gcsman's reviews

If this movie had been made 15-20 years ago it would have been hailed as great, and would now be seen as a classic. Nowadays of course it has loads of competition, but it's still good across the board. I liked its balance of plot, characters, dialog, action, and visual impact. And pace. It moves along briskly, expecting (quite rightly) that at this stage viewers will have no trouble filling in any little gaps for themselves. It has a classic unity of focus -- no distractions with side plots or multiple storylines -- and makes good use of two big cosmic antagonists (Galactus and Silver Surfer) that have been staples in the Marvel comics since they were introduced. And to a level that is now rarely seen, it's pretty much comics-accurate: These are the FF characters just the way they should be. The cast are all just fine (among which Vanessa Kirby stands out, with the script allowing her to show that she is, hands down, the strongest team. Member). The choice to set this in a retro-1960's setting and in a parallel universe is simple and clever, totally getting around the problem of how to introduce them into a superhero universe already stacked with characters, and answer the question where they've been all this time.

So all of this together gets a 10/10 from me. Does this mean it's perfect? No, you can always find ways to poke holes in the story or the details or something that didn't appeal to you personally. It just means that I can't really see how it would have been done better. What pushes it over the top for me, however, was something visual and rather subtle, which I didn't notice consciously till well into it. It has something to do with the color palette and how the characters LOOK so real-but-enhanced. They just look great. I can imagine the production team spending days over choices like what exact shade of blue to use for the FF uniforms, or what precise shade of orange for The Thing, or how to make the Baxter Building remind us of the Avengers tower but have its own identity, or exactly how big to make Galactus, or how shiny to make the Surfer's skin, and on and on. And baby Franklin Richards is really about the best movie-baby I can recall seeing anytime recently. There is really a LOT behind everything we're seeing.

This all honors the importance of of FF in the Marvel canon. It was THE very first Marvel comic title where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were striving for something different from Superman or Batman and it struck gold right away. Fun fact, I learned from one of artist Scott Adams' books that the FF characters represent the four archetypal elements of nature: earth, air, fire, and water. (And I really thought it was fun to see how they used Harvey Elder, the Mole Man, who was the very first villain in FF issue #1.)

The first FF movie (back in 2005) actually wasn't all that bad for the time, but it was aimed more to juvenile audiences and just didn't quite 'work'. The attempted reboot in 2015, though, was just bad. Third time's the charm.

Notice that whenever this studio wants to start over with their superhero film lineup, what character do they call on? Every time. That's what happened with director Richard Donner's pioneering version in 1978 starring Christopher Reeve, Zack Snyder's version in 2013 with Henry Cavill, and now James Gunn directing David Corenswet. Superman is THE iconic superhero, and from the box office buzz on this opening week it's obvious that lots of people who won't come out for the latest Marvel or even DC outing will go to the theater to see the Big Guy in action. Instant success.

But then the actual movie has to deliver and I'd say this one is pretty good. I can't think of many films with (just over) 2 hours run time that motor through so much material. There are loads of characters who all get good time on screen, the acting is uniformly just fine, and the storyline is pretty complex but winds up satisfactorily. Comparisons are inevitable of course. I thought Henry Cavill was great, but that version was in the hands of a director (Snyder) with a very dark vision of things that just does not suit Superman. He (and we) would have been better off directing Batman. And of course Christopher Reeve was the original (at least the big-screen, big-budget versions) who just suited the role of the ultimate good guy with the power to make things right. Rachel Brosnahan is the best Lois Lane since Margot Kidder, and Perry White and Jimmy Olsen also have more prominent roles than they did in previous versions. They're good. So is Nicholas Hoult as our classic villain Lex Luthor, playing a power-hungry man consumed by jealousy and rage. The "Justice Gang" trio also add quite a bit of interest, particularly Mr. Terrific.

A surprising standout though is Krypto, who's on screen much more than I expected. The dog is absolutely great -- I don't know whose idea it was to feature him so strongly, but it works! Weirdly, the chemistry between Superman and his dog is at least as important to the story as the link between Lois and Clark. If there's anything genuinely new about this version, that's what it is.

A couple of things that didn't totally work for me though were the Kents (a friend of mine who was raised in Kansas said their accent is not even close to accurate -- maybe they moved there from Georgia??). I preferred Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter.

And then there's the junk science like antiproton rivers, pocket universes and impossibly big monsters which indeed are typical in the actual comics, but seemed a bit over the top. (But to be fair, watching Christopher Reeve reverse the flow of time by reversing the Earth's spin was crazy too.)

I feel like only the Brits are capable of doing films like this -- small-scale stories with eccentric characters put into unpredictable situations, suffused in a warm, low-key and gentle sense of humor and irony. The story here is that Charles Heath (Tim Key), a resident of a tiny and thinly populated island, has invited folk musicians Herb McGwyer (Tim Basden) and Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) to the island to do a special concert of the music they sung back when they were a popular duo. Turns out the "special concert" is just for him (Charles), and he can afford to pay them because he's won The Lottery -- twice. Since they broke up as singers years ago, Nell has moved on to marriage and other things, but Herb still carries a torch for her and can't let it go. He needs help and refuses to see it.

We get quite a bit of impromptu singing as it goes on, and it's nice. The island looks exactly like it should -- isolated, rocky/meadowy, slightly gloomy with rain. There's one little town with a tiny general store which doesn't seem to stock anything that Herb is looking for, but the owner lady (Sian Clifford) always comes up with a clever and slightly weird substitute. The central part of it, though, is the interplay between Herb and Charles. To call Charles 'eccentric' doesn't tell half of it. He's the nicest, most generous person you could imagine, but anything he says is so tangled with elliptical side tracks and self deprecation that it takes a while to translate it all. But both of them grow because they change each other. Herb learns to step outside himself and do things for others, while Charles gets the courage to take some (social) steps that he has long been aching for. It's a feel-good experience in the best sense. This is 2 hours at the movies that you won't regret.

I see on the various YouTube items about Sheena, a lot of people post that they saw this film (now 30 years old) when they were kids and really loved it. And true enough, the substance of it is at a level that any kid can pick up. The setup of the plot is sheer nonsense -- a blonde, blue-eyed girl is suddenly orphaned in Kenya by the death of her parents, and is raised by a local tribe, growing up to become their shaman and protector. (Though actually that's not *quite* as crazy as the Tarzan origin story of being raised by apes from babyhood.) She also learns the ability to telepathically control animals, a plot point that comes into play several times. Joined by an American TV journalist, she must fight off an invading evil company wanting to take over the tribal lands. This is adventure fantasy, pure and simple.

There's no one in the cast that can be called a great actor; they're all just filling roles. However, the two leads (Tanya Roberts and Ted Wass) are clearly trying hard, so credits to them for that. All that being said, there are still reasons to see it. One of them, of course, is Tanya Roberts: she looks great in that minimal deerskin bikini and is athletic enough to put across the action scenes. And I don't even think that should be called a guilty pleasure -- if it's OK to admire the hero's body in Tarzan movies, then it should be OK for Sheena too. According to Roberts, she spent a lot of time in the gym and training for horseback riding, and it shows (though her archery skills needed work). And she's right there on camera for almost every scene.

The other reason is the scenery and setting. Loads of Kenyan vistas and animals that are used to good effect. It's mostly beautiful to see. The way that lions are used, though, is a bit startling (plunking the actors right into the middle of a handful of lions in a scene or two). I suppose those particular animals were well trained and well fed on the spot, but I imagine that couldn't or wouldn't be done today.

All in all, this is certainly a second-rate B movie. The plot and the acting just don't carry it beyond that. But the point is that it's not *third* rate. As some creative artist said a long time ago, it takes a real effort to make something as good as second-rate. And in fact, it's no worse and perhaps better than most of the Tarzan movies that have been made. Bottom line is, enjoy this for what it is.

Numerical ratings aside, the acid test of any movie, really, is to ask yourself "Would I like to see this again?" For Thunderbolts* -- yes, I would. Definitely. For Captain America Brave New World just released a few months ago -- not particularly. That's really it in a nutshell. The production values are similar, but TBolts puts across a level of heart and commitment that has been missing from the MCU for a while now. And there's depth to it (see below) that I see is generating a lot of serious discussion among pro reviewers, which hasn't happened to MCU films in a while.

The backstories of almost all the main characters are drawn from a bunch of previous Marvel movies and streaming series including Black Widow, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Falcon and Winter Soldier, and Hawkeye. So that's quite a lot of homework. But it turns out not to matter too much, because TBolts stands by itself pretty well. There's a fairly intricate but coherent plot, about the right amount of action/combat, but especially strong character development for two or three of the major characters.

Lots of people have commented on how good Florence Pugh is as the Black Widow assasin Yelena, and I'll completely agree. We find her in a pretty dark place when the story starts. After years of doing solo black-ops jobs with lots of fighting and killing, she's lost, lonely, motiveless, achingly unhappy. But the script doesn't give us the true depth of this right off the bat; it develops as we go and finally finds its full impact (on both her and the plot) toward the end. She's the emotional center of the story and Pugh totally carries it off. And I thought it was effective that she was willing to look weatherbeaten and grundgy throughout the whole film, which nicely externalized her internal state. On the surface, there's nothing in the plot or the action that sets TBolts apart from other Marvel outings, but it shows how really great acting can lift all that material to a different level.

But there are good performances all around, and the dialog and scene construction are a well designed mix of suspense, serious talk, and gentle humor. For the other characters, I've liked Hannah John-Kamen ("Ghost") since her role in Ant-Man and The Wasp and am delighted she's back -- she's a little underused here, but she has definite screen presence and cool superpowers not duplicated by anyone else. Sebastian Stan and David Harbour are good as always, and Lewis Pullman as the mysterious "Bob" is great. His storyline is a close second to Yelena's for its prominence in the plot (my wife, who's not necessarily a fan of these movies, liked Bob a lot.). Julia Louis-Dreyfuss as a CIA director playing her own behind-the-scenes games portrays the true villain in the show, a manipulative, nasty mastermind. Her character is unfortunately kind of one-dimensional and at times it was just annoying. That's the only false note I can really mention.

Among different themes running through the whole story, the one that sticks with you at the end is how damaged, flawed people (which everyone in this new team is) can heal each other where normal society could not. The way to get past the Void inside you is not to keep it suppressed (as Yelena has tried to do) but share it with others. Pain shared is pain understood and lessened. Not a bad message to find in a superhero movie. One of my friends who's a health professional says that the way Thunderbolts* shows, and deals with, mental and psychological illness, is on the mark.

The pacing, the action, and the camerawork are all the usual Marvel good work. There are inventive touches too. The 'fanfare' that opens all the MCU movies starts off nice and brisk and perky as always, but gradually goes dark and grinds to a halt, cleverly signalling the mood of the upcoming story. The opening scene where Yelena paraglides off an immensely tall building would be a highlight of amy Tom Cruise flick, but here it's used just as a cute throwaway. The final battle setting (in New York of course, did you need to ask??) uses innovative camera angles from both above and below that lift it above the routine approach. And the end credits cleverly use variants on classic artwork to show 'what happened next' to the team. Bottom line is, go see it!

Famed director Stephen Soderbergh is quoted as saying that he's much more drawn to scenes with people talking than to Bond-style action, so it's much more natural to compare Black Bag to things like The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, or (much more recently) the excellent All the Old Knives. If you want car chases, explosions, hand to hand combat, lots of guns, and a high body count, then you have no shortage of choices out there. Black Bag is almost in a different genre.

Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are the standout leads, with a supporting cast of younger actors that I found a lot less familiar, but they are all excellent. The old but distinguished Pierce Brosnan plays their division chief and dominates every scene he's in. The story is essentially a slow-burn spy mystery: who among this tight group of 6 different agents has been selling info about a new secret weapon to the Russians? Who's the mole? Is there more than one? Is their chief involved too? The low-key weaving and unweaving of the net cast by George (Fassbender's character) and later his wife Kathryn (Blanchett) through their interactions with the other agents is really the bulk of the story. I wondered if the protagonist George was named as a callout to LeCarre's main character George Smiley, who was similarly laconic and close-mouthed, the perfect spy/bureaucrat.

A few things in the production didn't quite work. The lighting for all the indoor scenes was just too dark (why is that so trendy??). And Fassbender and Blanchett seemed to have overly heavy makeup, which was inexplicable. Some of the dialog was murky. Maybe that's due to the sound system at our theater, but my wife and I watch good old movies too, and we are usually struck by how clear the actors' diction was back then. Mumbling isn't an acting style.

Director Bong Joon Ho has risen rapidly to the top rank, particularly because of the award winning 'Parasite' (2019). For 'Mickey 17', which has a very different tone, imagine a gonzo mashup of 'Fifth Element' (1997), 'Avatar' (2009), and 'Starship Troopers' (1997) and you'll get some idea of what it's like. The single central idea is a good sf one, i.e. What are the possible consequences of human cloning. Here it's called 'reprinting' -- upon the human subject's death (here it's Mickey, played by Robert Pattinson), he is not resurrected in a literal sense but his newly reprinted body has his previous memories downloaded intact into it. Whether than means he's actually the same person plunges you into a sticky ethical and moral debate. Is it OK to use Mickey essentially as a lab rat to explore the conditions on an unknown planet (Niflheim) and get killed over and over? By a rather fun accident, the 17th incarnation of Mickey didn't actually get killed by his encounter with the resident aliens (who look like giant pillbugs; the babies are actually rather cute) and when he makes his way back to base he finds version #18 of himself has already been made. Oops. That mix generates the rest of the plot.

It all has a rough, dystopian feel to it, which is common enough these days. I'd welcome a change. On top of the experiences of the main character there is in-your-face social satire centered on entrepeneur Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his controlling wife (Toni Collette). Marshall acts like a seedy carnival barker with Trump-like mannerisms and dreams of grandeur (not much of a stretch there). His delusions eventually lead where you might expect, but there are numerous twists and turns that keep things unpredictable.

Pattinson is really good as Mickey, and he plays the two versions of himself with drastically different personalities, which is interesting in itself. It's the best acting I've seen him do (and I thought he was good in 'Tenet'). Naomi Ackie has a good supporting role but could have been given a more fully developed character.

The most impressive single thing about this Atom Egoyan film must be the setting, which draws heavily from the recent, real-life Canadian Opera Company production of Richard Strauss's opera 'Salome'. Even a few of the genuine singers are used in supportive roles. The plotline that is embedded within that atmosphere is, however, a fairly conventional one: the young stage director (Amanda Seyfried) must face two big ghosts from her past who are (a) her father and (b) her mentor, himself a legendary director. We;ve seen variations on that many times before. Other things getting in her way -- which would be enough of a challenge by themselves -- are the personal issues and problems of the lead singers and management who want to skew the production their own way. It's well enough done, and it's certainlyl visually impressive. I didn't think however that this role suited Seyfried too well; I though she should convey a more commanding, certain presence, because her character was supposed to be an experienced director already. (Comparison for contrast: Cate Blanchett, the imperious orchestra conductor in Tar (2022)). But there it is -- Egoyan has a strong personal style, and you get what you get.

The plus signs for this movie are clear enough: the usual Marvel high production values, a good cast, a plotline that's clear with some engaging turns, and more than enough action to satisfy those who just like to see things zoom around and get smashed up. If you're a Marvel fan you'll find it entertaining enough without rating it anywhere near the top of the list.

Contrary to what I was more or less expecting, we see the new Cap (Sam Wilson, played by the engaging Anthony Mackie) doesn't spend the first part of the film learning the ropes so to speak or getting used to all his new gear (the wings, the iconic shield, the costume). Instead, he's already in full command of what he's doing. Another surprise was the amount of screen time given to Harrison Ford as General (now President) Ross, last seen in any major way in the first Hulk films. He played a much bigger role than I was expecting; so much so that the usual "hero's journey" of personal growth ends up belonging to him more than to Sam. Well, whatever. The villains aren't very prominent by comparison and what they do seems kind of arbitrary. But, it's an enjoyable enough way to spend a couple of hours at the theater.

Some of the plot and many of the characters won't make complete sense without having seen several previous Marvel productions for backstory, including the Avengers and Hulk films and the Falcon and Winter Soldier miniseries, and especially the Eternals movie. I'm not totally sure how they are going to work their way through the ever more complex world that they've created over the past 15 years: maybe the upcoming Fantastic Four film and the re-introduction of the X-Men will do the trick for new directions that don't require all the previous background.

It feels almost insulting to give a numerical rating to this impressive film, as if it were in the same category as some summer blockbuster flick. But I'll say 9/10 with my only reservation that it could have been just a bit shorter with much the same impact. It's 'epically personal', which sounds self-contradictory but is not, and impact is what this has: a gut wrenching look at the Iranian uprisings of 2022/23 as seen very much from the inside, through the eyes of one family in Tehran. They are upper-middle-class, with a good apartment, two cars, and good career prospects for the father -- an investigator for the law who has his eye on attaining the level of a judge someday. But now, demonstrations and riots break out everywhere because of the ruling patriarchy's increasing repression, and things boil over after the death of a young woman brutally treated by the police. The ruling regime responds only with more oppression. The family's father (Iman) is forced into assigning sentences to accused rioters without due process and is badly conflicted -- if he is fired for sticking to his basically decent principles, his whole family will lose everything. The two daughters (Sana and Rezvan) are young adults who see what's happening and like many other young Iranians become increasingly radicalized. The mother (Najmeh) continually tries to hold things together as they threaten to spiral out of control.

It's all very much centered on this one family, with the point being -- as I saw it -- that they are experiencing in microcosm what is happening to their whole country. It's a picture of generational conflict as well as the simple fact of ordinary people trying to decide how to respond to almost intolerable pressures. Iman, a basically decent guy, just loses his path because he cannot fully recognize what is going on around him as a new and different society is trying to be born but is being viciously put down. And his children, who see that new world as a distant vision, cannot find a path to it.

The family's journey is carefully and methodically tracked along with archival footage of the real-life events in the streets. The camerawork and the scenes and settings are in a sense unremarkable but the cumulative effect of the whole story is big, and things happen particularly toward the end that came as surprises.

There's little doubting the authenticity of it all. See it any way you can; this is history in action.

This thing is getting Oscar buzz but for the life of me I can't see why. There's not a single character in the story that I could get engaged with. The two young leads (Ani and Igor) are supposed to somehow be playing out a fairytale romance, but Romeo and Juliet this is not. They are both shallow people, and the young guy is particularly off-putting -- entitled, self centered, thoughtless, with access to way too much money for his or anyone's good. I actually don't blame his parents for wanting to shut things down. This was just hard to sit through. Instead, go and watch Zeffirelli's classic movie version of R&J for true quality.

In its way this is quite a magnificent movie. My wife and I saw it in the theater on its release and we were just so impressed -- and it sticks in the mind. Even now, when some of its special effects and sets look rather outdated, it has a raw power, commitment, and energy that are undeniable.

This is the best King Arthur movie out there, hands down. Arthurian lore is so diverse and well established that it will survive any version and any take on it, but some certainly stand up better than others. Excalibur stands out because it takes the legend just as it is: straight on, no apologies. After all, the Arthurian cycle is mythic, not historic, and attempts to make it grounded and gritty for "modern" consumption like some more recent efforts (see King Arthur (2004) or Legend of the Sword (2017)) might be watchable but they just don't last. One reviewer -- I think the one for Time magazine but I've forgotten exactly -- said that Excalibur "sprints like a deer through the thickets of legend". Exactly right. In two dazzling hours it follows Arthur's life beginning to end, in a way that treats the story just as it is: fantasy and legend, with no useless tethers to the real world,

The actors, who at that stage were a largely unknown group of young people, do a great job. Nigel Terry grows in front of our eyes from a young country rube into a figure of stature and majesty (and I like the way his voice and delivery of lines change to match). The others like Nicholas Clay (Lancelot), Cherie Lunghi (Guinevere), Helen Mirren (Morgan LeFay) fit their roles seamlesslly. And there are others playing more minor roles who would soon become A-listers -- Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne.

But the standout is Nicol Willamson as Merlin. This is by far the most convincing version of the character to be seen on screen, and Excalibur is worth seeing just for him. His eccentric, tightly controlled performance is perfectly explained by the simple fact that, of course, he's an ageless wizard who lives simultaneously in two worlds, the everyday and the spirit realm. Under those conditions it would be hard to behave 'normally'.

Another key to the production is the setting and the visuals. Some scenes, like the sword rising straight up from the water in the hand of the Lady, or the finale with Arthur being carried to Avalon, are flat-out electrifying, and the choice of Wagner's music as accompaniment is genius. I'd like to go on and on but the message is, if you haven't seen it then what are you waiting for? And if you have seen it, revel in another watch.

However, there is just one thing to do first. To get the most out of Excalibur, take all our 21st-century attitudes of irony and snark and check them at the door. Then dive into this and enjoy.

Just rewatched Thor on video after a few years' gap and I still enjoy the heck out of it. This made stars of Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, and my god the extra star power? Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgaard, Idris Elba, Rene Russo (underused), and Anthony Hopkins for goodness' sake. And for the MCU, our first real glimpses at Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) who would carry those roles onward. The biggest key of all, though, was putting Kenneth Branagh in the director's chair and giving him room to work.

One thing I liked that followed on from that decision was to take this story seriously and play it straight. Norse gods, Asgard, and Frost Giants? Really? Marvel apparently saw Thor as a big risk, this soon in the unfolding of MCU, but that was exactly the right way to play it. We're invited right from the start to buy in to that outlook, and boy it works. In the later Thor and Avengers movies, Thor got turned into something of a clown and played for jokes, which mostly leaves a bad taste in the mouth. That does a serious disservice to the character.

Extra kudos here go to Patrick Doyle's magnificent musical score, which has a grandeur and intensity that no later Marvel film has matched (yes, including Avengers Endgame. I mean it.) It baffles me why it wasn't used more in the later films. The big payoff scene with Thor's (apparent) death and resurrection, when I first saw it in the theater all those years ago, was electrifying. There he is, riding the storm and taking on the invincible Destroyer (who by the way was comic-book accurate, beautifully rendered). It worked so well, first because the victory was earned (we've watched hero mature and become someone truly worthy of wielding Mjolnir), next because of the striking visuals, and next because of that pulsing music. There's little else in the Marvel movies that equals this scene, except maybe the inspired rendition of that rainbow Bifrost bridge. And Asgard as a whole.

I downgrade my rating just a little to a mainly because the three sidekicks Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg aren't terribly well used (and they are similarly kind of useless in the Thor comics too). Sif (Jaimie Alexander) has a lot more promise, but was repeatedly underused here and in the later films (in the real Norse mythology, Sif is Thor's wife -- that was too much to swallow, I guess).

Amyway - enjoy!

Just re-watched this on DVD, and found it stands up pretty well. A decade ago. The MCU was still in early stages of building its empire and the movies had the feeling of freshness and newness, many central characters were being given their full outing on the screen for the first time, and there was lots to look forward to. The first half of CA I think still stands as one of the best Marvel storytelling outings. The second half is more of predictable battle and combat scenes strung together.

Really, the cast is great. Chris Evans totally establishes his ultimate good-guy character fighting on the side of right, truth, and fairness. He looks and acts the part as well as any MCU persona.m and it's no accident he was one of the best-beloved Marvel heros. Add to this Hayley Atwell -- a supporting role here but one that proved to have a lot of longevity (including perhaps the centermost role in the What If --? Alternate-history series, which is loads of fun). Then Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, and Hugo Weaving, always great. They make it all so easy to watch.

This time through, I was struck by something new: the structural parallels with Wonder Woman (2017). I don't think that was intentional, but several basic elements play out the same way: we have the superpowered hero fighting on the side of right during a World War, his/her intrepid band of companions, the doomed best friend, the villain holding god-like powers, the giant bomber revealed at the end that is carrying a load of Ultimate Weapons. I suppose that just reflects the fact that there aren't a lot of totally innovative plots for movies like this.

Watching this glossy actioner, I actually wondered for a while if we would make it to the end without a scene where Tom Cruise is running desperately to save something-or-other. But, sure enough, toward the end there he is running in a flight suit through some unspecified snowy pine forest. See Tom run. Run, Tom, run. This time-filling scripting feels like it's done in place of something better like, for example, acting. The thing is, Cruise is actually a capable actor, such as here in the (very) occasional scenes where he allows himself to express self-doubt or internal reflection. I liked his performances in things like Rain Man, Jerry Maguire, Edge of Tomorrow, or Oblivion, for example, which show off a good deal more.

But, that's not what the franchises like Top Gun and Mission Impossible are all about. They're about hi-tech action, sell tickets, give the target audiences what they want to see. Very high production values coupled with entirely predictable and cliche-ridden plots. The good guys face a highly contrived, arbitrary set of challenges but win out in the end, and the bad guys lose with a high body count. And of course the essence is about glorifying the leading man, around whom everyone else in the cast must orbit. Not to say that the flight sequences in Top Gun aren't thrilling at times -- the climax of the long bombing run and dogfight etc. Really was.

The cast of cocky-new-guard ace pilots carefully curated to show diversity is fine, but none really stand out above the limits of the script. Jennifer Connelly just keeps getting more attractive, but yet again, she's in the story just as support for the leading male. And the brief scenes with Ed Harris, genuinely one of the best actors out there never to win an Oscar, stand out. But I really wish Cruise would go another direction, because he's capable of more. Stop running and start thinking.

This isn't quite the epic LOTR-scale fantasy that it is clearly striving for, but I thought this was a captivating, totally watchable movie with loads of interesting material. I appreciate its ambition. Even though its reach just a bit exceeds its grasp, it's trying for a lot. A thorough re-imagining of the old fairytale with a long, complex storyline, a wide variety of dramatic scenes and settings, several well known actors -- get in the mood and there's lots to like here. And looking back a decade later, it's still fun. A classic huge gloomy castle with turrets and passageways galore, a Dark Forest, a true fairyland, a thundering army in mediaeval mail, and of course a group of acerbically charming Dwarves -- added-value to the essential elements of the classic story, which are all there but delivered with a different point of view.

Contrary to what some other reviewers say, this is the first thing I saw Kristen Stewart in that made me think she does have the goods as an actor. She does soulful expressions just great, and her re-imagining of sweet Snow White as a grime-covered semi-action hero but with special life-enhancing abilities is clever. It's not Shakespeare by any means, but she does a good job. Chris Hemsworth plays somewhat counter to type as the Huntsman, an antihero with a tragic past (explored much more in the sequel "Winter's War)" who gradually finds his path back to light. And of course Charlize Theron totally leans in to the Evil Queen persona, perhaps just chewing the scenery a bit too much. But then, this is a fairystory and so the characters are archetypes in the end.

Am I giving this all too much credit? Actually, I don't think so. This production stands up quite well, and as I said, if you get in the mood, you'll enjoy it a lot. But check your 21st-century cynicism and snark at the door.

TNG was always the best of the Star Trek franchise. Back when it was new, seasons 3, 4, and 5 were where they really hit their stride. It was must-see TV week in and week out. The scripts were ingenious and well written, they tackled loads of social and political issues of the day by cleverly placing them in the future and giving them a new twist. And by then we all loved the Enterprise-D crew and wanted to see what they'd encounter next: Picard of course, but also Data, Worf, Crusher, Troi, LaForge, Riker -- whoever your favorite was. Going on past season 5 things started inevitably falling off in intensity and quality, but the midstream of this series run was SO good at times.

"Yesterday's Enterprise" though still stands as my favorite. Watching it for the first time I remember exclaiming "hey, this is REAL science fiction!" -- a cut above the essential nature of Star Trek which is often just cowboys-in-space. War between empires. Time travel. Moral conundrums: dare they change the past or not? The whole plot of this episode has an inevitability to it that is carried off to a T. And it builds on the foundation of almost all the previous three years of the series, using all their characters but particularly Tasha and Guinan in surprising ways. It holds up well -- if you haven't seen it, butyou know the TNG characters, you've got a treat in store.

I first saw this shortly after is release back in 2010 -- it was part of an Australian new wave of lean, tightly made movies that could compete on the international market, and it's an absolute gem. A small bunch of late-teens from the fictional country town of Wirrawee are on a long weekend excursion far away from everything when their country is invaded in a blitzkrieg by an unspecified Alliance led by an unnamed General. (But clearly these enemies are Oriental in some way -- one would guess Korea or China, so if you're troubled by overt racism this will likely bother you). However, 99 percent of the story is on the young group who gradually and reluctantly find that they must turn themselves into guerilla soldiers. It's completely their show.

I hadn't seen any of the troupe of young actors playing the main roles before, and they're all great. They sell it. The Australian scenery is on full display too, and most of all, the pacing and script are exactly right. Nothing drags but nothing is rushed. These young people don't have superpowers, and nothing happens that is out of the realm of possibility. They learn to do things because that's what people do when pushed beyond their normal limits.

Madame Web is indeed not too great, but I found a way to get some enjoyment out of it (without escaping into the obvious and unrewarding alternative of mockery). The way is to put yourself back in the mindset of roughly 25 years ago (which coincidentally is the time period the film is set in). Back then, superhero films were new -- think the first two Spiderman movies -- the superpowers were more specific and limited, the stakes were smaller, the stories were personal and kind of low-key compared with the present time. It was all fresh and new and started at a level you could believe. When you see it through that lens, there are things to enjoy. Dakota Johnson in the lead role is fine and she's on screen for almost every scene. The occasional 'Web vision' sequences are well done too, and the references to spiderweb patterns everywhere she looks are kind of clever.

In other words: superhero movies don't have to be all Avengers-infinity-War level all the time with their universe-saving stakes, characters with godlike powers, and endless screen-melting battle scenes. The sequence starting with Iron Man (2008) and ending with Endgame (2019) was pretty amazing, but we might not see anything like it again. "Ordinary superhero" films can work too and we're in a different era.

All that being said, Madame Web does have serious problems. The script and dialog are pretty uninspired -- like it passed through too many hands. The villain Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) is cringeworthy, about as good as if he were doing a second rehearsal. The main plotline is that Cassie Webb (Johnson) is trying to save three young women who are going to become Spiderwomen (played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor) from being brutally killed, a fate that she's seen with her precognitive power. But the action wanders and jumps around here and there and never feels like it settles on a coherent approach. Unfortunately, I would guess that these three young actresses are never going to get the chance to play their nascent Spiderwomen roles again. That's a shame, because there are some good storylines in that direction to work with.

It's great that IMDb shows the viewer votes and not just thumbs-up or thumbs-down. But you really have to go beyond the average rating and look at the full bar graph of the actual votes (which you can see by clicking on the average rating at upper right on the screen). From the graph, you can see for yourself what the trollvote factor is (the bin at 1/10), discard it, and look at the REAL average from the rest. It's always obvious where the real center of the distribution is, and I usually find that I agree with it. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie that truly deserved a 1/10 and I don't think this one does either -- but despite some good elements, I can't rate it higher than about 4 or 5. And of course, there are way too many 'fans' out there who can't seem to stand superhero movies led by F rather than M protagonists and will not take these movie on their merits.

There's no denying Zack Snyder's impressive visual imagination, which is on full display here. The opening few minutes by themselves are worth seeing, as we are introduced to heroine Kora (Sofia Boutella), living amidst vast scenery on a moon around a huge Saturn-like planet filling the sky. Many later scenes show off Snyder's characteristic obsession with dark, brooding lighting and apocalyptic settings. In its own way, this is all sort of fascinating.

It's all very watchable, but the whole problem is that even with stuff to look at, you still need to have a story to tell. All these impressive visuals, and the plot such as it is, are deployed at the service of scenes of extended violence and combat that seem to be just there as set pieces. And as lots of others have already said, this part of it is pretty derivative -- there are elements of Star Wars, of course (a plucky band of rebels against a huge Evil Empire), but also feels from Avatar, Tarzan, Game of Thrones, and other fantasy/sf adventures. It also doesn't help that the basic premise doesn't make a lot of sense: Kora's plan for fighting the Empire and its millions of soldiers is to gather a little rogue band of specialist fighters who can then do (something-or-other) to semi magically bring everything down. Of course it all has to finish up with scenes of hand-to-hand combat that go on and on in great detail. It seems like these scenes are the director's real interest. The main cast has several familiar names, and they all do OK, but most of the time they have little to work with except to keep the action going.

If only Snyder would turn over the scripting and storyboarding to someone else. As Ursula LeGuin said, if there's nothing going on but unceasing physical action, it's a sure sign that no story is being told. For me, Snyder's most complete accomplishment is still "Watchmen" (2009), which is also pretty dystopian but has his best combination of plot, characters, and visuals.

"Princess Mononoke" is the only other Miyazaki film that I've seen (which is clearly my loss). Just saw The Boy and the Heron in its subtitled (not dubbed) English version at one of our local independent cinemas, and it's quite an experience. To say the least, Miyazaki has an inventive mind. The overarching theme of the story is that young Mahito embarks on a journey to meet (or save?) his mother, thought by everyone to have died in a fire the year before. But that summary conveys almost nothing of what happens on screen. We are step by step taken into an increasingly bizarre wonderland of human and non-human, good and evil characters who alternately guide Mahito, or hinder him, or push him along. He's a naive boy, but not just a cipher to whom things happen: he has a will of his own and is not afraid to assert it at critical times -- but as we see, his judgment isn't always true.

There's no doubt that Miyazaki has an impressive visual imagination, which is on full display here. I was struck by the extreme use of 'masking' as an animation technique: the backgrounds, landscapes, and settings both outdoors and indoors are rendered with full, lush detail and striking colors, whereas the main characters are drawn quite simply and generically, which makes it easier for the viewers to put themselves in their place amidst the action. (The exceptions are the odd characters that we would NOT identify with, like the Grandfather or the gnome-like grannies in the country house -- those are drawn in very specific detail.) And there are genuinely arresting concepts that will stay in your mind, like the corridor of doors leading into different worlds (in this movie, the multiverse is digital, not continuous!), or the fire maiden Himi.

The strongest impression I came away with, though, was that as the movie went along, I could not predict what we were going to see next: the action flows from scene to scene smoothly enough, but with big and sometimes jarring changes in location and sub-theme, as if they didn't want to be held to a single self-consistent storyline. Perhaps I'm just too wedded to Western linear thinking. This story is coming from a truly different place.

This is a British low-budget sf film from director Keir Burrows. Low budget is not a bad thing in itself if the story concept is good and the execution is clever, but (at most) only one of these things applies here. The protagonists Ana, Nate, and Liv have a makeshift basement lab in which they discover matter transference through homemade wormholes. (Actual real physics says that a wormhole requires pseudo-infinite energy to keep open, so a bit beyond these guys' budget, but oh well - ). After a while we get references to quantum tunnels, clones, photonic beings with no mass, and other things. And the dialog fills up with junk science. The starting point isn't bad and at the beginning I was looking forward to seeing how this would develop. But it lost its way in a meandering middle act during which the main character (Ana) searches for answers and her lab mates are evasive and annoying. The denoument does have answers of a sort but it's a mishmash that's not very satisfying. The underlying science might be worthwhile as a concept for a plot, but the script and details of the storyline just aren't enough to make good on it.

I'll put in a good word for the lead actress Yaiza Figueroa (Ana), who is better than the material she's been given to work with. Aside from that -- not a lot to say.

Just back from seeing Maestro on its opening weekend at our local theaters. Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan seem to be shoo-ins for Best Actor nominations, along with a few other categories like set design, costuming, and cinematography. I admired the craftsmanship on display here quite a bit -- meticulous recreation of the styles, settings, speech patterns from the 1940's through the 70's. And obviously Cooper dug very deep into channeling Leonard Bernstein, not just hairdo and makeup. (And at times his resemblance to the real Bernstein is pretty stunning.) I knew a lot less about his wife and love Felicia Montealegre, but I'm assuming the same is true for Carey Mulligan's portrayal of her. They are both arresting, finely nuanced performances.

It's all impressive and worth seeing more than once. One thing I wanted more of was, oddly enough, the music. We mostly get only tiny snippets of Bernstein's own compositions, plus a bit of Beethoven and others, as if Cooper (who's also the director) thought we the audience wouldn't have the patience for more. Wrong, IMO. There is one -- just one -- centerpiece scene allowed to play out full measure, which is Bernstein conducting the last several minutes of the titanic Mahler Second Symphony in a huge cathedral. It's the highlight of the film, and although the purpose seems to be to show B's over-the-top directing style, the music itself is what's overwhelming. Bernstein seemed to be made for Mahler (than whom there is no more emotional composer) and his work bringing all of Mahler's symphonic work back into the mainstream is for me his biggest career accomplishment.

The rest of the movie is like a series of short vignettes, as if we are putting blocks together to gradually assemble a rounded picture of Lenny and Felicia. I wanted them to let some scenes just play out longer. When this thing is on Netflix I'll watch it again to help decipher all the rapid-fire, overlapping dialog. And, I'm not sure that even if you go back and look at films from the 1940's you would see this much cigarette smoking! It's a feature. He was clearly a chain smoker, but was she as well? Perhaps so, given their causes of death.

All this said, it's a major film and worth going to see. There are loads of movie biographies of famous people that are totally off track. This one isn't.

Just back from the theater. My rating of 5/10 really reflects more my personal reaction to it, rather than how well it was done and acted. It's advertised as a comedy, but there aren't really many laughs, and I wouldn't even call it a black comedy. As we watch Paul Matthews' (Nicolas Cage) life slowly disassemble through no fault of his own, it wanders fully into the horror regime. Not some crude slasher type of thing -- stylisically this is closer to what Alfred Hitchcock might have made with the same material. And personally I just don't react well to horror -- there are twenty different things I'd rather do with my time, thanks. If I hadn't been with friends, I might not have sat through it all.

Not that it's a bad production. On the contrary, it's well acted (and thus effective) and Nic Cage displays all his considerable acting skills to the full. Matthews is a sort of dumpy middle-aged professor at some small college who's a failed researcher and a rather ordinary teacher. Everything about him is ordinary. He's not dislikable but not terribly interesting or likable either, and is just generally ineffectual at everything at either work or home. He's not someone you would want to spend a lot of time with. (Paradoxically, Cage is so good at conveytng Paul's lackluster life and inner nature that he actually makes us less interested to watch!) Paul likes the momentary fame of being at the center of this unique communal dream phenomenon, but when it takes a violent turn (in the dreams, that is) he doesn't seem to know what to do, gives in to his buried rage, and ends up participating in his own destruction.

There's lots of satire of modern life, like cancel culture, New Age woo-woo thinking, the emptiness of suburbia, monetization and corporatization of practically anything, and me-first attitudes -- but I felt like these were secondary to the main thread of horror/tragedy. Sorry, but not for me. The thing is that if some explanation had been given for why this communal-dream phenomenon was happening, and thus what to do about it, it would have been more in the direction of a science-fiction movie. I might have found that more interesting. When word gets around that this obscure person is appearing in all kinds of peoples' dreams, researchers would jump on it and treat it as a huge puzzle to be solved -- something that would reveal much about the brain and collective unconscious and so forth. There's no sign that any of that is happening here, it's all focussed on the reactive effects on Paul and his life. In the end I'm not sure what to take away from this thing.

WW2 aviator Peter Carter (a young David Niven), flying back to England from a bombing run over Germany, finds himself on a burning plane with no parachute, the rest of the crew either dead or having already bailed out. After a desperate "mayday" conversation with radio operator June (Kim Hunter) in which the two fall hopelessly in love, he jumps. But in the heavy fog, Heaven misses their chance to take him and he survives. He and June immediately meet, fall further in love, and thus create very big bureaucratic problems for the Folks Upstairs. Peter has now made marks in the real world that weren't supposed to have happened. After a winding road through Act II, Peter must face a trial with the Powers that Be to decide whether or not he can be granted a full life, or be Taken Up as was originally scheduled.

That's the plot, and if well done, the concept is almost guaranteed to be entertaining. It's very much in the style of other good films like Heaven Can Wait (1978), Here Comes Mister Jordan (1941), or Soul (2020). The main cast is really just dominated by five roles: Peter, June, Frank (Roger Livesey), "Conductor 71" (Marius Goring), and Abraham Farlan (Raymond Massey). Massey's entrance happens only with the trial, but he makes a strong impression as always. It's all consistently easy to watch.

But there are many features of this thing that are just flat-out strange, or at a minimum, completely arbitrary. The dialog is clever and biting, but also quirky and nonlinear, as if it was written by bright but totally inexperienced scripters. It's always a little -- off center. Some characters and even scenes seem to have no relevance at all (why is the first person Peter meets in his second life a shepherd boy on the beach with goats, and why is he naked playing a flute??). Is the heavenly Judge to be thought of as God, or an archangel? And why is he the same person as the surgeon working on Peter's brain? Why does 'Conductor 71' have no name, and an absurdly thick pseudo-French accent? I guess there's much here that is mildly allegorical, and the thing about allegory is that it's not rational -- it takes a different route into your mind.

Anyway, there's a fair bit of stuff here that seems pretty innovative for the time (almost 80 years ago!). The visual concept for Heaven and the setting for the Trial, and that big staircase, are impressive even now. The real world is in Technicolor, but Heaven is in classic black and white -- a feature that one of the characters comments on, surrealistically. And there's one little scene, during the section where Peter is simultaneously under the knife on the operating table and temporarily on trial Above, that is a standout. He and two of the angelic representatives drop down to check out the operating room (having conveniently stopped the flow of time so that no one is aware of them). We see them walk right through a glass-paned door as if it's not there. The effect is totally seamless and 'real', and I frankly don't know how they did it in that remote pre-CGI era. But it couldn't be done better even today.