More Nostalgia Plundering: A (Very Late) Review of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

 directed by Tim Burton

written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar

As I write this, this film is now available on every single form of home video, including digital release and physical media like Blu Ray, 4K and DVD.  And yet...I actually watched this film in theaters.

One could say that a very busy schedule kept me from reviewing this film as soon as I saw it, but that would be a lie. The truth is that I spent all that time from September up until right now, grappling with my disappointment over how this movie turned out.

To give a little bit of context: the original 1988 film Beetlejuice is one of my all-time favorite movies. I watched it as a child with my aunt and little sister and enjoyed it immensely.  Years later, I introduced it to my children on DVD, and one of them in particular, of the goth girl persuasion, took to it with nearly the same enthusiasm that I did.  While talks about the sequel had been going on and off again for years, when it became clear that one was on its way, it was more than a movie that my daughter and I were looking forward to: it was a generational experience.  So to say that my daughter and I were disappointed would be an extreme understatement.

So, decades after the first film ended, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is eking out a living as a medium with her own reality show, where she is managed by her beau Rory (Justin Theroux) but is unfortunately estranged  from her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega). Ironically, her most cordial relationship in her life is with her stepmother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) who approaches her with unfortunate news: her father Charles has died.  As a result, in deference to his last wishes, Delia, Lydia and Astrid head back to Winter River, Connecticut, where they moved during the events of the first film, and head back to their old home, only for Lydia to discover that someone else from her past is still gunning for her, none other than the spurned bio-exorcist Betelgueuse (Michael Keaton), who's facing problems of his own in the afterlife, apparently his ex-wife Delores (Monica Belluicci) has broken free of the random packages in which she was stored for some reason, and resumes her quest to murder Betelgeuse that she was unable to fulfil because he had killed her first. His only hope is apparently to marry Lydia or something like that. In the meantime, in Winter River, Astrid finds herself attracted to boy who isn't quite what he seems. Hijinks ensue.   

If the synopsis sounds cluttered, rest assured that's because the plot it's summarizing is. The original movie, in contrast, had a very similar premise: a young couple, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis (who are dismissed from this film with a single line of dialogue) die and find themselves trapped in their house. a living family moves in and makes their lives hell, and so they turn to a "bio-exorcist" named Betelguese to rid them of their problem. Hijinks ensue. Pretty simple, right?

The problem with this movie was that the filmmakers seemed torn between wanting to mine the nostalgia from the first film (look at all the guys with shrunken heads, just like the guy in the first movie!) and wanting to cash in on the popularity of Tim Burton's recent Netflix series Wednesday (let's have Jenna play a rebel again, who falls for the wrong guy...again). The  end result is a middling, muddled film at best, and at worst a bastardization of one of Tim Burton's most original, quirkiest works.  It wasn't all bad, of course; Michael Keaton kills it as the "ghost with the most" while Willem Dafoe entertains as an actor who, for reasons that are never explained, has become a detective in the afterlife. 

I've seen worse movies, but none of those were the long-awaited sequel to one of my favorite films ever, so this one was hard to endure. 

6/10

Nostalgia Mining Gone Wrong: A Review of Twisters

directed by Lee Isaac Chung

written by Mark L. Smith and Joseph Kosinski

I was big fan of the 1996 disaster-film Twister, starring Helen Hunt and the late, great Bill Paxton as estranged storm chasers Jo and Bill Harding.  It was actually a pretty silly movie, with a paper-thin plot and visual effects that have not aged too well, but there was something about its storytelling, from the pacing, to the exposition about tornadoes to laypeople like me, to strong performances from nearly the whole cast that charmed my socks off. In particular, I loved the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman's wacky turn as dusty, a member of Bill and Jo's storm-chasing crew. I also remember that this was one of the first movies I ever saw in a THX-equipped movie theater, which was a big deal back in the 90s.  In short my affection for this film prompted me to check out the sequel: Twisters.  

It's a movie that, to be fair, does not seek to emulate the original film in any way, but an unfortunate consequence of that is, to my mind, at least, it does not replicate any of its charm. 

When the film begins, Kate (Daisy Edgar Jones), her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) and their crew of Oklahoma-based storm chasers are on a mission: to "tame" a tornado using several barrels of their chemical cocktail similar to what baby diapers use to absorb moisture.  Unfortunately, the tornado taming chemicals don't work, and everyone in the crew except Kate and Javi suffers a horrific fate. 

Years later, Kate is working a desk job detecting storms for a government agency from New York when Javi hits her up to go storm chasing out in the field one last time. Javi has gone into business chasing and studying storms, but his main financial backers, basically a real estate company don't exactly share his altruistic intentions when it comes to dealing with tornadoes.  Also, his partner Scott (David Corenswet) is more interested in the money than the science, as well. Notably, nobody on Javi's crew has Kate's storm-detecting skills, which is why he looks her up, and for old times' sake, she agrees to help him out, and they both head out to where it all began: Oklahoma, where a slew of tornadoes appears to be taking place. Complicating things, though, are the presence of other storm-chasing glory hounds racing to the same spots and disrupting their efforts, including, most notably, the crew of YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) who are more interesting in stunts like shooting rockets into tornadoes than actually studying them.  Worst of all, out in the field for the first time since the catastrophe that took the lives of her crew, Kate loses her nerve. 

As Kate continues chasing tornadoes with Javi and his corporate crew, she starts doing some soul-searching, especially when the tornadoes start tearing up towns in the area and both Javi's backers and Tyler's crew start showing what kind of people they really are.  One group is only interested in buying up the land that's just been wrecked, while the other are actually giving out supplies.  

After a verbal spat with Javi over what his people are doing, Kate asks herself: should she get back in the game, and finish what she started years ago, with her mission to tame tornadoes? This time, she may actually have an unlikely ally: Tyler.  Under his glory-seeking veneer, Tyler is apparently a very gifted weather nerd, just like Kate, and he takes a keen interest in helping her (and in her). Together, they might be able to pull of the impossible, though they're running out of time. 

The good news is that like Helen Hunt before her, Daisy Edgar Jones turns in a commendable performance as the lead. Her back story does have the air of cliche about it, but she sells it, along with her American accent, pretty darn well. She has an easygoing chemistry with Javi, her colleague with a bit of an unrequited attraction to her.  

One of the bigger problems of the movie, though, is that while Glen Powell is a competent enough actor, his character was just awfully written, and worse, the chemistry between him and Edgar Jones just wasn't there.  Virtually everything about their interaction, from their eyeroll-inducing "meet-cute" to her discovery of his "heart of gold" is ripped straight out of Hollywood's playbook of awful romantic cliches.  Producer Steven Spielberg has openly admitted to having their one kiss cut from the movie, and quite frankly I couldn't agree more with the decision.  It honestly grated on me how hard the film "shipped" these two.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the film's only problem. The ingredients were actually there for a worthwhile sequel; the plot was easy enough to follow, Kate and Javi were likable and played well by Edgar-Jones and Ramos, and the updated visual effects promised more spectacle than the first film did. However, uneven pacing, stilted dialogue and ineffective staging of the action sequences resulted in a film that failed to live up to its charming but already flawed predecessor.  

Maybe I'm just too hung up on my nostalgia for the first film, but this one really didn't do anything for me. 

6/10

Richard Linklater's Weird Preoccupation (Spoiler alert)

 I was supposed to write this nearly two months ago, after I had seen Richard Linklater's latest film, Hit Man on Netflix, but between work and more interesting things to do, like watch movies in theaters, I just couldn't find the time. Still I feel I need to write this, since it's been percolating in my mind for a while, and since Glen Powell is still very much topical, being in the blockbuster film Twisters out in theaters now (which I intend to watch).

In 2011, Richard Linklater, a well-regarded director and screenwriter responsible for memorable films like School of Rock, Boyhood and the "Before" trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight), made a curious, little-seen film known as Bernie, which starred Jack Black as the title character, Shirley MacLaine as Marjorie Nugent, the elderly widow whom Bernie befriended and later murdered in cold blood, Matthew McConaughey as a prosecutor determined to put Bernie behind bars, and a whole bunch of townspeople who actually lived through the events that started with Bernie's bizarre friendship with Mrs. Nugent and ended with her brutal murder at his hands and his eventual trial and incarceration. Not actors playing the townspeople, notably, the actual townspeople.   It's actually an interesting hybrid of comedy, drama, and documentary, and Linklater unflinchingly depicts the very moment in which Bernie takes Mrs. Nugent's life with a rifle, after which he stuffs her in a freezer. As a piece of narrative, it actually works, but when one learns that it actually served as some kind of advocacy for Bernie Tiede's reduced sentence, suddenly the film takes on a wholly different complexion.  However one feels about the characters in this film, it is not denied that Bernie Tiede murdered Marjorie Nugent, and yet, somehow, for a few years it began to look as if this film might result in Bernie's case being retried with him receiving a lighter sentence, all because of Jack Black's highly sympathetic portrayal of the character. That particular crusade ended in 2016 when Bernie was re-sentenced to 99 years in prison. 

Linklater would go on to make other films, so one would think that was over, right? I know I did.

Then, bizarrely, in this year's Hit Man, Linklater has his lead characters commit murder in cold blood and then  go off happily into the sunset.  This ending comes, bizarrely enough, after Linklater spends a portion of the film discussing the ethics of putting people in jail for wanting to kill someone so badly they're willing to offer money to someone else to do it.  This would have simply been off-putting were it not for the existence of Bernie; it would have felt like such a sour endnote to what was an otherwise entertaining and very competently-made film. Like Bernie, it should be noted Hit Man was inspired by true events, specifically the very interesting story of a college professor named Gary Johnson, who actually moonlighted as a fake hit man for the local police in order to entrap people who wanted to have other people killed. Unlike Bernie Tiede, however, Gary Johnson never actually killed anybody, and yet Linklater took the bizarre liberty of not only having him kill someone but having him outright murder that person.  I don't understand why anyone would want to tell a story like that; I know if I were one of Johnson's heirs, I wouldn't be happy about it.

Is it possible that Linklater was chafing at how his film had failed to have the impact he had hoped it would on Bernie Tiede's trial, and so, years later, made this film in which someone gets away with murder as some form of catharsis?  It is, of course, impossible to say, but I honestly cannot help but wonder if there is some kind of spiritual connection between these two movies.  

A Fond Farewell: A Review of Deadpool and Wolverine

 directed by Shawn Levy

written by Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells and Shawn Levy

After feeling bad about Marvel Studios' recent stumbles, I was happy to learn that the once seemingly-unstoppable box-office behemoth would only be releasing one movie in all of 2024: Deadpool and Wolverine. It wasn't exactly a movie I had been pining for my whole life long to see, but having enjoyed  both of Deadpool's first couple of cinematic outings I was looking forward to this with cautious optimism. I need not have worried, as it turned out.

Basically, after retiring from costumed heroics to sell cars, Wade Wilson aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) isn't exactly living his best life.  While celebrating his birthday with his friends, he finds himself abducted by the Time Variance Authority and brought before one of its chief officers known only as Paradox (Matthew MacFadyen), who tells Wade that his timeline is about to die, having been deprived of its "anchor being," essentially an entity necessary for any given universe's continued existence. In this case, the anchor being of Deadpool's universe is the deceased Logan aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) who died at the end of Logan. Deadpool is being offered the chance to join the "sacred timeline" or the "main" Marvel Cinematic Universe, but is also informed that everyone in his world will die, including his friends and loved ones like Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), Pete (Rob Delaney), Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), and Colossus (Stefan Kapicic), among others.   Distraught, Deadpool escapes the TVA, and exhumes Logan, believing his healing factor has saved him, only to be disappointed. Undeterred, however, Deadpool jumps across universes, attempting to recruit one Wolverine variant after another only to be repeatedly rebuffed until he finds one and brings him back to the TVA. Unfortunately, Paradox tells Wade that this is the worst Wolverine ever, and then banishes them both to the Void.  Wade is now in a race against time to get back to his timeline and save it from certain destruction, which could prove to be a bit of a challenge, considering that the Void is run by a particularly nasty character named Cassanda Nova (Emma Corrin)  who happens to be Charles Xavier's twin sister from another reality, who, like Deadpool and many others, was sent here.

There are a couple of assumptions I had about this movie that I was happy to see disproven, but I won't go into them so as to avoid spoiling crucial plot details, but I will say this much, I was surprised by how much heart a movie this irreverent managed to have, especially in reference to the now officially-defunct "Fox Marvel Universe." This movie, as unlikely as this may sound, is actually a bit of a love letter to those old movies, without the earliest of which the MCU would not exist.

Even though this is the first Deadpool movie to be released under the Marvel Studios banner, it's still made very much in the mold of the first two films, with all of the key ingredients like graphic violence, plenty of sexual references and enough f-bombs to make Quentin Tarantino blush.  It's Marvel Studios' first-ever "R" movie, and it earns the rating and then some in its first five minutes alone.  There's plenty to enjoy for those  of us who aren't just in it for the potty mouths and the gore; the action sequences are quite-well staged, and the humor, for the most part, works pretty well, especially with all of the "meta" references to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, among other things.

Unfortunately, the writing underpinning all of this is arguably the weakest of any of the Deadpool movies; the plot kind of feels like the kind of story that wouldn't even stand up to casual scrutiny, and even some of the expository dialogue, tongue-in-cheek as it may be, feels a bit off.  

Fortunately, this is mostly offset by the fantastic chemistry between Reynolds and Jackman, in their first onscreen team-up since they appeared together in the disastrous 2009 film X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  At its heart, this movie is a buddy comedy, and these two guys really sell the heck out of it. For all its shortcomings, this film is definitely something worth catching in movie theaters.

8.5/10

Return to Form: A Review of Inside Out 2

 directed by Kelsey Mann

written by Meg LeFauve, Dave Holstein and Mann

Nine years after Pixar charmed audiences around the world with Inside Out, an animated movie about the inner workings of a human mind, presented as a work place with five anthropomorphic emotions, they're back with its sequel, Inside Out 2, which, as I write this, is apparently charming audiences even more than the first one did to the tune of a billion dollars at the box office. 

Set several years after the events of the first film, Inside Out 2 begins with Riley (Kensington Tallman) enjoying her middle school years with her two best friends Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green), who do everything with her, including play her favorite sport, hockey. When the three of them are invited to a summer hockey camp, Riley couldn't be happier. As a result, the emotions residing inside her, Joy (Amy Poehler), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) live in a pretty harmonious balance especially since together, they are charged with taking care of the most important thing Riley has: her sense of self, which is the sum total of all of her memories and beliefs formed as a result. 

Suddenly, Riley is thrown for a loop when a number of things happen. First, she hits puberty, and the resulting hormonal swings suddenly mean that the five emotions' control console no longer works as it should, and on top of that, four new emotions arrive at headquarters: Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edibiri), Ennui (Adel Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).  Then, the real doozy hits when Grace and Bree, en route to hockey camp, tell Riley that they'll be moving to a different high school.  As a direct result, Anxiety comes to the fore, hatching an elaborate plan for Riley to make friends with the popular varsity hockey players led by Val Ortiz (Lilimar). Faced with the imminent departure of her friends, Riley wants to ensure that she makes new ones at hockey camp, and Anxiety, as a result, overpowers Joy and the other five emotions, imprisoning them in the bowels of Riley's mind, and sets her own plan in motion even if it means mistreating Grace and Bree and basically going against everything she believes in, thus eroding her sense of self.   Joy and the others are now in a race of time to save Riley from the consequences of violating her own belief system, as Anxiety, now in control makes one questionable decision after another. Will they make it in time?

With the exception of the first sequel to Toy Story, sequels to Pixar films have an unfortunate tendency to regurgitate what happened in the film that came before them, albeit with a variation or two.  This was true for sequels to Finding Nemo and even The Incredibles, and if I'm completely honest it's a bit on display here as well.  Beat for beat, Inside Out 2 basically repeats the story of the first movie, from the happy status quo, to the disruption to Riley's life that involves someone moving away, to grappling with new, difficult emotions. That said, even though the film retreads familiar ground, it does so astonishingly well, and with, I daresay, some pretty authentic emotional beats. 

It was a masterstroke to introduce Anxiety as the film's actual antagonist, because grappling with anxiety is something that virtually everyone in the audience, regardless of their age, gender or social background has done at one point or another in their lives, and is probably why the film has connected with so many people all around the world. There's something really fascinating about the design choices made for the character, who, unlike the generally cute and cuddly-looking characters is quite distinctly ugly and haggard-looking, a look that, surprisingly, goes rather well with her domineering, obsessive personality. From my own experience  I found it totally believable that anxiety could essentially take over Riley's mind, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people in the audience could relate to that, too.

This is when Pixar are in peak form; when they create stories that, rather than pander to one interest group or another, really manage to tell compelling stories to which people from all walks of life can completely relate. May they continue to make movies like this. 

9.5/10

All's Forgiven, Will Smith: A Review of Bad Boys: Ride or Die

 directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilail Fallah

written by Chris Bremner, Will Beall and George Gallo

In his first film that he actually shot after having slapped Chris Rock in the face at the 2022 Oscars, Will Smith revisits one of the characters who helped propel him to stardom, that of Miami detective Mike Lowry. As before, he is paired with comedian Martin Lawrence as fellow detective Marcus Burnett, as the Bad Boys hit the big screen once more.

The film opens with Mike getting married to his girlfriend Christine (Melanie Liburd) and with Marcus getting a heart attack during the reception. It was harrowing enough experience, but soon the partners have an altogether different problem: it seems that their beloved, deceased Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano, who appears in a series of recorded video messages) who was murdered in the last film by Mike's estranged son Armando (Jacob Scipio) at the behest of the drug cartel, is being framed by shady types headed by ex-Army Ranger James McGrath (Eric Dane) who fought against the cartel until he was captured and tortured. McGrath's operation has friends in very high places, so high that maybe not even Mike's boss Captain Rita Secada (Paula Nunez) and her new boyfriend, District Attorney Adam Lockwood (Ioan Gruffud) can help them. Mike and Marcus find themselves in a race against time to clear the captain's name, and soon it's clear they are in way over their heads.

Ever since the first of these films came out in 1995, back when co-producer Don Simpson was actually still alive, it should be clear that none of them was ever intended to be high art. The first one, made on a shoestring budget of USD19 million, was a solid piece of entertainment, deftly mixing action and comedy. The second movie, made on a much bigger budget, unfortunately suffered from a bloated running time and some ridiculous over-the-top action set pieces.  It was so off-putting that I didn't even catch the third movie, Bad Boys 4 Life, in theaters. After catching and enjoying it on Netflix, though, I was convinced that it was worth giving this franchise another shot in theaters, Will Smith's antics notwithstanding, and I'm glad I did. 

The filmmakers don't reinvent the wheel; as before, the film is anchored on the banter between Mike and Marcus, and the writers quite cannily age the characters along with actors, which makes them all the more relatable as much of the audience has grown old along with them.  The plot is paper-thin, of course, and a lot of the writing is just flat out silly, but that's really not what I came to see. 

On that note, the movie delivers exceptionally well on the action front, and it's worth pointing out that Belgian directors Adil and Bilail (as they are billed in the film's credits) have a really good eye for this sort of stuff. The action was pretty excellently choreographed and shot, and in a day and age when action sequences have been redefined by the likes of John Wick films, this was no mean feat. There is a flat-out brilliant use of drone shots in the climactic action set piece at the end of the film which is almost worth the price of admission by itself. Speaking of John Wick there is a surprising bit of action from a rather unexpected character late in the film, which involves a home invasion. It was interesting to see some John Wickesque ass kicking played for laughs, but darned if it doesn't work like a charm.

All told, this was a genuinely fun movie, one whose existence was arguably well-justified. I honestly don't know if they could keep this up with future installments but in the unlikely event that Sony ends this franchise here, well, they'll do so on a high note.  

8/10

Truly Pernicious: A Review of "Hit Man" (HEAVY SPOILERS)

SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW UNLESS  YOU HAVE SEEN THE FILM OR DO NOT MIND HAVING KEY PLOT DETAILS SPOILED

directed by Richard Linklater

 written by Richard Linklater and Glenn Powell

Currently charming critics and audiences on Netflix, Hit Man is the latest film from auteur Richard Linklater, who directed Jack Black to notoriety in School of Rock and who spent over a decade filming the acclaimed film Boyhood. 

This time around Linklater directs Hollywood's latest "It" boy Glen Powell (who was the smooth-talking 21st century update on the "Iceman" character in the nostalgia extravaganza Top Gun: Maverick) in a film that can best be described as an odd hybrid between a romantic comedy and an appallingly clumsy critique of the justice system. 

Gary Johnson (Powell) seems like a relatively normal guy on the surface. He teaches philosophy and psychology at his local community college and has a whole bunch of cats to keep him company at home. What most people don't know about him, though, is that he leads an extraordinary double life as, of all things, a hit man, though not a real one. No, Johnson simply pretends to be a hit man as a part-time gig for the local police, enticing would-be clients looking to off someone in their lives to engage his services and not stopping until these supposed clients provide evidence incriminating themselves such as the command to kill and the money for the job. 

It's an unusual job, but it's one Johnson does exceedingly well, even though he starts out in the film as a substitute for the corrupt policeman Jasper (Austin Amelio) who's been suspended for beating up minors. The arrest count  he racks  up is impressive, but when he meets prospective "client" Madison (Adria Arjona) who is looking to have her husband bumped off, he finds himself smitten and unable to complete the sting, instead advising Madison to take the money she would have paid him and start a new life for herself.

 The cops are disappointed with Gary, but his track record has been so good that they'll willing to let his slip-up slide. Things get more complicated, however, when not too long afterward he meets up with Madison, still in his hitman persona, and starts a steamy affair with her, one which he obviously has to conceal from his colleagues in the police, and one which threatens to complicate  his life even further when Madison's husband, furious at her for taking a lover, decides to hire Gary to kill her.

A genuinely funny and charming movie up until this point, the movie then takes a ridiculously dark turn when, apparently having written his two leads into a corner, Linklater has them straight-up murder a police officer and then ride of into the sunset. Yes, you read that right: Gary and Madison murder Jasper, who, having figured out their angle, tries to extort them for a cut of Madison's late husband's insurance money.  This isn't some madcap sequence where they kill the guy in self-defense or he kills himself by some humorous accident; it's just pure and simple murder.  Specifically, Madison drugs Jasper, and Gary, who at this point has never killed anyone in his life, puts a bag over his head.  This isn't done in a fit of panic, either; as Powell portrays him, Gary acts with the calm resolve of a cold-blooded killer.  

  

The problem I have with the resolution to this story is that this movie isn't written as some dark satire critiquing the legal system but as an emphatically light romantic comedy, so this turn it takes basically ruins the whole thing, like a bottle of soy sauce emptied on a perfect apple pie.  Part of the narrative feels distinctly like a critique of the justice system as Gary attends the court hearings of the people he has entrapped into hiring his fake hit men, but it's never meaningfully developed. Also, by resolving the film so sloppily Linklater ensures that any ethical discussion would be hypocritical on his part considering he allows murderers to walk away scot-free. 

It's honestly a shame because, in truth, Powell, is a pretty compelling actor, and given the critical acclaim this movie has received (from people who aren't me), this movie is quite an effective showcase of both his comedic talent and his credibility as a leading man. It's honestly just a shame that the ending of this movie had to go to the dogs, even though it's weirdly consistent with Linklater's mindset that he showed in a much older movie, one I'll write about next. 

1/10

The Movie That Humiliated Hollywood: A Review of Godzilla: Minus One

 directed by Takashi Yamazaki

written by Yamazaki, Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata

Last year, Hollywood's cookie-cutter, conveyor-belt approach to making movies blew up in its face in the worst way possible, with a majority of its major, big-budget releases tanking at the box-office nearly all year round. No one was safe, whether it was the once almighty Disney, whose flops included a Marvel movie, an original animated movie and an Indiana Jones movie, or even Tom Cruise, whose Mission Impossible movie managed to underperform at the box office even after he had dragged it to completion during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

It was against the backdrop of these creative and financial disasters, that Godzilla: Minus One, a low-budget, entirely Japanese-produced disaster movie starring the iconic kaiju, opened to nearly universal critical acclaim and global box-office glory, taking nearly everyone by surprise, arguably including the filmmakers.

Godzilla: Minus One takes place immediately after the Second World War has flattened Japan. During the dying days of the war, a failed kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryonosuku Kamiki) lands on a secluded island populated by mechanics, asking them to attend to his plane. The lead mechanic Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) realizes that Shikishima is a deserter, but before anything else happens the small island is invaded by a gigantic creature known to the locals as Godzilla. The creature kills everyone on the island except for Shikishima and Tachibana, whom it leaves for dead.

Shikishima returns to the mainland to find his home completely destroyed, and as he struggles to rebuild, he finds himself starting a rather unusual family with the drifter Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and an abandoned baby she has adopted. Shikishima finds well-paying work as a minesweeper, shooting mines with pinpoint accuracy from a small boat, and all seems to be going well for him. Even as the Americans conduct nuclear testing in the nearby seas in Bikini Atoll, Japan strives to rebuild.

Then, to everyone's shock, Godzilla reappears on the mainland, only this time it has grown much, much bigger as a result of the nuclear detonations. The gigantic creature leaves wide swaths of destruction in its wake, and soon the people of Japan find themselves in a race against time to figure out how to stop it from flattening what's left of their country. After suffering another unthinkable loss, Shikishima volunteers to lead the charge, together with his minesweeping crewmates, Captain Akitsu (Kuranosuke Sasaki) Engineer Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) and Crewman Mizushima (Yuki Yamada).  Noda and other volunteers come up with a daring plan to take down Godzilla once and for all, but it also requires someone to act as bait for the monster by piloting an airplane, a job for which Shikishima is eminently qualified. There's only one mechanic he will trust to help him prepare his plane, though: Tachibana.  The stage is set, and Shikishima and his allies make one final, valiant stand against the seemingly invincible creature known only as Godzilla.  

The makers of this film get right virtually everything that the 2014 American film, directed by Gareth Edwards, got completely wrong. First and foremost, they created characters with whom the audience could connect and identify. While Shikishima's deep trauma and survivor's guilt are front and center, it's clear that everyone else in the supporting cast carries some version of that pain considering the state of their country, and when they express anguish upon realizing what they are facing their despair is palpable.  While we do not get to intimately know these characters, they are nonetheless both written and acted effectively enough to impress on us why we should care whether or not they make it to the end of the movie.

Even though Godzilla has relatively little screen time, the build-up between his appearances is commendably effective. Each of the monster's appearances in the film is timed to near perfection and follows meaningful scenes of character development and world-building as opposed to slogging exposition or filler.  Of course, by limiting his exposure to pivotal scenes, the filmmakers are able to stretch their limited budget as far as possible. The digital effects that bring Godzilla to life are remarkable indeed, and while the creature definitely suffers from a pretty noticeable case of "dead eye" in several scenes, the computer-generated imagery on display here still puts to shame the effects work of Hollywood films which had budgets that were well over ten times what this film cost to make (I'm looking at YOU, Thor Love and Thunder).

The film still has a firm connection to its B-movie roots, from the occasional jerky movement of the creature to the sometimes exaggerated actions of its actors, but that only adds to its earnest charm. These guys are definitely punching well above their weight here.     

 The film isn't quite the masterpiece its biggest fans are touting it to be; some of the inherent silliness of the storytelling used weighs it down a little bit, like the crucial scenes where Godzilla appears to be standing in the open sea even though the water beneath him is several hundred meters deep. All that aside, though, it's a sterling example of tight, well-woven storytelling that Hollywood, in its never-ending quest for pushing product on its hapless audience, seems to have forgotten.  Here's hoping Godzilla: Minus One teaches Hollywood how to make good movies again. 

8.5/10

Clumsy at Times, but Full of Heart: A Review of "If"

 written and directed by John Krasinski

In the current marketplace dominated by adaptations of existing intellectual property, whether they're comic books, novels, video games or even previous movie franchises, when I see a property that looks even remotely original I usually make it a  point to check it out at some point, although often that usually just involves switching on Netflix.

To see the family-oriented fantasy "IF," though, required a trip to the movie theaters, and fortunately, the film's trailer enticed me enough to not only make the trip but to bring almost all of my family along for the viewing. I'm happy to say that the film, for the most part, was worth the trip. 

The film starts with a brief prologue narrated by its protagonist Bea (Cailey Fleming), a 12-year-old girl who lost her mother to cancer at a very young age, and whose father (John Krasinski, pulling triple duty here as an actor, director and writer) is about to undergo heart surgery as the film begins. A bit hardened by the pain she has experienced early in life, Bea, who moves in with her kindly grandmother (Fiona Shaw) initially resists her efforts to get her to engage in whimsical, childlike activities like painting and drawing. A chance encounter in her grandmother's building with a mysterious neighbor changes everything, though, as Bea meets her next door neighbor Cal (Ryan Reynolds).  Cal is a man with whom she shares the remarkable gift of being able to see people's imaginary friends (IFs, as they are referred to), two of whom she meets almost immediately, the insect-like cartoon ballerina Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and the giant purple furball Blue (Steve Carell).  Many of these IFs face the problem of their children having forgotten them, and it's up to Bea, Cal and their friends to help the IFs find their way back to the hearts of the children who once loved them.

It's a simple enough story, told with generous helpings of humor and heart, and a fairly decent amount of computer-generated imagery. The storytelling logic doesn't really hold up all that well to scrutiny, but charming performances from the lead actors basically carry the film, along with an enchanting, if occasionally overbearing music score from Oscar-winning Pixar veteran Michael Giacchino, and some understated but striking cinematography from two-time Oscar winner and regular Steven Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski. Of course it also helps that Krasinski has recruited a murderer's row of extremely talented actors to voice the IF.  In particular, it tugged at the heartstrings a little bit to hear the late Louis Gossett, Jr.'s voice as Lewis, a kindly old teddy bear of an IF who runs a retirement home of sorts for them. It was his last onscreen appearance, and there's a brief tribute to him at the very end of the credits.  

The movie was good fun; I would hardly list it as an all-time favorite, but I think it's the kind of movie studios should try to make more of, i.e. non-franchise family movies.

7.5/10

A New Breed of Franchise Epic: A Review of Dune Part 2 (Spoilers for Dune Part 1)

 directed by Denis Villeneuve

written by Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts

I had thought about reviewing these films as one big film at first, but decided against it given that I only just saw Dune Part I on Netflix, arguably compromising the viewing experience I was meant to have. Also, it would do a disservice to both films to weigh them together, given that each of them has its merits and flaws. Needless to say, there will be mild spoilers for Dune Part 1.

Dune Part 2, as the title suggests, tells the second part of Frank Herbert's seminal sci-fi novel, which takes place thousands of years into the future, when humankind has traveled to other planets. The film itself, like Part 1 takes place mostly on the planet Arrakis, a world rich in the highly-coveted resource known only as the Spice, which is coveted enough to inspire mass murder.  On that note, Dune Part 1 has ended in utter tragedy for our story's main character, Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson).  Their family, the House of Atreides, was destroyed by the rapacious Harkonnens led by Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) and his nephew Rabban (Dave Bautista) as revenge for having been deprived of stewardship of Arrakis and its riches by  Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) who had then entrusted the planet to the Atreides clan led by Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac). Leto, knowing the Harkonnen's nature, had recognized the stewardship of Arrakis for the death sentence that it was, but even then could not prevent what was to come. Fortunately, however, his son Paul and his concubine Jessica have survived the massacre, only to flee into the deadly desert populated by gigantic predatory sandworms, and by the indigenous population the Fremen, led by Stiglar (Javier Bardem) who, on their worst day, could be every bit as fierce as the monstrous creatures under the sand.  The Fremen, like the Atreides clan, despise the Harkonnen for what they have been doing to their planet for years.  

Paul and his mother, however, are safe from the initial hostility of the Fremen because Stiglar and the others see in him the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy of salvation. They believe him to be the Lisan Al Ghaib, or their long-awaited savior, or come to do so with every challenge that Paul overcomes. Having been well-trained by his father's military adviser, Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), Paul is a skilled fighter who makes himself extremely valuable in the Fremen's fight against the Harkonnens. His skill and integrity also endear him to Chani (Zendaya) a young Fremen fighter who rejects the old superstitions about the Lisan Al Ghaib.  It is the skills passed down to Paul by his mother, however, that make him far more than just another fighter. As a member of the society of shamanic women known as the Bene Gesseret, Jessica has essentially imbued Paul with considerable powers, which include mind control and clairvoyance.  Through the latter, Paul has had terrible visions of a future in which billions die because of holy war started in his name.  As a result, he dreads going down to the south of Arrakis, where legions of zealots await who would happily wage war in his name. 

The resistance Paul is leading, however, prompts a more brutal response from the Harkonnens, with Vladimir recruiting his murderous nephew Feyd Rautha (Austin Butler) in order to crush the Fremen rebellion. Feyd Rautha has no compunctions about raining fire down on every square inch of Northern Arrakis to flush out the Fremen, thus confronting Paul with an awful decision; does he stay in the North with his ragtag army fighting against a far larger force, or does he head south and realize all of his worst fears?  The decision is not an easy one at all.

There has been no shortage of praise for this film since it was released a few weeks ago, and to my mind the praise is, for the most part, richly deserved. It's been awhile since I've seen a movie like this, one that is truly sumptuous in its scale and scope. Shot on location in Jordan, Abu Dhabi and Hungary among other places, with the best cameras available for the job, this is one of those rare experiences where the viewer can see every last dollar of the film's $190 million budget on the screen. There is a seamless marriage of live-action and computer-generated imagery, and absolutely topnotch performances by the entire cast seal the deal as they sell the verisimilitude. I could not help but be transported to this world thousands of years into the future and light years away. Everyone involved in this is firing on all cylinders, from director Denis Villeneuve, whose work I've admired since 2013's Prisoners  to actors Chalamet, Zendaya, Ferguson, Skarsgaard, Butler and the legendary Christopher Walken.  Florence Pugh makes a brief but pivotal appearance as Princess Irulan, the Emperor's daughter. All these sterling performances are framed against some truly brilliant cinematography, and set to a mesmerizing score by pop-culture god Hans Zimmer, who, even as he innovates, presents a score evocative of some of his very best work, like Gladiator.  

As odd as this may sound, though, my issues with this film are not at all with the stage craft behind it but rather with the writing that underpins the entire narrative.

For one thing, there is a specific course of action which Paul is loath to do, one which could actually kill him, and yet towards the end of the film, he changes his mind without apparent catalyst or significant reason. This is completely distinct from his decision to head south, incidentally. It just feels like one of those things that happens because the plot needs it to, and quite frankly it feels out of place in a movie this meticulously put together.

Second, and this is more intimately tied into the story, I had a problem with how the Fremen leadership, and in particular Stiglar, went from being wise in the ways of the world and Arrakis in general to babbling zealots in the second film. It's yet another example of Hollywood taking a shot at religion (a whole other post in and of itself) and does a disservice to the character.  But more on that elsewhere.

All told, however, this film is truly excellent and should really serve as a blueprint for how to make blockbusters moving forward. 

9/10 

The Master Returns: A Review of The Boy and the Heron

written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki

It feels strange to say this considering my family and I own on DVD nearly every film ever directed by legendary director Hayao Miyazaki, but The Boy and the Heron was the very first Miyazaki movie any of us had ever seen in movie theaters.  Better late than never, though.  The guy is an anime legend, and I am grateful to have seen at least one of his wonderful films where it was meant to be seen: on the big screen.   Coming into this film, I was actually a little worried; Miyazaki's most recent film prior to this, 2013 The Wind Rises, had lost a lot of his charm, but even though The Boy and the Heron isn't quite on the level of Miyazaki's very best, it is at least a very welcome return to form for him.

The story actually starts out on a grim note, with the protagonist, teenage boy Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki) losing his mother to a fire as the Allied Forces bomb Japan in the middle of World War II.  Following the chaos, Mahito and his dad Shoichi (Takuya Kimura) move out to the countryside, Mahito meets his father's new wife Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura) who also happens to be his mother's younger sister. As Mahito grapples with his grief and loss out in the countryside, he receives a most unexpected visitor: a talking gray heron (Masaki Suda), who leads Mahito into a magical, mysterious world where he learns a lot of things he didn't know about life and death, including certain truths about his mother.

This film is reportedly rather personal to Miyazaki; he grew up in post-World-War II Japan and like Mahito, he, too, lost his mother, though much later in life, and to disease and not a fire.  This tinges the whimsy with a gentle melancholy. As a result, even though Miyazaki's usual commentaries about greed or the military-industrial complex are absent from this film, there's still a weight to it that makes it feel compelling in its own right.  By anchoring its narrative on the kind of pain that only the death of a loved one can induce, the film introduces audiences to a Miyazaki protagonist unlike any we've ever seen before. Miyazaki's last protagonist, airplane designer Jiro Hirokoshi, was notably unsympathetic as a character because of how he put his love for aviation over everything, even his own humanity. Fortunately, Miyazaki goes in completely the opposite direction with the youthful Mahito, who bears a very human emotional burden all throughout the story.   

I'll admit the film sometimes feels unwieldy because of the wildly different tones it must juggle, but Mahito's heartache lends the story real gravitas, and imbues the striking images with a weight and soul they wouldn't otherwise have. The whimsical world Mahito visits, after all, is the Land of the Dead.

Miyazaki's visual signature permeates the film, which is what makes the fantastical elements pop all the more. It was a striking choice to start the film with the violence of the blaze that killed Mahito's mother, but as the fire recurs throughout the film in flashbacks, it helps lend the film its distinct visual identity, as do Miyazaki's flourishes like a multitude of cute characters, namely the Warawara, who evoke the Soot Sprites from My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. Miyazaki's longtime composer Joe Hisaishi contributes a suitably emotional score, if not a particularly striking one.

It really was gratifying to finally see a Miyazaki movie in theaters. Given that the man is 80 years old I don't imagine I'll get to see a whole lot more, which makes this even more of a privilege. Though I may not consider this his best work, if I only ever watched one Miyazaki movie in theaters, I could have done a lot worse than this one.

8.5/10