SASQUATCH SUNSET

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B-

I went into Sasquatch Sunset expecting a kind of gross-out comedy that happened to be about Sasquatches. I had heard there was a lot of Sasquatch fucking and shitting. These things do happen in the movie, but, if you can believe it, they are used sparingly—which only heightens the impact when it does happen. What I was not quite prepared for was an ultimately bleak mood piece about extinction. In retrospect, the very title of the film should have been a clue.

There are only four characters in this movie, and none of them speak anything beyond a somewhat organized series of grunts. While watching, I kept thinking of the 1986 film The Clan of the Cave Bear, in which no verbal language is ever spoken. What I forgot about that movie is that they have established a form of sign language, with which the film presents subtitles. Sasquatch Sunset doesn’t even have that; in this movie, we just get the grunts. Beyond that, all communication and emotion is conveyed through a sort of mime by actors in hairy suits.

To say that Sasqutch Sunset isn’t for everyone is an understatement. There were reportedly many walkouts when the film played earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. This is not difficult to believe: I was one of six people in the theater when I went to see this, and a person in the row in front of us did indeed walk out in the midde. She even booked a seat for an AMC screening of Dune Part Two on her phone before getting up and leaving. An excellent choice, to be fair, but still, side note: don’t do that shit. Your phone screen is distracting and annoying—it’s why I know what movie you booked as an alternative, which you should do after leaving the theater.

I really thought Sasquatch Sunset would be funnier. If there’s so much sex and shit, why wouldn’t it be? Well, co-directors David and Nathan Zellner, working with a script by David, have created something akin to a nature documentary—but with mythical creatures as its subjects. They also mark their territory with piss, and in one fairly gross instance we see one vomit after eating too many fermented berries. But the thing is, once I got a recalibrated sense of the meditative tone of this film, I found myself surprisingly engaged by it. In the end, it’s a kind of family tragedy. About Bigfoot. But it takes an unusually “realistic” approach to what Sasquatch might actually behave as feral animals in the forest, particularly as a kind of “missing link” species between great apes and humans.

Speaking of humans, another curious detail of Sasqutch Sunset is that there are none. Inevitably, the Sasquatch characters encounter human civilization, in the form of things like a red X spray painted on a tree trunk, or a campsite. But, they never encounter any human beings. It’s unclear to me whether we are supposed to infer a loss of habitat due to human activity, though we do see them observe smoke from a forest fire in the distance. Several times the Sasquatch characters we’re following smack sticks against trees together in a coordinated pattern, clearly a signal to any other Sasquatch who might hear it. But, these are the only ones we ever see, and —spoiler alert—not even all of these ones make it to the end of the movie. I got to a point where I began to assume they would all be dead by the end of the film, but that’s not exactly how it ends. I suppose it depends on how you look at it.

I’ll definitely give Sasquatch Sunset credit for being absolutely unlike any other movie I have ever seen. I can’t think of a single person I would recommend it to, but I’m not sorry to have seen it. It’s certainly compelling to know that the Sasquatch characters are played, under intricate layers of makeup and prosthetics, by the likes of Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, playing the one female among the group. There is also a juvenile played by Christophe Zajac-Denek, and Nathan Zellner himself plays the “alpha.” There is also a baby Sasquatch, performed mostly through what appears to be puppetry, with somewhat mixed results.

There are indeed a few genuinely funny moments, but Sasquatch Sunset plays much more like a meditative drama. And given whose story we are seeing unfold, your mileage may vary. By the time it ended, this Sasquatch story had kind of lost me and then, somehow, brought me back around again. This is a fascinating specimen of experimental cinema, with an unusual blend of absurdity and sincerity. Whether you’ll be into it, even if the premise intrigues you, may very well depend on when you watch and and what mood you’re in. Somehow, in my case, it had a hook that ultimately got me.

They have been to the top and it wasn’t what they were expecting.

Overall: B

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

There were multiple ironies to my experience watching The American Society of Magical Negroes, starting with the fact that the theater I went to see it at started to show the wrong film at first. After deeply confusing those of us in the audience with this very film’s trailer playing amongst all the others before the feature started, they then played American Fiction—a vastly superior film in every way imaginable.

Eventually, once the correct film was playing, after some time I registered another irony. This is a film about Black people whose literally magical job is to ease the discomfort of White people. And this film is so blandly inoffensive, with a premise with great potential to be effectively biting, it plays as though the movie itself exists to ease the discomfort of White viewers.

On the one hand, The American Society of Magical Negroes just can’t win. It triggers the Fox News set by quite directly suggesting the most dangerous animal on the planet is “White people.” Then it rankles leftists by having its Black protagonist risk everything by falling in love with a White woman. (Sort of. We’ll get back to that.)

And here is where we get into the fundamental difference between The American Society of Magical Negroes and American Fiction. American Fiction didn’t give any of its White characters a pass. This movie, by contrast, wants us to think it’s highlighting the absurdity of the myth of the “Magical Negro,” and then gives its White characters a pass at every turn. There’s an impassioned speech near the end, delivered by Justice Smith as Aren, a new recruit for the Society of the film’s title, explaining to his coworker Jason (Drew Tarver) what it’s like for him to live in this country as a Black person. And—spoiler alert!—a minor light goes on in Jason’s head, showing a definitively contrived, if small, step toward White understanding. Except to present all this in the context of literal fantasy genre filmmaking rather undermines the message we’re meant to get from this movie.

This is a film of endlessly missed opportunities. It doesn’t even play with the concept of a “Magical Negro” as a historic stereotype specifically in literature, cinema, and television, where Black supporting characters reliably come to the aid of White main characters. Instead, while trying to convince us it’s using the concept subversively, it’s just continuing the tradition of its use. The only difference is that now, the protagonist of the film is the Black supporting character, and the White main characters are its target audience. The oddest thing about this movie is that it’s like a low-rent Harry Potter but with an undercooked premise and a lead actor who is actually more charismatic and talented than Daniel Radcliffe.

Because this is the one major strength of The American Society of Magical Negroes: the winning cast. Justice Smith embodies his character wonderfully, playing both awkward and increasingly confident with equal skill. David Alan Grier exudes warmth as Aren’s mentor, and Michaela Watkins is a welcome presence, if relatively inconsequential, as his boss. An-Li Bogan has great chemistry with Smith as the love interest for whom Aren ultimately risks everything. The story here rather lacks focus and suffers from uneven tonality, but the cast alone makes up for a lot, and together make this movie watchable, if ultimately forgettable.

A particularly curious element of this film is the multiracial ethnicities of both its protagonist and his love interest. Aren even mentions at one point that his mother was White, yet never offers any clarity on what must be unique to that experience, distinct from either being White or having two Black parents. Lizzie is briefly referred to as “ethnic” but never clarified beyond that—evidently we are to understand that, as a matter of fact, she is not a White woman. At least not fully: she’s Asian and White. But, given that Jason makes a comment about not realizing she’s “ethnic,” it would seem she’s “White enough.”

It may be that I’m splitting hairs here, and overdoing the parsing of ethnic heritage in characters—except that this movie is quite literally asking for it. It seems to give White women a pass in particular, in the end offering Lizzie a last-minute “twist” that underlines the role of women in society as “supportive wives and girlfriends.” This is incongruously problematic on its own, as it creates a a false equivalency between the otherwise very real struggles of women, including White women—something that has its place in film for sure, just not this one and not in this way—and Black people experiencing racism.

The American Society of Magical Negroes has some genuine charms (including Nicole Byer as the Society’s president), but it ultimately fails at what it aims to be, and struggles to clarify its point of view. Everything it aspires to, American Fiction achieves with ingenious finesse. I recommend you just watch that movie instead.

We’re meant to learn how White people are more dangerous than sharks, except this movie has no bite.

Overall: B-

DUNE PART TWO

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A
Editing: B+
Special Effects: A

The word “iconic” has been overused for decades. For this reason, I don’t ever use it. Maybe Dune Part Two is the exception that proves the rule. There is a moment in this film that is so visually iconic, it looks like the cover of a pulp science fiction novel come to life. There’s nothing kitschy about it, though; it’s very earnest—a key element of both these movies’ success.

I have to admit, I spent a fair amount of Dune Part Two thinking that it might not be living up to the hype. I wanted to be bowled over, overwhelmed by my love for it, and that wasn’t quite happening. The thing is, that’s just not how Denis Villeneuve operates. This is an artist with such unparalleled skill as a storyteller, you need to regard the piece in its entirely before you can properly judge it. This movie does not disappoint.

There’s something about Dune Part One, released in the fall of 2021—two and a half years ago—that makes it stand apart. I really liked that film when I first saw it, but I didn’t love it. And yet, every single time I rewatch that film, I appreciate it more than the last. I’ve seen it at least four times now, and I still notice new details every time.

It is for that reason that I expect the same thing with Dune Part Two. I’m not yet prepared to declare my undying love for it, but, much like Paul Atreides’s visions, I can see a near future where I’ve gotten to that point. I am genuinely looking forward to seeing this movie again, and will certainly be seeing it many times. This first go-round, I know there is much I did not catch, which is to be expected with films so well adapted from literary source material, but material I have not read. I have started to consider reading it, though.

I am especially looking forward to the point at which both Dune Part One and Dune Part Two are avaiable to watch together, back to back, as one film. Part One was two hours and 35 minutes long; Part Two is two hours and 46 minutes; the two combined, as one interrupted narrative, would make a five hour and 21-minute movie. When combined, maybe one of the greatest science fiction films ever made.

Has anyone else thought to compare this to Kill Bill Vol. I and Kill Bill Vol. II? Wildly different movies, obviously, but a key thing in common: a first part that ends abruptly, with much of the story clearly left to go—but incredible up to that point. Then the second, concluding part comes out, and even the first part is improved when regarded as part of the whole.

And there’s a lot new to discover in Dune Part Two, particularly when it comes to the cast. Zendaya had all of seven minutes of screen time in the first Dune, and as expected, here becomes a critical part of the story. She is great as expected as Chani, as is Timothée Chalamet as Paul—effectively embodying a young man who is maturing, for both good and for ill, before our eyes—but I simply must mention Austin Butler, as Feyd-Rautha, nephew to the grotesque Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). I could already tell from Elvis that he was a very good actor, but only when comparing that to his performance here does Austin Butler prove to be an astonishing talent. He’s not just the most eminently believable psychotic character in this movie, but he takes it a step further with an incredible vocal performance just similar enough to Stellan Skarsgård’s to make him believable as a relative of his.

There’s a lot of other new famous faces introduced to Part Two: Christopher Walken as the Emperor; Florence Pugh as his daughter, Stellan Skarsgård; Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot Fenring, one of the Bene Gesserit; even Anya Taylor-Joy as a flash-forward of Paul’s little sister. Unfortunately, none of these top-notch actors get much to work with, while Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson (as Paul’s mother, Jessica), Josh Brolin and especially Javier Bardem get all the desert scenery to chew. Anya Taylor-Joy get about one minute, if that, of screen time.

It’s understandable, however, for them all to want to be part of something that is greater than the sum of its parts. There may not be any better example of that phrase than the two Dune movies—and, incidentally, unlike many other franchises, you absolutely need to have seen Dune Part One in order to fully appreciate, or possibly even understand, this movie. They really should be regarded as part of a collective whole, like Kill Bill or The Lord of the Rings.

The special effects, once again, are spectacular. Even more of this film takes place on the desert planet of Arrakis than the previous one did, and still Villenueve makes it a work of art, between the incredible cinematography and the seamlessly integrated visual effects. The fact alone that he manages to render characters riding sandworms without it looking ridiculous is an impressive accomplishment. The sandworms alone give the film an arresting, visual grandeur.

None of this would matter, of course, without such rich storytelling, in a fully realized, wholly separate universe. For much of this film, we see Paul learn the ways of the Fremen, the people native to the desert, fighting alongside them, protesting their insistence that he is their Messiah while also using that faith to his advantage. This film certainly has more to say about religion, a running subtext to the intergalactic political intrigue and fighting between different planetary clans. Which of these “houses” will ultimately gain the greatest power is incidental to the means by which this power is attained.

I will say, I could feel large swaths of the source material left unaddressed, at least not directly, while watching Dune Part Two. But, like Dune Part One, it is denslely packed with information, which no doubt gives greater satisfaction to those familiar with the books, and more easily picked up on by the rest of us with subsequent viewings. “Epic” is another word I try to avoid because of its overuse, but it is unavoidable here. This is an epic film for the 21st century, done right in a way it hasn’t been for decades, a classic that might just be beloved for generations to come.

Just when you wonder when there will be shock and awe . . . it comes.

Overall: A-

ALL OF US STRANGERS

Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A+
Editing: A+

How do I adequately convey how much I loved All of Us Strangers? How do I even explain what it’s about? Except, perhaps, to say it’s a beautifully melancholy, queer love story with an emotional through line that cuts deep?

Mind you, I say this as a gay viewer, and this is incredibly relevant. I can’t help but wonder how the response to it might be different among audiences that are not gay men. I am certain anyone open to the experience of this film can be deeply moved by it, and even have an intricate, nuanced understanding of what the characters are feeling. But for me, in a way few other movies ever have, this story wrapped my very soul into a warm embrace.

Will I love this movie as much upon rewatch, I wonder? There’s only one way to find out.

In the meantime, I must say there is plenty of All of Us Strangers that evades straightforward understanding. That is beside the point. You need only to feel it. And boy, did I.

Adam (Andrew Scott) and Harry (Aftersun’s Paul Mescal) are two gay men, living in the same London high-rise apartment building. It must be a new building, very few other people living in it, as they discuss how distractingly quiet it is living there. We really never see them interact with anyone else in the building, only each other. When a fire alarm has Adam exiting the building, he sees Harry’s silhouette in his sixth-story window, looking down at him. After Adam returns to his unit on a much higher floor—with spectacular, panoramic London views—Harry knocks on his door, drunk, and introduces himself.

Adam and Harry’s steadily blossoming relationship expands beyond that first meeting, which is tentative, cautious, a bit shy. They don’t hook up immediately. They do a bit later, though, and it’s some of the most beautifully shot and tender, gay sexuality I’ve seen onscreen since Moonlight (2016). It’s both highly erotic and genuinely moving—a feat of narrative execution that has me tempted to call director and co-writer Andrew Haigh a cinematic magician.

And All of Us Strangers is indeed magical, even when it defies logic, and quite deliberately so. The story of Adam and Harry runs parallel to the story of Adam and his late parents, who died in a car crash when he was twelve years old. And yet, he takes a train across town to his childhood home—and finds his father (Jamie Bell) and his mother (Claire Foy) there, the same age they were when they died, somehow unsurprised to find their son coming home, now a grown man they had never actually gotten to see grow up.

Mum and Dad have an understanding that about 35 years have passed, but have no knowledge of what has transpired in that time. Their knowledge and relative ignorance remains stuck in, we can only estimate, about 1988. And as premises go, this is a little out there, because All of Us Strangers never makes explicit exactly what’s going on, and there’s a physicality between Adam and his still-young parents during their visits that negates any idea of them as conventional ghosts. It’s a little more like they exist as flesh and blood, but in a different dimension.

What it does allow for, however, are conversations Adam never had a chance to have with his parents otherwise. He comes out to them both, in separate conversations. It’s notable that his mom has a more complicated, slightly more negative reaction than his father, who is much more quickly accepting—a scenario that defies the stereotype of gay experience, and is likely more common than many realize. This, among many other conversations Adam has with his parents, packed a unique emotional punch for me, and so far as I could tell, I was crying before most of the rest of the people in the theater.

All of Us Strangers features gorgeous cinematography, and is edited with unparalleled finesse, transitioning between Adam with Harry, and Adam with his parents, with seamless grace. There’s a sequence in which Adam and Harry go out dancing, do some drugs, and then proceed into a sort of montage of domesticity, with the club music continuing uninterrupted through it all. It’s beautifully executed.

There is a bit of a twist at the end, very directly related to Harry, which ultimately had me baffled. It calls into question a great deal of what has been seen beforehand, but then, there is even a moment when Adam asks his mother, “Is this real?” The answer, evidently, is that if it feels real, then it is. And All of Us Strangers is all feeling, which therefore makes it real. Adam tries to introduce Harry to his parents, and for most of this sequence, Harry seems to be the only one existing in a grounded reality. This is now a film that will allow things to be that simple.

This is a movie I will be thinking about for a very long time, maybe for years to come. I haven’t been this in love with a mood-piece queer love story since Moonlight. Indeed, that film and All of Us Strangers would make for a spectacular double feature. From end to end, it is beautiful and sad and cozy and charming and erotic and mysterious and bewildering. It would seem there is no end to the riches it has to offer.

Nowhere to go but up: together,

Overall: A

WONKA

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-
Special Effects: C+
Music: B-

An argument has been made that, well, Wonka is for kids, and kids deserve movies too, right? Well, here’ s my counter-argument: the likelihood that kids will indeed enjoy Wonka notwithstanding, there are still kids’ movies out there that are actually good. This is not one of them.

Mind you, it’s not terrible either. But that’s just the thing: there is a Roald Dahl legacy to live up to here, as well as a Gene Wilder legacy, and Wonka falls short on both counts. This movie doesn’t even live up to the 2005 Tim Burton film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I still insist was wonderful, I don’t care how many haters there are out there. Of course, that’s not to say any of these films have held up to the truly classic, enduring 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—which, astonishingly, was rated G—but, on the flip side, kids today are neither likely to know anything about that film, nor have much interest in watching it if they do. It would be the equivalent of me having any interest in a film released in 1934 when I was ten years old.

The bummer of it right now is, if you want to take your kids to the movies, Wonka is nearly the only option. The only others in multiplexes right now are the animated films Migration and Wish, which are both getting worse responses than Wonka. Wonka, at the very least, is sprinkled with several genuinely charming moments, of the sort that are a signature of director Paul King. (King directed both of the Paddington films, and both of them are far superior to this.) If you’re one of the adults taking kids to this film, well, you’re kind of shit out of luck.

And, to be fair, it’s not just that it doesn’t live up to Roald Dah’s cinematic legacy. From the opening scenes, in which Timothée Chalamet dances with a bunch of people holding “Wonka” umbrellas behind him, the choreography middling and the lyrics unmemorable, I thought: Oh. This isn’t going to be great. The sequence ends with Wonka getting charged a fee for daydreaming, a brief gag that works better than any of the extended theatrics that came before it.

My biggest issue with Wonka is the visual effects. This movie was made on a budget of $125 million, and I just have to wonder: where the hell was the money spent? Just on the talent? Chalamet’s $9 million paycheck is objectively ridiclous, and yet even that is but a fraction of that budget. Once again, the shockingly good Godzilla Minus One comes to mind—that film was made for $15 million, and it looks far better than this.

Wonka is appropriately color saturated for a film that is clearly presented as a musical fantasia. And yet, a huge amount of it is rendered in subpar CGI, giving it a far more artificial look than films about the same character released 52 and 18 years ago. I was especially mystified by the one Oompa Loompa, whose movements are noticeably jerky-jerky. How can a film this expensive to make look so bad? To give credit where credit is due, Hugh Grant imbues the Oompa Loompa with more personality than any single other character in the film, which almost makes up for the bad visual effects. Almost. (Side note: it’s also in this film’s favor that the Oompa Loompa is given full autonomy, and never becomes the stand-in for slave labor that the Oompa Loompas were in either of the previous films.)

To be fair, Timothée Chalamet, an objectively great actor, does his best with what he has to work with. As do a bevy of other big names who make up the supporting cast: Olivia Colman as Mrs. Scrubitt, the innkeeper who tricks Wonka into indentured servitude; Keegan-Michael Key as the Chief of Police, so easily bribed by Wonka’s rival chocolatiers with chocolate that he gains a ton of weight over the course of the film (and I find the idea that this is “fat shaming” to be debatable at best); Rowan Atkinson as Father Julius, also easily bribed with chocolate; Jim Carter as Abacus Crunch, one of the other indentured servants slaving away in the inn basement; even Sally Hawkins, the mom in the Paddington movies and here playing Wonka’s mother in a few flashback sequences. In none of these cases does the actor get as much to chew on as they deserve, in spite of Olivia Colman’s extensive screen time as one of many villains, but the one who most directly steals Wonka’s luck away from him.

Fundamentally, Paul King seems to have missed the point entirely, of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is about a possibly-corrupt, borderline sociopathic chocolatier weeding out the one good little kid in a group of spoiled brats. The only way Wonka’s return to that character’s story, particularly as a prequel, would make sense would be for Willy to learn the same kind of lesson himself as a youngster. Instead, Wonka is presented as pure hearted, and constantly taken advantage of by the adults around him who are the spoiled brats.

There is only one genuine kid in this movie, Calah Lane, who plays Noodle, also toiling away indefinitely in the inn basement. Lane is quite lovely, actually, one of the best things about Wonka, with onscreen charisma that helps keeps the proceedings watchable. But Noodle and Willy are both similarly pure of heart, dealing with heightened, standard kids-movie villains. Willy Wonka is supposed to be backed with subtext, and Wonka, generally pleasant as it is to watch, is all text.

All of that brings us back to this: kids will have a great time. The group of kids in the row of seats behind me, who did not shut the fuck up the entire film, certainly did. Surely they neither know nor care anything about Gene Wilder’s or even Johnny Depp’s iterations of Willy Wonka. For them, there is only Timothée Chalamet. But here’s the key difference: none of those kids are going to grow up regarding this as an unfortgettable classic from their childhoods. It’s just another passable outing at the movies, and in the context of its cinematic legacy, that’s a real shame.

Hugh Grant’s ample charms can’t elevate a middling achievement.

Overall: B-

THE MARVELS

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B

The Marvels has all the same old bullshit I tired of eons ago in these superhero “universes”—the supposed stakes of saving the world; the CGI-laden action climax; the same broad story arc as dozens of other superhero movies just like it. Even worse, it relies too heavily on “MCU world building” that connects all these movies, the onetime novelty where the collective audience consensus finally seems to be: we’re over it.

And yet: there are things that set The Marvels apart. Like Captain Marvel (2019) before it, this is the exceptionally rare movie about a woman superhero. Indeed, this time, it’s about three women superheroes—one of whom is a woman of color. I am all about supporting movies like this, just to keep the studios keyed into the idea that they clearly have an audience. But, it also helps if the movie is actually good.

One of the unfortunate things for viewers who haven’t consumed all of the MCU content is that The Marvels, like most MCU movies anymore, relies on shorthand assumed to be understood by viewers who have. I’ve heard moderately good things about the Disney+ series Ms Marvel, but haven’t gotten around to seeing it, so this film is my introduction to her—otherwise known as Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani)—as a character. Incidentally, I did watch WandaVision on Disney+, but even two years ago is long enough for all the MCU mediocrity I’ve viewed to simply blend together in my memory. I know I liked Teyonah Parris’s screen presence as Monica Rambeau then, and I still do now.

How it comes to pass that Kamala, Monica, and Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Captain Marvel herself, have found themselves in a predicament wherein every time they use their power at the same time, they teleport to swtich locations, I could not pretend to explain. The Marvels is packed with science fiction techno babble that is utterly meaningless, and all you can do is let it go. If you keep an open mind to the objective stupidness, The Marvels is actually pretty fun.

It’s the scenes where it goes gonzo-bonkers that I wish it had more of. Goose, the “flerkin” who looks like a regular domesticated house cat but is actually an alien that can swallow things exponentially larger with giant tentacles coming out of his mouth, was easily my favorite thing about Captain Marvel in 2019, and that remains true now. And director Nia DaCosta, along with her team of writers, really ups the ante with Goose this time around: Goose’s ability to swallow giant things whole, and then cough it up like a hairball later, slimy but otherwise completely unharmed, becomes a pivotal plot point. I didn’t know I needed to hear an overhead intercom voice say in a deadpan tone, “Don’t run from the flerkins. Let them eat you.” But it arguably made my week.

In other words: I came for the cats. Or the flerkins, to be more specific. Not to get too far into spoiler territory here, but this time we get more than just goose, but in a way you may not be able to predict, and it’s bizarre, fun, and hilarious.

I just wish flerkins weren’t the only area in which The Maevels leans into getting super weird. Weird is good! The rest of it, really, is just rote. The villain, Dar-Benn, is just dull (through no fault of Zawe Ashton, who does the best with what she has to work with), and represents otherworldly aspects of the Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel story that come across like a cross between Superman and Star Trek, with dying suns and generations of alien-ethnic rivalries. The stuff Captain Marvel has to condend with is rarely earthbound, and within the MCU context—Guardians of the Galaxy notwithstanding—it makes her less interesting. The most interesting superheroes are specimens of flawed humanity contenting with awesome responsibilities, who are dealing with other human beings.

All that said, Larson, Parris and Vellani have an undeniable chemistry as a trio, and the addition of Khan is particularly welcome, with her South Asian family getting the kind of representation seldom seen in films like this. Her parents, played by Mohan Kapur and Zenobia Shroff, make the most of the screen time they are given—even as a fight takes place in their house that destroys a bunch of their stuff, and even blows a hole in their ceiling. This is the kind of stuff that annoys me, the massive collateral damage that barely gets acknowledged, or might just get a sigh or an eye roll. Sure, these movies are utter fantasies, but if you are going to set any part of them on our version of Earth, there should be some modicum of groundnedness.

But, yet again, I nitpick. I guess you could say this is my passion. After Goose the flerkin, my second favorite thing about The Marvels is the run time: one hour and forty-five minutes. I saw that and thought I must be dreaming, it was so shockingly reasonable. Did someone get fired so another person could finally come in and say it’s okay to stop making these movies as though we are pretending they’re epics? There are many complaints one can have about The Marvels, but at the very least it’s not bloated.

Instead, it’s a breezy hang with three very different women with great chemistry, and a mouth-tentacled alien cat. If we could just get more weirdness on the level of kitty tentacles and less in the way of tired plot tropes, we’d really be getting somewhere. On the other hand, even a meaningless good time is still a good time.

People aren’t talking enough about how Tango is the real star of the movie.

Overall: B

GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
Animation: A-

The stop motion animation in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinoicchio may be the best I have ever seen. It’s not quite perfect, but then stop-motion never is. Usually it’s a lot easier to see how it’s done, with diorama scenes shot frame by frame, but for the most part in this film, the character movements are almost shockingly fluid. I can’t imagine the hours that would have had to go into this, and still, this is the longest stop-motion film ever made. (It clocks in at an hour and fifty-seven minutes, although the animation gives way to extended end credits at about 1:50.) The fact that virtually every frame is a uniquely beautiful work of art makes it all that much more of an achievement.

I only wish I could have seen it in a theater. It was released in select theaters on November 9, but apparently not in my local market—both rare and a disappointment. Now, exactly one month later and as of December 9, it is streaming on Netflix. At least a lot more people will now actually be able to see it, I guess. Will they bother, with Netflix’s massive library to choose from? It would seem so: it remains in their top 10 movies currently. Perhaps one day they will figure out they can get the best of both worlds by giving their movies a wide release in theaters, after which millions will still watch it streaming. I would have much preferred seeing this wonderful film in a cinema, but I’m just glad it exists.

Presumably co-writer and co-director Guillermo del Toro’s name is part of this film’s official title in order to differentiate itself from the critically reviled Disney live action version that was also released, all of three months ago. This one might as well be called The Pinocchio Movie Worth Watching.

Parents of small children may well want to be strongly cautioned, however. This is still del Toro we’re talking about: this film goes into some weird, very dark places. I can’t remember another animated feature film that deals with death so frankly—and so extensively. The entire narrative is bookended by deaths pivotal to the plot, and one of the story threads is about Pinocchio himself being impervious to death. Except, because this is a Guillermo del Toro film, Pinocchio is killed and revived several times, each time spending longer in a netherworld populated by card playing rabbit skeletons and a magical Chimera voiced by (naturally) Tilda Swinton. It should be noted that none of this suggests permanent immortality, as human death in this world is indeed permanent, and the rules are different for Pinocchio because he isn’t actually a real boy.

He is, however, a gift offered to Geppetto (David Bradley) by the Chimera’s empathetic sister Wood Sprite (also voiced by Tilda Swinton), in a misguided attempt to ease his grief still unabated many years after the death of his ten-year-old son, Carlo. Both Carlo and Pinocchio are voiced by the immensely talented Gregory Mann, a pubescent boy with a heavenly voice. (His voice reportedly changed during production, necessitating the editing of his voice to match how it sounded from the start.) I didn’t really expect this Pinocchio to be a musical, but it technically is, with characters breaking out into song, albeit not particularly frequently. The songs themselves are just fine, but the voices across the board are wonderful—including that of Ewan McGregor as Cricket. He sounds even better now than he did in the 2001 smash Moulin Rouge!

Cricket, incidentally, provides some much-needed comic relief in an otherwise rather dark movie. This humor itself is also dark much of the time (he keeps getting squished and saying things like “Life is such hideous pain,” which ironically brought me endless joy). In addition to McGregor, though, this deeply stacked cast also includes Christoph Waltz as the villanous carnival puppetmaster; Ron Perlman as a fascist government official in this film del Toro chose to set in World War II Italy; John Turturro as the local village doctor; Tim Blake Nelson as the aforementioned Black Rabbits (apparently based on “Undertaker Rabbits” from the original story). Most amusing of all is Cate Blanchett, who was reportedly so eager to be a part of this film that, when it was the only part left, she happily took the part of Spazzatura, an assistant carnival monkey who speaks almost exclusively in squawks and grunts.

All of these elements combined to leave me thoroughly charmed by Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which is both recognizably a product of his mind and a uniquely imaginative venture, narratively as well as visually. It does feel a bit more skewed toward adult interests, but it is appropriately rated PG, and older children may enjoy it. They may also be disturbed by it. And that is honestly the most fun thing about it.

Therein lies a rich world of discovery.

Overall: B+

2009'S AVATAR IN 2022

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A
Special Effects: A-

When I first saw Avatar in 2009, I was impressed enough with it that not only did I give it an A-, by the end of the year I put it on my annual top 10, placing it at #10.

With the film’s first sequel finally coming to theaters this December, the first film is once again in theaters now, this time only available in 3D—in 2009, I went to see it first in 3D, then again in 2D, and very much preferred the latter. I suspect I would feel the same way now, even though I must say, when viewed superficially as nothing more than blockbuster entertainment, that film remains a spectacular specimen. I cannot deny that I was wowed by the effects, the visual inventiveness, and how imaginative it was—possibly even more than I was thirteen years ago, when I spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the uselessness of 3D in my review.

And now, I am doing something I never did before: re-reviewing a movie in re-release many years later. My rule has always been against this because, well, I already reviewed it. Except in this case, there is the unusual burning question of how well the film holds up after all this time, both because of the amount of time that has passed, and the massive cultural shifts in the zeitgeist in that time, particularly when it comes to race.

There is no question that the “white savior” concept came up in criticism of this film in 2009, but I am somewhat disappointed in myself not to have mentioned it at all in my original review. In the year 2022, for anyone with any concerns about social justice at all, James Cameron’s narrative in this film certainly sits uncomfortably—and for many white people, less comfortably now than it did in 2009.

James Cameron is another massively successful straight white man, after all, and certainly there will be some who read my commentary now as just shitting on straight white men. It cannot be denied, however, that his gender and race informs the story he is telling here, about a white man (Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington) who enters the “indigenous humanoid” population of a moon called Pandora, gets accepted as one of them, and then leads them in successful resistance to the “white people.” A lot of the problematic characterizations of this indigenous population are more glaring now, and further reading comes recommended. There is plenty out there about this if you make the slightest effort to look for it; I am hardly alone in thinking about these things.

One wonders whether Cameron will take any of these frankly fair criticisms to heart in the upcoming sequel. I have my doubts, but also I suppose it’s not impossible. The internal struggle I have with the original Avatar now is how much I genuinely enjoyed it. And surely, plenty of people might sensibly ask why we can’t just give ourselves over to blockbuster entertainment and simply be entertained. I can tell you this much: if you do that with Avatar, you absolutely will not be disappointed. Cameron’s script may be packed with stereotypes and tropes, but it is also incredibly tightly constructed, and the film is riveting from beginning to end. I just also had the space in my head for recognition of its many faults, some more subtle than others. I wasn’t even as bothered by the 3D this time around; the film is so wildly entertaining that you quickly forget about the sometimes awkward visual experience.

Would I recommend that you see this in the theater now, again? Only if you are a purist regarding the cinema experience: there is no question the stunning visuals work better in a theater, no matter how big your home TV screen is.

Also, there has been regular mention over the years that Avatar has the distinction of being the only film ever to become the biggest box office earner of all time which people don’t really still talk about, and no one can even remember what the characters names were. Sigourney Weaver plays Grace, the doctor who heads the “Avatar” program that links humans to hybrid Na’vi that can breathe and function in the local environment. Zoe Saldana plays Neytiri, the Na’vi woman Jake falls in love with. Michelle Rodriguez plays Trudy, a rebellious company employee. Stephen Lang plays Colonel Miles Quaritch, the man who becomes the very Cameronian villain of the film. Giovanni Ribisi is Parker, the corporate shill intent on ruining the Na’vi land in pursuit of the idiotically named “unobtanium.” Very seldom are any of these people’s names actually said onscreen.

Setting the problematic narrative aside, the reason to see Avatar remains its groundbreaking special effects. The Na’vi are CGI rendered in a way that precludes any genuine photorealism, and yet their environment on Pandora is so colorful and inventive, it is an unusually immersive experience. It feels very much like a fully realized world, wholly separate from the one we live in. Cameron simply grafts a very Dances with Wolves story onto it. I spent a lot of time not minding that so much, thinking maybe I should mind it more, and escaping into a science fiction fantasy. That descriptor can be applied in more ways than one, and which angle you take on it is really up to you. But, even the most spectacular entertainment is not above a more deeply critical look.

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Rendered Spectacularly

Overall: B+

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

I keep imagining what Three Thousand Years of Longing will look like on small screens. The film is in theaters now, opened this past weekend, and to say people are not flocking to it would be an understatement—so far it has grossed all of $2.8 million. With a budget of $60 million, to call that a flop would practically be an insult to flops. And it’s really unfortunate, for two reasons: first, it suggests the movie is worse than it really is; it’s actually fairly compelling. And second, it looks fantastic on the big screen, in a way I fear will not translate to televisions and mobile devices, no matter how big the TVs are. At this point it will be a huge surprise if this movie even finds much of an audience in an eventual streaming landscape.

And this puts me in a tricky position, because while Three Thousand Years of Longing is both fine and in certain ways even provocative, inviting spirited discussion, I still can’t say it’s good enough to justify recommending you see it in theaters. What I can say is, if you do go see it in theaters, it won’t feel like time wasted. And in its defense, this film does not deserve to be flatly ignored by the public at large, which is essentially what’s happening.

I suppose it might have had better prospects for success if it were better than just fine. There seems to be a critical consensus that the story is a bit trifling, but the film is beautiful to look at. That is my assessment as well, but with an emphasis on its beauty being far best appreciated in actual cinemas. The visual effects seem to occupy a sort of middle ground, where it doesn’t look like a fortune was spent on them, but director George Miller has a deep talent for making the best of limited means. The visuals don’t ever look particularly cheap, either.

There’s one shot in particular, very brief and arguably unimportant to the story, that very much impressed me: when Idris Elba’s “Djinn” (known in the West as a genie) is released from his bottle by Tilda Swinton’s academic “narratologist” Alithea Binnie, he is at first huge by comparison, literally filling the entire space of her hotel room. As he slowly resizes down to better fit the space, there’s a moment when he gently grabs her by a hand that is itself nearly as large as her entire body. And this shot, blending live action footage with CGI animation, it looks incredibly convincing and real. There are other shots where the visual effects don’t look quite as real, but they don’t quite move into the realm of “fake,” either; they exists in an intermediate space of George Miller’s design, and thus easy to accept as an element of this very specific fantasy.

And here we move into another one of Three Thousand Years of Longing’s several contradictions. This movie is very much a fantasy, and in terms of production design, pacing, and visuals, all combine to make a film that is truly unlike any other, something that should be very much to its benefit. (It’s also fascinating to see a fantasy film that still acknowledges the residual effects of our modern, real-life pandemic, with sporadic extras wearing face masks in indoor scenes.) And yet, broadly speaking, it is still just another love story. Alithea and the Djinn spend a lot of time in her hotel room having intellectual discussions about the utility of being granted wishes, how all such stories are always cautionary tales, but as the Djinn regales her with many stories of his previous times spent outside of the confines of bottles (for the duration of the time indicated by this film’s title), they are all tragic tales of love, and meanwhile the affection brewing between Alithea and the Djinn is telegraphed very early on (and thus it’s really not a spoiler for me to reveal that here).

I was fully engaged through all of this, and most other viewers likely will be too, and yet for a story ostensibly themed on the eternal longing of romantic attachment, overall this film arrives at a place surprisingly shallow. It seems easy to deduce that a big part of its lack of success is how it doesn’t feel its feelings very deeply, much as its characters purport to; Miller, instead, is largely intellectualizing it all, as that is precisely what Alithea and the Djinn do as they discuss all this in her hotel room, through most of which she insists she is “content” and has no need for any wishes.

To be honest, this is where I really wish Miller had gone in a different direction. In the end, Alithea is not quite as contented as she insisted she was. But, there really are such people out there, rare as they may be, and it would have been nice to see some resolution where a contented woman—particularly an older, single, childless woman—managed to stay that way. I suppose Miller might argue, given the way that the film ends, that she does. But, I would argue otherwise. There is an assertion made in this film that there is something that “all women desire,” and although it is never said explicitly, there is very much the connotation that it is romance. And that’s a little reductive.

Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed the banter between Swinton and Elba in this movie, and would have liked even more of it than it offered. There’s a large amount of flashbacks to the Djinn’s previous experiences over thousands of years, and that is where most of the visual effects are found, but I found these sequences to be compelling as well. I particularly enjoyed the means by which the Djinn gets discovered by a new person after centuries or even millennia, which are fairly clever. That might be how I would summarize this movie overall, actually: fairly clever. It takes a universal theme and repackages it in a unique way. Most viewers would enjoy it just fine sometime later on a smaller screen at home, but as a visual experience, I was glad to have seen it at a cinema.

It’s a vivid experience, I’ll give it that.

Overall: B

DC LEAGUE OF SUPER PETS

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: C+
Animation: B

I suppose if you take your children, or your niece or your nephew, to see DC League of Super Pets, they will be suitably entertained, and you won’t hate the experience.

That’s about as close as I can get to heaping praise on this movie, which, even as an animated feature, embodies every cliché of comic book superhero movies developed over the past twenty years. It sticks to the formula, following the same story beats as nearly all of the rest of them, with a big, effects-laden climactic battle at the end, the fate of the world (or the city, or the galaxy, or the universe, take your pick) hanging in the balance. It has a few clever one-liners, most of which got burned through in the trailer. It wants you to think it has a sense of humor about itself, with self-referential meta humor, except that it’s all been done before ad nauseam, and ultimately it’s just another in a long line of cash grabs.

And League of Super Pets is very much in the “DC Cinematic Uniiverse,” the opening titles preceded by the glimpses of all the DC heroes in a graphic presentation long known to be part of their attempt at replicating Marvel’s runaway success. This movie doesn’t just feature Superman and his super dog, Krypto, but it features every quasi-human superhero member of the Justice League as a diversified ensemble supporting cast—each of them positioned to wind up with one of the “League of Super Pets” as their own pet.

To be fair, I did kind of enjoy this movie, for a while. Some of the humor, and a few of the animal-based puns (love Krypto’s dad, “Dog-El”), actually land. But, the shtick outlasts its welcome, and you feel all the exact same pieces of the “superhero story” clicking right into place. The truth is, DC League of Super Pets is just another superhero movie, just like countless others that came before it. Grafting the tropes onto domesticated animals doesn’t make it any more original.

If anything makes this movie watchable, it’s the voice talent, which is abundant: Dwayne Johnson as Krypto; Kevin Hart as Ace, the invulnerable dog; Vanessa Bayer as PB, the pig who can change her size; Diego Luna as Chip, the electrified squirrel; Natasha Lyonne as Merton, the speedy turtle; Kate McKinnon as Lulu, the villainous guinea pig; John Krasinski as Superman; Keanu Reeves as Batman; Marc Maron as Lex Luthor, of all people—his second major voice role in an animated feature this year (The Bad Guys isn’t exactly a classic either, but it’s a better movie)—and there are plenty more, in many cases recognizable voices in cameo parts. Every person voicing characters in this movie is clearly having a great time, and that alone makes it more fun to watch.

It’s still pretty forgettable once it’s over. DC League of Super Pets is fun while it lasts, but there’s nothing special about it. It’s just another movie that is almost literally paint-by-numbers and will disappear into the outer rims of the zeitgeist once opening weekend has passed.

Maybe if they’re cut enough you’ll be distracted from how stale it gets.

Overall: C+