[Movies] Bad Action

Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom -- My first impression is that the writing of the script for this movie may have been crowdsourced to children ages 6-10.  I doubt that is really the case.  What I do think happened is that it came from prompting an early version of AI, something a good deal less sophisticated than Chat GPT4.  What an incomprehensible mish-mash of tone and action. It is as close to completely incoherent as a movie can be without being a series of totally randomized sequences.  I can think of no principle of good screen writing that was employed here. The description of Dumpster Fire could not be more apt. No good will come from this movie to anyone associated with it.  It should not have been released.  Wow.  Just wow.

Fast X -- In contrast Fast X is roughly on the same plane of quality, but it embraces its own absurdity in such a way that it is at least inoffensive.  Movies like this are pure background noise, only meriting partial attention.  But everyone involved seems like they are having a good time -- I wouldn't doubt this group, having done these movies for years -- is probably a fun bunch to get together. I have no idea what the plot was, or whether there was any semblance of character arcs.  Like I said, a bit of eye-candy to have on in the background and never to be thought of again.

Road House -- Another step up in the genre, mostly due to the fine performance of Jake Gyllenhall.  Given the state of reboots and sequels in Hollywood I would have expected this to be borderline offensive -- see: Justified: City Primeval, Many Saints of Newark, pretty much anything Star Wars or Star Trek -- but it was actually not bad. They kept the right amount of irreverence and absurdity of the original (although, sadly, no one is ever told to "be nice") while making you hate the villain and identify with the hero.  BTW, a key villain in this is Conor MacGregor, an MMA fighter who is making his acting debut playing a psycho. Since he is clearly half-psycho in real life, "acting" is a stretch.  Anyway, it's Gyllenhall who provides what redemption there is with a pitch perfect performance of a normal, friendly-looking dude who can just happen to beat the snot out of anyone else on the planet.  Overall "meh", but I might watch it again if I land on it when I'm channel surfing.

Note the escalation in the three action flicks discussed here: from Dumpster Fire to  Inoffensive to Not Bad.  That is where we are now.  At one point in the not too distant past I declared the action film as the predominant art form of our time, for better or (more likely) worse.  If I recall correctly, I suggested the action supremacy started with The Matrix and peaked with Infinity War.  I stand by that, but even I am stunned by how quickly has come the fall.

[TV, Movies] Disney's Dive

I don't know what to do with Disney.  I should probably cancel my streaming service.  They have not produced a good movie since, well, since Endgame really.  I don't count Spiderman: No Way Home because I get the distinct impression that it was mostly Sony. Every Star Wars movie has been abysmal, except Rogue One, which was passable.

The TV series have been very bad.  I can't speak to the Star Wars series since I haven't mustered the energy to try them in the face of my horrible expectations, although I have heard good things about Andor -- interestingly a prequel to the one passable movie. 

The Marvel series have ranged from disappointing (Wandavision) to tiresome (Moon Knight) to misguided (She-Hulk) to utterly vomitous (Falcon and The Winter Soldier).  I didn't watch Ms. Marvel as the mere thought of it was depressing.  I will grant that the one-off special Werewolf by Night was on the plus side.

It's tempting to look at this as some sort of modern phenomena, but Disney has been operating on the take-a-theme-and-squeeze-every-last-penny-out-of-it-until- there-are-no-fans-left model for decades. On a whim I fired up The Love Bug, the original, from back in the '60s when I saw it at the drive in.  I did this mostly because the theme song is so catchy that I still remembered it.  It's a decent kids film.  During this time (maybe mid-60s to mid-70s, let's call it post-Mary Poppins) Disney produced films that all varied on the theme of some popular adult activity, rendered absurd and silly by magic or misadventure, mixed in a lot of really great character actors (including a young Kurt Russel) and cranked out dozens of kid hits.  They started out with some good quality The Love Bug, That Darn Cat, The Ugly Dachshund.  Then they kept at it, kept digging deeper and deeper, kept leaning on formula and sequels, reaching lower in casting, but as long as kids (like me) trusted them we still went and saw all the films (until we grew up) and they wanted every last dime.  It finally ended for good when Star Wars arrived in 1978.  Somehow, another Don Knotts spoof-western couldn't measure up anymore.  I suppose now that they are milking Star Wars for themselves they got the ultimate revenge.

The point is, I keep my Disney sub partly because it comes as a package with Hulu (Archer, Shoresy) and ESPN+, and partly because I harbor a wish that they may start kicking out quality films like Infinity War again.  But time is running out.

[Movies] Strange Dr. Strange

Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is not very good.  The main problem is the script which is just a litany of set pieces and action sequences without a clear purpose.  In good script writing something happens because something else happened because something else happened.  In bad script writing something happens and then something else happens and then something else happens. DSMOM is bad script writing.  

The second problem is that what little valid causality there is comes from exposition.  At the moments when the writers realized they needed some explanation for what they wanted to do next, they just gave a character a speech. Exposition kills.

The third problem is that the dialogue is flat and dull and all attempts at humorous interjections fail.  It's hard to say why this is.  Cumberbatch, McAdams, Wong, etc. all are capable of delivering a comic line.  It could be that these moments were poorly timed in the darker tone of the film.  It could be that they just picked bad takes during editing.  Whatever the case it didn't work.

The fourth problem is that it is heavily, heavily contrived. Eg.

• The MacGuffin in this case is a teenager who can traverse the multiverse.  How and why she can do this, we don't know.  She's not given much of a personality.  The only personailty she is given is identitarian -- she is Hispanic, with lesbian parents -- so it seems she is only served up as a diversity symbol.    

• There are cameos that are huge for Marvel fanbois -- Patrick Stewart, John Krasinski, etc. playing iconic characters -- cute, but purely a gimmick from what I can tell. 

• The characters' powers are both enormous and vague, which allows them to do anything that the script requires whether it is coherent or not.  I cannot emphasize enough how much this undermines any superhero movie. It's also lazy. This has become a huge problem at Marvel. (I could write an entire post on this one.)

• The final battle is an ode to Evil Dead (thanks to director Sam Raimi, I suppose),  with combatants throwing musical notes at each other and zombie joint snapping and so forth.  It is absurd to the point of cynicism.

In the end, you're left with nothing but a sense of pointlessness.  No harm will come to you from watching it but set your expectations properly.  It is a timepassing curiosity at best, unlikely to be rewatched.  Don't pay money for it beyond any streaming fees you're already paying.

The final post-credit scene is Bruce Campbell crying in relief "It's over!"  It makes me wonder if the film's creators knew it wasn't very good.

[Movies] No Way Home

Bluntly put, Marvel has been putting out crap since Endgame -- clearly Infinity War was a high water mark.  They've managed to retire, or in some cases degrade, the characters we loved. They've neutered the Hulk, turned Loki into a tool, and turned Hawkeye into a retiree. They've produced new characters that have zero resonance. I mean, who the hell is Ms. Marvel?  Who are The Eternals?  Where are The Fantastic Four, The Silver Surfer -- the household names?  The scripts are dreary and lame and filled with exposition. The casting pales in comparison to the brilliant use of RDJ, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Holland, Scarlet Johannson.  I used to joke about how bad DC was in comparison to Marvel, but none of the Marvel series could hold a candle to Peacemaker.

Then along comes No Way Home and it's really good.  Through some unusual circumstances I actually saw this twice in a movie theater.  At least once there was a great deal of cheering and demonstrative behavior.  If you've ever seen YouTubes of theaters during scenes from the big battle in Endgame, where everyone is cheering and shouting -- it was like that.  In fact, see it here.  I won't recap it as I'm sure you have heard about the gist of the plot, but I'll note that the cinematic dark arts of Pacing and Tone rang true throughout.  If you get those right you're more than 60% of the way to a great film.  If you nail the casting, you begin to push 90% and, of course, when you have nothing but established characters and the iconic actors that made them famous, greatness becomes a lock.  

So yeah, go see it and enjoy it.  You can think of it as a throwback to when Marvel was hitting non-stop home runs instead of grounding out to second every time.

Now I will extend my rant.  Feel free to move on.

One of the most gratifying scenes in No Way Home was the now famous Matt Murdoch scene with Charlie Cox.  The acknowledgment of the Netflix Daredevil series from 5 years past raised hope for a restart of that character.  In fact, Disney+ even created a special class of "adult" content so they could stream it without offending their child-oriented demographic. I'm a fan of that DD series and a few years ago I would have loved to see what Marvel could have done with it.  Now that they seem to have confirmed their intention to do just that, my prior is that they will screw it up somehow.  The Netflix show, despite its flaws, was vastly superior to any TV series Marvel has put out.

And I've heard little good about the latest Dr. Strange.

I know it's silly for a grown-ass man to go on about this but as I have stated before, I do have a deep nostalgic affinity for Marvel from my tween years of buying comics off the spinning rack for 15¢. And perhaps I should temper my negativity a bit because the new Thor trailer looks pretty cool.  That's Taika Waititi at it again.  

Ah well.  As a grown-ass man I know nothing good lasts forever.  Like the heroic age of pantheon TV before it, the heroic age of action movie craftsmanship appears to be coming to an end.  I guess we'll see what's next.  I hope it's not the heroic age of TikTok.

[Movies] Flick Check: No Time to Die

Well, it appears that the intent of this is that James Bond is over. It's been 60 years since Dr. No so it's probably for the best.  The franchise has been quite a rollercoaster of quality.  Unexpectedly, the very best movies-as-movies happened in the final incarnation (Skyfall, Casino Royale) although the best portrayal and aesthetic remains The Connery.  Their cultural relevance dwindled long, long ago, and the attempt to rejigger the films as standard actioners never really panned out until the Daniel Craig ones I mentioned as the best.  The symbolism of Bond has been reviled and worshiped, often simultaneously.  And it all leads up to No Time to Die it seems.

Bluntly put, No Time to Die is not a good movie. Craig doesn't seem to know if he wants to play Bond or some sort of Chris Pratt character. The entire movie is a pastiche of Bond tropes.  The daffy, skin-showing, bond-girl who turns out to be an effective agent, the Q-armored Aston Martin, Bond as a rogue agent, a villainous madman bent on world domination from an island lair. Even the core personal story follows the plot of On Her Majesty's Secret Service right down to the "All the Time in the World" meme.

So, yeah, it's just as well that it ends. There really is no purpose to this franchise anymore.  Mission Impossible does everything better in this specific sub-genre and as for action films in general, Mad Max: Fury Road, any Avengers film, or even the Fast and Furious franchise, will put it to shame.

Personally, I would love to see them reboot Bond stories set back in the '60s.  Same aesthetic, same morality (or amorality); done seriously, like Mad Men was.  To quote Never Say Never Again, "I hope were in for some gratuitous sex and violence."

Since everyone else is going to do it, here are my thoughts on essential Bond films:

• Casino Royale and Skyfall are the best quality movies.  They are top notch action films that stand up well.  Many will also offer Pierce Brosnan's Goldeneye for quality and I will not gainsay them.

• Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger constitute the core of when The Connery burned bright and the cultural icon was made.

• Roger Moore had a couple of decent outings with Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun, but camp had long overtaken the franchise by then.

• The only campy one I really enjoyed was You Only Live Twice, which mashes up Bond and chopsocky and cranks the blatant sexism to 11.  Lousy as a movie, but it makes me grin.

• Timothy Dalton I barely remember.

• Pierce Brosnan got to do some great sequences but to my mind none of his were strong end-to-end.

• The most beautiful bond girls are not in the main canon, to be honest.  For that you must go to a Casino Royale parody from the '60s, which starred David Niven as Bond, Peter Sellers as Fake Bond, and Woody Allen as his little brother Jimmy Bond.  The movie was inane and incoherent, but the girls -- and there were many -- were ridiculously beautiful in that way women were in the 60s and are not today.

[Movies] Flick Check: The French Dispatch

I found this movie delightful.  It is the most Wes Anderson of Wes Anderson movies.  Effectively a paean to the halcyon days of the New Yorker under William Shawn it doubles as a love letter to the written word, the literary written word.  I love movies like Wes Anderson makes, and to a lesser extent the Coens, that are forthrightly self-conscious about their storytelling.  In a sense, there is no need to suspend disbelief here because belief in the film as representative of reality is never intended.  

Another thing I love about it is how it is all done in the service of the personal.  Love, grief, loneliness, resentment, aspiration, family -- the motivations of the characters are almost exclusively personal.  One particular section that is set during the Paris student uprisings in the 60s seems to explicitly belittle any political notions. The acting is as wonderful as you would expert given the hi-end cast.  A stand-out among stand-outs being Jeffery Wright as Roebuck Wright.

The audience that appreciates humanity and the written word over socio-political motivation and basic exposition is dwindling fast.  We have to be grateful for every breath of fresh air we get. I hesitate to recommend this movie to anyone. The vast majority of people would find it merely curious, or worse: boring.  Most movies are positioned for the largest audience possible. The French Dispatch is positioned for me.

[Movies] Flick Check: Roundup

Many Saints of Newark 

Da hell?  That was awful. How did this steaming pile emerge from perhaps the most celebrated and renown TV series in history?  The tone is inconsistent; the motivations vague and unjustified; the acting (with the exception of the mighty Ray Liotta) was lame.  An entire subplot (maybe 30-40% of the film) was a misguided paean to social justice. It even fails as wanton fan service. Just a top-to-bottom disaster.

A month back I speculated whether any of the pantheon TV from the aughts could get made today.  I think this is the clear answer: no.  This is what The Sopranos would be in the current cultural atmosphere. It is a sad, sad time for the arts. My advice: do not watch this.  In fact, let's all agree it never happened.

Black Widow 

Not bad.  Nothing revelatory.  As seems to be common in movies of late, the tone is haphazard and the motivations contrived.  But then, it's a superhero film, not high art.  It's saved by likeable characters and engaging portrayals. Middle-of-the-road MCU fare. In the grand scheme it would probably have seemed more relevant had it come out a pre-Endgame.  

Dune

It's gotten to the point with movies that my first expectation of anything is that it will suck. Filmmakers generally have so many priorities that supercede dramatic quality (social justice, sequels and universe building, the Chinese market) that if you end up with a coherent, humanistic story you can count yourself lucky.  In that way, Dune was a pleasant surprise.

I read Dune as a youth and was left uninspired.  Perhaps I should read it again, but it strikes me as an odd story to have gathered so many admirers.  It is effectively an allegory of an aspect of late twentieth century cultural interaction between an advanced civilization (The Empire in Dune; The West in reality) and an un-advanced civilization (The Fremen in Dune; Arabs/Muslims in reality) where the un-advanced have a resource that the advanced need and will fight for (The Spice in Dune; Oil in reality).  From this we make a gumbo out of with imaginative tech and paranormal people and organizations as de rigueur for speculative fiction.  The elemental narrative is the bog-standard trope of The One.   

Saying Dune is visually impressive is an understatement.  On my 65-inch plasma it was mesmerizing; I can only imagine how good it would look in Imax.  It could have trimmed a bit of excess running time, but it never bogged down for too long.  To director Denis Villenueve's credit there was minimal wokery in a story line that is ripe for it.  To his discredit there was virtually no humor or light hearted moments to offset the rather grim tone and story.

Still it set the stage very well for the upcoming sequel (this movie only covered the first half of the book) and carried my interest enough that I am looking forward to the next installment.

Here's a question:  If Dune is an allegory for West/Islam relations in, say, the 1970s and '80s, why not make a contemporary movie of it.  Reset it in Riyadh in 1975, where Duke Leto is a British Petroleum exec assigned to Saudi Arabian production and the Bene Gesserat are, oh, I don't know, al-Jihad or something, and Ollie North is Baron Harkonnen.  I am only half kidding.  It could be the stuff of serious adult historical drama if handled correctly, which of course it would not be. It would require cliched, narrow, Aaron Sorkin-level viewpoints if it was to be greenlit.  Sigh.  But mix in some blasters and mind-control and you're golden.

[Movies] Flick Check: Round Up

I had given up on general movie watching, thinking TV series had taken over, but TV quality has taken a nosedive and I've stumbled on some good flicks.  I believe anyone would enjoy watching any of these. 

Vast of Night -- From a first time director that caught the eye of a lot of people.  It's an alien visitation story, low-budget, Twilight Zone-ish, but took chances and ended up a very clever bit of filmmaking.  By "chances'' I mean direct and indirect references to black and white tv shows of the late fifties, extended blackout moments, and a striking 10-minute tracking shot.  It has a certain amateurish feel which is not only appropriate for the genre but also part of its charm.  Also great performance from lead actress Sierra McCormick. 

Into the Spiderverse -- Yeah, I finally got around to watching this.  It's very skillfully done.  Sharp dialogue, with heart and humor.  The plot is pure formula but not in a bad way. My problem is that I simply cannot connect with animated films.  I don't think I ever have -- even as a child.  I can't remember an animated film from my youth that left an impression. I remember Saturday morning cartoons.  Even today I love Archer, the first season of Family Guy, a number of South Park episodes -- maybe it's when animation becomes a full length movie giving it the pretense of drama… I don't know.  Spiderverse is a good film. I think if it had been live action I would have liked it.

Hunt for The Wilderpeople -- A Taika Waititi gem.  Sam Neill and the fat kid with a splash of diabetes from Deadpool2 go on the run in the wilds of New Zealand.  I don't know how anyone can write comedy in the soul-crushing, fun-hating, depressing bureaucracy we call the entertainment industry today, but Taika manages it consistently.  Bless him. He does that thing he does where he takes tragedy and swamps it with gentle humor without denying it.  This movie is a delight.

[Movies] Flick Check: The Rise (and fall, and further fall) of Skywalker

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was bad.  I know that won't surprise you because everyone has seen it and read the reviews.  Let's consider all nine movies in order of release:

4 - Classic

5 - Arguably even more classic

6 - Pretty darn good but marred by Ewoks

1 - Godawful

2 - Crap

3 - Crap

7 - Crap adjacent

8 - Pukeworthy

9 - Crap

Given that, it's quite remarkable how this mess has remained a cultural touchstone. My first reaction was that it must be another instance of Boomers controlling the economy, but then I am a late Boomer and I was 16 when Star Wars was first released and 19 when Empire came out.  The bulk of Boomers were well into their 20s or even 30s.  You could argue that even a 30-year-old Boomer was an impressionable child, and I'm not sure I'd disagree, but I have to believe that the generation that has kept Star Wars at the forefront or pop culture because of sentimental attachment to the early films is Gen X.  Can't really blame this one on the Boomers.  

In fairness, I should point out that the stand alone movies were better -- Solo was OK and Rogue One was outright Good.  I have not seen The Mandalorian.

[Movies] Flick Check: Wonder Woman 1984

It's astonishing that Marvel has put on what is effectively a 10-year master class in action movies in general and superhero movies in particular, and Warner Brothers hasn't learned a thing.  There is simply no aspect of this movie that exceeds the mediocre.  The plot is pure formula, without the slightest twist to provide any interest.  With the exception of a single Gal Gadot scene, the acting is mailed in.  I take that back, Pedro Pascal, who played the villain, at least put in the effort to ludicrously overact.  It is too long, too repetitive, and too expository.  Even the special effects look amateurish.  Honestly, given the state of technology it seems you would have to try very hard to produce outright bad special effects, but they managed.  The cinematography is prosaic.  The dialog is juvenile and dull.  I only hope there was a PA or a Grip or someone who did something worth doing in this mess.

Strangely, it has an oddly poignant moral about accepting the truth even if it is painful, and understanding how your best desires can lead to disaster.  A good theme done disservice.

Warner made a big deal about streaming new releases on HBO Max.  HBO may regret that deal if this is the sort of thing they can expect.

[Movies, TV, Music, Good Links] Entertainment Consumables

Quick hits on sound and vision.

• Knives Out is weird. A solid drawing room style murder mystery, it made some waves because people assigned it socio-political meaning. I suppose there was possibly that intent, I don't know. I do know it was a very impressively-plotted mystery, speaking as someone who understands how difficult that is. What I think ultimately holds it back is the casting. There were a lot of high-end names associated with this, none of whom were particularly believable in their roles -- especially Daniel Craig. They do their level best but none transcend their miscasting. Not a bad bit of entertainment, but ultimately little more than a curiosity.
• Midway -- There have been two movies about the battle of Midway, one in 1976 and one in 2019. Both have been less than mediocre. This latest one has little to no character development, the pilots were so undifferentiated I couldn't remember why I was supposed to care about whom. Lip service to the wives back home was empty. Even the action scenes were unaffecting. It was mostly vanilla dramatizations of commonly known events. Skip this one. It's a shame. The Battle of Midway deserves a more Band of Brothers-y treatment.
• Theme Time Radio Hour -- Radio show, or perhaps a podcast(?), hosted by Bob Dylan as a sort of old school DJ. I've been working my way through the episodes. Dylan reaches way back, often as far back as the '30s, to find songs to match the theme. It's a good antidote to standard broadcasting or machine formed playlists.
• Sleep With Me, I may have mentioned this podcast before, but I've recently gone back to it to help me chill. Essentially it is a guy droning on, telling rambling stories, or absent-mindedly recapping TV episodes in a meandering, monotonous kind of way. If you are trying to follow the narrative, you are doing it wrong. It is amiable and aimless with the intent that it lingers at the edge of your conscious mind and eases you into sleep. It absolutely works for me.
• Perry Mason - the latest series from HBO. Old folks will remember Perry Mason as a TV lawyer played by Raymond Burr in the '50s and '60s. Here we go back to his origin as a skid row private eye in the '30s. The effect is a bit strained, as if everything was laboring to send a message or to make an important point. I also don't know if I buy Matthew Rhys as the lead. It's full of darkly motivated characters, as noirish as it gets, but feels a little too inorganic. Still, we're only three episodes in. If it pans out I may comment more.
• Wendover Productions -- Not strictly "entertainment", this is a YouTube channel that cranks out 15 minute videos explaining how some key and complex aspects of commerce work. How Airports make (or lose) money. How long-haul trucking works. The thing here is that these are short and to the point, versus, say, a Discovery Channel show that has to fill in 30-60 minutes. Nothing revelatory, just keenly interesting to those with active and inquisitive minds.

[Movies] Flick Check, A Couple to Skip

One of the benefits that will come with the end of lockdown will be that I can go back to largely ignoring movies. The other day I found myself paging through Amazon Prime, having flashbacks to going to rent a video from Blockbuster and seeing nothing I wanted to watch and wandering the aisles until I finally settled on something that at least would pass the time inoffensively. I saw two movies this month, neither of which was worth the time spent watching.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile -- This is an unfocused retelling of the Ted Bundy serial killings. Supposedly from the point of view of his girlfriend/fiance who stood by him through the ordeal, or at least stood by him much longer than she should have. It is manipulative. We see her standing by him, although we are not clear on why she should have known better because we are presented with so few details of the investigation that it's made to seem like he really was possibly not guilty. Is that meant to have shown us what it looked like to her? Are we supposed to assume she looked no more deeply at it? The actions and state of mind of the woman we are focussed on is unclear, and so it ends up dramatically unsatisfying. (A final revelation at the end only serves to make this worse.) Slightly more interesting are the portrayals of the trial and the showboating characters who tried to use it as an entertainment platform. Zac Efron played Bundy and did a good job at serious acting. We are thankfully spared any portrayals of the actual murders. All in all, a fine concept, that results in nothing but a shrug.

Ad Astra -- This movie won a lot of accolades but it is actively bad. The story of an astronaut who has to follow up a lost mission to Neptune that was headed by his father because some aspect of the technology used in that mission is now causing chaos back on Earth and might destroy the solar system. As you might guess, this is about the astronaut's daddy issues. Near as I can tell it is little more than exposition from start to finish. He is brought into the mission via a briefing (exposition). He learns more from an older scientist and friend of his father who accompanies him (exposition). He learns yet more for another character he meets along the way (exposition). He finally encounters his father and they explore their feelings (exposition). The visuals are striking at times, but the science challenges your reality suspension skills. The most interesting question is how Brad Pitt decided to star in this. He is usually top notch at spotting good scripts, but this one is a real clunker.

So looking forward to not watching movies again.

[Movies] Flick Notes: Oscars and Eye Rolls

I used to watch movies all the time and keep up with all the new releases. I gave that up years ago because pretty much all movies were disappointing to me. None of them seemed to be saying or doing anything new. The bulk of them even fail as entertainment. But when you run out of things to do, well... Most of these got some sort of Oscar mentions.

Joker -- Everybody is talking about Jaoquin Phoenix's performance and rightly so. He's a phenomenal actor. The movie itself is gut punch after gut punch. There is no respite. It is brilliantly shot and structured. Visually stunning. It owes a debt to Taxi Driver, obviously. But theme-wise, it's another cruel-world-destroys-a-decent-man story. Nothing wrong with that, other than it makes me roll my eyes. As beautiful as the craftsmanship and acting was, it doesn't strike me as rewatchable.

Ford versus Ferrari -- This is a man's movie. That is to say all the major characters are men and it celebrates traditional masculine roles and attitudes. In that sense it is kin to movies such as The Right Stuff and Master and Commander. Christian Bale gets to play a goofy wildman. Matt Damon (whom I increasingly like) gets to play gruff and homespun. Theme-wise, it's another powerful-people-are-keeping-the-true-believer-down story. Nothing wrong with that, other than it makes me roll my eyes. But it is a lot of fun so it has a high probability of being a rewatch.

JoJo Rabbit -- Part delightful, part depressing. This kid Roman Griffin Davis is the one who should get the best actor award. It starts out to be an irreverent comedy about some Nazi youth in the last days of the Third Reich, if you can believe it, and it's brilliantly funny and touching, even considering the main kid has a goofy version of Adolf Hitler as his imaginary friend. But this is no Hogan's Heroes. We transition into finding a Jew hiding in an attic and a slow descent into tragedy and terror. Yet, oddly, it never feels like a beatdown. It never loses its sense of humor or the humanity of its characters, even the Nazis. A remarkable achievement. Of the movies I've seen lately it's the only one that seems fresh and original, even daring. It doesn't make me roll my eyes, but if I rewatch, I'll turn it off about half way.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- Well, that was, um...interesting. The story of a fading Hollywood TV star and his friend and stunt double. They have various highly stylized adventures culminating in a re-imagining of the Manson family massacres, wherein the family, instead of committing the Tate-LaBianca murders, end up trying to kill the TV Star and his stuntman who end up killing the Manson crowd in a most gruesome manner. In a way, this is of a piece with Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds wherein a bunch of badass Jews demolish Nazis -- it's a fantasy of evil served justice that they didn't get in real life. Much could be made of Taratino's self-conscious view of Hollywood as a righteous fantasy machine, and I'm sure pretentious film reviewers will. If the ultimate statement of Once... is unclear, it is still beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, cleverly structured, and rife with points of nostalgia for someone my age, and often utterly mesmerizing. No eye roll. Likely rewatchable.

Icarus -- This won the Documentary Oscar a couple of years back. It is riveting. It begins with a very accomplished amateur cyclist (the documentarian) who decides to pursue a doping regime and document the process as an expose on the ineffectiveness of anti-doping measures. In the course of this he works with, and befriends, a legendary Russian doping master who had worked with Russian Olympic teams. The Russian takes advantage of the opportunity to become a whistleblower in the Russian Olympic doping scandal and things go from interesting to deadly serious as the highest levels of Russian politicians take umbrage and the stakes become mortal. Definitely recommended. Free on Netflix. No eye roll, but there is rarely a reason to rewatch a documentary, maybe doing further reading into the story counts as a rewatch.

[Movies] Flick Check: Midnight in Paris

It's been a long time since I saw a Woody Allen movie. I needn't recap the personal reputational crash he's experienced over the past decade or so (I remain agnostic as to its validity). Perhaps I should develop a policy on how to approach art by troublesome artists. Or perhaps I should chew glass.

Midnight in Paris is one of his magical-realist comedies. Set in modern day Paris, a writer engaged to an awful woman finds himself transported each night to the Paris of the 20s. He meets Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dali, and a host of others. During the course of these adventures he comes to realize a) how awful his fiance is and b) how he can't live in a romanticized past. It's all very light-hearted, romantic, and delightful.

Although his main character is still basically Woody Allen, thankfully he stopped trying to play himself as the romantic lead. I think his last shot at that was shortly after the turn of the century, which was about 20 years too late. Here he gives the role to Owen Wilson who does a great job of playing Woody Allen, but more subtly and thoughtfully.

Yes, it's a standard Woody Allen comedy. If you hate those, you'll hate this. Also, although the moral of the story is to live in the present, you'd be hard pressed to get the most out of it unless you were aware of some of the personalities from the 20s, otherwise you'll miss a lot of the clever portrayals. I especially liked Adrien Brody's Dali. If you're OK with Woody Allen and have a passing awareness of the personalities from Paris in the 1920s you'll, like me, find it a fine piece of light entertainment -- sweet and engaging. It's promptly paced and deftly filmed. It won the Oscar for best original screenplay. What more could you want?

[Movies] Flick Notes

John Wick 3 -- This, along with the previous entry in the series (which will be at least 4), suffer from trying to impose a rational and institutional justification on what was, in the first movie, an expression of existential emotion. Like 2, it is wall-to-wall fight scenes, often gorey. The writers overwrite and the actors overact in an attempt to make the oddball supporting characters become iconic. All fail. The motivations are manufactured. Much emphasis is put on a ragged looking Keanu Reeves ruefully responding in monosyllables, like it's totally badass. In sum, it's a decent film to shut your brain off to, but it's a mere shadow of the one where a guy got revenge on the people who stole his car and killed his dog.

Godzilla: King of Monsters -- awful. Made even more awful as it is theoretically a remake of one of the most amazing cult films of all time: Gidorah, the Three Headed Monster. I wrote about the original 5 or so years ago:

Then came Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster, a movie that simply could not have been made without the consumption of untold quantities of LSD.

To wit: A south seas island whose natives worship an enormous and deeply creepy-looking caterpillar. Twin fairies, about a foot tall, who speak in unison, can summon the caterpillar via song, and live in a what appears to be a modified make-up kit. An androgynous woman who is clairvoyant and claims to be from Mars, but may actually be the resurrection of a human princess. (In the original Japanese version she was from Venus. They changed it to Mars for the US release for reasons that I'm sure it made sense when they were tripping.) A group of assassins in black suits from the princess' homeland; these men are referred to as "the killers". And lastly Ghidorah itself, a three-headed, two-tailed dragon from outer space that shoots lightning out of its mouths and has no purpose other than wanton destruction.

The events are surreal. At one point the twin fairies appear on a sort of TV talk show and are challenged by some wise-ass kid to sing to the caterpillar. The androgynous woman is heckled by a crowd and told to do a striptease. The caterpillar has to convince Godzilla and Rodan to stop fighting and team up against Ghidorah by imploring them not to be "bullheaded". Pause to consider that one: A giant caterpillar called a giant bird and a giant reptile "bullheaded" as translated by twin telepathic foot-tall fairies speaking in unison. The mind reels.

Then there is the three-headed monster itself. It appears to have no purpose other than malevolence. It doesn't eat, sleep, breed, or do anything but break things and kill people. Visually it is actually quite disturbing. It's three heads fly about haphazardly in all directions firing lighting wantonly, without any targeting intent. It emits an earsplitting shrill mechanical sort of shriek without pattern. It's a Lovecraftian vision of unfeeling, meaningless destruction. If I had to fight Cthulhu I would sick Ghidorah on him. It's clear at least one of the special effects team must have gotten a bad tab of acid.

The remake does away with the flights of imagination. The bad guys are environmental terrorists not mysterious black-suits, the singing fairies are replaced with some sort of sonic frequency generator, and so forth. It would be fine if they truly attempted to make a movie about how the world would deal with such a threat, but they didn't. The actions are almost uniformly poorly motivated and incoherent. That is to say, nothing anybody does makes sense even after you have suspended disbelief about giant monsters. An incoherent movie that aims for realism fails. To do an incoherent movie properly, you need to add madness for it to make sense.

I'm sure there are more sequels in the works. It's clear Universal Pictures needs to invest in a robust supply of hallucinogens.

[Movies] Flick Check: The Irishman

This one is a bit different for Scorsese. Yes, it's about organized crime. Yes, it has De Niro and Pesci. But this time we throw in Pacino for good measure. And, more interestingly, the arc here is not just a storied event, although there is a main event, but an entire life. It is long -- three and a half hours - and it probably should have been shorter, or longer and a trilogy, or perhaps a mini-series.

To summarize, in the first third of the movie we follow the rise of Frank Sheeran -- an ambitious, corrupt, delivery truck driving tough guy (De Niro) as he climbs in rank in the mob to enforcer and hitman. The second part sees him essentially go on loan to Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino) with whom he develops a bond. In third part Hoffa goes so far off the rails that the De Niro character is ordered by the mob boss (Pesci) to kill Hoffa.

Along the way we are treated to dramatized drive-bys to many mob mythologies: Kennedy being made president by the mob who are then responsible for his assassination, the Bay of Pigs being an attempt to save all the mob investments in Havana, and of course Hoffa's murder. We are also given a glimpse into the effect mob life on the families, especially through the eyes of Sheeran's daughters.

I'll take this opportunity to point out the women play a very small role in this movie. As do any minorities. It's a story almost exclusive of white men, mostly old ones at that. If that bothers you, you should not watch it. If you watch it even though it bothers you, you can't say you weren't warned so at least admit you chose to be bothered. The nice thing about Netflix is your right to press "exit" on your remote and pick something else to watch.

In the canon of Scorsese mob films, this is more contemplative. It breaks no truly new ground -- in fact, I hold a minor suspicion that Scorsese had the idea to remake The Godfather in his image -- the choice of the mob life, the costs beyond the violence, and regrets at the end, all without the Coppola romanticism.

This leads to another interesting aspect of the film: bringing Pacino into the mix with De Niro and Pesci. De Niro is De Niro. He plays a solid, multi-layered character, but it's not a stretch for him. Pacino is well known to have had pretty much one character since Scent of a Woman -- a mildly unhinged, flamboyant loudmouth. That how he plays Hoffa, and it fits since that's what Hoffa was. The real standout is Pesci. Here he plays the opposite of the profane psycho role he normally takes. Instead he's a wizened, hyper-competent mob boss, a figure of respect, in fact, almost like Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone in reputation.

The Irishman is a terrific movie. Scorsese still makes terrific movies. It's human heart is on display, the lack of which is the thing he decried about superhero movies so he's practicing what he preaches. If he's not shaking up the world with Taxi Driver or Mean Streets anymore, he's still one of the great ones. The Irishman is proof.

[Movies] Flick Check: Spiderman: Far From Home

Spiderman: Far From Home is probably the last Marvel movie I will anxiously anticipate. It wasn't bad. It's essentially a pastiche of a lot of previous Marvel films, though. We re-hash the immature boy has to grow up theme of the first movie. We re-hash Ironman 3 in that the villain is somebody that Tony Stark dissed years ago. We still have Tom Holland and Jacob Batalon (Ned) and Tony Revolori (Flash) being dead on perfect for their roles. Zendaya does alright but the script struggles with synthesizing her supposedly fierce and rebellious personality with having actual feelings for Peter. The adults are a mixed bag. Marisa Tomei and Jon Favreau are wonderfully fun as always and actually have a great chemistry. The business with Nick Fury feels tacked on to remind us that there is still a broader Marvel narrative going on, but it's not too intrusive. All in all, mostly good fun.

It falls down on Jake Gyllenhall. He does his best with a difficult role that requires him to be sincere, but not too sincere. When you have a hero that turns out to be a heel, you want to be able to look back on a rewatch and say, I should have seen it coming. But in the end, as I said, it's just Ironman 3 all over again, and quite frankly, Jake Gyllenhal is no Michael Keaton.

Good movie. Glad I watched. Will probably stop flipping when I stumble on it in the future. So where does that leave us with Marvel?

One place it leaves us is with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola railing against Marvel movies and superhero blockbusters in general. I am not entirely unsympathetic to their views. I admit that if I did not have such powerful childhood memories of the Marvel comics, I would likely be much less enthused about them. I have no delusion that these are among the great works of humanity the species has produced. But then, they are not supposed to be. Scorsese called them "theme parks." Well, that's kind of their goal, isn't it. Did you watch is expecting something like Taxi Driver? Coppola called them "despicable" which is preposterous. However much you may dislike them, they are in no way despicable.

Here's the thing. I would love it if more movies were made about humans. It would be great if there were more movies that match the best of Scorsese and Coppola, even from Scorsese and Coppola. For that matter, it would be great if every TV show was as good as Deadwood. The Marvel movies don't stop that from happening. So why such fervent objections to them? If Scorsese and Coppola want more great movies, they should make them. Or finance them. Doesn't Coppola have his own studio?

Action movies are almost never humanistic art. They are a craft. A skill. I have suggested they are the defining works of the 21st century so far, for better or worse. Appreciate them for what they are. Or would you prefer the level of action movie we back in Scorsese and Coppola's heyday -- say, Tron or Logan's Run?

Another place it leaves us, or at least me, is with no childhood comic book connection to anything that is going on now. There are apparently movies planned about "The Eternals", a thing of which I have no childhood memory or ever heard of before, but it is supposedly the next big enduring theme. Honestly the upcoming TV shows featuring the Avengers characters sound more appealing to me. TV is a writer's medium so we may actually get some character-based, serial story-telling, which would be nice.

It seems obvious to me that the heroic age of superhero movies is over. Perhaps that will make some people very happy. In the spirit of appreciation, I'm just glad I had the opportunity to relive a rare happy slice of my childhood. Going forward I'm sure I'll catch Marvel movies in the normal course of things, when they come to streaming channels I subscribe to.

Maybe the next Spiderman movie should be titled Spiderman: Let's All Move On.