TL;DR: On my way out of the theater I saw a dad talking to his 6/7 year-old son: "Which one did you like better? The one we watched this morning at home [the original "Ghostbusters"] or this one?" The boy replied without hesitation: "I liked the one at home more."
An exemplary example of corporate studio cowardice, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is an unbalanced morass shaped into the form of a movie that only vaguely resembles the original. Most frustrating: Even though it's a confounding pastiche, buried underneath the cringe-worthy fan service, vapid dialogue, absurd plot holes, and pointless characters there were glimpses of a film that could have stood up to the 1984 classic, but if this movie shows us anything, it's that studios today would never, ever greenlight something as original and visionary as Ivan Reitman's masterpiece.
Instead of a comedy with sprinklings of sci-fi, horror, and suspense, this Ghostbusters feels like a bunch of scenes from each those different genres shoehorned together into something that could appeal to little kids while tugging at the nostalgic heartstrings of their parents. The result is cynical dreck. Silly sight gags bump up against cheap jump scares which transition into gross out humor. Instead of trying to build something unique, something with a singular vision, they took the genre classifications of the original and inserted elements of each one. It's paint-by-numbers movie making... and it stinks.
Mckenna Grace is the heart of the story, and her Phoebe Spengler is the only character who goes through a meaningful story arc. (With the possible exception of Paul Rudd's Gary, but his story gets so little screen time that it's all but disqualifying.) She actually gives a pretty good performance, and the filmmakers could have used her journey to explore lots of ideas- things like the nature of reality and the coherence of the soul. There was even a chance to center a queer character in a touching way, but nothing goes beyond heavy inference, or it is explained away with technobabble. And as any Star Trek fan will attest, when technobabble is used as an emotional escape hatch instead of a plot device, everything around it crumbles.
Even the villain was a wasted opportunity. The O.G. Ghostbusters villain, Gozer, was a Sumerian god. This new one is also a god of the same era. That's a rich vein to explore. Are the Ghostbusters modern incarnations of ancient warriors who helped rid the world of transdimensional beings in the earliest days of civilization? It's an idea that gets a fleeting mention (though only in relation to a secondary character), but, like all the other big ideas, is never explored. Instead of world-building we get a revisit to the New York Public Library and a meaningless bit of fan service.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife was a promising, if flawed, kick-start of the franchise. I'd hoped that with a return to New York and more involvement by one of the original's writers we'd get something at least marginally as entertaining as the first two of the series. I guess that I'll just keep on hoping.
Full of spectacular visuals and gorgeous direction, Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part 2, is a tragic, magical masterpiece. Its epic scale feels perfectly balanced with intimate moments, and the story is driven relentlessly forward by a bold script that brilliantly adapts Frank Herbert's dark, challenging novel. The end result is a moviegoing experience rarely seen in modern cinema; as the credits rolled I felt something akin to what a previous generation must have after seeing The Empire Strikes Back. Dune: Part 2 expands the universe introduced in Dune: Part 1, making that first film feel foundational instead of merely groundbreaking. This second film is bigger & better (though not perfect), with an ending shrouded in darkness. It is instantly a member of the exclusive fraternity of sequels that improves on the original*.
There are (minor) flaws, but not with the acting. While purists may quibble with some of the words said - or not said - the delivery of every line was pitch-perfect. Timothée Chalamet holds the heart of the film in his hands, and in the most important moments he lives up to the task. His "hero" is haunted by prophetic dreams and is relentlessly tempted by people driving him towards a bloody power grab. His struggle & eventual failure to hold on to his moral center plays out on his face in one of the most convincing turns in any sci-fi movie ever.
Among all of the uniformly incredible secondary players Zendaya stands above the rest. Dune: Part 2 is her coming out party. The expanded role that her Chani gets in Villeneuve's script is served well by her intensity, ferocity, and courageous vulnerability. She's falling for a man who's at the center of a prophesy that she doesn't believe in. As she fights to hold on to him, she's also fighting for the soul of her people- all while trying to win their freedom in any way that she can. The Chani of the novel didn't have nearly as much agency as the Chani of the film, so Zendaya's turn is probably its biggest surprise, and it was a joy to watch.
Given its 2:47 runtime it's strange to feel like anything was missing from the movie, but my only quibble with Dune: Part 2 is that some plot points felt a little rushed, and the climatic battle was almost peripheral. There was clearly a decision made to focus most screen time on character development, which kept the spotlight on the people at the center of the story. In our age of vapid popcorn spectacles, Villeneuve's choices were the right ones to make. But in a work as vast & detailed as "Dune" anything left out creates a gap that is hard not to notice. When deciding what to keep and what to skip, like Paul Atreides, he's damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. I'd just love a chance to see what ended up on the editing room floor in a Director's Cut someday.
*Check out my List, "Second Verse, Better Then the First," for my take on which sequels top their originals.
With Echo Marvel got things half right. The good stuff is very, very good, while the bad stuff was, well, par for the course for the studio these days.
They took a big swing story-wise by centering the Choctaw side of Maya. They also didn't shy away from her disabilities. The series is a triumph of inclusion, presenting viewers with perspectives that are all-too-often ignored or overlooked in mainstream entertainment. The extended sections with no (or little) sound force us to consider Maya's worldview and the story is all the better for it. And the actors... The entire cast is a Murder's Row of talent, with Alaqua Cox managing to hold her own among heavyweights like Graham Greene, Tantoo Cardinal, and Vincent D'Onofrio. Chaske Spencer also stands out with a great turn as a criminal with a heart of gold. The music is killer (holy crap that opening title sequence!) and the overall production value is a testament to the love and care that went into crafting the show.
All of those good things said, the Marvel Machine can't seem to let a story pass through itself without mucking things up. The first episode is unfocused and the finale is a morass of forced mythology and performative climax. Had there been as much effort put into the plot's overall structure as there so clearly was into the multilingual & multicultural elements, there could have been a battle that stretched across multiple episodes that made more sense. (Why not have Maya's powers manifest in the scene in episode 4 while they were alone and have her psychic connection reinforce Fisk's evil instead of cut off in a confused, unresolved way? The final siege at the powwow would have been him lashing out in a way that made sense instead of it being the out-of-nowhere, formulaic set piece that it was.) For as brave as the rest of the series was, there was a distinct lack of courage in making Maya's power set ambiguous. One of the cool things about her character has always been that her intense focus gave her an ability to mimic anything that she saw. That was something that came from within; it's a sign of strength. There wasn't a need to infuse her with a mystical heritage only to see in manifest in a way that made no sense. (Is she super strong? Can she possess people around her? Can every woman in her lineage summon power via the palms of the hands?)
I'd love to see these characters - and actors - again, so here's hoping that the new "Marvel Spotlight" imprint gives us more... but better.
A collection of brilliant in-jokes cobbled together into a coherent web series, Plat It Again, Dick is a love letter to Veronica Mars fans that will cause Marshmallows to burst out in riotous laughter while making non-V.M. watchers scratch their heads at the idiocy on display. Don't be fooled by its rough-around-the-edges look, either. There is subtlety and nuance in its construction, with as many jabs taken at Hollywood & filmmaking as there are at the Mars mothership. (Pay attention to the sloppy editing & production values happening in the background of the show-within-the-show.) This makes sense given Rob Thomas + some Mars alums' work on Party Down; and like on that show the cast are all-in on the jokes, with everyone involved doing campy send-ups of themselves. (Percy Diggs III's hilarious take on himself is the series' stand-out, with Enrico Colatoni coming in a close second.) This little web series is a Must Watch for any Marshmallow, but totally skippable for casual fans of the series.
And so ends the Netflix/Marvel experiment. This may be the most disappointing final season of a great show of all time. Not because it is of poor quality- far from it, in fact. With a satisfying ending that leaves the characters dealing with their respective evolutions, the fade to black in episode 13 made me mad that this was (probably) the last that we'll ever see of this cast, most especially Krysten Ritter as the titular sarcastic, hard-drinking, self-destructive P.I.
After a lackluster season 2, Jessica Jones rebounds with a complex, taught third (and final?) effort. The choice to put Jessica up against a brilliant, non-powered serial killer - played deliciously by Jeremy Bobb - made the show even more grounded, and the introduction of the evil-detecting Erik as a potential love interest was inspired. My one quibble with the plot is that there could have been some non-connected mysteries woven into the story (a-la Veronica Mars). After 6 series, it's also starting to become unbelievable that the other show's main characters aren't showing up more- even in passing. A quick cameo from one of them in the final episode only serves to hammer the point home. When they say, "Turn on the news these days and it's 50/50 whether you're on it," it makes their absences more pronounced.
All that said, the story does move along nicely. The head-fake from one villain to another, while totally predictable, is satisfying to watch thanks to Ritter's standout performance. She is the most natural fit for any of the Netflix/Marvel characters (though Jon Bernthal is a very close second for his incredible Frank Castle). The rest of the cast keeps up with her- for the most part. I absolutely loved Malcom's journey, and Eka Darville shines along the edges of the plot. Rachel Taylor continues to be the weakest link in the cast (though she'd be a stand-out player in many lesser shows). Her Trish Walker goes through quite a lot over the season and it's only in the final episode where we get a glimpse of the kinds of things she could do if the story had been allowed to continue. While this was the first 13-episode Netflix/Marvel show that didn't feel artificially drawn out, it could have definitely been better with 11 or 12.
Savor the good stuff here, and let that final line from Killgrave sink in, because this is the end of the line for Jessica Jones and all of the Netflix/Marvel characters. And that sucks.
Was at this show when they were taping. It was amazing.
One of the greatest bad movies of all time, Highlander is a landmark of 1980s filmmaking for both its high-concept story and chintzy production quality. The acting is all over the place, but in the moments where it really counts everybody steps up their performances. Sean Connery makes one of his most memorable turns as an ancient mentor, and Clancy Brown is one of the decade's most iconic villains. Looking back from almost 40 years later one can see all of the tropes and plot holes that we'd now call lazy writing, as well as the lackluster fight choreography, but one cannot deny that the world the writers created is one that has endured. Every time I watch, I find myself wishing for more Ramirez, more Kurgan, and more mythology.
As someone who came of age in Boston just before and after the Charles Stuart case, this documentary series hit like a gut punch. I was a white kid in an ethnically mixed "border region" between a mostly-Black neighborhood and an all-white one. It is incredible how the filmmakers were able to accurately capture the tension that ran throughout the Black parts of the city in the immediate aftermath of the crime - especially in neighborhoods like mine - as well as the perspective of the white citizens who were feeling threatened by the violence that was raging through the ghettoized areas, and now seems poised to directly threaten them. Particularly haunting to me were the comments made by the unrepentant police detective, who is hopelessly lost in the white supremacist methods and attitudes of his day. I had a police officer in my family around that time and I heard some of the exact same things from them.
For anyone who did not live through this epoch-defining period of Boston history, this series is a must-watch.
The best thing that you can say about Iron Fist season 2 is that, like the first season, it is nowhere near as bad as its reputation. For my money it's not even the worst Netflix MCU show (Luke Cage gets my vote there). But it is decidedly not great.
The Original Sin of the Netflix MCU shows was casting Finn Jones as Danny Rand. He remains the weakest link among all of the Defenders + Punisher leads; and while his acting is still pretty pedestrian, he does make noticeable improvements to his fight choreography in this follow-up effort. The writers, as well, make improvements, as the secondary characters - namely the Meachum siblings - have much more to do and they doesn't feel wasted at all. And Jessica Henwick somehow shines even more than she did in season 1, with a storyline that is more grounded and a payoff that feels earned. Her budding friendship with Simone Missick's Misty Knight is fun to watch and offers promise of more to come from them. (Which, of course, we'll probably never get to see. Stupid Disney.) But best of all is the fact that this season is just 10 episodes long. This means less fluff & fewer filler scenes, and the plot moves along at a much better clip. And the ending? Wow. Probably the best final scenes of any Netflix show... with the disappointing knowledge that nothing will come from them. But still, such a great send -off.
Jon Bernthal is back at his intense, mesmerizing best in this follow-up season of The Punisher. Unfortunately, Netflix's second go-round with Frank Castle doesn't reach the heights of its first- or even the first half of the 2nd season of Daredevil. This time the writers fall into the too-many-episodes trap, and if it wasn't for Bernthal's heartfelt ferocity the entire season could have felt like a waste. The pacing falters and the two main storylines are so hopelessly disconnected that when the protagonists from one are the main focus, the characters from the other feel like wasted space. What could have been a tight 4 episodes for each arc back-to-back get woven together and are drawn out to absurd lengths, with the final confrontation getting a 2-episode run-up that is lousy with filler scenes.
All of that said, the show still looks and feels amazing. The action is tight and every scene is shot perfectly. Netflix has done an incredible job of building out its corner of the MCU's New York. Handled carelessly the character crossovers, event shout-outs & other easter eggs would do little more than make nerds like me giggle; but the production team here skillfully uses them to ground the show in what feels like a complex reality. You don't have to have seen Det. Mahoney in Daredevil to appreciate his story arc in this show, but his choices in the final two episodes make even more sense if you have. It's a net trick that (as of Dec. 2023) Disney hasn't been able to replicate with its own MCU shows.
On balance, any fan of the first season - or any of the Netflix shows - will enjoy the second season, but you might feel a bit let down towards the end.
Like its first season, Luke Cage's sophomore effort starts off with tons of promise. The look, feel and style of the series remains ambitious and gritty. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that there is too little story stretched out over too many episodes. While the writers don't make the same mistake that they did in season 1 by splitting everything between two competing villains/arcs, what remains is S-L-O-W to develop. The endless talking and silly character turns feel like so much fluff, which detracts from the generally OK plot. The main cast is all gangbusters, with Alfre Woodard again standing out with her damaged, diabolical portrayal of Black Mariah, and Theo Rossi gets a special shout out for his deliciously complex, heartbreaking Shades. Unfortunately, the bright moments in each players' performances are lost in the muddle of filler scenes. Had this season been 6-8 episodes it would have been stellar. Instead, it was all but forgettable.
Full of gorgeous cinematography and some tear-inducing acting by its cast, especially a surprising breakout performance by Alice Halsey, Lessons in Chemistry is a better-than-serviceable but too-trite-to-be-great miniseries that is, despite its faults, absolutely worth your valuable time.
Brie Larson is magnetic as Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant wishcast of a woman whose talent and ambition are stifled by all of the sexism and ignorance of 1950s America. As insidious as all of the offenses against her are, and as affecting as her performance navigating them is, at times the scenes feel like a checklist of problems that women trying to break through into male-dominated workplaces in a male-centric society face. Ironically, it's during her scenes with other women when the real malevolence of gender discrimination comes through and when she loses many of her battles.
But what starts out as the premise of the show is quickly overshadowed by the love story between Larson's Zott and Lewis Pullman's Calvin Evans. They have a wonderful, um, chemistry, and the twist that sends the show down a totally different pathway is gut-wrenching, to say the least.
The appearance of Madeline gives the show another boost, and Alice Halsey simply mesmerizes in the role. Her brilliance and precociousness suck up every scene that she's in to the point where the parts that she wasn't in felt unnecessary. Who cares what happens to Elizabeth's show? I want to see what Mad is up to!
And that's the irony of this show: The parts that are good are startingly good; they make the parts that feel too contrived or too convenient, or too formulaic stand out all the more. There's a great show buried within the series, but it's surrounded by to much fluff to ever break out and truly shine.
The Marvels is the MCU trying to right the ship... and it feels like it. The shift in marketing prior to its release (i.e. Thanos appearing in the final trailer & TV spots) & the 1:45 runtime are the most obvious examples of this. The film is a good watch but also felt a bit like a sugar rush: Totally enjoyable, with a slightly hollow-feeling comedown. The Marvels has the bones of what could have been a genre-redefining swing for the fences, but in the brief moments where I could catch my breath as the story plowed ahead I couldn’t help but think that the changes that were obviously made during reshoots & in the editing bay were the wrong ones to make. Kevin Feige & Co. are smart enough to know that they've made mistakes of late. They're just not brave enough to make the kind of movie that would fix them.
The trio of Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani have great chemistry and are loads of fun to watch. Vellani is the breakout star of the piece, but her arc felt rushed. In a more ambitious film Larson could have showcased a wide range of emotions- from rage, to soul-crushing guilt, to brooding loneliness, to broad musical comedy. We get to see flashes of each, but it left me wanting more. And Parris just kind of… is. She holds her own, but only comes to life in her quiet scenes with Larson & Vellani. She deserved more of that.
Until The Marvels, the average runtime of an MCU movie was 2:18. The choice to trim that down dramatically for this installment wasn’t necessarily a bad one- it’s just that the wrong things got left out. Instead of quick-cut flashbacks to fill in plot gaps (Zawe Ashton’s Dar-Benn barely gets any motivation for her malevolence, so her energetic performance is kinda wasted), they could have skipped a couple of set pieces and used the technological plot device in act two to do a lot more character development.
Imagine an MCU movie with flashy comic book stuff that felt like an addition instead of the raison d'etre of the piece. The massive battles & awesome stinger + post-credits scene could have bookended a Phase 5 bottle episode that served as a deep character study of the women at the center of it.
We could have seen Carol Danvers make a mistake and be devastated by her (genocidal) actions. We could have gotten much more of Monica Rambeau coming to terms with her abilities. And we could have seen Kamala humanizing her idol & coming to grips with the awesome responsibility of her powers. They could have even retconned the dismal Secret Invasion. (The filmmakers seem to have joined the rest of us in wishing that it never happened, as most of the plot contradicts what went down in that show.)
Instead, Marvel stuck with what it knows, and what we got was a perfectly serviceable entry to the MCU. It just wasn’t as good as it could have been if Marvel wasn’t trapped in the formula that it created.
Just a step above hot garbage, Blue Beetle's greatest contribution to the genre of comic book adaptations is that it is a near-perfect example of what happens when a movie is plotted out on storyboards as if it were a graphic novel, and then transferred directly to the screen. Whatever the noble intentions of the director & artists involved, what works on the page rarely ever works in the theater.
There are kernels of a great story and heartfelt acting sprinkled throughout the film that in a comic book would tease depth of character and complex storylines, but when fashioned by marketing executives aiming for four-quadrant box office returns they serve as frustrating moments in a nearly insultingly formulaic morass.
Xolo Mariduena is only slightly less flat as Jaime than he is in Cobra Kai, but his castmates mostly hold him up in the scenes that they share. Given the bad material they all had to work with, however, it's hard to make judgements about performance, as everyone had at least one moment to show what they were capable of. Shockingly, the weakest link is Susan Sarandon. She's just too good an actor to play the kind of crappy, campy villain that this sorry script calls for. She hasn't got the tools to make her cringe worthy lines fun; she's a heavyweight trapped in a featherweight bout and it just never works.
In between bouts of head shaking at simpleton dialogue & predictable story beats, I found myself wanting to see more of those good things. I wanted more of Nana's backsory (and a juxtaposition between her history & Conrad's), any kind of illustration of Jaime & the suit's relationship, and more about Rudy's genius & it's stifling by the US's Immigration policies.
The worst thing about Blue Beetle is that it had the potential to be a great film but it was dumbed down on purpose.
Astonishingly, Strange New Worlds' writers have taken a supremely difficult road yet produced a story that feels cheap and lazy. As if using a musical episode to get themselves out of the plot corners that they'd written themselves into wasn't bad enough, the songs were cringe-worthy and the premise was beyond absurd. Normally I give points for ambition when big swings are taken by TV shows, but from the first scene this episode felt like an escape hatch for storylines that we all knew were doomed when they started. It made the viewing experience feel hollow and performative. This episode was an abysmal mess.
Excruciatingly boring. An absurd plot. Insipid character arcs. With Secret Invasion, Marvel/Disney has officially entered the abusive stage of its relationship with fans. With each offering we keep telling ourselves that they've changed, that this time it will be different ("This will be Marvel's Andor!"), but we just keep being disappointed.
Even worse than the story, Kevin Feige & Co. waste really great performances from a murder's row of acting talent. Samuel L. Jackson makes some terrible scenes sing, never more so than when he goes toe-to-toe with an otherwise wasted Don Cheadle; Kingsley Ben-Adir mesmerizes, especially in his chilling final soliloquy; and Olivia Colman is irresistibly delicious, leaving the audience thirsty for more of her. Even Ben Mendelsohn has some nice moments. Instead of lifting it up though, their scenes serve as peaks from which we can see the depths of the series' valleys.
This show was an empty promise from the start. "Secret Invasion" was a massive, world-changing comic crossover event. Disney was never going to be able to pull off anything of that scale or importance with a six-episode miniseries. To avoid having to pay for the massive list of stars & endless special effects they'd need in order to come anything close to a true adaptation, the writers insult the audience's intelligence by putting in two throwaway lines about how they can't get The Avengers - or any other superpowered person - involved in the fight against this existential threat to humanity. "It's my war," Nick Fury says. And that's not even the most ridiculous plot point.
Disney's superhero division needs a massive reset, because just like when Marvel started flooding the market with endless variant covers for their increasingly silly comics in the 90s, I'm no longer buying what they're selling.
A wonderful rebound from the previous episode, "Those Old Scientists" is one of the best crossover/time travel episodes in Star Trek history. Lovingly constructed, each of the characters maintains the spirit of their own show while toning things down just enough for there to be a seamless melding of the two. Also, given the central conceit of Lower Decks constantly questioning the nature of Star Trek fandom, there were some nice meta moments where Strange New Worlds' playing around with the universe's continuity are noted. In fact, one major area of character exploration is highlighted and a clear message is given to the audience from the writers: "We know that this is way different from what has come before, but this is a 'phase' and we'll get back to the character's familiar trajectory in a little while." My only quibble with the episode is that it felt a little bit drawn out; the ending was never in doubt so the journey there felt kind of extended. There was space for there to be a much more robust examination of the time travel trope within Star Trek as a whole, as well as ideas around causality, alternate timelines, and paradoxes. Instead, the writers chose to go in a more light and airy direction- which is fine. It just felt like there was stuff left unsaid or untried, so the stakes never got that big. The episode was fun and will stand out as one of the all-time greats of its kind; it just might not stand out as one of the all-time greats.
Barbie is a breath of fresh air. It's a brilliant conceit with stunning visuals, incisive writing, imaginative direction, and pitch-perfect performances. It'll go down as a cultural touchstone, but not a classic, IMO. What holds it back is its complete abandonment of any world-building. To be fair, at several points, writers Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach tell us via different characters that none of the "How" and "Why" questions are important; and what's left off of the page in the way of table-setting leaves plenty of room for sly political jabs & feminist manifestos. (The takedown of Citizens United & Trump's Border Wall in particular are beautifully rendered.) Unfortunately, without this connective tissue the movie can feel like a collection of awesome scenes that are only tangentially related to each other, and the final 10 minutes (which should have been 5) do not feel earned... I know that this can feel a bit nit-picky, but my nerd brain craves rules for my cinematic universes, and I just couldn't help but keep bumping up against the lack of any while I was watching this movie, no matter how many times it (rightfully) criticized Mattel, capitalism, consumerism, the objectification of women, and the patriarchy.
That said, I still had lots of fun and laughed out loud quite a bit. Margot Robbie is absolutely brilliant as Stereotypical Barbie. She's a Toy Story character come to life, and you root for her the whole way- right up until her final line, when she exudes unmitigated joy at doing something that most women (I imagine) see as a chore, at best. What's more, the wattage of her star power goes toe-to-toe with - and matches - Ryan Gosling's turn as Ken. He absolutely knocks it out of the park, giving a heartfelt complexity to a story arc that is, arguably, more transformative that that of Barbie's (up until the final 10 minutes, anyway). And the secondary characters from Barbieland all shine, with Simu Liu & Kingsley Ben-Adir standing out from the (very talented) crowd.
The world needs Barbie the movie, even with all of it's imperfections, and even if it hasn't convinced me that it needs the toy itself.
Boring. Bloated. Baffling. After a breakout first season, Strange New Worlds' writers seem intent on falling back on familiar tropes. "Lost in Translation" is a formulaic "One crewmember is hallucinating but everybody is convinced it's exhaustion or something else until an event proves that it isn't and it turns out that only they have the key to saving the day" episode- one we've seen countless times before. Only this time, thanks to the show not being on broadcast TV, it comes with an extra 12 minutes of runtime. Given the absurd predictability of the plot the main draw of the piece is the fan service, which is illustrated by yet another appearance of Lt. James Kirk. It felt as if the powers that be on this show got so excited to give us "First Contact" scenes between Kirk & Uhura, and then Kirk & Spock that they didn't bother to come up with an interesting main storyline, or even a compelling B plot. (Rebecca Romijn & Carol Kane have zero chemistry.) I keep hoping that this show will be as good as it was in season 1. I guess that I'll have to keep waiting.
With breathless action sequences, a multi-layered & relevant plot, and surprisingly strong acting performances, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning rises above the abysmally clunky exposition scenes, always annoying just-in-time-out-of-nowhere escapes, and absurd masks that pollute the series. There's a complex story and believable character motivations, and Tom Cruse maintains his fierce intensity throughout- except when delivering great comedic story beats. He's the main attraction, but most of the supporting cast are on the top of their game as well (save for Carey Elwes & Henry Czemy who are flat & boringly archetypical). Both Rebecca Ferguson & Hayley Atwell shine, with Atwell more than holding her own in her scenes with Cruise- even matching his ability to perform incredible stunts while maintaining character. And while Esai Morales crafts a deliciously sinister villain in Gabriel, the lack of depth or even understandable motivation afforded to him in the script limits his impact. We can only hope to learn more about him in the next installment. (Though nobody will ever match Philip Seymour Hoffman's turn in Mission: Impossible 3.)
And those stunts. Wow. Mission: Impossible films are about the ride, and this one certainly delivers. With the exception of a major set piece in the 3rd act that goes on just a bit too long, everything holds your attention and gets you moving in your seat as your body bobs and weaves with the camera. Christopher McQuarrie's direction is frenetic but not confusing, hard-hitting but not abrasive. The flow of both action and story feel smooth (except in the clunky exposition scenes). While I wouldn't call this a classic in any sense of the word, it was a fun watch and I definitely feel like I got my money's worth.
A heartwarming, hopeful, yet surprisingly shallow entry from Ron Howard, We Feed People seems more interested in dissecting the man behind World Global Kitchen than in examining the work that they do. Founder José Andrés (who did not want the film to be centered on himself) is an interesting person, to be sure, but amidst the vision, drive, leadership and selflessness, you only ever see glimpses of the anger, frustration, and family neglect that live alongside them. What remains feels like an incomplete portrait. The same holds true for the organization that he started and functions as the heart of. As his team moves from disaster to disaster, we only get flashes of how they perform what can only be considered to be miracles to get an industrial-scale kitchen up and running in the middle of a disaster zone all while building logistics & distribution networks amid ruined infrastructure. The closest that they come is when the NGO is responding to a hurricane in Bermuda. A team on the ground scrambles to find a way to set up a kitchen so that they can start processing the food that they are ferrying in via helicopter. But just when it seems as if we're going to get details on the kitchen build and the rallying of volunteers, we've moved on. What should really be the star of the movie - the team members & locals who create the needed systems seemingly out of thin air - are seen as we drive past them, following Chef Andrés as he moves from place to place. There's not nearly enough on them. This gives us a documentary that is an examination of Who, What, Where, When & Why, but offers frustratingly little about How.
Like its titular character, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny exists in a world that has moved on from it. What's more, even though it's a perfectly serviceable film that's got fun moments, fine acting, and some heartfelt character work, there doesn't seem to be a reason for it to exist at all. The movie is all about reliving the past (or, more to the point, trying to save it), and it starts off with a flashback action set piece that is both exciting and full of technical wizardry. Disney seems determined to perfect the art of de-aging onscreen and the effect here is the best to date. It's a throwback that works, as Director James Mangold constructs the most Indiana Jones-esque part of the movie with fast-paced action and plot development that work really well together. Once its done and we fast forward to 1969, however, the story becomes a bit of a morass that challenges even the most fervent suspension of disbelief.
Harrison Ford is 80. He looks great- not a day over the 70 years old that he's playing, in fact. But watching him punch Nazis and scramble up cave walls while keeping up with his goddaughter, Helena, who even he points out is half his age, is absurd. Her character arc is the plot's biggest surprise and forces Indy to ask some interesting questions, but it doesn't help that Phoebe Waller doesn't look the part that she's trying to play, nor does she have the gravitas to feel like the heir to Indy's legacy that the film so obviously wants her to be. And those questions that get asked? Well, they're never answered. For a movie so interested in the past, it never really wants to reckon with it.
It's more than just missed opportunities to talk about Indy's history of "grave robbing" or the casual colonialism inherent in his ethos. (Whose museums do all of those artifacts belong in, anyway?) Even Nazi ideology is once again breezed over, save for one moment when Mads Mikkelsen is at his chilling best when he needles a Black WWII vet. The worst offenses are the obvious callbacks to iconic scenes in the first 3 films. Not only do they reflect lazy writing, it feels like the entire structure of the movie was built around them. At one point Indy grouses about an experience from one of the first 3 movies that everyone watching will remember, only to have a repeat of that film's other most memorable scene take place just a minute or so later. It's beyond fan service. It's insulting hackery.
This would have been a much more impactful and meaningful film had Harrison Ford been forced into the background, if there had been a worthy heir who could have taken the lead in the adventure as he advised. This would have worked as a nostalgic film as well, as he could have found himself playing the role that his father did in (the far superior) Last Crusade. Alas, the folks at Disney's Lucasfilm division seem much more interested in trying to repeat the successes of the past than inventing something for the future. If the world really has moved on from Indiana Jones, it'll have to keep waiting for what comes next because there's no sign of it here.
With its first shocking episode Black Mirror makes a bold mission statement, and writer Charlie Brooker is not effing around. This disturbing parable for the then-nascent Twitter Age only had its cultural relevance amplified in the following years by the real world parallel of rumors of a modern-day British PM participating in a hazing ritual in his school days that involved an eerily similar act as depicted in this piece. Since it was a British production, the performances by the cast are all awesome. (I especially liked the subplot with the female journalist angling for a scoop.) The story's fatal flaw, however, is that the government position of not negotiating with terrorists is never explored. It's not considered. It's not dismissed. It's not even mentioned. This could be a function of cultural differences (it's an unspoken reality that governments outside of the US will pay ransoms for hostages), but the fact that it doesn't come up at all is a glaring omission that took me out of the story. Looking back from 2023: As a cultural artifact of great import I'd give this episode an "8," but as a piece of entertainment the plot gap makes it hard to go beyond a "6."
"I stole a loaf of meth." = The best-constructed joke of the entire series run. Absolute genius.
An adaptation from a novel that actually feels like a novel, The Last Thing He Told Me is a slow burn. And while that usually pisses me off, I found myself sucked in by the story and engrossed by the characters. Except for Bailey. (She annoyed the crap out of me- though, to be fair, that was exactly the point. So kudos to Angourie Rice, I guess?) I thoroughly enjoyed the deliberate pacing and incremental unraveling of the mystery. Jennifer Garner's Hannah is pulling at threads in desperation, and her grounded performance is what makes the show work. Her moves from clue to clue never feel like they've been pulled out of thin air, or like Sherlock Holmes-ian strokes of genius; rather, she always looks like a normal person just trying to make sense of the tragedy and chaos that she's fallen into. I also appreciated the structure of embedded flashbacks. Sometimes they were there to provide story details for us, while at other times they served to illustrate what the characters were thinking. In just about every case, the context they provided felt earned and none of them were wasted.
When the show started to lose me, however, was when the mystery finally gets solved. The performances don't drop off - if anything they get more intense and affecting - but the motivations shift from "What the hell is happening?!" to "How do I deal with all of this emotional stuff?" It can make for great storytelling, but the slow pace starts to feel more like a liability after that shift happens. But by the time I was getting impatient I was closing in on the story's endgame, so it didn't detract too much from my enjoyment of the piece as a whole.
A final note about my overall rating. I had an average rating of "7" for all of the episodes (all "7s", save for a single "6" and one "8"), but I added an extra point for the consistency of quality. There wasn't a bad episode in the bunch, and I only felt the urge to skip through scenes a few times throughout. That's quite an accomplishment in this day and age.
It's obligatory for any reviewer to dismiss James Gunn's hyperbolic table setting for The Flash, so here is my required, "No, this was not the greatest comic book movie of all time." It was... fine. It's lightyears better than the dreck that was Shazam: Fury of the Gods or the rolling disaster of Black Adam. And while it has more depth than Justice League, it lacks the - love it or hate it - imagination & vision of Man of Steel. For the most part the special effects are what we've come to expect from superhero movies these days, which is to say they are just enough to create the world onscreen and not good enough to wow you, but the final extended post-battle sequence was almost insulting in its lack of quality. Like the movie as a whole, it felt like way too much got crammed into a limited timeframe so there wasn't the space to give it the care and attention that it needed to make it truly great. What we got instead, both in that sequence and through the entire movie, were cool moments that are fun but underwhelming, and inside jokes that are amusing but not good enough to welcome in those who aren't hard-core comic/film industry nerds. If you're in that latter category you're going to enjoy the ride, if not be blown away by it. For those who aren't, you'll be more confused than entertained by it all.
After this middling performance, we've probably seen the last of Ezra Miller in the DC universe, their legal troubles notwithstanding. There were ahem flashes of good acting at times (Barry's goodbye to his mom was genuinely emotional, as was his lashing out at his younger self in the Batcave), but for the most part they fell flat. Maybe the unbalanced tone didn't give them a chance to shine, or the weak dialogue was beyond elevating... or maybe they're just not as good an actor as we saw in The Perks of Being A Wallflower. Either way, it's hard to like (either) Barry very much, and a major reveal in the third act doesn't feel earned because of it.
On the other hand, Sasha Calle was a breath of fresh air. Her Kara Zor-El could have been a triumph if the story had been centered around her. As (rightfully) bitter as she is against humanity, her core heroism comes through loud and clear- as does her devastation at the loss of her planet and people, along with her desire for vengeance against Zod. She deserves more of a chance to shine in her own movie. Her counterpart in the story, Michael Keaton, underwhelmed me, but that's only because he spent a good portion of the film as Bruce Wayne and we didn't have enough time to get acclimated to, or learn about, the changes that he's gone through since we last saw him in the cape back in 1992.
This is not a spoiler, but on the way out the door we get one of the most jarring tonal shifts of all: An end credits sequence that comes out of absolutely nowhere. It's an obvious stylistic stamp on the film from James Gunn. With its music an and comic whimsy it acts as a visual and emotional coda on everything that has come before, announcing that the film that you just watched was The End, and from here starts a new beginning.
We can only hope.
It's inevitable that any documentary about a soccer team will be compared to Welcome to Wrexham, so to get it out of the way: No, it's not as good. But it's not bad at all. It's also doing something different. Sure, Angel City is executive produced by one of the subjects (Natalie Portman), just like Wrexham is produced by its owners, but the mission of Angel City's ownership group isn't to rebuild a storied team or rejuvenate a Rust Belt town- it's to change the very nature of professional sports in America. The stakes feel bigger, and the pressure on everyone involved is greater. And while it's not a true documentary in the sense that it's not providing a dispassionate, objective retrospective of the team's first season, it does a great job of capturing the emotions of everyone involved... up to a point. I was thoroughly entertained and by the end was happily rooting for A.C.F.C. & the entire NWSL. At the same time I wish that the media savvy ownership group had been confident enough to provide full access to a filmmaker they didn't control to document their story. It would have resulted in a more complete film that didn't feel like an airbrushed highlight reel. Founding a startup is messy. Founding a startup within a floundering, scandal-ridden, twice-folded, third-tier sports league is an epic potential-disaster-waiting-to-happen that I couldn't help feel like I wasn't really being told about. At multiple points I could tell that something was being glossed over here, or a major conflict was merely hinted at over there; it gave the series a hollowness that all the great production values and heartfelt earnestness of the athletes couldn't mask. Like A.C.F.C.'s inaugural season, this series was nice to watch but I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed by it at the same time.
Apollo 13 & From the Earth to the Moon this is most definitely not. Both Ron Howard's masterpiece & Tom Hanks' epic miniseries were portrayals of complex humans driving America's space program, while Director Damien Chazelle and writer Josh Singer seem to think that Neil Armstrong and the rest of the men at NASA were all one-dimensional automotons. Somebody forgot to remind these filmmakers that when you are dramatizing well-known historical events where the end result isn't in doubt, the drama & suspense need to come from the characters themselves. Instead, we get Ryan Gosling's Armstrong showing no emotion and never displaying any sense of ambition. After a personal tragedy at the start of the film he is distant and cold to everyone around him, including his wife and children. He drifts through the story, moving from scene to scene without any apparent purpose or emotional drive. He's going through the motions and doesn't seem phased when he's ultimately chosen for the Apollo 11 mission. This emptiness, which is echoed by everyone around him (apparently there was never any laughter or lightheartedness at NASA), creates a void at the center of the film that saps all of the energy and joy from the climactic scenes on the Moon. Why should we care about this momentous occasion when the main character clearly doesn't? It's fitting that we don't see Armstrong's face for almost all of the Moon sequence, since we never see his insides during his journey up to that point. By the end I was so angry with Armstrong as a person - and at NASA for letting someone who appeared to be a borderline sociopath anywhere near a rocket - that this felt like the origin story of a villain instead of an examination of a family at the center of one of humanity's greatest triumphs. But that's not even the worst of it. Chazelle & Gosling's story and performance choices do an incredible disservice to the brilliant VFX and sound editing that give at least a little life to what is otherwise an interminably boring character study of an absurdly uninteresting man. First Man is a tragedy of wasted potential.
Ben Affleck pulls off a neat trick with Air; he's made a movie that takes place almost exclusively inside an office compelling viewing. Yes, it's predictable (unless you've never heard of Michael Jordan or his eponymous sneaker), and yes it's a dramatized version of history where the (very) rough edges around the main character have been smoothed over. But this is not a documentary. As a piece of theatrical entertainment it's pretty awesome. And the cast all bring it. Matt Damon is fun to watch as Sonny Vaccaro, and Viola Davis is just the perfect mix of nice, polite, and hard-nosed negotiator. Their scenes together are magnetic. And Damon & Affleck's chemistry is still there after all these years. Definitely worth your valuable time.
Phenomenal acting from Jonathan Majors. An inspiring story. A "forgotten" war. Really great effects. Devotion had all of the ingredients to be a tear-jerking blockbuster but - tragically - it misses the mark. Majors is astounding as Jesse Brown, a pioneering Black pilot in the early days of military integration, never more so than when the racism, discrimination, and abuse that his character has internalized erupts from within. His scolding of his co-pilot at the start of the third act, which starts as a murmur but rises with every sentence to a thundering crescendo, is as powerful and affecting a cry for an ally as anything you'll ever see on screen. In those moments he rises so far above the script and his castmates that it's almost absurd. Glen Powell isn't bad in his role as wingman Tom Hudner, but he just looks out of his depth next to Majors. The cinemaphotography is beautiful, but it can't paper over the spaces where the story drags, and it certainly can't elevate the flat, nearly dead-eye performances of the entire supporting cast. J.D. Dillard's directorial choices baffled me throughout. Was Brown's squadron some sort of bubble that didn't have any racism in it? And could Thomas Sadoski's Lt. Cmdr. Cevoli have been any more corny & shallow? There were moments when tears threatened to well up, but the spell was never able to hold. I wish like hell that it had been able to.
