Top Gun: Maverick

 I have a deep-seated dislike for Top Gun, an extremely '80s movie that's all surfaces and very little else even by '80s standards. Yes, the plane scenes are grand, but they can't make up for the rest of the film. 

 Hot shots! part trois Top Gun: Maverick, its 30-odd-years-apart sequel, is just as cheesy, but it pulls a neat trick by letting Cruise be charming and relaxed, and by not making the whole movie a dick measuring contest between him and his dad and the rest of the planet: it's allowed to be likeable now!

 That's not clear from the start. First impressions are pretty bad, with a lot of aggressive nostalgia-baiting - the music, images and even title fonts are carefully calibrated to give dads the world over a dopamine hit, and an early scene at a bar that introduces this film's roundup of cadets, along with the obligatory love interest is pretty bad.

 But.

 In another early scene where the protagonist is test-driving a bonsai SR71, he goes against orders and does as maverick do not because he wants to wave his willy around - he's taking another hit to his career for the team; He's trying to make it so their project doesn't get canned, thus saving their jobs. That's kind of emblematic of how this picture is different from the 1986 model.

 I mean, he does end up willy-waving in the end and causes the project to fail, but it's played for laughs.

 So yeah, Tom Cruise's character, despite being the absolute best at what he does and always pulling off any supposedly impossible flying feat he puts his mind into, is kind of a fuckup. His career is on the rocks after far too many reckless stunts and some self-sabotage so as to not get saddled with a desk job; It's always perfectly clear he's going to end up earning everyone's admiration by dint of being so fucking awesome, but he makes enough mistakes that it's possible to root for him. Even better, and unlike on the first film, his motivations aren't a mess of selfishness and various insecurities. He at least tries to put other people's interests before his for pretty much the whole movie.

 Even the obligatory love interest is more interesting. Beyond it being the great Jennifer Connelly, there's a sense of shared history now, not just some girl he gets an inappropriate boner for. Their big love scene is actually a conversation in bed.

 

 Back to the plot: his old buddy Iceman gets him to prepare a bunch of young Top Gun graduates for a seemingly suicide mission against a fortified military installation in a carefully unspecified country against a very tight time limit. 

 This leads to a lot of drama, not just from the clashing personalities but because among the young whippersnappers is Rooster (Miles Teller), son of Maverick's old buddy Dead Meat Goose.

 The drama is nothing out of the ordinary, but it's a little bit cleverer and more nuanced that it needs to be (or than it would have been in the hands of Tony Scott). It's very enjoyable. The always welcome John Hamm is there as the authority figure who's always busting Maverick's balls, so that's another plus.

 And the frequent flying scenes are, as advertised, incredible. Everyone's saying that this movie needs to be watched on the biggest screen possible... and yeah, I fully endorse that. It's consistently stunning, all the real hardware and stunts lending a tactility and a sense of weight that's very much appreciated in this age of blue/greenscreen. The sound design is incredible, too. It's unimpeachable as spectacle, expertly delivered, and frequently peppered throughout the movie, and it makes an already very likeable film essential viewing.

 It all ends with a suicide mission into enemy territory that bears so many Star Wars similarities I was  kind of expecting Lord Vader's tie fighter to pop up at some point to shoot at the good guys. It sports some of the most glorious vehicular action since Fury Road (this is not nearly as good as that, but that's absolutely not a knock on its quality). It also starts piling up the cheese in an entertaining fashion, along with script inconsistencies and ridiculous developments. Not that there wasn't any of that going on before, but it really goes into overdrive in the third act.

 And that's ok! It's all earned. This is not a movie that even pretends to try for realism - it operates on a kind of heightened, operatic reality that makes all the cheese easy to forgive. I mean, it's a new Top Gun movie.

 But this time, it's good.

 So do we need to get Friedman and Seltzer to make a shitty parody now? You know, for symmetry?

Nekrotronic

From the first days of humankind, infernal beings have lived among us. Trying to possess us, causing suffering and mayhem and... you know, demons will be demons. They had us against the ropes, a handy animated introduction lore-dump tells us, until some people rose against them and got magical powers and vanished most of them back to hell.

 But some remain among us, both devils and hunters, waging a war unseen that can determine the... whatever and you get it by now. Basically, the plot of every other horror/fantasy nerd-baiting manga/RPG/videogame mediocrity.

 I wish I could say Nekrotronic - Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner's follow up to Wyrmwood - rises above those uninspired origins. And actually I will say it, because that's a pretty low bar to clear. Maybe I'll mumble a little while I say it, though, because it's not great either: It spends too much time setting up a universe that isn't that interesting, throws in a quite a few jokes that don't work, and its low-budget action varies wildly in quality and effectiveness.

 It starts promisingly enough: After the prologue we're introduced to our protagonist Howard (Ben O'Toole), a sewage worker and his buddy Rangi (Epine Bob Savea) - ostensibly a co-worker, but he just stays in the truck playing on his phone all the time. They have a likeable enough chemistry. It's Rangi's game that starts driving the plot, because it (a kind of Pokemon Go with ghosts) is actually part of an evil corporation's plan to use phones to possess people en masse. Oh, and yeah, apparently demons from hell found a way to get into the internet. Which you'd think might be used as commentary, but nope.

 Soon enough those demons enter the picture, leading our protagonists to realize there's a secret world filled with hostile occult forces - something about reality being a sugar-coated topping, etc. etc. While running away, they get rescued by Luther (David Wenham), a guy who kind of looks like Sean Bean and drives around in a high-tech van with his two beautiful daughters (Caroline Ford and Tess Haubrich).

(Spoilers from here on out - you have been warned!)

 Luther does indeed get Sean Beaned, but not before explaining to our intrepid protagonist that the demon hunter powers are hereditary, and he's the son of the demon hunterest demon hunters that ever demon hunted. Oh, and his mom (Monica Bellucci!!) got possessed and is the big bad.
 Howard's buddy is shortly killed but brought back as a ghost who follows everyone around, kind of like a lame, unfunny Griffin Dunne; his main thing is popping up leaning casually at weird angles, something the filmmakers apparently thought was hilarious. I guess Joe Piscopo in Dead Heat is a better comparison.

 Will young Howard master his gifts? Will the prettiest demon hunter daughter inexplicably fall for him in the few hours they have together? Well, yeah, duh. But what is pretty unexpected is that along the way Howard fucks up, repeatedly, to a degree that these movies seldom have the balls to pursue. Sure, it makes it that much harder to buy him as a hero (or to understand why two certified, experienced badasses would come to like him or even put up with him) but it offers up some really funny moments in a movie that mostly flubs it jokes.

 It's an action/horror/comedy hybrid with just a few laughs and no scares, so the action has to pick up the slack. And it does, kind of, in a very low-key, low-budget way. Despite a few exposition dumps, the script keeps things more or less lively. Visually, I liked the designs. There's not a lot of elaborate stuff, not with the budget the filmmakers were working with, but some of them are pretty out there:

Pretty metal, right? Or at least very Doom.

 The whole film's deal is a mix between demons and technology, and it does ok on that front. The effects are a mix of practical and digital with, well, mixed but mostly likeable results. There's some shootouts, some cool ghosts, a lot of energy attacks and wavy power lines coming out of hands. It won't blow anyone away, but there's an energy to it I kind of enjoyed, at least when the filmmakers weren't shaking the camera for (shitty) effect.

 So definitely not a great movie, and maybe not one I'd recommend, but... I don't know, it's kind of fun. It's silly, overstuffed, buys into its own mythos with way too much enthusiasm, and honestly it's just kind of a mess overall, but I found it enjoyable. It's similar to Wyrmwood, but where that film's oddball ideas mostly worked, the ones here mostly don't.

Thanos is a fucking moron and how the hell are people not talking about how stupid his whole deal is?

So - I  thought I'd posted this already, but apparently I didn't. Rant ahoy!

 Oh, Thanos. You purple moron.

 You're a con, pure bullshit. An established, overwhelming threat for so many movies. All your appearances used framing and cinematic language to double down on how tragic/awesome/dangerous you were supposed to be. And they got Josh Fucking Brolin to play you - that's a personality injection right there, and does wonders for your credibility.

 Which is useful because we never really get a good sense of who you are or why you do it, just some vague bullshit about balance and a wiff of a tragic backstory. We just know you by what you're trying to achieve, and how far you go to achieve it.

 So... let's talk about that - your plan, ok? Your genius plan.

 Your great work, for which you sacrificed so much, in which you used up the mcguffins seeded across several different films. Even if those pesky superheroes hadn't interfered, It wouldn't have lasted, you fucking idiot. A generation or two, tops. A blink in history, an infinitesimally small blip in geological terms, nothing on a cosmic scale.

 I guess being an alien, no one bothered explaining this to you, but as LaTour discovered back in the early 90's, people really like fucking. Although maybe you should know this, since Marvel seems to operate under Star Trek rules and aliens are just different colored people. Anyhow. Depopulations are followed by population booms. You know, as in baby boomers. People are just going to get it on more.

 So, you didn't foresee this? OK, fair enough, you're insane or delusional to a degree that would actually affect your basic reasoning, though you're never really portrayed that way. But none of the superheroes, some of which are supposed to be pretty smart cookies (despite all evidence to the contrary presented in the events of Avengers: Civil War). They never mention this, or call you out on it? Even when they can't stop quipping about whatever other bullshit crosses their minds?

 Bull. Shit.

 That's even before looking at how you actually went about doing it. You expended the stones to wish, if I understand it correctly, fifty percent of all life, determined at random, gone. Turned to dust.
 Let's assume this 50% took place within each species. This includes animals, because that's how they figure out things are fixed in Endgame, right?

 Let's also assume this includes rock-based beings, microbes, and other life forms, because this is Marvel, and there are Korgs and I'm sure nano-lifeforms too.

 We're talking mass extinctions, multiple. Ecosystems will collapse as they suddenly find they no longer have a viable local population.

 OK, OK. Let's say that the wish somehow keeps things so that the missing 50% has an even geographical and gender distribution, and most populations can hang on after such a drop. In for a penny and all that, it's a reasonable suspension of disbelief request for a superhero movie. Let's not go completely hard sci-fi on this shit.

 Still. You got free rein to rewrite the script for reality as it happens with a collection of artifacts with poorly-defined abilities... (incidentally: face it, dude, if you had any smarts at all, no superhero would have even got close to you once you collected half of them). And yet you barely used them except in the most brute force of ways, because... damn the scripts for these movies are so fucking dumb. These fucking Russos.

 Anyhow, this is the best you could come up with. This is the masterplan it took you however many MCU movies to build up to.

 Wiping both 50% of life in the universe, and 50% of the biological resources they consume, which is bound to be the biggest part of any given lifeform's consumer footprint.

 That's not bringing balance, dumbass. You're basically keeping the same ratios; It's just an exercise in futility. 

 Still, we get that shot of you looking satisfied with your job:

Magic hour lighting, Josh Brolin, an idyllic background, and a pose that says "I'm a tough antihero who just pulled off something amazing." Nope! You're just a fucking moron and you didn't do shit.

 You fucking idiot.

 You could have played with reproduction rates to force sustainable populations. If you have a boner for murder, you could have done what you did, but have said "50% of intelligent life to be culled every x amount of time ad infinitum (Mass-Effect style)." You could have made resources self-replenishing, but I guess that wouldn't be evil. Any mix of these would have at least made your wish consistent with what  you wanted, and some of them would have worked, kinda.

 Or you could have wiped out all life, started again from scratch; you know, proper supervillain shit, not this half-assed idiocy.

 I mean, I'm not an immortal, god-level intelligence (yet!) and I thought of most of these as I was watching these fucking movies. Just saying. Not that I'm smart, I'm saying that you're dumb; I'm explaining that because I think you're dumb.

 

 But I guess any of these options would preclude a hilariously maudlin scene where Spidey slowly pops out of existence in slow motion at the most melodramatic possible moment, in the most melodramatic way possible. (I'm so glad I didn't watch this at the cinema, because that scene made me laugh out really, really loud.)

 I guess it's kind of pointless to try to get through to you, though. I mean, you did think it was a perfectly good idea to do the whole 50% genocide thing in an analog fashion before you got the stones.

 Going planet by planet, taking a force big enough to conquer entire populations and handle the ensuing genocide, killing half of everything, I guess? Let's be charitable and say you only killed sentients, though I wouldn't be surprised if there's an extra somewhere in the Infinity War blu-ray showing your troops shooting down alien bunnies and centipedes and trees on whatever planet it is they show you killing off half of the population. Or actually, it would be surprised- that'd take way more consistency and thinking than I'm willing to credit the writers of these movies with.

 If you'd been doing that for a while (and I can only imagine how long it would take to organize random mass-murder on a planetary scale, even if after a couple of planets you had evolved an efficient industry around it that would have given the Nazi higher-ups raging murderboners) - as I was saying, if you'd been doing that for a while, it'd be easy to see just how unsuccessful your plan was, just go back to one of your previous stops. See how they're repopulating.

 Just something for your science team to bring up at some point. Bet that'd be a fun meeting.

  Anyhow. You did this all by hand, went artisanal with your depopulation plans for however many worlds. What's the carbon footprint of your genocidal spree, Mr. Balance? No suspension of disbelief is ever going to make this shit even remotely work - not even in a world where space travel is cheap and instantaneous, or where people shoot lasers out of their arse because they were bitten by a rabid unicorn.

 Based on the fact you considered that a valid use of your time, your (mis-)use of the infinity stones is perfectly in-character, I guess.

 Maybe you're just a genocidal maniac who doesn't really care about the sustainability, effectiveness, or even common sense of  your plan. You're just straight up insane, and shoot any underling who questions you.

 That's actually a fun take! I'd be completely on board with that, and it would make for a fun running gag as the avengers or whatever bring it up repeatedly. Except, no, that doesn't happen. The films, and the universe within them, completely buy into your bullshit. Because... well, let's not pretend the non-Thanos elements are worth a turrd-embedded peanut in any of the Russo films. They manage to cram a whole lot of heroes together, and that's their mission accomplished - logic, sense or narrative be damned. These movies run off excel sheets, not scripts.

 Disney's banking on viewers having invested enough into these characters or the MCU itself, to find enough goodwill to overlook these things.

 And lots of these things there are, but still lots of money these movies made, and almost universally beloved they are. So... good job, I guess? God I hate this universe so much it's made me speak like Yoda.

 I once played in a D&D game (I know, I know. Neeeerd! Shut up, you comic book character) where one of the players, after being injected with poison, made the following wish: "I wish all the liquid was taken out of my body, and deposited right there (pointing to a spot by his side.)

 So, shockingly enough, yours isn't the most obviously dumb use of a wish I've ever heard. It also gets at least some points for ambition. Dumb, dumb ambition.

 But you don't fool me, Thanos. I'm not drinking the purple kool-aid. You are a fucking moron and shame on anyone that posits you as a proper - or even marginally acceptable - villain.

 It's almost as if you were just a plot necessity, a poorly made hook to hang a creaking, tangled mess of just as dumb plotlines on.

 Fuck you and the fucking stupid movies you rode in on.

The Sadness (Ku bei)

 The Sadness is a new zombie (or more appropriately, a rage virus) Taiwanese movie. It's also a type of film I haven't seen in a while - a gorehound endurance test, an extreme-horror assault on good taste that riffs on George Romero's The Crazies, but focuses and revels in horrific violence to the exclusion of almost everything else.

 The story follows a young couple, Kat (Regina Lei) and Jim (Berant Zhu), who are separated and try to find each other in the midst of the outbreak of a pandemic that turns people into violent, rapey fast zombies. After some establishing scenes, the movie kicks into high gear when a morning commute turns bloody:

Mind the wet floors.

 It's a genuinely disturbing, well-made scene, especially in the opening stages, with a single, knife-wielding nutjob stabbing his way through a crowd. When it gets going, his movie does not fuck around, and set-pieces like these make it more than worthwhile.

 But... well, it doesn't get going for a while, and when it does it's a bit stop-start. While the part of the movie that focuses on Kat is a relentless, tense series of chases, it frequently cuts back to her boyfriend Jim, who spends most of the movie trying to track her down. The pacing feels a little off, with some episodic encounters that keep deflating the nervous energy the movie had managed to build up. The whole story develops much as you'd expect, with a few elements that have been done to undeath elsewhere in the zombie space.

 It also ends up being a bit shallow, despite flirting with commentary a couple of times. In that early subway scene, before it turns into a bloodbath, Kat is harassed by a creep (Tzu-Chiang Wang) who then acts like an entitled little shit when he's rebuffed; He gets infected and turned into a literal fucking monster that stalks her throughout the rest of the movie. Seriously, fuck that dude. He makes for an effective, hateable villain, but the movie seems to be a bit too much on his wavelength, which is unfortunate in a movie that reserves its most horrifying tortures for helpless women. To be clear, the movie is not team #rapezombie, but its dour tone makes it a bit harder to watch than I'd personally prefer.

 Contributing to that: the film also devotes some time to a few infected doing some anime-style shallow philosophizing on how good doing bad things feels. They never strike upon anything interesting, just juvenile word-wankery. It's like the makers of this movie were aware zombies are often used as metaphors, but didn't really have an interesting metaphor of their own.

 It's a very well-directed, well acted, and technically well-crafted movie; There's lots of bloody mayhem, and the gore is appropriately gruesome and excellently realized. A really promising start for writer/director Rob Jabbaz.

Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings

 The Detective Dee series is a weird and interesting one. It's basically Sherlock Holmes done as wuxia, in the form of action movies with a lot of spectacle. Because they take place in a heightened Chinese magical past, it's tough to work out the internal logic, which is important if the main character is a detective. Gravity is optional, giant animals abound and some minor (mostly Buddhist) forms of magic seem to work, but when a storm is summoned in a room it's down to hypnotism and 'machine parlor tricks.'

 The first film did a better job of being a detective story, while the sequel leaned into the more extravagant elements; With this one it's best not to expect too much logic and deduction, and just go with it; It's a fun ride.

 This third installment starts out with Mr. Dee saddled with a powerful weapon which makes the empress jealous; she goes out and gets a few sorcerers to get back at him, turns his best friend against him, and then things turn out to be more complicated

 I'm relatively ignorant with respect to Chinese films, but there seem to be two broad types of historical/martial arts films - Wuxia, more grounded, fights-based films (which I expect is what most of us think when we talk about these things - it's the type of film I'm more familiar with from when I was a kid) and Xianxia, special effects extravaganzas that focus on spectacle (Chinese Ghost Story, Warriors of Zu.)

 I far prefer the first camp, especially since CGI has replaced a lot of the practical effects I enjoy in the second one. Four Heavenly Kings falls firmly in the second category, despite it being set in 'reality' as opposed to a mythological realm, with CGI that ranges from just bad, to so bad it's good, to bad but cool, to actually this is pretty cool- but it's directed by the great Tsui Hark, so it's filled with neat visual ideas and a lot of energetic filmmaking. My particular favorite is a chase with a flying Nazgul trio who proceed to Voltron into a bigger threat:

And every so often there'll be some incredible set or costume. I mean, look at this!

 Unfortunately, beyond the terrible acting and unfunny broad humor that are endemic to these films, the script lets the film down.  I just didn't find it engaging - a lot of scenes which could be taken out with no impact, and a cool story tangled up in bad storytelling. It also has genuinely awesome fight sequences devolve into bad CGI clashing into other bad CGI in garish ways. 

 Detective Dee remains a pretty boring character, one of those uncorruptible, infallible types who seem to have already read the script so they're three steps ahead of everyone else. Apparently acknowledging this the movie focuses on Yuchi -Dee's best friend turned reluctant betrayer- who's a more interesting, conflicted dude, and more importantly his acting style consists mostly of staring at things as if he was willing them to explode with the power of his mind:

 The rest of the cast includes some fun villains and Dee's underlings in the bureau of investigation, who mostly are of the unfunny comedy sidekick variety. The movie also introduces Moon Water, one of the bad guys who later turns coats; She's the one that gets the chase scene with the Voltron Nazguls. Unfortunately she also has to endure a cringeworthy 'sexy' scene with one of the underlings, but seems like a cool character. Maybe the next Dee adventure will find a better use for her.

 Nothing you wouldn't expect from this type of movie, then. Still, though it's uneven as hell it achieves the most important things I wanted from it: it showed me cool shit I hadn't seen before, it was entertaining, and it managed more than a few good-looking scenes. To be brutally honest, I had to skip  through some of the boring bits, but I'd still recommend it if you like this sort of thing.

The Superhero movie rant

 Here's my hot take on Marvel movies: I really like some of them and I really dislike others. On average they're pleasant timewasters. Edgy!

 They've achieved some sort of miracle formula with their character writing and casting that makes them way better than they have any right to be. And the ambition of the unified thing is kind of amazing, in a depressing way. Unfortunately their scripts, villains and plotting usually let them down, so there's a familiar arc to them where they're a lot of fun to for the first act and get duller as they go along and the life gets sucked out of them by plot needs. It's on full display in Iron Man, and it's happened again and again. More likely than not it isn't enough to dislike them, but it's disappointing.

 Beyond that they're often lightweight, childish, vapid and weightless. Smothered under committee decisions and corporate goals which make them extremely samey; But despite all that,  they're fun to various degrees, mostly.
 A lot has been made of them being more roller coasters than 'film' films, but there's a place for that, and I like me some well-made roller coasters. Also, every now and then they put out a genuinely good film. It's easy to say oh, that's down to Taika Waititi, or Shane Black or whomever... but the best  (in-house MCU) film by far was by Scott Derrickson, whom I like but is no auteur.  (yeah, Sinister was scarier than most horror movies, but ended up being mostly OK.)

 If I'm to be honest I kind of prefer the DC movies - not the Zak Snyder ones, hell no: they're some of the most joyless, dumb dumb DUMB shit I've ever seen. But other than those the folks at Warner seem happier with each of their movies being way more unique, giving them a lot more personality. Less of a sense of corporate oversight. I'm a big fan of Aquaman (probably the best 80's nostalgia world-trotting adventure-type film made outside of the 80's), Shazam and especially the great Suicide Squad. They show much more range than Marvel's 'let's pay some lip service to a different genre to give our superhero formula a little bit of flavor' philosophy.

 So that's the good. And a lot of the bad, because I can't be nice and just compliment things unequivocally, and also because I use this blog to vent. My main problem with all but a few of the MCU films is that they're ostensibly action spectacle movies, but both the action and the spectacle are almost always mediocre. Even when what's happening is interesting or cool, it's either poorly edited or shot in a pedestrian, boring way. The one thing they consistently nail is comedy- So it's better to consider them action comedies, which makes them go down easier because outside of Asian films the action in that genre is almost universally mediocre.

 When I don't like them, it's because they focus on plot. Yeah, that's the point I'm (slowly, verbosely) working my way to.

 Force me to be objective and I'd have to say the worst one of the lot is probably Iron Man 2, because that's the one they chose to sacrifice to get the MCU going. That's ok, they're allowed to screw up every now and then, they were working out the kinks of their masterplan to franchise the everloving fuck out of these things. I honestly can't work myself up too much about it, because it's less than two hours long; things can get so much worse.

 No, It's the Russo Brothers films that I reserve my pure undiluted hatred for - Civil War and the last two Avengers. I won't say they're the worst superhero movies I've ever seen, because Glass is a thing that exists. Not even the worst mega-budget superhero movies, because Batman Vs Superman conveniently came out to show everyone just how motherfucking joyless a superhero film could be. Still, the Russo crapfests drained a dozen hours (triple that in subjective time) of my life, so I might as well shit-post about them.

 They're a relentless cavalcade of contrivances, cheap manipulation, hollow character moments, Marvel house style action (IE: crap), artlessly inconsistent tone, bullshit twists and so much sheer dumbness  thrown at your eyeballs in the hope it'll slip by quickly enough that you don't notice before they assault you with the next ludicrous event and I have no idea why people like these things. I mean, I'm used to being out of sync with what most other people enjoy, but I can usually see and often appreciate why they do enjoy it. In this case, beyond attachment to the characters, I've got nothing. These are (to me, obviously) transparently cynical, bullshit films and I just can't fathom why anyone would like them.

 And they color the ones I liked retroactively! I am way less interested in any sequels to Thor, even with Waititi signed on, after despising every scene the character is in on either of the last two movies. I'm supremely uninterested in whatever complications the idiotic twists in Endgame introduce to the inevitable Guardians of the Galaxy sequel. The best Marvel movies are by far the ones that act like the MCU doesn't exist, but now there's the spectre of the next crossover event looming over any future Marvel flick. Screw that noise.

What's that, they're making a Dr. Strange sequel? With Sam fucking Raimi at the wheel? Oh... wow. Sure, OK, I'm excited.

And now without further ado: A list of all Superhero movies, ranked by objective* quality category!

*: May be subjective.

Excellent:

Spiderman - into the Multiverse (put me against the wall, and this is the one I'd pick at no.1)
Dr. Strange
Batman 2 (Tim Burton)
Suicide Squad (2021)
Unbreakable
Aquaman

Good:

Thor Ragnarok
Guardians of the Galaxy
Iron Man 3 (would be excellent, but it's got too much fluff...)
Shazam
Logan (would be excellent, if not for an extremely weak third act.)
Deadpool 2
Birds of Prey
Blade 2
Superman (the OG one)
Superman 2 (The OG really good, proper DC superhero movie)
X-men 2
Shang-Chi (Possibly excellent, if they had kept it a martial arts movie instead of the shitty final fight against Cthulhus)
Batman (Tim Burton)
The Dark Knight
Pootie Tang
Avengers 1
Spiderman (the OG really good, proper Marvel superhero movie)
Spiderman 2 (should also probably go under excellent)
Spiderman - Far from Home (dumb but fun)
Spiderman - No Way Home 
The Wolverine
Howard the Duck (I last saw it when I was ten, and I won't hear your horrible lies about it!)
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (debating whether to place it here or under OK, but its earnestness won me over.)

OK:

Iron Man
Lego Batman (fun, but the least good of the big screen lego movies.)
Spiderman - homecoming
Thor 1 & 2 (I know, I know, but I didn't hate the sequel... what can I say?)
Thor Fhor
Dr Strange 2 (big, big disappointment, but worth it for some good scenes.)
Captain America 1
Avengers 2 (I suspect I'd file it under bad if I saw it again these days)
X-men
Blade. (Snipe's sheer awesomeness as Blade would rate as excellent; unfortunately, I don't like the movie around him.)
Watchmen
Batman Begins (Great, right up to when he dresses as Batman.)
Ant-Man (would be bad, but it's extremely charming until the plot kicks in.)
Captain Marvel
Deadpool (Sorry! You can't have your cake and eat it, chum; you can't be an irreverent parody and a cookie-cutter template superhero origin story. Other than that, good job!)
Wonder Woman (it peaks halfway; it's all downhill from there.)
Wonder Woman 1984 (somewhere between OK and bad. It's got a LOT of problems, but it's a noble failure.)

Bad:

Iron Man 2
Captain America 2 (gets by on goodwill for a while, but is brought down by its plot and terrible action much harder than usual for Marvel.)
Incredible Hulk
X-men 3 and the rest.
Blade 3 (No amount of Snipe is going to compensate for this bad a film)
Black Panther (I get its cultural significance and I'm happy it was hugely successful. But it's got bad action, even for Marvel, severe pacing issues, and honestly besides the wardrobe and some really charismatic performances - a huge asset, to be sure... I couldn't find anything to like here.)
Dark Knight Rises
Superman Returns
Superman 3 & 4 ('80s) (Poor Richard Pryor.)
Eternals
Superman (Zak Snyder)
Suicide Squad 2016
Daredevil
Spawn
Batman with nipples 1 & 2
Electra (at least it had more fun than Daredevil.)
Ghost Rider (for fuck's sake, why would you give an action movie to these two guys? Never watched the sequel)
The Garfield Spidermans

THE FUCKING WORST:

Civil War (AKA: Everyone be dumbing around! Except the bad guy, he's friends with the scriptwriters.)
Avengers Infinity (more like infinite, amirite?) War
Avengers Endgame (The best of the three. That's extremely low praise.)
Batman Vs Superman (Why the HELL did I even watch this? WHY?)
Glass

 That's... a lot of films. I'm not going to do the math, but more than half of them are at least OK. Not bad for not-real-cinema, huh? The one conclusion I think we can all draw is that if the Winter Soldier is in any movie, even mentioned in passing, it's going to suck ass with a straw.

 I got bored with the list half way, so there you go. I put up most of the big ones I've seen; If you want to know how Dolph Lundgreen's Punisher ranks up there, smash that subscribe button, like my channel, sacrifice your firstborn for my patreon and maybe I'll be arsed. Or not.

 So I've ranked a bunch of widely-beloved movies that have made more money than I can imagine below Superman IV: Quest for Peace or the Batman sequels that became a cultural punching bag pretty much the instant they were released. I realize how ridiculous that looks. But I honestly think they are worse. All those movies I listed under Bad (and some of them are really, really bad)… I rolled my eyes at them, laughed at them, made fun of them. But I don't regret watching them that much, and some of them I found interesting for some reason or another.
 The Avengers movies, though, they got a visceral reaction pretty much from the get-go. Why? The action is bad, but it's not illegible like on the Ghost Riders, and plenty of other Marvel films I do like have uninteresting visuals (helloooo phase 1!)
 Why I feel these films' scripts insulted my intelligence while I pretty much forgot all about Amazing Spiderman 2 or Spawn the minute they ended, I don't know.

 Tone is a huge problem, sure - portentous and apocalyptic, but borderline anxious to wink at the audience and assure them that they're still watching a breezy entertainment. Annoyingly Ingratiating. Everything feels arbitrary, calculated, contrived. Their pacing is a complete wreck - they're the busiest boring movies I've seen... They last forever. And yeah, part of it must be a reaction to how much other people like them, I guess; not in a "Haha, let's be contrarian" way, I hope, but more a "What the actual fuck?"
 I've read a lot of people defending these things, looking for a way to at least appreciate what they're doing - but beyond the (pretty impressive) feat of mashing together so many characters and storylines into a... barely cohesive tangle of bad scripting (a feat that I'd argue wasn't worth doing), I can't see anything to latch onto. Man, I kind of feel bad - contrary to what it may seem, I don't like shitting on things others genuinely like; But these are not films I can say "Eh, they're not for me." I can't see them as anything else but objectively shit films disguised by their level of budget and competent craftmanship, and buoyed by the many, much much better films that came before them. I think I barely ever say anything is 'objectively bad', at least I barely ever mean it, no matter how much I might put a movie down. We'll see how time treats them, but I'm sure as hell never watching them again. Once is once more than enough.

 Coming up next: Thanos is a fucking moron and how the hell are people not talking about how stupid his whole deal is? Wake up, sheeple!

Pop Music

 I grew apart from pop music in the early nineties. Just lost interest in it; nothing in the mainstream appealed much to me, and I didn't manage to find what interesting music there was. A circuitous route led me from The Jesus and Mary Chain to punk and heavy metal, and that was pretty much it; with a few exceptions, like Radiohead, The Wedding Present or the Foo Fighters, I pretty much gave up on pop music and dedicated myself to the heavier stuff. I'd still identify myself as mostly a heavy metal listener, though I'm not sure it's true anymore.
 The thing is, in the early '00s I ran across the AV club website. I mostly followed them for their movie coverage, but some of the bands they covered sounded interesting. This led me to download Death Cab for Cutie's We have the Facts and we're Voting Yes, and to indie pop.

 Living in Argentina, I'd never been exposed to any of these bands - from what I could tell from the outside, most of the music I was discovering was 'hipster' music (a label I've never really understood, at least when applied to very accessible, poppy music - guilt by association, I guess). In any case, I was excited to find that I'd discarded a whole genre as prematurely dead, and managed to miss a huge number of artists who were making the sort of pop music I liked.

 I've been trying to put together a list of pop music recommendations for my sister (she asked me a few years back, but what can I say? I'm lazy). So here it goes. I'll limit this post to relatively new stuff - hopefully later I'll work my way through older stuff. I'm also sticking to the sunnier end of the pop spectrum for now, since I know that's what my sister prefers. I've included a ton of songs as links below, one per word.


 Let's start with Death Cab for Cutie, then; good time for it, since their latest CD -Codes & Keys- is excellent. Here are a couple of songs from it. Their older stuff varies, but my favorite CD of theirs is Transatlanticism.

Cloud Cult is a weird one; if I had to put a genre on it, I'd call it electro-hippy pop. Still, there's no arguing with a song as beautiful as this. The rest of that CD - Feel Good Ghosts - is pretty great, too.

 Pop doesn't come any sunnier - and guilty pleasures any guiltier - than Jimmy Eats World. You've heard them, even if you don't know them by name. They've written a lot of pop gems over the years; their best CD is Clarity, but their catchiest songs are either on Bleed American or Invented. Warning - do not listen to if you're allergic to cheese. Your credibility may be impacted if you admit to liking this band. Do not, under any circumstances, pay attention to the lyrics.

Nada Surf is another great pure pop band. Here's a few songs to try; please don't pay attention to their lyrics, they're pretty terrible. Let Go is probably the best place to start, but Lucky or The Weight is a Gift are pretty good too.

Stacey's Mom is a kind of terrible gimmick song which Fountains of Wayne will probably never live down. Look past that, however, and you'll find a really good power-pop band with impeccable songwriting and some very funny, incisive lyrics. Check this out, or this, or this. Welcome Internet Managers is the CD to get. Warning: it contains Stacey's Mom.

 In a perfect world, Shearwater would be huge. The whole of their last CD, Animal Joy, is essential - and Animal Life is probably the best single pop song I've heard this year. It's one of my favorite bands, and they've remained amazingly good throughout the years.

 Regina Spektor is a lot of fun - her first two CDs, Soviet Kitch and Begin to hope are both great - The first skews weirder, and the second has catchier songs. Us is probably her best song, but she's got plenty of great stuff.

 Andrew Bird's been around for ages, and he's put out some really great music in that time. Armchair Apocrypha and The Mysterious Production of Eggs are the ones to get.

 The National's Boxer is highly recommended. Here are a couple of standouts.

 There's no arguing with The Arcade Fire's Rebellion - a track so great I'd still consider the band great even if everything else they ever put out was shit. Good thing the rest of their stuff holds up pretty well. Of their CDs, I'm partial to Funeral, but the rest have good songs too.

 I'm not a huge fan of 80's revival bands - The Killers and Film School, for example, leave me cold. But The Editors, for one CD at least, hit it out of the park; An End has a Start has these two songs.

 Bloc Party have made two really great albums (Silent Alarm and Weekend in the City), and another one that's still pretty good but comes front-loaded with some truly horrible songs. Here's some of their stuff.

 And now, for the Scottish. Frightened Rabbit make some lovely music - a good place to start would be their Midnight organ fight CD; it's got gems like this, or this.

 Malcolm Middleton is a particular favorite, though he's definitely an acquired taste - I can't think of many musicians who write pop as acid as his; try A Brighter Beat and work your way from there if you like it; its first three songs are unbeatable.

 Finally, a band I was introduced to fairly recently - Vast. Both Nude and April are really great, chock-full of great songs. I'm really not sure why this band isn't a lot bigger.

 And that should be enough for a while!

28 Weeks Later

28 weeks after the beginning of 28 days later (which would make it 224 days after the first infection, but that just isn’t as catchy enough a title) all the zombies- ehr, infected- have starved and died out. A repopulation effort begins, spearheaded by the US military, in a cordoned-off area of London. Of course, it goes to hit and the infection starts up again and you get hordes of infected running around acting all spooky and feral and eating non-infected repatriates and soldiers alike, and a small group of people band up to survive both them and the US military, who are trying to contain the spread of the infection.
Extremely visceral and surprisingly intelligent, I have to admit I liked this movie much better than I liked the first part (which I liked a great deal). It goes out in all sort of random, wonderfully unexpected ways; the characters, while stereotypical, have unexpected reactions which make them feel very well rounded out and involving; it’s got flat out great action scenes which don’t work against the horror and suspense, and it’s the rare kind of horror movie that actually works for its scares. Oh, it sneaks in some biting political commentary, and the gore is pretty magnificent.
And yes, most of the action scenes are muddied up with trendy, overly jumpy editing. And you could say the three standout scenes are a bit derivative, (the best scene, and first runner up for Best. Use. Of. Helicopter. Ever., was used in a throwaway line in the book World War Z, and the other two are a bit too close to Creep and The Descent for comfort), and that the script has a few holes here and there. (Nothing major, though) But it’s still a thrill to see a movie that not only uses something a bit more elaborate than the cheap shocks and gross-outs most horror movies these days manage, but isn’t afraid to evoke grander things- be it as large as parallels with a certain current middle eastern conflict, or as small and intimate as the way guilt makes us desire to violently put out an accusing stare- even after we’ve been undeservedly forgiven.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Dead Man’s chest came out while this blog was on hiatus, so let’s get it out of the way: it was one of the best movies last year. Incredibly fun, imaginative, smart and perversely unpredictable, it also had that elusive quality movie theorists like to call balls – making it all the more unbelievable it had come from the toxic bowels of both Disney and Jerry Bruckenheimer. It was shot concurrently with the third part of the (so far) trilogy, and has spent most of the year since in post production. (Judging by the end product, the script was written during that time too, but more on that later)

So it’s fair to say my expectations ran very high, especially after watching the excellent trailer (a cannon fight OVER A FUCKING MAELSTROM- holy fucking shit!) It’s also fair to say the final film not only didn’t live up to its promise, it’s also a crap movie on its own right. Messy and lackluster in almost every respect, it manages to miss everything the previous installments nailed just right, and indulges in their worst excesses.

The plot, such as it is, follows the rescue of Jack Sparrow from the land of the dead (or Davey Jones locker), pirate politics, and the subsequent showdown between pirates and the forces of modernism and civilization. It also tries, but not too hard, to tie up the impossibly high number of loose ends from Dead Man’s Chest. Sounds exiting, right? Well, looks like it didn’t to anyone involved, so they spent more time thinking up wacky stuff for Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow than developing the script.
I mean hell, I like Jack Sparrow as much as anyone else- his first entry in Pirates of the Caribbean is probably the best character introductions since the Dude Lebowski - but it was always understood that it needed to be dosed carefully… well, until this film, that is. They’ve got Geoffrey Rush as Barbossa – a great character that could easily drive the whole movie if they needed a main character, (and remember Dead Man's Chest didn't, through skillful storyline juggling) but he’s relegated here to be the straight man for gags that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out were improvised by a stoned Johnny Depp. And when he’s not providing angry reaction shots, he’s spewing important-sounding bullshit to cover up for plot holes. Actually, that describes most of the dialog in the movie. But it’s that kind of careless pandering to audiences that sinks the flick; save for the first few minutes it feels, and this wasn't the case in any of its prequels, like Disney and Bruckenheimer had an active voice in it. It feels like a committee movie.

So we get an overdose of all things Sparrow, but unfunny. We get lame slapstick and gags that are taken just a bit too long- Just count the number of animal reaction shots or cutesy gimmicks like Jack’s father. We also get characters we couldn’t give a shit about and major plot elements that are pulled out of nowhere (and that are dropped before they go anywhere) – and that might be the most puzzling thing in this movie; I mean, I could understand it on the second one, it was a sequel to a movie that didn’t really leave room for one, but for fuck’s sake- these last two were written at the same time! A couple of major plot lines not only don’t really make sense, they also turn out to be completely unnecessary and are forgotten and left unresolved halfway through. And forget about character attachment- they are either too busy explaining the plot dramatically enough to fool people, or making decisions which are so random one wonders if they’re not rolling dice to see what they do next.

What the hell happened? I can take a couple of guesses. Dead Man’s chest began with a crow pecking out a corpse’s eyes, and it’s a smart, complex film. I can see how that would give a Disney exec a heart attack, and lead to the studio forcing their standards on Verbinski and the scriptwriters to make this piece of shit under legal threat.
Time is also undoubtedly a factor here- either all the good stuff was left on Dead Man’s Chest, or the two-films at a time thing was all a hoax and this movie was indeed written and made in this last year or so. I could also blame CGI, I dunno. (It would explain Orlando bloom, at least…)
Finally, it could be that Verbinski and Co. fucked up. It could happen.

There are some saving graces to the movie. It’s telling it has striking images which display an incredible visual imagination. (Which I’d attribute to Verbinski; most of them are shamefully squandered in the trailer) It’s also worth noting that unlike in the previous two installments, where a sequence would start being amazing and end up being stunning through unexpected developments and wit, here they fall through almost instantaneously without a script to prop them up.
I also liked that a theme running subtly through the previous movie was picked up and pushed to the forefront- that the positive aspects of piracy, the freedom, mysteriousness and adventure of it are only possible at the fringes of civilization; it’s hammered home too soon, too often and too obviously, and it’s also lifted directly from some of the best westerns, but hey- I still like it.
And whoever thought of the whole worthless oriental angle (poor Chow Yun Fat is woefully underused- this movie demanded full on wuxia action, dammit!) still deserves a raise, simply because it allowed them to cram Keira Knightley into all sorts of tight oriental costumes.

But yeah, all in all, it sucks pretty bad.

The DaVinci Code

Against all my instincts and better judgment, I finally caved in and went to see the bad boy of religious thriller adaptations. Expectations were about as low as expectations can get, but holy shit- The flick still fell well beneath them. Pretentious, dull, stupid and contrived, it doesn’t even do right by the conspiracy theories that it plunders shamelessly to use in its unimaginative pastiche.

Tom Hanks stars as a scholar specializing in symbols who gets caught up in the titular code, a series of puzzles and plot contrivances that point to forbidden knowledge that theoretically could shake the foundations of organized religion. Soon he’s running for his life with a cop, (the beautiful Audrey Tatou) dodging a deranged killer albino monk (no, it’s not as good as it sounds) and a driven French police chief. Shadowy plots, unbelievable coincidences and ludicrous plot twists- plausibility is lost without a trace close to the beginning, and never even threatens with a comeback.
At least it solves the age old problem of translating an exposition-heavy book to the big screen. You have people talk about what’s happening at the slightest chance! All the time! You cut that with stupid action sequences, and then start again. (To be honest, I think that’s an inherited problem with the book, but since I haven’t read it I won’t go into that). Still, you’d think that the director of the beautifully brutal, laconic The Missing would have known that it was a bad idea. There are no characters, only exposition pieces- events don’t happen because they make sense, they serve to propel the characters to the next shitty revelation so that they can then narrate it in excruciating detail. This comes to a head in a hilariously ridiculous bad guy monologue that would put any Bond Villain to shame.
The film also shows off at every chance an undeservedly (and unnecessarily) high budget; in an attempt to make all the exposition more palatable to the audience it obviously considers only marginally more cogent than slugs, every exposition piece inevitably turns into a CGI bonanza.

All for what? Is the final revelation worth it all? Was Jesus gay? What the fuck is it that has the whole religious community in an uproar?
The revelation, when it comes, is underwhelming- least of all because if you know anything about conspiracy theories, you already know all about it (and probably more than Dan Brown). But beyond that, it’s just a different shade the official story, superstitious as the original. Not even a gesture at challenging the status quo (at least, not a significant effort by this century’s standards). Enough to get idiots who actually believe in the sanctity of these fairy tales all riled up, but frankly, it’s not even worth spoiling.

Coffee and cigarettes

A collection of shorts shot over a long period of time, Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and cigarettes explores how different people interact in any social situation where, well, coffee and cigarettes are the centerpiece of the table.
It's terribly uneven, as it might be expected; sometimes the acting is atrocious, some of the dialogs feel forced (all risks of heavy improvisation), and by the middle of the movie one's tempted to fast forward a chapter or two. But most of the shorts are at least worth watching, and all but a couple ring uncomfortably true. There are at least half a dozen absolutely brilliant segments to be found.

The way uncomfortable situations are portrayed is excellent- both funny and chilling; Iggy Pop and Tom Waits meet up, expecting to find common ground in the fact that they're both rock icons (they don't, sort of); Two friends find there might be a bit more distance than they suspected between them in the excellent "No Problem"; Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina, in possibly the best short, overturn each other's expectations. Kate Blanchett plays herself and her cousin, in which recriminations are half-uttered and go unresolved in a very realistic way. There are also some fun, silly bits- the White Stripes test a Tesla coil, Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni exchange a dentist appointment, and two members of the Wu-Tang Clan run into Bill Murray disguised as a waiter. By last third of the film, patterns have begun to emerge; snatches of conversation are repeated, and concepts are rehashed. There's no revelation, no eureka moment, but by the time two weary old men try to stretch out a smoke break and one of them begins finding something important in idle conversation, the emotional impact is deep and undeniable.
Far from flawless, Coffee and Cigarettes is still an extremely rewarding movie from one of the better directors out there.

Gozu

If there's one thing you can count on Takashi Miike to do, it's to provide truly bizarre filmmaking. He's outdone himself with Gozu, though.

After increasingly erratic behavior (which includes a hilarious attack on a Pomeranian dog, whom he insists is really a yakuza-eating pooch), Yakuza goon Ozaki proves to be too much of a liability for his organization. The boss orders Minami, another goon who happens to be best friends with Ozaki, to take him to the city of Nagoya to be disposed of. After some comic mishaps along the way, Ozaki is accidentally killed and his body goes missing; Thus poor minami is left to search the city of Nagoya, which looks like a mixture between an abandoned strip mall and a giant truckstop (with a scrapyard thrown in to add some color). Things get weirder from there; from hyper-lactating inn keepers to soup ladles stuck in unlikely places to shitting ghosts (I kid you not... That scene is one of the funniest I've seen in ages), the bizarre factor just increases until the final, unforgettable twenty minutes or so- which are a prime example of both Miike's fondness for stretching an uncomfortable scene to almost unbearable extremes and his knack for nailing shots that are impressive both in concept and execution.

There is a lot of David Lynch in the plot, and a bit more of David Cronemberg at his most carnal (although neither of them have ever been even remotely as weird or explicit as this). The pacing is a bit slack here and there, and while a theme gradually emerges, it never even remotely makes sense. Which is just as good, as it doesn't really need to (and I suppose it was never intended to, either). Overlong at more than two hours, it's still thought provoking, engaging and a damn hoot as well.

Blade Trinity

 Note from future me:
 Welp, another one to the bin. I still think Blade 3 fucking reeks, but man did I ever get angry about stuff back then. I'd leave it up if the jokes were funny as well as tasteless, but... they aren't.

 Here's the final paragraph, only to show that I was ahead of the curve in hating David Goyer (who still sucks):

...At some point during this drivel, the Final Solution is revealed- turns out, it’s a Coma rip-off: racks and racks of human vegetables, from whom blood is harvested instead of organs. How is this a Final Solution? And how the fuck does this relate to Dracula? Well, your guess is as good as mine. And here’s my guess: it doesn’t, because David Goyer holds our intelligence in such contempt that he didn’t even bother writing a half-assed plot. I mean, for fuck’s sake! People often ask me why I get so worked up over shitty movies, but let me ask you this: this motherfucking bastard is shitting on us and laughing all the while, and all I'm supposed to do is open my mouth?

I would immediately join any religion that promised swift and painful death to these talentless hacks. And Goyer, you’re way fucking up in the list.

V for Vendetta

That the Wachowski brothers have a strong political stance was clear from the Matrix- before it degenerated into cheap religious parable, there was a lot of mileage to be had from the deceptively shallow Gnostic premise.
But who would think they'd make a movie out of it? Ably transposing Alan Moore's classic outraged indictment of the tendencies of Thatcher's Britain to the current geopolitical climate, the film mostly follows young Evey (Natalie Portman) as she discovers just to what extent her society is fucked up. Helping her in that endeavor is a mysterious stranger wearing a Guy Fawkes mask who wages a personal war against the totalitarian government; Poor Evey is inexorably drawn into this gentleman's (known as V, whose voice is played with gusto by Hugo Weaving) conflict
Whether you'll like this movie or not first and foremost will hinge on whether you stand on either side of the republican/liberal divide. Make no mistake about it, this film is an outright attack on some of the conservative tendencies that have been gripping the US under Bush's regime. It works as a story, but the movie unsubtly, and rather heavy-handedly, pushes them to the fore at every possible opportunity. They're valid points, but earnestness doesn't always mesh with good storytelling.

So, does it work? well, surprisingly enough, it does. It helps that it's not an action flick, but rather a calm exploration of its themes, with emphasis on the characters' stories as V's war escalates and shakes the dystopia's foundations. The characters are mostly very likeable (especially Stephen Fry and Stephen Rea, both a pleasure to watch acting). And the central mysteries- Just who this guy V is, and how did things get to where they are- are compelling, if a bit underwhelming.
But... (there's always one of those, isn't there?) remember when I said it was heavy handed? Well, heavy handed it is. The film portrays V as using anarchist methods (and indeed does not implicitly approve or disapprove of them), but portrays him more as an enraged liberal. In fact, it idealizes him to a fault, while it demonizes everything and anything related to the bad guys. Couldn't some shades of grey be added in there? As always, audiences can't be trusted on to draw their own conclusions. There is no subtlety, and points are often hammered home when inference or an unbiased presentation of the facts would have been far more effective.
Not that V doesn't do morally reprehensible things during the movie, but the film's sympathies are too clearly with him; He never once shows a shred of weakness, not one negative trait. No real humanity... Until one unfortunate late scene where one of the worst cliches the movie could have comitted is gleefully perpetrated.

In fact, the movie promptly goes to hell as the final scenes start. Starting with its only extended action sequence (fun!) it promptly begins to smash everything it had carefully built up in the previous two hours. Taking a sharp turn towards the metaphorical, whereas the rest of the movie was very gritty and even had some nods to realism (Hollywood realism, at least), any complexity is dispelled; the resolution is facile and feels extremely cheap. Everything culminates in an unmasking scene that is idiotically juvenile, its cheap symbolism almost demagogic.
It'll please fourteen-year-olds in the audience to no end, I'm sure- but anyone else will probably find themselves feeling either disappointed... or insulted. A shame, to be sure; But the Wachowskies seem to have a penchant for ruining movies with supremely shitty endings.

The Legend of Zorro

What a godawful piece of shit. It's aimed straight at the kiddies, but even hating the little snotrags as much as I do I'd find myself incapable of inflicting this horrendous crap on them. If my uncommon attack of scruples doesn't scare you off, consider this: At one point, Zorro's little offspring uses the series' trademark kung-fu, swashbuckly style of gymnastics to put a dastardly professor in his place.
I'm still recovering from that one. At least the rugrat's acting is on the same level as the acting of Banderas and Zeta-Jones (and Rufus Sewell, who's been slumming since Dark City). Hmm, wait, that isn't a complement. At all. Ok, at least he doesn't look like he's had a botox overdose.

Not even trace amounts of originality, sense of fun, or any sort of effort can be found here. To call it derivative would be an insult to the original movie, which at the very least at least managed to be entertaining and witty.
I don't intend to go into the plot (lucky you), but let me rag on a bit to scare off anyone still willing to inflict this shit upon himself. Or rather, vent for a bit. There are several slapstick scenes that are completely out of place, inserting jarring visual gags (that fall completely flat) and aren't even followed up. Check it out, the horse is drinking! And now it's smoking! Best of all is the only moment where the movie winks knowingly at the adults enduring this crap for the children's sake- a scene where a recently divorced, drunken Banderas hammily asserts that "no one leaves his tequila worm dangling". Only in this movie that could pass off as a sly, witty double entendré.

Silent Hill

When her daughter almost dies while on one of her frequent sleepwalking outings, Rose daSilva (Radha Mitchell) thinks of no better way to fix it than to take her to the haunted town Sharon, her adopted child, keeps mentioning in her nightmares. Oh, and she goes without even telling her husband, and also runs away from the cops without any reason at all. Bright girl, huh? you better get used to it, her common sense actually takes a dive as the movie goes on.
Soon enough Sharon dissappears in the ghost town that gives the movie its title. For the rest of the film Rose will search for her daughter in suitably spooky places, mostly with the help of the cop she ran away from earlier. But in order to find Sharon, she will need to solve the puzzle that the town itself poses.

To go into it any further would spoil what, surprisingly enough, is a fairly good plot. The script is not up to it, though, and the pacing suffers for it- there is an overlong exposition sequence in particular that not only overexplains everything you managed to work out yourself, but does it in such a way that will make your neurons commit seppuku en masse.

And that complaint, this maddening mix of good and crap, extends to cover all the other aspects of the movie. Take the visuals, for example.
The town of Silent Hill is spot on- a spooky ghost of a settlement with mist obscuring everything in white and a constant shower of ashes raining down. All the derelict interiors are also excellent- and when the Dark arrives and things get overtly supernatural, well- the effect is nothing short of breathtaking. The walls peel to reveal bizarre blood-colored rot patterns, floors become rusty grids of iron letting you catch a glimpse of hellish fires raging beneath. All's great, till the monsters show up. Usually loads of them, and they're a bit, uh, shit actually- I laughed out loud hard at some... let's try and describe one of them:
A zombie duck-like thing. Its torso is a mass of scarred tissue, except for a pulsating sphincter from which it projectile-defecates caustic diarrhea. Nothing even remotely scary. Might look like the critters in the game, but the movie would definitively be a lot better off without any of them- and the fact that they're overused doesn't help at all.
Most of the characters well defined and likeable, with some unexpected depth. There is a running subplot of Rose's husband (Sean Bean) trying to find her and running into a police officer that seems to be covering everything up; once some of the plot details become apparent, the reason for the cop's actions take on a different light- how often can you say that happens in a would be blockbuster? The female cop/sidekick is a bit two dimentional, but a strong character and likeable enough. Unfortunately we're stuck most of the time with Rose, and while she's also likeable, her only reason for existing is to move the plot forward- every fucking cliche misstep in the horror book? she'll do it happily, twice. Living proof that Darwin was wrong, wrong, wrong!

So the movie flip flops between rather good and utter crap very frequently, often within the same scene. Extremely frustrating, especially considering that the balance tends towards the shitty side of the spectrum. But then something happens- the climactic speech is laughable and didactic, but the final showdown that ensues is way cool, bloody and suitably apocalyptic (the henai reference made me chuckle). So far so good, time for the fake ending.
And when it arrives, like so many things in this movie, it comes completely out of the left field. A truly beautiful ending, understated and poignant- it easily, completely outclasses the rest of the movie, and even feels a bit undeserved. Stunning.

King Kong

King Kong has perhaps one of the most famous tragic endings in Hollywood history. Contrary to that dapper 'Beauty killed the beast' final line, audiences these last seventy plus years since it came out knew better than to cheer the poor beleaguered beast's death.
No one, apparently, told that to Peter Jackson. He's made Kong as likeable as he can- so much so, that Naomi Watts seems to like him better than she does potential love interest Adrien Brody. Jackson also takes pains to show just what an injustice is being inflicted on the poor ape. In fact, the film feels at times to be a simian version of the Passion of the Christ. At best, it could be interpreted as a petulant 'but Kong was not a bad guy!'... despite that everyone got that the first time. At worst it's an insult to the viewer's intelligence and a crass attempt at cheap Spielberg-style manipulation.

You all should know the story by now- a scrupleless director (Jack Black, pretty much reprising his role from School of Rock) takes his crew to film in a remote, lost island in the thirties. There after some adventures the main actress is abducted by the natives and offered up to Kong as a sacrifice. The crew fights against giant insects and several species of dinosaurs to get her back, and in the process manages to capture King Kong and take him back to Mew York. There they attempt to use him in a live show from which he escapes, wrecks havoc in the city, grabs the girl, and finally dies in the Empire State Building.
And it takes over three fucking hours to get there.

Bloated is the only word that can be used to describe this movie. Each and every scene could have several minutes shaved off, and be a lot better for it. That's not the only excess in evidence: there is a tasteless overabundance of special effects in all of the island sequences, and baroque, unnecessary twists in the action. Many of the scenes are fun, but all but a few of them overstay their welcome and drag on and on and ON!. The only well-rounded character in the script is Kong; All the humans flip flop whichever way is convenient for the plot.

There are some good bits here and there. The recreation of thirties North America is extremely good, if a bit showy. The special effects are all good and look approppriately expensive. Kong animates incredibly well. Some humor and bizarre little details in the action every now and then do help move things along. And there is no denying the earnestness on display... but frankly, none of this even nearly compensates for all the crap you'll have to put up with to get to the end credits.

There is just one scene which does add to the original: while making his way to his aerie, Kong passes by a bunch of giant ape skeletons, without giving them a single glance. Melancholic and quite affecting, this scene alone shows restraint and subtlety, concepts that unfortunately don't seem to exist in the rest of the film.

Mirrormask

Also produced by the Jim Henson company, Dave McKean's Mirrormask follows the same trail Labyrinth forged twenty years ago, with mixed results.

Based on an original story co-written with frequent collaborator Neil Gaiman, the
story centers on Helena, a young circus juggler and aspiring artist. When her mother falls very ill (a brain tumor is implied), she is drawn into her fantasy world as expressed by her drawings- the shadowlands. And not all is well there; the precarious balance between the light and dark kingdoms has been subverted, and darkness is spreading like a disease. It soon falls to Helena to find a way to recover the Mirrormask, a charm that was stolen from the queen of light, and restore the natural balance.
And while the premise is fine, the execution is a bit of a mess. It feels slightly disjointed, a collection of individual scenes more connected by their general weirdness than a coherent narrative. The symbolism and messages- not to mention the overall plot- are muddled. The story make sense as a whole, but seems to be at odds with itself at times. All of which is a shame: there is nothing wrong with the scenes themselves. The characters are very well fleshed out and likeable, and Gaiman's gift for dialog and humor are very much in evidence throughout. And even though sometimes it feels forced, the level of imagination on display is impressive.

And that imagination is more than well served by the movie's visuals. Dave McKean has long been one of my favorite graphical artists, and his work translates to film beautifully- any shortcomings in the story are easily dismissed given that it's so often breathtakingly gorgeous to look at. And that, in the end, is Mirrormask's main strength- just let yourself be distracted by the pretty pictures, and you'll be fine.

The Fantastic Four

Four words:

Fucking. Piece. Of. Shit.

If you liked this horrendous excuse for entertainment, you're part of the problem; please die as soon as possible.


Seriously, this movie was painful; formulaic, dull, unspeakably idiotic, unimaginative, you name it. One of the clearest examples of commitee moviemaking I've seen in a long time- even with my low opinion of humanity, I find it hard to imagine how an individual could invest the time and effort something like a movie requires coming up with this drivel.
To get it out of the way: 4 hotshot scientists, along with their eeeeeevil corporate employer get superpowers, learn how to use them, then (almost as an afterthought) fight each other. The acting is shit, the dialog has to be heard to be believed, no noteworthy special effects, etc etc. To give you an example of how shitty this piece of garbage is... this girl can become invisible, right? But not her clothes. At one point the group needs to get trough a crowded bridge, so they make her become invisible and strip- a gruelingly stupid scene that exists only to show Jessica Alba in a state of mild undress. So, when she makes it, she runs into... the rest of the group.
The movie is full of this shit. No, not Jessica Alba showing skin; of crappy scenes, plot holes, and an absolute disregard for any intelligence the viewer may possess. This movie, and others like it, are why internet piracy needs to exist.

Serenity

Based on the TV show Firefly (which I will now have to catch sometime, dammit), Joss Whedon’s new Serenity not only rises above most TV to big screen adaptations, it’s also quite a lot better than most big SciFi releases.
The crew of the spaceship Serenity has definitely seen better times. Led by Captain Malcolm Reynolds, an embittered veteran, they try to scrape by in the lawless fringes of civilization while keeping a beautiful telepath (who they rescued from a research facility) and her brother away from the evil empire stand-in, the Alliance. After narrowly escaping alive from a bank robbery gone awry, they must contend with a sociopath Alliance operative sent to retrieve their charge, dodge a horde of cannibal berserkers, and solve the mystery posed by the girl they rescued- which, as these things tend to do, may be of dire importance.

The complex character dynamics are effortlessly, and masterfully introduced, as are the broad strokes of the setting. One of the few complaints that can be levied against the film is that too much material is trotted out just for the series fans in the early going, but since all those elements tie into events later on, that’s really moot point. There is a constant vein of understated humor that runs throughout the film even at its grimmest moments. And things do get quite grim- for a space opera, (one based on a TV show, no less) there are a lot of moral grey areas, genuinely hard choices made and one exquisitely ruthless scene that had me smiling all the way to the conclusion.
The science part is a bit iffy, but no worse than, say, Star Wars. And nitpicking about, say, whether a planet can be successfully blockaded would completely miss the point. The movie is character focused through and through, and in that respect it succeeds admirably. Both individual characters and the relationships between them are carefully rendered, entertaining, and faithful to themselves. It’s a treat aurally as well: the soundtrack is good enough to own, and the dialog not only succeeds in portraying an alien vernacular (think western-punk), but also a very particular cadence that, when you get used to it, is a pleasure to listen to. Outstanding stuff.

Land of the Dead

In the montage sequence that plays out as the background for the introduction credits for Land of the Dead, a media commentator wonders what would happen should the zombies that have recently overrun the world evolve, become intelligent.
That it's starting to happen is established at the very beginning of the movie: the undead try to mimic their vaguely remembered mortality, and one of them even struggles with its, well, zombieness and tries for some sort of intelligence. But where a lesser film would have its hands full just exploring that tack on the genre, here it's just one of the many threads woven throughout.

The events center around a fortified enclave of humanity- an overcrowded, tightly policed ghetto sprawling around a huge building. This is Fiddler's green proper, where Kaufman, founder of the enclave gets to live in comfort with his cronies. Simon Baker plays Riley, the leader of a strike team charged with retrieving supplies from neighboring zombie-ridden communities. The raid that kicks off the movie goes a bit south, with two effects that set up everything that follows; Simon Baker has a falling out with his second in command, John Leguizamo, who hints that he's got a sweet deal staged for after the raid. And they manage to tick off an abnormally smart zombie, who raises a mob of corpses-in-arms and goes after them looking for revenge.
Zombies remain pretty much a background element until the final act, which is not nearly as bad as it sounds; all of the characters are extremely well developed (except for three standard, kick-ass soldiers with one defining trait), and the action is kept lively and interesting. And there's always Asia Argento to look at. It's hard to go into any detail without saying what happens, but suffice to say that the enclave is threatened with destruction not by the zombies, but a disgruntled ex-resident. It's surprising how, despite all the gore, this is not really a horror movie. It mixes and matches genres, but comes out pretty much as an intelligent action flick.

As I mentioned above, the character work is excellent- and they are uniformly well acted, with some truly great lines. Robert Joy stands out, and even the standard action hero has a real personality and a very healthy misanthropic streak. The gore is wonderfully abundant- people are torn apart in all sort of creative ways, and it's a treat to see the zombies pick up dismembered fingers from the floor and chomp them down with gusto. The action is very well choreographed and exhibits one of the most welcome traits that the movie shows in all its aspects- originality and inventiveness. It's also stylish but not too much so, and the effects are pretty good.

And, as with Romero's previous zombie entries, there is abundant social and political comment. While the dead are entranced and distracted by the living with fireworks, Dennis Hopper keeps control over the inhabitants Fiddler's Green with vice, military force and the specter of upward mobility. There are no easy outs, no deus ex machina, and the characters are true to themselves instead of following arbitrary scripting that serves only the plot. As 28 Days Later and Shawn of the Dead abundantly proved, the zombie movie is far from stagnant, but Land of the Dead trumps them all. It's an exhilarating, tight, brilliant little film that needs to be seen, even if you don't normally go for this type of thing.

Night Watch (Nochnoy dozor)

Apparently, there are others living among us. Special people with special powers who must chose between light and darkness and seem to feed on blood to power their gifts. (if they're good, animal blood, if not, well, they're vampires) After a disastrous confrontation hundreds of years ago, they coexist in an uneasy truce that has members of the light policing their dark brethren, and curbing their destructive impulses with regulations and paperwork.
And that is the titular Nightwatch. Events follow one of its members as he tries to rescue his son from a hungry vampire, and save the world from an ancient curse that is quickly reaching some sort of occult critical mass.

For all the fantastical elements, the action is fairly grounded by grittiness and a wonderful sense of humor. The action takes place in modern day moscow, and while the events and concepts in the background are high concept and world shattering, the action is kept relatively low key; the Nightwatch as an institution, for example, is underfunded and highly bureaucratized- it has more in common with a run down police station than with the hall of justice. The ideas the movie plays with are left frustratingly undefined, but imaginative and (perhaps because they are mostly left unexplained), intriguing. There are shapeshifters, an alternate mode of existence that all Others have access to that seems weirdly sentient and hungry, a mystic that plays out possible futures with beaten-up playstation 2, and echoes of a past confrontation playing themselves out in the present. All conveyed in a striking, highly stylized aesthetic vision that lies somewhere between arthouse and MTV. The effects are a mixed bag, but mostly succeed due to the artistic direction; the characters are likeable and fairly well defined, and that also helps overlook some weak acting.
The main problem with the film as it stands, is that it's quite unapologetically the first part in a trilogy. While events stand on their own, by the end it seems strangely lightweight, unsatisfying- but it's a good deal of fun while it lasts. As long as it keeps its tongue firmly placed in its cheek, its playfulness, and that wonderful balance between the fantastic and mundane, there are more than enough reasons to be optimistic about the next two installments.

Revolver

One would think one worthless movie that was universally reviled would be major wake up call, the kind of thing that'd save you from a rampaging ego.
In Guy Ritchie's case, it just prompted him to switch genres to one he had proved successful in before. And if Revolver is any proof, his ego is quite healthy... and his talent is still on a holiday.

A more turgid mess is hard to imagine. The story follows a ex-convict who, two years after being freed from prison, is taken into confidence by two men that help him get even with a mafia big fish while they strip him of every cent. Sounds simple enough? Well, it is- the big twist in the movie is fairly clever, but easy to see coming. That's not the problem. The problem is that the film thinks it's absolute genius- from a stupefying voiceover that waxes philosophical over every inanity conceivable, to endless existential dialogues that never amount to anything, to scenes that don't have any reason to exist, stylistic choices that only remind you how much better Ritchie used to be at it, and plot twists and details that only make sense half the time.
What other explication is there for the animated segment, except that Tarantino did one in Kill Bill? Or... let's say you want to establish that a character has a split personality- would you explain it by showing him trapped in an elevator, with a dialog like this?

-Actor 1: I'm you!!!
-Actor 1: Noooooooooooooooooo!
-Actor 1: Yes!
-Actor 1: Noooooooooooooooooo!
-Actor 1: Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhh!

OK, I might be simplifying a bit, but the scene goes on for what seems like ages without being any more meaningful. A bit dismal for a film that thinks of itself as smart, based on all the entry-level thematic chess playing footage it crams in. Possibly the most excruciatingly painful scene I have had the bad luck to watch on the big screen this year.
On these grounds, it's quite easy to dismiss Revolver's self professed status as a mindfuck. Like most anime, it chooses quantity over quality by confusing complexity for depth. It's also overindulgent, wit-less, pretentious, and just plain fucking bad at moments. There is one extremely cool character- Sorter, a shy hitman with the face of an accountant and the moves of a Matrix stunt double. But apart from that, Revolver is a complete disaster from a would-be auteur who can't even blame the script, seeing as he wrote it...

A History of Violence

Call me soft hearted, but I'm partial to any movie that begins with a five year old girl being blasted point blank, even if the carnage is not shown. Oh, movie magic...
Vigo Mortenssen plays Tom Stall, owner of a small cafe in a small all-american town, loving husband and father of two adoring children. This may be the first mainstream movie I've seen that has an on-screen sixty-nine, but it tops that accomplishment by making it wholesome, somehow.
But it couldn't last, could it? Tom's ideal, placid life is interrupted by two crooks that stop by his diner with murderous intent; when it becomes clear that a bystander is in mortal danger, Tom springs into action and kills them brutally. He's hailed as a hero, and begins to readapt and try to live with the consequence of his actions. But now there are a couple of hoodlums tailing him and his family, calling him by another name and insisting that he come back to Philly with them. (A city Tom claims not to have visited in his life)

All in all, the story is a straight pulp one- by the numbers, even. Predictable and somehat heavy handed at moments. But the devil is in the details; in this case, David Cronemberg's quiet, naturalistic direction superbly contrasts what's going on plotwise. The action scenes, when they finally break out are realistic and utterly brutal, and the film as a whole lacks any stylization. This takes the action out of context, and gives it new meaning. At least, it would unless you're a jaded fucker like I am, in which case, it's all good fun- but I can still appreciate them trying. Too bad the script and the tone of the film don't match up like they do on one particular, brilliant scene (which can only be described as consensual rape).
Is it as good as the buzz it's been gathering says it is? Well, no, it's quite overrated- but it's still damn good, especially if you latch onto the small details, like the way these tough mafia goons are surprised by sudden explosions of violence. The fact that it does have a bit of depth, and how that depth is achieved,(by a clever director, not by a clever script) also elevate it and make it, at least in my opinion, a pretty damn good film.

The Fog of War

For some reason I've always seen William McNamara as a bastard, a warmonger responsible for the evils of Vietnam. Old smear campaigns die hard, I guess, as I never really had a clear concept of who he was and what he did.
The Fog of War is a documentary on his life and work, beggining in the end of world war I but focusing on his work during the wars (cold and otherwise): the second world war, the cuban missile crisis, and Vietnam. The format of the film is that of a long interview, spliced together to forma a constant narrative; that's the backbone of the movie, McNamara's running narration- and if it works, it's not only because that man's story is intertwined with some of the most significant events in modern northamerican history. At 85 Mr McNamara is not only articulate, he's damn brilliant.
The film is no an apology, neither is it an indictment of his actions. This is the (seemingly) honest recounting of a very bright, very idealistic person, who, while fully admitting his mistakes, also provides the reason as to why they were made. The film's subtitle, eleven lessons from the life of William S. McNamara should be taken at face value; while the lessons are somewhat arbitrary (they don't quite do justice to the material that they are suposed to encapsulate), they are important nonetheless and quite timely. Consider this gem:
"If we can't persuade nations of comparable values of the rightness of our cause, then we'd better reexamine our reasoning."

Collateral

It starts out promisingly enough, and for a while it's a solid, if unremarkable, thriller. Jamie Fox plays a likeable, professional cabbie that's hired for the whole night to take Tom Cruise (a hired killer) to the sites of five hits. When the Cab driver discovers what his fare is up to the standard cat and mouse games ensue, as the killer insists on using him as his personal chauffeur for the night.
While that goes on, there’s some uneasy character building going on between the two, and the movie also follows the police (and later, federal) investigation into the night’s killings.

And, as I said before, it works for a while. But keeping it up proves to be too much of a hassle. Even a workmanlike thriller like this one needs good craftsmanship, and it seems that everyone involved decided to wrap it up as soon as possible and go to the pub. Michael Mann has done some extremely good stuff in the past (Heat, The Insider, The Thief), but here he lazily follows a lousy script to increasing depths. The problems really start to show at a showdown in a discotheque, and when the final twist is revealed… oh what the hell, you can see this one coming a mile away, and besides, it’s in the trailer- it turns out that the cabdriver’s potential love interest (who he had a meet-cute with just that very night) is the final victim in the hit list. Fucking hell, what do they tell whichever fuck-wit that comes up with this shit? Insult the intelligence of the viewers as much as possible? Let’s see what’s the stupidest thing we can come up with and watch them gobble it up?
By the time Tom Cruise is unerringly tracking his prey in a subway complex (one assumes he’s using his scientologist superpowers to do it, why not?), the only thing that can conceivably keep you watching is morbidity. But then again, this movie scored 7.7 on IMDB… where’s my shotgun?