister, Yelena, as the next Black Widow, both in the films and on Disney Plus. While Florence Pugh is wonderful in the role, one occasionally gets the feeling that Natasha is the sidekick in her own movie. (This is not helped by the fact that David Harbor, as the aging Russian supersoldier the Red Guardian and Natasha's adoptive father, sometimes cringingly overacts.) Maybe because of this, Scarlett Johanssen's performance, while adequate, is not outstanding, except during her scenes with her adoptive mother, Rachel Weisz. The antagonists, Dreykov the founder of the Russian assassin training academy the Red Room and his super-suited, super-powered killer Taskmaster, are not that compelling (even with the twist that Taskmaster is the daughter Natasha attempted to assassinate in Budapest years ago). 

As far as I was concerned, the best (and the most bittersweet) scene in the entire movie is the post-credits scene. The film is set in 2016, post-Captain America: Civil War, but this scene is set post-Avengers: Endgame and apparently close to the events of the Disney Plus TV series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. This is because as Yelena goes to visit Natasha's grave, she runs into the mysterious woman from that series, the Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. In the series, Valentina was shown recruiting John Walker's US Agent to be a part of her (maybe) villainous team, and now we see Yelena is on Valentina's payroll as well. Valentina says she has Yelena's next target: the man behind her sister's death. She opens a tablet and we see a picture of Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye. The Contessa Valentina was supposed to be introduced to the Marvelverse via this film, but having seen her in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, her appearance here actually makes more of an impact. 

Having said all this, the film was well directed, structured and paced. The mandatory action set pieces were interspersed with quieter character-building moments. The usual overblown third act CGI was, surprisingly, more restrained than I have ever seen in a Marvel film (or maybe the technology is just getting better). But unfortunately, in the end, except for Yelena, the movie feels like a throwaway. It's not too little, but in the case of Natasha Romanoff, it's sadly too late. 

Grade: C

Coming Out of the Dark: Movie Review, "A Quiet Place Part II"

 

("The Dark" being, in this case, the first movie I have seen in a theater in over a year. Unmasked, because I'm properly vaccinated. I went to a Memorial Day matinee, and the theater wasn't quite half full. It felt damned strange to be sitting next to somebody, in this case a teenager the father went out of his way to assure me was not sick in case he should cough.)

This is the sequel to 2019's A Quiet Place, an alien invasion sci-fi/horror story of creatures with enormous ears who hunt by sound and move so quickly you don't see them coming (although they've certainly heard you). The first film focused on a family in a small town that was quickly overrun, who slink barefoot around the denuded remains of the town and scavenge to survive. The Abbotts, Lee and Evelyn (John Krasinski and Emily Blunt) have a bit of an edge in that their daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf and they can communicate via sign language. (The actor is also deaf in real life.) At the climax, Lee is unfortunately killed by the aliens--but Regan discovers that her cochlear implant can generate feedback at a frequency they can't stand, giving humans (Emily Blunt in this case, with the perfect I'm-coming-for-you-motherfuckers expression as she racks her shotgun) a chance to kill them. 

In one way, this sequel is more of the same. It picks up where the first movie left off, with the Abbott family burned out of their refuge and having to creep very softly into the little town, looking for shelter. The aliens are still rampaging across the countryside, there are few people left, and there seems to be nowhere to hide. Writer/director John Krasinski sidesteps the sequel-itis problem by focusing on his characters, in particular Regan and her brother Marcus (Noah Jupe). Emily Blunt takes a bit of a step back, and there is a new character, Emmett, a friend of the family played by Cillian Murphy. But the breakout star of this movie is Millicent Simmonds. She is a revelation, and at the end she gets to be a feedback-generating, monster-killing badass. 

This is a well-written, directed and (especially) edited movie. There are lots of shots of feet (dirty, cracked and sometimes bloody), showing the characters as they slowly and silently walk across the abandoned, perilous landscape. Krasinski paces this film very well, and ratchets up the suspense almost unbearably in the third act. (The editing also helps with this, as the two separate storylines--Regan's and Emmett's, and Evelyn and Marcus', are edited for maximum tension. The sound, or lack thereof, also plays a role. Several of the scenes, particularly at the beginning of the film where "Day 1" of the invasion is shown, give us a window into Regan's character as they are shot in utter silence as the monsters approach.) The screenplay is even more bare-bones with its dialogue than is usual for a film--obviously there is more subtitled American Sign Language than actually spoken, but even then, every word crafted does double and triple duty. 

Having said all this, I have a few nits to pick, and they mostly have to do with the worldbuilding. We see more of the monsters in this movie than the first, which is fine. But we also learn more about them, and some of that makes no sense. For instance, on "Day 1," the first indication that something is wrong is a dark contrail arcing across the sky above the Abbotts' softball game--the implication being, it's an alien ship falling to earth. Right after that, the monsters appear in the little town and proceed to lay waste to vehicles and people. One wonders if it was purely an accident that the aliens crashlanded on Earth, particularly when it's revealed in the third act that they can't swim. If that's the case, why in the hell would they voluntarily land on a planet that's 70 percent water? Also, although they're evidently intelligent enough to be accomplished hunters, they don't seem to actually be sentient. If not, who the heck made the spaceships they arrived in? 

In addition, while I perfectly understand Krasinski keeping a tight focus on his characters and their small-town setting....where the hell is the U.S. military in all of this? These monsters can be killed, by guns and in Regan's case, with a pipe she uses to stab a sound-shocked alien. Sure, they move incredibly fast and have huge shiny Venom-like teeth, but they can be mowed down with a tank or taken out with a drone just like any other target. I can't imagine that any scientist, upon seeing those enormous cauliflowered alien ears, wouldn't immediately begin investigating what sound could incapacitate them. Logically, it wouldn't fall to Regan to discover the high frequency that can take them out. 

Another thing that bothered me is what should be a big casting no-no--the unfortunate use of the Sacrificial Negro. There are only two speaking roles for men of color in this film, and both characters get taken out shortly after they appear. (Hell, in IMBD's cast listing for the film, they aren't even given names.) Obviously a lot of people die in movies like this, but that's not the point. In 2021, it should be verboten to introduce two characters of color in your movie and almost immediately kill them off. I liked Cillian Murphy's performance as Emmett, but his acting isn't so precious that he couldn't swap roles with Djimon Hounsou (the doomed "Man on Island") and let the POC live.

Nevertheless, despite these hiccups, this is a worthy sequel to the first movie. The ending leaves room for a third film, and given the robust box office, I imagine another will be forthcoming. Hopefully the focus will be expanded just a bit, to show how the rest of the world (a la Independence Day, although lacking that film's bombast, please) is coming together to eliminate the threat.

Streamin' Meemies: Wonder Woman 84

 

Wow, this movie was a disappointment. I hate saying that, but it's true.

The first Wonder Woman was one of my favorite movies of the past few years. Except for the overstuffed, over-the-top CGI of the third act, as an origin story for Diana, it worked. The scenes on Themyscira were wonderful. Diana sorely needed more women around her once she left the island, but her fish-out-of-water persona was funny and heartfelt, serving to show us the core of love and compassion that is Diana Prince. And of course, the defining sequence of the entire movie, No Man's Land, when Diana shed her untried Princess of Themyscira role and truly took on the mantle of Wonder Woman, was enough to bring tears to many viewers' eyes. So I was really looking forward to this, especially knowing that Patty Jenkins returned to direct it.

It gives me no pleasure to acknowledge that this movie is simply...not good. 

There are three major problems with this movie. The first is the villains. The writers made a mistake in having two villains, as both of them come off half-baked at best, even with Pedro Pascal overacting his little heart out. (I suppose his fast-talking, google-eyed hamminess befits the movie's 80's setting, and of course he's also a thinly disguised [and prettier] version of Donald Trump, but it's a wonder there was any background scenery left by the time Pascal finished chewing it.) Kristen Wiig's Barbara Minerva/Cheetah had the better initial setup, but in the chaotic mess of the third act, she went completely off the rails. (Don't get me started on the murky, poorly-lit, patent awfulness of Diana/Cheetah's final fight.) It's too bad, as she struck me as potentially being the more interesting character and villain, if she had been properly developed and written. The key to her character, I think, was her "people like you" rant to Diana when they first fought, and her combination envy and hatred of Wonder Woman, even though she had wished to be just like Diana Prince. This dichotomy could have made a great contrast and foil for our hero if the screenwriters had really delved into it, even though it would have meant a major reworking of the entire script. 

(But then again, the entire script, with the exception of the majestic opening sequence, felt like a rushed first draft. Also, it's set in the 80's, for frak's sake! Where's the 80's music?? They don't even have any 80's music playing in the mall! Even one song, like Led Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song" in the middle of Thor: Ragnarok, could have better defined the movie. At the very least, when the fake Ronald Reagan came onscreen, they could have used Genesis' "Land of Confusion." I mean, this movie cost what? $200 million? They damn well could have spared a few million, or whatever, for music rights.)

The second problem is the central MacGuffin, the Dreamstone. The writers try to give this a twist by saying it's imbued with the magic of a trickster god, making it "wishes with tricks" (which made me wonder if Loki would show up...oops, wrong studio). However, when Pedro Pascal's Max Lord basically swallows the damn thing, turning him into a walking, bleeding Monkey's Paw, the concept falls completely flat. In the bad third act, when everybody on Earth is spewing their nastiest, most secret wishes, the murderous, amoral impulses most of us attempt to stifle, it was cringing enough to make me "wish" someone would request to blow up the planet and be done with it. Of course, that's almost what happens....

But the third problem, the one that really really bothers me, is how Steve Trevor was brought back to life. Diana is shown to be still pining for Steve (and I tend to cut her a little slack here...since she's functionally immortal, over 65 years for her would be equivalent to a few months, or a year, for us), and after her conversation with Barbara Minerva where she's asked if she was ever in love, naturally her thoughts are with Steve. So when she holds the Dreamstone, her fondest wish is that she could see him again. This is understandable. What is not understandable, to me, is the way the Dreamstone brings him back. Instead of constructing him a new body, a body fueled by Diana's powers (which would have been in keeping with the plot as presented, as Steve's presence slowly drains Diana and makes her vulnerable to harm), the Dreamstone recreates his mind and spirit...and inserts it in some other poor sap's body.

For crying out loud. Did no one stop to think how bad this looks? This poor guy is taken over and used without his consent, and it's treated as a joke. I can only suppose it was in the service of a clever meet-cute camera shot, as the camera slowly revolves around Diana and the stranger calling her out with Steve's lines from the first movie, until the second or third time around when Chris Pine's face appears and Diana realizes who it is. But though we have Chris Pine in the role (because he has second billing, har har), we're shown that Diana, and everyone else, actually sees the other man's face and body, because that's what reflects back in the mirror. So this man is taken over without his permission or knowledge, and we know nothing of how it disrupts his life. (Apparently he doesn't remember anything that happened during this time, as the same actor is shown in the sickly-sweet final Christmas scene.) And finally...Diana has sex with Steve in this man's body, knowing this. This is, to put no fine point on it, simply awful. 

Unfortunately, Patty Jenkins has a co-writing credit on this script. I am shocked and dismayed that she signed off on this. It's not right, and it's not funny. It's also fucking unnecessary. If the magical MacGuffin could create several dozen nuclear weapons out of nothing from Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's-addled mind, it damn well could have constructed Steve Trevor a new body.

Now, are there any good things in this movie? Amazingly enough, there are. The opening sequence, with a young Diana running an obstacle course that is the equivalent of a "Themyscira Ninja Warrior" contest and learning a lesson about taking shortcuts and the truth, is magnificent, wonderfully shot and edited. It recreates the spirit of the first film in a manner the rest of Wonder Woman 84 sorely lacks. Chris Pine has the same effortless chemistry with Gal Gadot, and the snippet of him parading various 80's wardrobe choices got a chuckle out of me, at least (although I think that's the only time I laughed). Finally, the end-credits cameo was delightful. 

But as for the rest....I'm glad I didn't see this in the theater, even if I could have. (As a matter of fact, I snagged a two-week free trial of HBO Max after a purchase at Best Buy, so I actually didn't pay anything to watch it.) I hope this film doesn't sink Wonder Woman III, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot really need to rethink their character and world after this debacle. 

In the Blu-Ray Boudoir: Avengers: Endgame

Yeah, I finally did get around to this. Obviously I had to wait until it surpassed Dances With Smurfs Avatar as the highest-grossing movie of all time. And a movie with a three-hour runtime is best watched at home anyway, to allow for snack and pee breaks.

So I'm not going to bother with spoiler warnings. Y'all should know what happens in this film by now.

Today's emoji:

I wanted to put this here because in my not so humble opinion, Natasha Romanoff is the character who got screwed over the most in this movie. Which I will get to.

Grade: B- 

Avengers: Endgame is, of course, the culmination of ten years of the Marvel juggernaut, the second part of a story where our heroes battle a Mighty Purple Chin-Rake....err, Thanos. Thanos kicked everyone's butts in Infinity War, and Endgame is the tale of the Avengers (which swells to include seemingly every character ever seen or glimpsed on screen in the Marvel universe) coming together to undo the damage and annihilate his amethyst ass.

This involves a great deal of furious handwaving about the "quantum realm" and time travel, which Dr. Bruce Banner (who is quite charming in this movie, as he has merged with his alterego snarlface buddy the Hulk to create a confident and erudite singular being) tries to explain to no avail. I won't even attempt to untangle it, and you shouldn't either, as the tiny parts which actually make some sort of sense are promptly undone by the film's next-to-last scene. Steve Rogers goes back one more time to return the Infinity Stones (and also Thor's hammer,  in a weirdly unremarked bit) to their pre-heist times and places and ends up living an entire lifetime in the past--evidently in an alternate timeline--with Peggy Carter. (Exactly how he returns to the main timeline as a well-preserved centenarian to give Sam the Captain America shield is an exercise left to the viewer's imagination.) But he gets his closure, and so does Tony Stark, in an infinitely sadder way.

(I really hope Marvel pushes for an Oscar nomination for Robert Downey Jr. Sure, it's a superhero movie, and the Academy will probably look down its snooty arthouse nose at it, but RDJ gives an excellent performance in this film. In the final battle, when the newly resurrected Doctor Strange looks across at Tony and holds up one finger, you can see the knowledge of just what that one path in 14 million to defeating Thanos involves, and the price Tony will pay, drift across Downey's face in those few riveting seconds. And then he steps up and does it anyway.)

This movie is three hours long, but the convoluted storyline pretty much demands it. The final battle--hell, the entire final hour of the film--is over-the-top CGI, but that's standard operating procedure for superhero movies nowadays. The revelations fly thick and fast, including Steve Rogers being able to wield Thor's hammer (cue Thor: "I knew it!") and all the suddenly resurrected Snapsters flooding through yellow glowy spiral portals opened by Doctor Strange and his merry band of sorcerers. Peter Parker bounces onto the battlefield chattering in his adorable nerdy teenage manner, gets a hug from "Mr. Stark," and says hi to Captain Marvel (who would totally have smashed Thanos if he hadn't pulled one of the Infinity Stones off the gauntlet and used it on her). Robert Downey Jr. gets a great last line, after summoning the Infinity Stones off the gauntlet Thanos has finally picked up and making them reappear on his own (how this is done is also left as an exercise for the viewer). In reply to Thanos' full-of-hubris statement, "I am inevitable," Tony Stark fires off a final rejoinder that circles around to the very beginning of the Marvel timeline, delivered pitch-perfect: "And I. Am. Iron Man."  Then he snaps his fingers and dusts Thanos' entire army, and the Purple Chin-Rake himself.

(Which, it seems to me, indicates that the Infinity Stones respond to the will of whoever is using them at any given time, since Tony's Snap didn't reverse-reverse the reverse Snap and re-dust half the universe, along with only 50 percent of Thanos' army. Plot conveniences are wonderful things, aren't they?)

Of course, this results in Tony's sacrifice. But that isn't the first, nor the worst, sacrifice in this film. I can actually buy Tony's laying down his life, since his character came full circle (kinda-sorta) from the narcissistic, self-absorbed asshole he was in Iron Man. Well, he still was a narcissistic, self-absorbed asshole, but living with Pepper Potts and becoming a father settled him down just enough to let him do what he did. So I can live with Tony Stark's fate.

His fate, however, does not compare to the dirt done to Natasha Romanoff.

Again, y'all should already know that there's more than one death in this film, and this one, as far as I'm concerned, is entirely unjustified. Hawkeye and Natasha (and wasn't that an obvious setup), were the team sent to fetch the Soul Stone, the one stone that requires a blood sacrifice (someone the wielder loves) to gain it. Hawkeye and Nat battle on the edge of the cliff for the dubious privilege of being the one to hurl themselves over, and Natasha wins. This inspired instant outrage in some quarters, with predictable pushback: "Well, Hawkeye had a family. He should be the one to survive, for them."

Stop. That. Shit. Right. Now. Clint Barton is not more valuable than Natasha Romanoff because he reproduced and she didn't. With that ridiculous objection out of the way, the only question that should be asked is: What have each of these characters been doing to show which one deserves to capture the Soul Stone?

The movie itself provides the answer. In the five years since the Snap, Hawkeye has turned into a one-man vigilante murder crew, offing people he considers to be Bad across the globe. I will bet you any amount of money that if each of those deaths was examined, there would be more than a few innocent people in the mix. What he's done is remarked upon for a few minutes at the beginning of the movie, then pretty much forgotten as soon as he's brought back into the Avengers fold. (One also wonders if, following their resurrection, he told his wife and children what he did while they were gone.) On the other hand, Natasha has been partnering with Steve Rogers for five years leading what's left of the Avengers, and helping people to deal with the losses inflicted by Thanos.

This alone qualifies Natasha Romanoff to bring back the Soul Stone, and Clint Barton to throw himself off the cliff. (I'm sure if this had happened, Pepper Potts would have seen to it that Hawkeye's family was supported financially for the rest of their lives.) This was a horrid decision by the filmmakers, in-universe as well as -out. The optics of sacrificing the only original female member of the Avengers, even if she subsequently gets her own movie, are not good, to put it mildly. This is the main reason I'm not going to buy my own copy of this movie, and why I probably won't watch it again, either. Natasha Romanoff did not deserve to be shat upon, and I'm not going to part with one red cent to the people who did it.

So, I have very mixed feelings about this film. It's certainly the end of an era for Marvel Studios. I can only hope in the upcoming Phase 4, Kevin Feige and crew handle their female characters (Captain Marvel in particular) better than they did this time around.

In the Blu-Ray Boudoir: Men In Black: International

I have fond memories of the original Men in Black. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones played off each other beautifully, and the latter's craggy face completely sold the idea of someone growing old in this risky, batshit crazy job and wanting to get out of it. The film had a fresh feel to it, and most of the jokes were genuinely funny.

That wasn't the case with this film, unfortunately.

Full disclosure: I like Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson as actors. Hemsworth has, of course, done a very good job in Marvel's Thor franchise, as has Thompson. The two of them had great chemistry in Thor: Ragnarok. Thompson was also good in Boots Riley's sci-fi satire Sorry To Bother You, and great in Janelle Monae's full-length video version of her album Dirty Computer. So I went into this movie predisposed to like it. That lasted about....an hour.

Today's emoji:

DNF

I've found that as I've grown older, I have less and less patience for stuff I don't like. About halfway through this movie, I realized the story was dull and insipid, the rapid-fire dialogue was not nearly as clever as it thought it was, I could not figure out why Hemsworth's character was considered such a screwup, the film's director had completely quashed the chemistry Taika Waititi drew from Hemsworth and Thompson in Thor: Ragnarok, and despite the presence of a luminous, silver-haired Emma Thompson, the entire movie was giving me a bad case of the Eight Deadly Words: "I Don't Care What Happens To These People!"

At which point I yanked the disc out of my Blu-ray player and went on with my life. Mainly, logging on to Disney+, finally getting the damn thing to work  (by streaming it with Microsoft Edge), and catching up with The Mandalorian. (Which I will talk about when the season is done.) This disc goes back to the library tomorrow. Fortunately, I didn't spend any money on it.

In the Blu-Ray Boudoir: Brightburn

(Do we have enough B's? Maybe, except for the grade.)

D

I missed this film in the theater, so I rented it from my library. This is just as well; after watching it, I'm glad I didn't drop any money on it. I would've liked to be a fly on the wall during the pitch for this movie, as it can be summed up in 3 words.

"Sociopathic Adolescent Superboy." 

Doesn't that sound cool? Or at least different. The idea of a young Superman (the film doesn't use those words, or even the description "superhero," but come on, we all know what inspired this) who is not the least bit heroic, and who in fact turns into a killer when he comes into his powers? Talk about inverting a trope. Not to mention that the next question is, "Who's going to stop him?" Especially since kryptonite is seemingly nowhere to be found in this universe.

Yeah, this is an intriguing premise. Too bad the execution is so thoroughly botched.

The main problem--and indeed, the bottom line--is the no-good, thin, underdeveloped script. Honestly, the film looks and sounds like a rushed-into-production first draft. I wonder if this was due to the power of the J.J. Abrams name, although he doesn't appear to have anything to do with actually writing or directing this mess. The characters are dull and shallow, with humdrum dialogue. It seems like the filmmakers are in such a hurry to get to the point where our Superboy, Brandon Breyer, realizes who he is and what he can do and starts offing anyone who gets in his way that they sacrifice buildup, tension and any semblance of character development. They certainly don't waste any said development on their central character, as apparently all it takes is a 12th birthday party and the denial of a rifle for a present to cause him to go stark raving batshit. (At least Superman absorbed the lessons and morality of Ma and Pa Kent and used them throughout his life. Although, to be fair, these particular adoptive human parents don't appear to have any good life lessons to offer. In particular, the excruciating scene where the father tries to talk to Brandon about playing with his penis...err, growing up is beyond awkward.) None of the actors stand out--they look like they're all in this just for the paycheck, and the kid playing Superboy seems to have only two expressions: a blank stare and a lip-curling snarl. (He also likes to dabble in his victims' blood and documents it all in his notebook, which is of course the clue the Unbelieving Mom--who was terribly written, as a character--stumbles upon that finally convinces her their Darling Alien Foundling is in fact doing these terrible things.)

The worldbuilding is also nonexistent. I'm sure this is partly due to the fact that they can't legally mention the "Super" word, but the film also eschews the existence of other superheroes--or aliens, since this is what Brandon actually is--altogether. A major logic fail is the fact that his ship supposedly fell to earth in 2006. Well, the last I checked, Google Earth existed then, as well as quite a few high-tech government spy satellites--and you're telling me they didn't detect this asteroid/spaceship blazing its way through the atmosphere, track its trajectory, and send some jack-booted Homeland Security thugs to the landing spot to scoop up whatever remained before these Kansas farmers could find and ferret away the alien baby? Especially since our Superboy, raised and controlled by the government, would have made a great weapon to use in the so-called War on Terror (as well as any number of Trumpian enemies, real or imagined). Hell, he could have smashed Osama bin Laden or any ISIS and/or al-Qaeda fighter to bloody mush in one pass. 

It's maddening that these people could have come up with such a fantastic premise and utterly fail to do anything with it, besides slathering on the murder and gore. (Specifically, if you have any squickiness regarding eyeballs and faces, there are two scenes in this movie where you'll need to avert your eyes.) The ending is also a downer, as our Superboy (after dropping his mother to her death from 35,000 feet) brings down a 747 and afterward sits in the wreckage eating a chocolate-chip cookie. This scene, and the end credits, sets up what this world's future will be--this superhero sociopath wreaking havoc with no one to stop him. (And let's not even think about what awfulness he'll come up with once he gets past puberty.)

Blargh. Let's skip this one, please.