Why I Saw This Movie
After being wowed by Infinity War, I've officially given in. I'm a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I want to see all the movies.
Positives
* A good fun movie
* Walton Goggins
* About halfway through the movie, I realized that the stakes in this movie were going to be a lot less than in other Marvel movies. There wasn't really a villain. (Ghost didn't actually want to harm anyone). "How are they going to make an exciting climax out of this?" I thought.
But... they still managed to make a really fun exciting climax after all.
Mixed
The fun of the Ant-Manmovies is supposed to be the humor. And although this movie was funny, it wasn't hilarious. There were quite a few jokes that didn't land, and a few more that the movie built up too much. Too much emphasis (music cues, reaction shots) for a mediocre joke. It wasn't terrible. There were some good laughs. Paul Rudd, Michael Pena, and Walter Goggins are all good. But it wasn't spectacular. (This may be a result of these Marvel movies being cranked out too fast. Action scenes are the easy part. But it takes a lot of time and talent to make a funny movie.)
Review
Nothing spectacular, but a good fun movie. Some great chase scenes. Some good action scenes. Decently funny (even if it is not absolutely hilarious).
Why I Saw This Movie
I was almost going to give this one a pass. I had been seeing a lot of superhero movies lately, and superhero movie fatigue was beginning to set in.
But...
These Marvel movies all tie together, so you kind of have to see them eventually just to be all caught up on the continuity. And I knew if I didn't see it in the theaters, I'd eventually end up seeing it on the small screen (like I did with Age of Ultron). So might as well see it in the theater.
Plus...
Then all those reviews started coming in. People were really raving about this movie. And then I absolutely had to see it.
Expectations Going In
I suspect my expectations leading into this movie were similar to most people. But correct me if your experience differed from mine.
1). This is just going to be one of those little Marvel movies to tide us over until the next Avengers crossover.
2). Wow! Everyone's raving about this movie. It's supposed to be the best Marvel movie ever! People were calling it Marvel's first Shakespearean epic. People were calling it the next evolution of Marvel movies.
3). And then the counter-reaction set in. A lot of people started posting on the Internet something along the line of: "It wasn't a bad movie, but it's nowhere near as good as everyone's been saying."
...put me in group 3 right now. It wasn't a bad movie, but it was nowhere good as everyone has been saying. But let's get in to the positives first.
Positives
* The acting is great.
I had never seen Michael B. Jordan in anything before. But that guy is a great actor. (It's almost a shame he was wasted in the villain role. The guy should be a leading man in his own right. He just exudes charisma.)
The actress who plays Shuri (Black Panther's sister) was also great.
And, as much as I hate to be the guy who praises the only two white characters in the film, both Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis were great.
I love Martin Freeman's comic facial expressions. (That look of exasperation he had when he was talking to Andy Serkis was great). And Andy Serkis was just amazing!
* The movie avoids the temptation to focus in only on the hero, and makes this movie a real ensemble cast. It wasn't just about the Black Panther, it was about the whole leadership of Wakanda.
* I know people always hate that the Marvel movies are always setting up future movies. It's an interesting system Marvel has of doing the old set-up and pay-off across movies rather than within a movie. It's annoying when you're watching the movie with the set-up. But it is kind of satisfying when you get to the pay-off.
Andy Serkis and the Vibranium was one of my least favorite parts of Age of Ultron. But it was kind of nice to see that plot thread now paying off in Black Panther. Negatives
* Severe pacing problems. Especially in the first act.
Too much standing around and talking about how great Wakanda is.
There was some action sequences in the beginning, which were intended to break-up the exposition, but I actually found them just as boring as the talking (I think because I didn't really know who the people were, and the stakes were not clear.) That whole challenge fight scene at the beginning had me confused as to what the point was. In fact that whole "becoming King" ceremony followed by the "becoming King Vision" ceremony of act 1 was way too long and boring.
* Why are they constantly switching back and forth between Wakandan and English? If you want to have them speaking Wakandan to build the illusion of authenticity, go for it. And if you want them to just speak English, then go for it. But what is with all that switching back and forth?
* A lot of these Marvel movies have suffered from the problem of having undefined powers, or undefined magic technology, that just works when it is convenient to the plot. This movie has the "undefined magic technology" problem in spades.
Neutral
I know progressives, and people of color, seemed to have embraced this movie. But during those opening tribal ceremony scenes, I couldn't help but think to myself that this movie was using every African tribe stereotype in the book. It was almost like watching one of those jungle adventure movies from the 1930s.
Would you call this racist? Well, you wouldn't, would you? Because the writers are both black, and the director is black.
It made me think a bit about how the stereotype itself isn't as important as the intention behind it.
It also made me think a bit about how almost all visual representation on film is some kind of stereotype.
Even films or dramas that are supposed to be based on real life make use of stereotypes. For example 90201 Beverly Hills is nothing like a real American high school. It's a stereotype based on our images of what a typical American high school is.
Rating : 6 out of 10. (Slightly above average, but nowhere near as good as everyone says it is.)
Positives
* Everyone has already pointed this out already, but it's good to see Peter Parker back in high school. (All comic book fans know that in his original incarnation, Spider-Man was a high school student, and the original 1960s version of the character is famous for combining teen-angst with super-hero stuff. So it's nice that they're returning to those roots.) And they've got an actor who is young enough to convinceable play a high school student this time.
....That being said, the filmmakers are pushing things a little bit by claiming Peter Parker is 15. Tom Holland looks young, but not that young. 17 would have been believable.
* I know some people hate this, but personally I think it's cool how inter-connected all the MCU movies are. So I liked all those Avengers references and Iron Man cameos.
* The action sequences were good. Fast paced, exciting, and the director did a good job of building tension. Tom Holland also did a good job of selling the danger. You could see from the worried look on his face that his character actually believed he was in real danger, which made the action sequences more exciting for the audiences.
The Negatives
* It's not this movie's fault necessarily, but we've become so saturated with Superhero movies lately that a lot of this is becoming old hat. There are a few little plot twists along the way, but basically I know everything in this movie is just leading up one big climatic fight against the villain. And that's basically what happens.
Rating : 6 out of 10. (Borderline 7, because this movie is pretty well-made for what it is. But we've had so many superhero movies lately, it's getting hard to impress me. It gets one star over average.)
Spider-Man Links
My review of Spider-Man 3 is here. (Spider-Man 1 & 2 were before I started regularly reviewing movies, although I have some brief thoughts on Spider-Man 1here. I never got around to seeing the Andrew Garfield movies.)
From io9.com Spider-Man: Homecoming Diversity Push Makes No Spidey-Sense . I read this article before watching the movie, and was initially in agreement with it. After seeing the movie, however, I was so charmed by Tom Holland's performance, that I don't begrudge him the role at all.
And speaking of Tom Holland...
Actor Tom Holland not to be confused with historian Tom Holland.
And a big welcome to everyone who's started following me under the mistaken impression I'm the next #Spiderman. I hope you like cricket...
So...I'm late with this one obviously.
I wanted to see it back last year when it came out, but never managed to schedule in a trip to the theater.
Funny thing about these summer blockbuster movies: there's so much hype surrounding them when they get released that you feel like you can't possibly live a complete life unless you see it.
But then a few months after the hype has died down, you completely forget about it. And I pretty much completely forgot about this movie.
Except...except that these Marvel movies, and their shared universe, create a sense of obligation to see all of them so that you can see how they all fit together.
(I'm not the first person to notice this, I know. And I know some people have been complaining about it, but as a geek, I still think the large in-universe continuity is really cool.)
Anyway, it was on TV this evening, and I wasn't doing anything, so I thought I'd just watch it to see.
On the negative side, many people have commented on how formulaic these Marvel movies have been getting lately. And this movie follows a very predictable formula.
On the plus side, it's all competently done.
The acting, directing, and writing is all good. The comedy is okay. (To be honest, it wasn't nearly as funny as I was hoping for, given a lot of the funny people who worked on this movie. But, whatever, can't win them all. The comedy was serviceable.)
That, plus Ant Man as a superhero allows for some innovations and twists on the standard formula. Sure it's a standard big action scene at the end, but having the hero and villain shrink down and fight it out on a toy train set was innovating enough to make the normal formula interesting.
Rating : 6 out of 10 Stars. (5 stars for being a competently done formulaic superhero movie. Plus 1 more star for the extra fun that shrinking down to a small scale brought this movie.)
Negatives
* A consequence of spreading one short book over 3 movies is that they're essentially all out of story by this point--the whole movie is just one long build up to a battle, and then one long battle.
* Tolkien's world, in which evil beings are always evil just for the sake of being evil, is one that is okay for children, but as an adult it feels like a waste of time to spend too long in such a world.
Positives
* But what a spectacular battle scene it was.
The Review An army of evil orcs which is evil just for the sake of being evil does not lead to a particularly engaging story. The only reason you'd ever see this film is if you like action sequences.
Fortunately, the action sequences deliver.
This would be the best movie ever if I was 8 years old again--the incredible battle sequences, the mystical settings, the awesome set designs. And the inner child in me could still delight in these things.
Rating : 6 out of 10 stars (Based on the spectacle of the battle scenes, and not on the plot.)
Links
For my previous reviews of the hobbit movies, see 1 here, and 2 here.
Positives * None of these characters are likable, but as in all Scorsese films, there is a kind of fascination of a train wreck watching how they are going to achieve everything they want, and then ruin it all.
* It's safe to say at this point that Scorsese knows what he's doing, and he delivers good story telling mixed with narration, and pop music.
Negatives * I absolutely hated all the characters in this movie
* Some of the scenes went on for too long and were overly indulgent.
The Review
Ideally, films shouldn't have to be only about likable characters. Sometimes you can learn a lot more about the human condition by films in which all the characters are absolute jerks. In theory, we should probably have more of these type of films.
And yet...in practice it can be hard to sit through a 3 hour movie with no likable characters at all. (I was even cheering for them to all go to jail at the end.)
However, in this day and age of excess and irresponsibility on Wall Street, it is definitely a very timely film.
The Review
I'm not sure this movie was quite as good as everyone had been saying it was (another victim of high expectations), but it was nevertheless a solid film. There are enough plot elements and characters to keep the attention. And Christopher Nolan's direction expertly builds the suspense in a number of scenes.
Links
For my reviews of other films in the Christopher Nolan trilogy, see some thoughts on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. I mentioned in both reviews my mixed feelings about an adult movie which features a grown man running around in a giant bat suit. To quote from myself : the idea of a guy running around in a bat suit seems perfectly natural in the world of cartoons and comic books. But the more serious and realistic Batman's surroundings get, the more he himself seems not to fit in with his own movie. I especially thought Christian Bale's husky "Batman voice" was a bit over the top. Maybe this is a sign of growing up--when you finally get to that point in your adult life where you look at costumed superhero movies and suddenly think: "Wait a minute, this is all ridiculous!" But, it has always struck me most about the Christopher Nolan Batman in a way that never really bothered me about all the other superhero movies I've seen lately. I think the huge rubber batsuit in particular looks more ridiculous than other superhero costumes.
External Links Cinema Sins Everything Wrong with the Dark Knight Rises Here. (I know this guy makes a career out of exploiting every nitpick he can about movies, but at least a couple of the things he mentioned here also bugged me while I was watching the movie.) Avclub review here (I know I'm becoming a bit predictable by always linking to the avclub, but they do good work.)
Avclub says of the politics of this film: There’s a catchall quality to the politics of it—the Occupy movement could be viewed here as unifying force or order-upending menace—but Nolan seems content to let his popular entertainment double as a Rorschach test.
Yes, the politics of this film seem...problematic. I know it's always been a part of the given Batman mythos that there are always lots of psychotic criminals wandering the streets of Gotham, and that the solution is always to lock as many of them up as possible. (This is, after all, a comic book world). But nonetheless, I was a bit uncomfortable at the beginning in how clearly the movie seemed to be praising a prison-state world (where the movie--or at least its main characters--openly praise the new laws that have locked up more people and put more police on the ground). Is this movie advocating fascism? The reviewer at Salon.com wrestles with the same question: It’s no exaggeration to say that the “Dark Knight” universe is fascistic ... . It’s simply a fact. Nolan’s screenplay... simply pushes the Batman legend to its logical extreme, as a vision of human history understood as a struggle between superior individual wills, a tale of symbolic heroism and sacrifice set against the hopeless corruption of society.
But, he goes on to conclude: But if “The Dark Knight Rises” is a fascist film, it’s a great fascist film, and arguably the biggest, darkest, most thrilling and disturbing and utterly balls-out spectacle ever created for the screen. It’s an unfriendly masterpiece that shows you only a little circle of daylight, way up there at the top of our collective prison shaft — but a masterpiece nonetheless.
* Managed to break the monotony from the
other Marvel Universe movies
* Created humor from the squabbling of the
main characters
Cons
* Tried to milk the sentimentality a little
too much—something I have little patience for in dumb comic book movies where
my investment in the characters is minimal
* The movie is funny, but it’s not quite as
funny as it thinks it is—somewhere there’s a much funnier movie featuring these
same characters that just didn’t quite get to the surface this time
* The ending didn’t make sense
* Multiple times main characters would
appear to die, only to turn out to be not really dead (4 times, by my count)—which
is a cheap plot device
* A few too many, “I’m not a scientist, but
come on this is ridiculous” moments
The
Review
For all
its faults, a fun film.(Even if the
creators of this movie blatantly have no idea how outer space works).The dynamic between the characters was good,
although not as funny as it could have been.(It had potential though—if they had just gotten some better writers in…).The third act just degenerates into a shoot-‘em
up, but of course, if you have any familiarity with the genre, you knew that
already.
My Cinephile friend continues to be very
enthusiastic about the works of Yasujiro Ozu (W), and
some months after he got me to sit through my first Ozu film, Good Morning, he invited me
to check out another Ozu film with him.
The
Review
Ozu
reportedly has a very meticulous style which he repeats in film after film, and
this film was in many ways similar to the previous film.A similar plot (a minor domestic situation,
which gets focused on in depth to fill up the space of two hours),
same highly stylized framing of each shot, and even more or less the same cast
as the previous film.
Therefore
everything I had to say about the previous film holds true here as well—it is
slow moving, but has a certain amount of charm if you let yourself get into
it.
Other
Things I Would Talk About If I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words
* This film being only my second foray into
Ozu, I’m still trying to figure him out—is he simply chronicling domestic life
for the sake of accurately chronicling it (as was reportedly Tolstoy’s purpose
in War and Peace), or is
he trying to provoke the question: “Are these little things, that everyone
spends all their time obsessing over, really all there is to life?”
* The interactions and conversations in Ozu’s
films strike me as so typically Japanese that I would be tempted to say anyone who
hasn’t lived in Japan can’t fully appreciate Ozu’s movies—or that is I would be
tempted to say this, were it not for that fact that my Cinephile friend (and
thousands of other Ozu fans around the world) have never lived in Japan, and
clearly love Ozu’s movies much more than I do.
6 out of 10. (The same rating I gave to the
previous Ozu film with the same caveat—more so than most movies, this one
really depends on you being in the right mood for it.)
Links
* I found this excellent review of the film while searching on-line.The
author picks up on any number of subtleties about the film I completely missed
on my own.(I didn’t even realize this
until I got to the end of the review, but after reading the whole thing I was
surprised to find out I actually knew the author. I don’t know him well, but we travelled in
some of the same circles back when I lived in Grand Rapids—The West Michigan Peace and
Justice Coalition for example.I have
even linked to him before years back here and here.)
I never got around to seeing this movie
when it was current, but it was always one of those movies I meant to see
eventually.And after seeing the
historical events in this movie portrayed in The World at War, I was curious to see the Hollywood version.
The
Review
The
history is interesting, but the movie is too mechanistic (focusing on who did
what where when).While the character motivations
are not ignored, the movie doesn’t have time to develop them naturally, and so
they come out mainly in the form of monologues.A more interesting story would have been the political evolution of the
conspirators. Unfortunately that subject is too big for a 2 hour movie.
The
movie is competently made, and interesting as far as it goes, but doesn’t reach
the significance it claims for itself.
Links
Much of
what I said in my review of Sophie Scholl holds true here as well.These type of stories are important because
they detract from the deterministic view of history—the idea that people’s
values are automatically determined by their culture, and so a person can not
be held responsible for having immoral values if those values are common to
their time or culture.Also remembering
these stories of resistance increases the culpability of all those who did
willingly collaborate with the Nazis.
The old: I was meeting a friend at the cinema, and this was
the only thing playing.
Negatives
* Shamelessly rips off the exact same formula and story from
Titanic
* The formulaic nature of this movie makes it incredibly
predictable.
* Awful….AWFUL…dialogue
* Another one of these Hollywood
romances where the writers couldn’t be bothered to give us a reason why the
lovers are in love, and we just have to accept that the whole romance started
because they liked the look of each other.
Positive
* The visuals
* A great spectacle
* Good special effects
* Decent action scenes
* Good acting
* Good editing and a quick pace which keeps the story moving
at a fast clip, and keeps you from getting bored.
The Review
I went into this movie simply
because it was the only thing playing at my local cinema, and I had low
expectations.I was pleasantly
surprised.It’s not a good “film”, but
it’s a great popcorn flick to see up on the big screen for all its spectacle and
special effects glory. Just make sure to
turn off your brain at the door.
Other Things I Would
Talk About If I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words
* Since Titanic, which
this film is blatantly ripping off, put in the trouble to bring in cameos from
historical figures, I’m going to lament that neither Pliny the Elder nor Pliny
the Younger got a walk on scene in this film.
Links
This is not a film you would go to for historical accuracy, although as ever wikipedia is a good place to check for which details came from history, and which didn't.
The quote from Pliny the Younger which opens the film is particularly good. "You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore." Pliny's first hand account of the Pompeii disaster is fascinating reading. I used to have, until my ipod erased it, Eyewitness to History (A) as one of my favorite audiobooks, which included Pliny's eyewitness account of the Pompeii disaster. But the entire account is of course viewable online, and makes for fascinating reading.
And From the Washington Post: CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA
misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal
interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity
of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and
taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in
fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques. (Rest of the article here).
And on a completely different note, from Salon.com “Cosmic” meltdown! Neil deGrasse Tyson under siege from Christian right: Evangelicals complain "Cosmos'" excludes creationism -- as if it were the only creation myth worth exploring
Conservative Christians are really mad about the reboot of the legendary science series Cosmos,
starring Neil deGrasse Tyson. The complaint? That an ancient myth about
creation invented by Hebrews thousands of years ago is not being
included in a show that is there to teach science. (The rest of the article here)
