Category: Movies (Page 3 of 24)

Eight movies and a brief rant:

“The Girl in the Spider’s Web” is set in a weird fantasy version of contemporary Sweden where the sun never shines, where no one ever smiles or laughs, and where (I am NOT making this up) a skilled hacker can remotely fire a car’s air bag in a matter of seconds WHILE driving pursuit in a high-speed chase. The script betrays no concept of “character arc”. I’ve seen worse movies, but not in a while. 

“Overlord” is a zombie movie centered around D-Day. The art director and associated minions did their best to make this movie LOOK authentic. One could wish that the writers put even a fraction of that effort in to understanding military process or personality, or even human personality, for that matter. The film is slightly redeemed by the charm and talent of the cast, who are all significantly better than the material.

“Venom” is a super-anti-hero movie based on a character I fundamentally don’t like, played by an actor who was born to play thugs but keeps trying to go elsewhere. This movie exceeded my expectations, but my expectations were abysmal.

“Creed II” is a “Triumph of the Underdog” movie with a good cast and a decent script. If you like this kind of thing, and we do, this is the kind of thing you will like.

“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” is yet another effort to drag the whimsical world of Harry Potter into a more solid and adult political story. It didn’t work in the last movie, and apparently no one learned from that experience for this one. This isn’t a BAD movie, but it is overblown and badly unfocused.

“Ralph Breaks the Internet” is somewhat better than it predecessor, but that isn’t hard. The two main characters are beginning to develop more personality than is in the script, apparently because the actors have had several years to let them incubate. There are a few REALLY clever bits, most of which involve the stable of Disney princesses, and a new character named “Shank” who is probably the sexiest female in the history of animation. If you like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you will like. Me, I’m not really sure.

“Robin Hood” is a thoroughly mediocre whole cloth medieval epic with significant amounts of technological fantasy wrapped in a thin skin of Robin Hood trivia. The main cast is charming and able, and do what they can, but the result is still a train wreck.

“Destination Wedding” is a staight-to-the-internet rom-com about two extremely damaged and prickly people who are thrown together by the circumstance of an egreiously inconvenient and self indulgent wedding. The dialog is hyperbolic and full of brilliant flourishes. One gets the impression that this movie doesn’t really want to be liked, but we did, anyway.

And now, a brief cinematic rant: Hollywood is well past the point of being able to put ANYHING on the screen. It has become nearly impossible to create a visual “Wow” factor, and yet they keep trying. Worse, they have not yet learned that spectacle won’t carry a movie. Most of the movies in this batch have good casts, big budgets, and awful scripts. Something really needs to change…

Uncle Hyena

“Bohemian Rhapsody” has a great cast, brilliant performances, and a really problematic script. If you love Queen’s music, and are only passingly familiar with the men in the band, you will love it. If you are enough more familiar with the band to realize how good the portrayals are, you will love it even more. If you actually have a handle on the band’s chronology, however…

The physical casting is good (Roger is weakest, Freddie best), and the performances are AMAZING; the extent to which the four primary actors have inhabited their characters is borderline creepy, it’s so good. The script, on the other hand…

The script follows a fairly standard three act formula: Things come together, things fall apart, things come back together. The first act is well done, and reasonably close to history. The second and third acts, however, are almost entirely fictional. Some of the events portrayed actually occurred, but the narrative that gives the events their emotional resonance has no basis in reality.

As a writer, this makes me uneasy. I appreciate that it is a good (if formulaic) story that is well told. But it isn’t Freddie Mercury’s story, it’s just something that someone made up.

I remember a review of James Clavell’s novel “Shogun” that included the phrase: “It’s a well written, well constructed novel that includes something like a scene where President John Kennedy and his wife Marilyn Monroe watch the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor on television.” “Bohemian Rhapsody” makes me think about that a LOT.

Uncle Hyena

Movies:

“Mile 22” is a tight, relentless, convoluted, and humorless paramilitary thriller. It is well made but exhausting. We saw it out of moderate curiousity, and weren’t disappointed, but were far from thrilled.

“The House with a Clock in its Walls” is a juvenile paranormal thriller. It is reasonably amusing, but ultimately rather thin. We don’t regret seeing it, but as often, that isn’t really a recommendation.

“A Star is Born” has been made four times, now, roughly every twenty years (with a break in the 1990s, for some reason) since 1937. In the course of the last month, we have watched all four versions. The story is more or less constant: An older (mid 40s) male artist whose significant career is coming apart due to alcohol meets a younger female artist and gives her access to a larger audience. Her career takes off, the two marry, his career crashes, he dies, she goes on.

Variations:

In 1937, both principals were actors, and we got the pattern for the story. The pacing was occasionally off, and the film could have easily been trimmed by ten minutes or so, but it was a generally solid movie, and the second best of the lot.

In 1954, we had a male actor and a female singer. The pattern follows the first movie closely, but the film suffers from severe bloat. If the 1937 film should have been about 100 minutes long, this one could have been really tight and clean at about 115, to allow room for the music. It premiered at an absurd 182 minutes, but was cut to a still badly bloated 154 for general release. Third best.

1976 gave us two singers, and the most divergent, and also the weakest version, of the story. The other three versions are double threaded stories; this one focuses on the female lead, and reduces the male lead to little more than a supporting character. He is never allowed to complete a single song, and his death (sacrificial and deliberate in the other versions) is stripped of all meaning. The end of the movie is an object lesson in what happens when no one has the power to tell stars who are also producers, “No.” This movie was already fifteen minutes too long before adding another ten minutes of bloat at the end. Last of the four.

2018 also gives us two singers, and returns to the original pattern, but adds FUNCTIONAL character background to both leads. At 135 minutes, this film is almost as long as the 1976 139 minute bloatfest, but not a second is wasted; this film is TIGHT. Best of the breed by a significant margin, and highly recommended.

Uncle Hyena