We've kinda come full circle with these superhero films when you think about it.
After the camp of the 90s, directors like Nolan and Singer reset the tone of superhero movies in the 2000's to something that was more grounded and serious, which in turn laid a lot of the groundwork for the MCU.
Here we have Taika Waititi providing a throwback to the Joel Schumacher days.
If that's your thing you'll probably dig it, but it's definitely not my brand of camp.
I’m not exactly a Thor: Ragnarok fan (nor the other two Thor films). I don’t have a problem with its silly tone, because I’m not a manchild who needs to see his childhood validated, but a lot of its comedy didn’t click with me (even after a rewatch). Everything that didn’t work for me in that film is amped up to an eleven here.
There are some serious points in it where the acting choices, slapstick/childish/hokey comedy, overly bright colors, gay undertones, overdesigned costumes (no nipples yet, but give Taika another film and we'll see what happens) and godawful music choices started to give me genuine flashbacks to stuff like Batman Forever, not quite the thing you want to remind me of.
It's not a complete disaster; the performances by Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson and especially Christian Bale are generally quite good. I'm also glad Marvel seems to have definitively found the saturation button back after Guardians 2, even if the framing/lighting with the visuals remains uninspired and maintains a general level of artifice that makes it look like shit. I believe they used the volume stages for most of the production, and like Obi Wan or The Book of Boba Fett, it’s very noticeable for most of the runtime.
The story's not all that interesting and makes no sense when you put any thought into it, but that's fine given that there is some progression with most of the main characters, even if Thor’s character arc throughout the MCU is all over the place at this point. As with most Marvel films lately, there is a lot of unnecessary exposition (e.g. the Korg narrated flashbacks are really clunky), but where it really drops the ball for me is with the balancing of tone and plot elements. I already thought that the darker stuff in Thor: Ragnarok didn't blend that well with the goofy scenes on the trash planet, but there's even more tonal whiplash here. Christian Bale is giving this excellent, terrifying performance, but he's not in the same movie as Chris Hemsworth, who's playing even more of a Thor parody than he was in Avengers: Endgame. One moment we're invested in this heavy, emotional story with Natalie Portman, and then we cut back to a goofy love triangle between Thor, his hammer and his axe. It's an unbalanced mess without a sense of stakes.
I also don't know what it is with Taika's comedy in these films, because I think What we do in the shadows, Jojo Rabbit and Hunt for the wilderpeople are all very comedic and smart, but for some reason he really likes his Thor movies excessive and dumb. Screaming goats aren't funny to me, they're a dated meme at best. Maybe it's because Taika can't go edgy and niche with the jokes here, but fuck I really hate his sensibilities for this character.
In short, another major misfire from Marvel if you ask me. I pretty much disliked everything except for a few of the performances. Please go back to making indies Taika, and for the love of god: let James Gunn pick the soundtrack for your next film. Even a film this dumb doesn’t need a Guns ‘N Roses needle drop, let alone four of them.
3/10
[9.4/10] When I watched the first batch of episodes from Watchmen, I thought it tossed a number of interesting balls into the air, but I questioned how and if it would be able to catch them all. Showrunner Damon Lindelof, of Lost fame, is not necessarily known for delivering satisfying endings. And while his series asked all sorts of intriguing questions about the institutions of power and those marginalized by them, and while it threw in one eyebrow raising plot point after another, to answer all of the former, and tie together all the latter, seemed like too much for even the smartest (person) in the world to do in a satisfying fashion.
And yet “See How They Fly” somehow does it.
The finale of Watchmen’s first (and, blue god willing, only) season tells us what Lady Trieu’s angle is, how it fits with the Seventh Kavalry’s plot, how Ozymandias factors into it, what Dr. Manhattan’s role is, how it intersects with Will Reeves’s plans, and what Angela Abar’s place in these grand events is. It tells a story of so many people seeking power, seeking vindication, seeking adoration, and then puts it in the hands of the one person who wasn’t looking for it.
It also allows us to understand not only the plot mechanics that led to the second momentous rain of squid of sky, but the motivations of everyone who reached that point. The racist, status quo-preserving rationale behind the Seventh Kavalry’s scheme has been clear for some time now. But “See How They Fly” accounts for the consequences of Cal Abar’s moment of reflex on the White Night. It accounts for the collection of watch batteries from the pilot. And it accounts for their failure, the assumption that they’ve thought it all out and have all the right answers. The truth, however, someone much smarter is pulling the strings, and even left to their own literal devices, the forces of Cyclops would have turned themselves to mush anyway.
That someone is Lady Trieu, and in Watchmen’s last character-defining, plot twist-revealing vignette, it sets her up as Adrian Veidt’s inheritor. She is, through one enterprising refugee’s machinations, his daughter, one who has matched, if not exceeded, his genius. She is playing the Seventh Kavalry, letting them do the dirty work of capturing Dr. Manhattan so that she can dispose of them and localize him in one fell swoop. It is another instance of a Veidt being one step ahead.
But we understand, for the first time, why Lady Trieu is doing this. She claims that it’s to better the world, to use the power that Dr. Manhattan sits on to eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenals, to clean the air, to fix all that ails us. But she does not seek that goal for pure altruism and, like her father, she’s shown a disturbing propensity to use whatever means are necessary if her goals are just. Instead, the episode suggests that all of this is an effort to impress her parents, to gain their approval, to show herself worthy of the gifts that she’s been given and to prove that she can build herself up to the highest heights of human achievement on her own, as Ozymandias challenged her to do.
But it’s Ozymandias who thwarts her. He declares that she cannot be trusted because she suffers from the same sins he does: vanity and self-aggrandizement. He tells his compatriots that she has to be stopped because she’ll soon demand that everyone bow down before her, because he knows it to be true of itself. And in one of the many little bits of irony and connection in the episode and the season, he uses the frozen corpses of the veritable offspring of his giant squid to crush his daughter, must as he used the frozen corpses of Dr. Manhattan’s children to ask her for help.
There’s two ways to read that scene. The first is as a rare moment of self-recognition in Veidt, knowing what he would do with that power and why, given the hell he’s been through, where it would lead, to the point that he resolves to stop it. The second is another instance of, true to the show’s themes, a white male going to great lengths to preserve the status quo and prevent a person of color from overtaking his position and assuming his legacy.
Either way, the triumph if brief for Veidt. Whether his pronouncements are accurate for Lady Trieu, they’re true for himself. Ozymandias seeks veneration and adoration. He got to save the world, but grumbled miserably for decades because he never got to take credit for it, never got his due from the people he put in power or the lives he preserved. On Europa, he had the thing he always wanted -- endless appreciation and devotion from all those around him -- but it was given reflexively, without due, and thus became hollow and even maddening. And in the end, he saves the world once more, and gets to take credit for it, both for now and for 1985, but it’s also his downfall.
That’s the other cruel irony and the button put on the stories of Laurie Blake and Looking Glass. After everything, the two of them decide to arrest Veidt for the lives lost amid his gambit from the original comic. For Wade Tillman, it’s enacting justice against the man who wrecked so much of his life, who left him so scared for so long, in the name of a well-intentioned lie, but a bloody lie nonetheless. For the former Ms. Juspeczyk, it’s the chance for her to have agency in this story, to take charge rather than be more of a bystander to larger forces as she was in 1985, given time to reflect on what happened and her place in it. And for Ozymandias himself, it’s the price he pays for being known, the music he must face for returning home, the cost he finally has to account for instead of his gilded cage of anonymity.
But the thing that he and his daughter share is that they’re not able to thwart a god. Even though Dr. Manhattan is trapped in his lithium prison, even though he’s mentally disoriented from whatever Keene Jr. and Trieu have done to him, he still has the wherewithal to transport away the people whom he knows can stop this, and to spend his last moments with the woman he loves. If Ozymandias was sent to his own private hell, Jon Osterman spends his final seconds on this Earth in his own private Heaven, experiencing all of his best moments with Angela at once.
As much as Watchmen is a story about racism and its institutional infestation, as much as it’s about masks and what happens when people put them on, it’s also a story about love. It is, as the episode name-drops, another thermodynamic miracle in the making, of two people coming together despite lightyears of distance between them, and the way it changes the world.
That change takes a little dealmaking though. William Reeves gives Dr. Manhattan up to Lady Trieu in exchange for her rooting out and eliminating Cyclops. But Cal very probably knew what the result would be, even suggested the trade to Hooded Justice. Reeves’s plan was to stop the organization he’d been fighting for nearly a century. Dr. Manhattan had even bigger plans, ones that may have widened even Will Reeves’s aspirations here.
As the season’s penultimate episode portended, Dr. Manhattan left something behind for his wife, a piece of himself that would give her godlike powers. In the final scene of the episode, she consumes it, and while the episode ends too tantalizingly soon before she can walk on water, the implication is clear.
So many people in this episode reached toward Dr. Manhattan this season, so many aiming to replicate him or supplant him or best him. But the person who receives his abilities is not someone who sought it out. It’s someone who it was given to, who it was earned by, through her capacity to love, for her capacity to try to save what might be unsaveable, for her willingness to fight and appreciate what’s lovely and wonderful even if it’s only fleeting.
But it’s also someone who has awoken to the injustices that lie under her nose. When Will Reeves offers some comfort and commiseration to his granddaughter, it comes with one admonition -- that for all Dr. Manhattan did, he could have done more. THey’re the words of a man who seems to know what’s coming. His project, and the project of Lindelof’s Watchmen, was to show an awakening in Angela, an internal transition from someone who believed, like Reeves himself once did, that the systems could be fixed from the inside, that they could be welcoming to and changed by people who looked like them, but that the color of law was never going to supersede the color of their skin in the people who tried to hold onto the power that badge conferred. Hers is a tale of epiphany, of understanding, of an insidiousness in the institutions she risked her life to protect that was, unbeknownst to her, ready to chew her up and spit her out like it had done so many others.
So she takes the power that would never be willingly forsaken by those who possess it. It is, in its own subtle way, a radical message. It’s radical because it ties in with a moral that David Simon, who chronicled faltering institutions himself on The Wire once put it, that when those institutions have fully failed you, the only thing left to do is pick up a brick. Will Reeves couldn’t find justice from the police department or the sterling heroes that were supposed to help him, so he found it himself, often in bloody terms. Watchmen firmly suggests that these institutions retain the same debilitating stink of racism in 2019 that they did during the time of Black Wall Street, and ends with Angela Abar picking up one hell of a brick.
The way Angela’s son looks at her own mask, much as William Reeves’s son did his, suggests (as Watchmen inevitably must) that this cycle isn’t over, that the age of heroes and vigilantes and those who’ve suffered trauma finding a way to exercise it in the name of justice isn’t over just yet. Topher has suffered his fair share of trauma today, and long before. When Ozymandias kills The Game Warden, his erstwhile servant asks him why he made him wear a mask, and Veidt responds that masks make men cruel. Only time will tell whether Angela’s son will don the same type of hood his mother and great grandfather did, if he will mete out justice with the same sort of cruelty, and on whom.
But the other way that Watchmen is radical come in whose hands it puts the responsibility and the ability to obtain that justice. While superhero stories can come in many stripes, most often they are a power fantasy. A strapping hero, often one the reader or viewer can see themselves in, fights for truth and justice and the American way with a force and a level of excitement that the muddy grays and grim realities of the real world can’t match. It is, if not as radical as the show’s political message, then certainly bold, for the show to declare in Angela’s raw egg cocktail and first, tenuous step, that it’s time for a change in who gets to assume those power fantasies.
It is remarkable, then, how well this show puts everyone in place and builds, thematically and narratively, to that moment. In the end, Watchmen finds a reason to bring everyone of significance to the show’s story and themes into the same location, as though each vignette and sequence we witnessed led to this moment. It reaches its climax at the same place it started, in what was once Black Wall Street and the theater where young Will Reeves saw a black hero in a mask and borrowed his name and mission. For a show that, from its first frame, asked probing questions about who holds power, how that intersects with the color of law, and who gets to be inspired by the power fantasies of masked adventures, it answers all three with a woman of color about to walk on water.
Each setup had a payoff and each payoff had a setup. Almost every seeming loose end is weaved together by the final frame. There are still queries that can be raised, objections that could be lodged, but everything that the series set up it knocked down. It seems too easy to say -- for a show that trod into such messy territory, that tugged on so many knotted threads of both the real world and its fictional one -- but there’s only one word to describe Watchmen and its ending. Clockwork.
When my filmmaker friend told me this movie was the best thing he’d seen this year, I knew it had to be good. But wow, did it exceed my expectations. I agree - this is absolutely the best film I have seen this year.
From the top, you’re hit with the 1970s pastiche all over this movie and there’s an immediate coziness to it that never goes away. Whether we’re isolated at a New England boarding school with four characters over winter break or in the middle of Boston, there seems to be a sense of lived-in belonging that you just want to be a part of. (Perhaps part of that, for me, comes from a massive amount of nostalgia for a New England holiday season.)
All of the characters, for all of their flaws and quirks, are immediately likable - you want to know more about them, and the movie gives you that in the best, most natural way: through conversation, and sometimes, quiet moments alone. The three leads - Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph - bring such truth and humanity to their roles that you don’t want to separate from them.
The plot moves slowly, but the atmosphere and characters are the real draw here. Don’t get me wrong - this movie is FUNNY. Dry, yes, but I laughed a lot. I also cried a lot. This movie touches on abandonment, depression, loss, and the deprivation of potential - but also the power of conviction, connection, found family, and the power in the unknown laid out before you.
If last year's Top Gun Maverick gave everyone the slightest bit of hope in regards to films that click with the general audience and blow up at the box office, this is the kind of film that'll make any self-respecting film fan lose all hope. Here's the deal: kids will pretty much like this by default, adults who are looking for validation of their childhood obsession will like it, and people who show up to see an actual movie won't. It's pretty much the blandest, calculated, do-nothing film they could've made out of this material. The animation is devoid of style and looks like it was originally rendered for a Dreamworks project back in 2008, the voice acting is mostly ass, it triggers the nostalgia & reference button way too often, the story & characters are watered down to a point where they're almost non-existent, it's not funny and its boomer rock soundtrack choices make absolutely no sense. It's irredeemable trash, like every product that rolls of the Illumination Entertainment conveyor belt. Nevertheless, I'm willing to bet that due to the large fanbase of the IP, this will be one of those films where in the short term some of the discourse will insist that "some people/critics don't know how to have fun" or "it's made for the fans" (only for those same people to deny ever liking it in the long haul, of course). Here’s hoping Illumination doesn’t listen to those voices in the same way that DC did after the release of Suicide Squad. This is not a foundation to build a franchise on.
2.5/10
Between 1983 and 1997, Jim Varney gave us the Ernest anthology of films. This series was seemingly resurrected by Martin Scorcese, in this unofficially subtitled addition "Ernest Tap Dances On My Last Nerve For 3 Hours".
Come on folks, this is a Scorcese film. The man who gives us endlessly rewatchable films like Goodfellas, Casino, Wolf of Wall Street. Fantastic pieces of work that will last forever.
This is not such a film.
It is bloated. Poorly paced. Starved of any real emotions for much of its duration. And when the end comes to finally put it out of its misery, it lacks any punch. Much to the chagrin of the director who casts himself in an overly-wrought cameo.
It isn't a catastrophe. De Niro puts in a great day's work, Di Caprio is consumed by the role. There are plenty of fine actors around them doing fine work. It's just a mess of edits and lacking focus.
I struggle to see a great film in this even if the fat was taken off it. It just isn't a masterpiece in hiding. And that's sad because the bones of the story itself is well worth telling.
They say every great fighter has one great fight left in him. I wonder if we have seen that already from Scorcese and this is one fight too many...
Omg, this episode is hilariously terrible. How is it possible to make something this terrible?
First of all, why the hell is Barry their father? Afaik their still themselves and "Nora" is the Speed force, a primordial force of nature who's been reborn, they even say that in the episode. So, again, why is he their father? Just because I create my dinner doesn't it's my child. Stop it, it's terribly cringe.
Second, how is Psych faster than Barry? He's literally a speedster supposedly faster than anyone, yet he's caught every damn episode, at this point you might as well take away his powers for good.
And third, why the f*ck does Barry need a stupid, sappy ass speech ever goddamn episode? God, just rehashing the same trash every episode, just do something different, just give us something good. The most exciting thing that's happened the last 4 seasons, apart from Barry meeting Justice League Barry was Frost vs Flash and him turning evil.
This episode was just so awful that I was laughing the entire time because of the stupidity of the episode with them being "family" even though they literally never met each other. I must say I did quite like Psych tho, he adds a much needed dynamic to the show other than the feel good, extremely nice characters of the show.
Honestly, if it wasn't for the Flash being one of my favorite superheroes of all time since I was a kid, I would've stopped watching this a long time ago. I sincerely hope this show ends for good at the end of this season, Grant is a great actor and deserves better than to waste away on this God awful show.
I enjoyed the movie a lot! As a DC fan one of the best films in DCEU and for what my prediction of Sasha Calle that she will be a great supergirl in it was correct when I saw her in the trailers of the film before, I love her character in the movie and people will gonna love her too 100% guaranteed. I really hope Gunn will hear us and let her be the Supergirl in the continuing DCU that he will make.
Idk why some people didn't like having different Batmans in it and some of them calling it as a Batman film (to be an insult for too many Batmans version that was presented in the movie), let me tell you now they are wrong! This is a Flash film through and through! I love that we have different superheroes and just treat them as a feature of the film, just like Batfleck in the first half his character was there then he was done and we got Keaton Batman and by the end, we have Clooney Batman and that was it, and because of this, it makes the world/universe much more alive for me because of multiple Batmans versions that we got in it.
Yes, Nic Cage is in the film and I love the part of what he was in the movie. There could be potential for a spinoff of his character in DCU if Gunn plays this right.
Go watch it if you're a big DC fanboy like me.
To understand my response to this movie, I need you to understand my history with this franchise. In 1984, a movie came out that I thought I would never be the least bit interested in. I went to see it because my youth group was talking about it and, as their Minister of Christian Education, and their youth leader, I was always interested in interacting with them about the media they consumed so I could challenge their worldview with the cause of Christ. I was completely astonished to fall in love with the love story that was, surprisingly, at the heart of this weird, mechanical, apocalyptic movie. It became one of my favourite movies and I’ve seen it multiple times since then and it still moves me. That movie, of course, was THE TERMINATOR, a straight up 10 out of 10. I have since followed every subsequent addition to the franchise, including the very good TV series, TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (starring Lena Headley). When this newest piece premiered, revisiting the woman that was the heart of that original movie, now 35 years later, I was at the first viewing of it, with great expectations. And, I found the true character arcs that first drew me to THE TERMINATOR: Sarah Connors (Linda Hamilton) hardened by the fight and grief, rediscovering her purpose, T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) conditioned by years of contact with humans, redeeming his mistakes; Grace (Mackenzie Davis) the self sacrificing warrior, Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) finding herself in the echos that call Sarah back to herself. It was all there, plus a stellar threat and some wicked action sequences. So I, unapologetically, give this film a 9 (nostalgic superb) out of 10. [Pre-Apocalyptic Action]
My review is not directed at viewers who have yet to watch Videodrome ; it's aimed to give myself an idea of what I thought of this movie so I can decide whether I want to watch it again or not. That being said, this wasn't the first time I've watched the film, but the original time (way back in the mid-80's, probably not long after its release) I watched this and was more intrigued with the special effects and mild body horror than I was with the message this film projected. Watching it now, I watched it to actually ingest the concept of the movie and I can agree with what most others say: its message is far more relevant today, especially with the advent of streaming media and a basically unfiltered, uncensored, unstaunchable torrent of material available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Do I think that an actual "Videodrome" (arena) exists that creates tumors or alters our brain? No, of course not; but I've no doubt the torrent of media available to the insatiable minds of humanity is having its effect on the collective soul of humanity. For those watching this for the first time (assuming you're still reading my review, even after I said it wasn't directed at you), don't watch this expecting a lot of mind-bending special effects or grotesque gore. It's THERE - in small doses - but that's not what this movie is about, nor what it's directed at. Watch this for the statement it makes, then make up your own mind as to whether you agree or not. Videodrome will either make you want to stop watching (TV, movies, streaming video) or it will whet your appetite for more of what's out there. You decide. Personally, for a movie that was released 30 years ago, I found the special effects still pretty cool - even though somewhat dated - and the gruesomeness was enough to sate my appetite. It was the message of the film that appealed to me the most, however. Would I watch it again? Meh, this was actually my THIRD time (maybe 4th? I don't even know, now) to watch it, and this time I "got it"... If I were to ever watch it again, it would be purely for the sake of nostalgia, certainly not because it's a great movie.
