Ordinary Evil

Posted: February 25, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Brian A. Costello | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Imagine Schindler’s List without the thin thread of hope. Imagine a Wes Anderson movie, visually, but replace the storybook whimsy with cold reality. Imagine the tale of a family “living the dream” while ash-spewing genocide is playing out, quite literally, in their backyard.  

This was a tough one, folks. A soul-crushing peek into the trials and tribulations of an SS officer, his darling wife, their newborn and two rambunctious boys, and the casual flippancy of living their privileged life with the Auschwitz concentration camp right on the other side of their barbed garden wall. There’s rarely a ten second span where you don’t hear the distant pop of a pistol, or some shouting, or the latter punctuated with the former. The night sky is tinged red with the light of furnace fires refracting through billowing smoke.  The gorgeous, picturesque landscape is blemished by a massive chimney as a constant reminder- thousands are being murdered and unceremoniously disposed of, and the engineers are always looking for a more efficient way to get it done. But it’s OK- you can still take your family out for a nice picnic and a relaxing dip in the river.

The Zone Of Interest is a brilliant bit of subversion that repeatedly reels you in with its subtlety, then knuckles you, hard, with its blatancy. I highly recommend it.  You will not have a good time.

John Krasinski Presents: An Actually Good Modern Horror Sequel

Posted: February 25, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Movie, Opinion, Man., Review | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

A thriller that actually thrills. A horror film that is actually scary. A sequel that urges the story forward without trying to one-up its predecessor. And boy, does it flow incredibly well- there’s not a wasted shot, a moment that lingers too long, nor a repetitive story beat anywhere to be found. Can you see where the visual and tonal influences come from? Sure. Alien, The Last Of Us, Lost, The Walking Dead, Jurassic Park, etc., all represented here. Does that in any way undermine the narrative? Nope. If anything it gets you to a familiar emotional setting sooner so you can let any particular scene take you on its unexpected ride. It’s refreshing when a modern horror film can do that. Add to that its originality in story AND the fact that it’s a sequel and you’ve got a new, modern benchmark for scary flicks.

Please keep making movies, John Krasinski. I’m not sure there’s a filmmaker out there today that knows how to keep things as lean and mean as you do. Just so satisfying.

Undeserving Of All The Trash Talk

Posted: February 25, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Movie, Opinion, Man., Review | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

A wholly serviceable, perfectly comprehensible, gloriously ridiculous bit of light entertainment with a visual flare and a unique style that we’ve come to expect from Matthew Vaughn. It’s a little long- some scenes meander about with uneccessary, repetitive exposition, and the aforementioned style is a little scattershot and underused- there are long stretches, by design, I think (as the movie’s two worlds take time to sync up), that make the shifts to hyper-fantastical action a bit awkward, but everything eventually unfolds in a satisfying and exciting way. Was the “oil scene” a little strange? Yup. Totally. But I’ll take an odd-yet-original swing for the fences over another generic shoot-em-up resolution any day. 

Not Vaughn’s best, but MUCH better than this weird critical drubbing it’s getting. And the “I love that I can be snarky and add to the noise” non-reviews some of y’all are posting at Letterboxd are just embarrassing. I mean… people are finding this thing confusing? COME ON. One star and a lame jab at Henry Cavill’s hair? You’re SO funny, you clever little proto-hipster, you.

Anyway, see it. It’s an unprecedented box office bomb, so you’ll be able to couch watch it very soon. Bring popcorn.

Should Have Created Some Coherency

Posted: February 25, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Movie, Opinion, Man., Review | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

An absolutely amazing collection of seamless, inventive, ever-present yet subtly-used special effects in one of the most bland, disjointed, and misguided films ever put on celluloid. Or, rather, hard drives- apparently it was shot on digital cameras you can walk out of Best Buy with for less than $4000. Which is pretty awesome, considering how truly revolutionary these visual effects are. But, oh, what a head-scratcher, narrative-wise.

Check it out, though, if only to marvel at what you’re seeing on screen for a bit (I somehow made it about 90 minutes before I gave up for the night and finished it the next day. While doing other things). Just don’t expect to care about anyone in it or understand how characters seem to just forget everything that happened before the scene they’re currently in. 

I see now why they course corrected Rogue One after principal photography. Gareth Edwards has a unique visual style, but his storytelling sense is severely lacking. John David Washington deserved better than this.

Too Little, Too Late

Posted: February 25, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Movie, Opinion, Man., Review | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Like its predecessor, it’s big, loud, dumb-yet-fun, generic action entertainment. Just maybe a little less of all that than last time around, but compensated for by being juuuuuuust a tiny little bit more noticeably derivative (#sarcasm). At one point Captain Quint and his War-Rocket-Ajax-Except-It’s-A-Submarine crew use some Squiddy Sentinels to break in to Talokan after Aquaman rescues his brother from the Soldier Mummies in Hamunaptra and brings him to underwater Jabba’s Palace so they can find out how to get to undersea Minas Morgul before Evil Iron Man, under the influence of Fish Sauron because he wields The-One-Ring-Except-It’s-A-Trident, does. No, there was nothing not fun about typing that sentence. Now, where was I… 

The CG creature and set designs are cool, but, also just like in the first one, there’s entirely too much of it, so after awhile it all just became an assault of visual noise that left me (once again) wondering, “wait… what even happened in the finale?” literally minutes after the credits rolled. Momoa’s fun, Amber Heard is a waste of space, Yahya Abdul-Mateen is great, I still can’t understand a literal word that comes out of Dolph Lundgren’s mouth, Randall Park was good (if not underwritten), and Patrick Wilson is the MVP here for classing up the joint.

Anyway, rest in pieces, DCEU. This was a one-hopper that got you to first base uncontested, but, alas, the game was already over.

Welcome To The Dollverse

Posted: February 25, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Movie, Opinion, Man., Review | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

A solid movie that uses goodhearted satire to playfully poke fun at gender inequality. But it never gets mean- it’s not even close to the Lorena Bobbitt-style societal emasculation that some fragile manbabies with too much time on their hands would have you believe. Alternatively, it’s not the 19th Amendment-style feminist victory others are championing it as- it’s mostly throwing softballs for two hours. And that is, at the same time, its biggest pro and con- it’s chock full of funny, lighthearted rib nudging that could probably have gone a little further. There was definitely a point where I almost checked out, thinking, “OK, I get it… now what?” The satire maybe could have used some more bite. Then again, that might have betrayed its good-natured approach to its subject matter, so I dunno. In any case, it’s fun. The production design is appropriately colorful and plastic-y, the writing is suitably goofy… It’s definitely a smiler, not a laugh-out-louder.  

But I hope every kid in America sees it.

Seven Samurai For Dummies

Posted: February 25, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Movie, Opinion, Man., Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

You’ll hear a lot of people complaining that Rebel Moon Part 1: Get Over Yourself With This Pretentiously Long Title is derivative of a bunch of classic films we’ve all seen. And it is. But I’m here to tell you- that was the best thing about the movie.  Recognizing that from scene to scene was the only interesting thing going on. It’s the only thing that kept me watching. RMPt1ACoF (hee!) is a bland mess that, even though it’s over 2 hours long, feels rushed and incomplete. Was I supposed to be invested in all these generic badasses that our heroes gathered together, one-by-one, for a Seven Samurai-type reckoning? Because I’m hard pressed to even tell you what their big character intro setpieces were. Oh wait- that one guy had to train a giant ratbird, I think. And did another one kill a guy with a lightsaber, or something? Whatever. I certainly couldn’t tell you any of their names at gunpoint. OK, I just looked it up and Ray Fisher’s character was called “Darrian Bloodaxe.” Oof. Anyway, when he died I think I was supposed to feel something. I didn’t. There was this rando character on screen that definitely did- she was all featured in a shot, yelling, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!,” but I was too busy distractedly thinking, “wait who is THAT seemingly important person?” to even care. Which, I think was one of the myriad directorial gaffes Snyder made- every single character, big or small, lead or under-five, Djimon Honsou or Jimmy The Random Robot, was treated like they were the linchpin of the entire fucking movie.

And that’s exhausting. When you’re 90 minutes in and still playing catch-up, not because it’s intricate or convoluted, but because it’s so scattershot, self-important, and plodding in its utter boringness, well… you’ve got yourself a Battlefield: Earth situation. Except without the joys of endless mocking. Yeah, there was a giant space vagina, but I feel that has limited returns, guffaw-wise.

Anyway, I will probably skip Rebel Moon Part 2: A Bug’s Life But Stupid. But there is a small part of me (the masochistic part, I guess) that is curious to see the “Snyder Cut” version of this once they put it out there. I’m in the minority that feels that made Justice League good (I mean, it didn’t make it essential viewing, or anything, just… better?). I dunno. I was still (foolishly?) holding out hope, but I think maybe I’ve kept Zack Snyder in my fridge well past his Sell-By date and it’s time to just hold my nose and pour him out into my sink. In slo-mo with speed-ramping.

Halitotic Penultimate Gasp

Posted: February 25, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Movie, Opinion, Man., Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wowwwww, what a mess. 

Was Affleck great? Yes. Was Keaton great? Yes. Was Sasha Calle great? Yes. Did any of them elevate the movie? No. There was no elevating this movie. It’s an occasionally fun, occasionally funny, occasionally thrilling, middling mess. And if you were hoping this ties up the grand disastrous experiment that was the DCEU in a nice, neat bow, I’m sorry- it so very doesn’t. The Flash plays out like the movie it was originally intended to be- a hybrid multiverse/origin story for a character that they fully intended to continue on with before the world went to pandemic shit and the actor portraying him devolved into a creep. And absolutely 0% was changed regarding that fact once they decided to scrap this whole decade-old Marvel-But-Gritty copycat experiment. It could have ended with a nice, coherent, game-ending touchdown. Instead it went wide-right on the goal posts with a climax involving floating, rotating, color-coded space-time multiverse balls, each filled with an odd, incomplete smattering of “established” CG superheroes from old movies, TV shows, and even “died in development” concepts, crashing into each other. And then The Flash peaces out and goes home. And then Clooney shows up and smiles. Because WHAT A CUTE, NON-DEFINITIVE ENDING, YOU GUYS.

I’ve truly enjoyed many moments and a few of the films WB/DC has put out there over the past decade, but ultimately, thanks to this misguided, undercooked, wet fart “ending” to the current DCEU, I’m glad it’s all over with.

I mean, until Aquaman 2 dredges it all back up by pretending it’s an unrelated thing.

REWATCH, 12/25/2023:

Ok, so I gave this thing a rewatch, and I’m… happy(?) to say that, six months removed from all the expectation and hype, it’s a better film than on its first viewing. It’s fun and original. Its double-role star is equally charming and (intentionally) annoying, which, against all odds, made it pretty watchable for me. However, the CG is still a disaster- I know the excuse for things like the opening baby scene is “this is just how things look in the speed force,” but let’s face it- that’s just director/studio spin for “we didn’t want to spend any more fx money on a film that’s 4 years late, stars a seriously problematic person, and is the halitotic penultimate gasp of a dead cinematic universe.” But, most egregiously, the movie suffers from unsalvageable narrative entropy in its entire third act, mostly because the “big bad” we’re supposed to care about was an utter afterthought for the first 2 hours, but definitely also because of that selfsame speed force CGI.

So, yeah, I had a better time this time, but 2 1/2 stars still feels right. “Average.”