Guns... So Primitive

Year: 2018

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o 

Run Time: 2 hours 14 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

For a huge corporation dominating the box office, Marvel sure does manage to take some risks. Let's not pretend that these risks aren't carefully calculated and demographically analyzed within a nanometer of their lives to be as safe and sure as possible, but they're risks nonetheless. 

They hand movies to indie auteurs with only a few low budget gems under their belt (Taika Waititi earned his way to Thor: Ragnarok with Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and James Gunn nabbed Guardians of the Galaxy with Super, a film that had literally 1% of that Marvel flick's budget), they adapt low-performing properties into mega-blockbusters (the aforementioned Guardians had two brief runs, and hadn't had a comic published in at least four years when the movie came out), and though all their movies have the same general sheen, they aren't afraid of changing up the tone and even genre of individual entries (from the paranoid political thriller of The Winter Soldier to the frothy heist antics of Ant-Man, there's a pretty wide range of material at this point). When you really take a look at the way they've gone at least a teensy bit out of their way to make sure their mass-market product is guided by interesting, dynamic people, it's pretty, well, marvelous.

Black Panther is a combination of all of these things, and way more. The character of Black Panther is a Marvel B-side, though he's right on the cusp of being a household name, at least in nerdier families. The director, Ryan Coogler, only had two films under his belt, though admittedly one of them was Creed, already a successful, critically acclaimed franchise extension. But most importantly, this is the biggest budget film ever to have a predominantly black cast, a black director, all while being the first Marvel film with a female cinematographer to boot. These are all very wonderful, and yes, capital-I Important things. While I personally wouldn't consider this kind of casting and hiring particularly risky (because I live in the real world, and am aware that all kinds of people can make all kinds of art), Hollywood has a tendency to view anything non-whitewashed as a potential financial loss. In the eyes of Hollywood, the near-future careers of many hard-working, diverse crew members depends on the success of  the mega-multi-million dollar Black Panther, as does the continuation of the box office juggernaut Marvel Cinematic Universe. That's what I'd call a risk, and a very Important one.

Of course, the movie also has to be good in addition to important, but would Marvel take a risk on something that wasn't good?

Well, you got me there.

Spoiler alert: It's good. But first, the plot, which is blissfully as insular as it can possibly be from the greater orchestrations of the Marvel universe. After the events of Captain America: Civil War, which saw the death of T'Chaka (John Kani), King of the African nation of Wakanda, the throne has been passed to his son T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman, who is finally free from playing every significant historical African-American figure the country to offer). Wakanda, though it seems to be a third world farming country from the outside, is secretly a high-tech utopia thanks to its vast deposits of vibranium, a magical compound that does, I dunno, comic book stuff. It's magic.

Unfortunately, not everyone in Wakanda is as pleased with T'Challa being crowned King as his mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) and tech-genius sister Shuri (Letitia Wright). The five tribes of Wakanda slowly begin to splinter according to their various allegiances, but the real breaking point comes in the form of two villains: the chav-bro arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, using his actual god-given face) and his partner in crime Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan, who is three for three on Ryan Coogler films at this point), an Oakland native who has mysterious ties to the Wakandan War Dog tribe.

Everything swiftly descends into what you might just call a "game of thrones" involving every major Wakandan figure, including General Okoye (Danai Gurira), leader of the bald, entirely female royal guard; W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya, currently an Oscar nominee for Get Out), a friend of T'Challa whose overwhelming hatred of Klaue makes him unpredictable; Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), T'Challa's former flame and an international spy who wants to use Wakandan technology to help those in need out in the world; and also Zuri (Forest Whitaker), but I'm honestly not really sure what he does. 

He mainly just delivers exposition and takes care of flowers.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Black Panther how very political it is. It's necessarily about political engagement and the responsibility of upper-class minorities to reach out and help the oppressed (which honestly isn't as far from the general theme of superhero movies as you'd think, although it is much more fervently expressed here). Occasionally the movie gets a little didactic, especially in a clunky monologue it shoves onto Michael B. Jordan's shoulders midway through, but otherwise it's soaked with an urgency and vitality that's startling for a film with this corporate pedigree.

But that's yet another thing about what makes it Important, and I'm a little sick of dwelling on that for the time being. Because Black Panther is fun, and it doesn't serve the movie to forget that. A tremendous cast is delivering crackling dialogue here, with just enough of a snappy edge to remind you that you're watching a Marvel project, but still shedding the vestiges of Joss Whedon flop sweat and finding its own personality in the process.

I mean, there's no way you can deny how awe-inspiring it is to look at that cast list. These people are all from different genres, mediums, and levels of fame, but they come together to create something spectacular. Everyone is having fun here, even Lupita Nyong'o, who is saddled with a tragically generic love interest role. A bright spot here is certainly Letitia Wright (whose biggest credit up to this point has been the odious British TV series Cucumber/Banana, which I regretfully watched all of in my capacity as a recapper at The Backlot) as the eager younger sister, whose energy and vivacity light up the screen like a thousand gigawatt bulb, but sometimes it's hard to look anywhere but the villains.

Marvel has notoriously had a problem with crafting solid antagonists, and that issue is cracked wide open here. Klaue is maybe not the best example, but the anarchistic glee with which Andy Serkis digs into the role is immensely satisfying. Killmonger, however, in spite of the ridiculous name, is a force to be reckoned with. Michael B. Jordan takes a role that we've seen in every Marvel origin story from the beginning of time (a villain who is a dark mirror-image of the main hero's costume and power set) and tosses in about a dozen extra layers of prickly emotion, charismatic intimidation, and moral ambiguity. He's not just a one note slab of eeeeevil, but rather a complex, satisfying character who serves up the themes of the movie on a silver platter. And not for nothing, he's so good-looking it almost hurts. Part of being a movie star is drawing the eye like an electromagnet, and he's at full charge.

Dude knows how to rock a vest, what can I say?

On top of all that, Black Panther is probably the best looking Marvel film to date, although - to be fair - only recently has it seemed like they've been trying to create any sort of visual beauty in their movies. But it also inhabits a wholly unique space in the American cinema sphere, bringing the traditions and aesthetics of Afrofuturism to the grandest scale they've ever seen. From the costumes to the sets to the sweeping cinematography of Rachel Morrison, Black Panther fully invests in the color, patterns, and majesty of Africa to create an arresting visual schema that dares you to look away for even a second.

There aren't nearly enough high quality screenshots of the film yet for my liking, but here's a quick taste of some of what it has to offer:

In the future, we don't question that women are badasses.

Western clothing patterns can go f**k themselves.

Oh yeah, did I mention Martin Freeman is in this movie? Should I have? Eh, probably not.

Sometimes set designers just get it.

The bottom line is that Black Panther is spectacular, and it makes itself so by utilizing a perspective that's been long absent from modern cinema. The heavy drums that propel the soundtrack straight through your skull, the elegant simplicity of the sci-fi gadgetry that blends old traditions with hyper-futuristic tech, and the eye-searing color scheme that doesn't remotely feel 80's in the way that most bold color palettes have gone recently, none of it could have come from Western culture, and the fact that it has been given such a platform is a blissfully new, visually entrancing experience.

What does come from Western culture, however, is the plot structure, and it's nothing we haven't seen before. Marvel falls back on a lot of their favorite tropes and plot devices, so nothing in the plot itself is going to particularly shock you. And while the action sequences are fun (especially a trawl through the streets of Busan, a South Korean burg we should all know very well, and a fight on the edge of a waterfall), none of them are blow-the-roof-off unique, especially the too-busy, dizzying CGI-fest that closes the third act.

The reasons to watch this movie are ample, but the parts where it fails are exactly the elements that mark it as a Marvel project. It's not Black Panther's fault that a formula we've seen 18 times before is getting a wee bit stale, but this is one in a long line of movies that are doing something unique and memorable, but I probably never need to see again. And it's a shame, because the act of seeing Black Panther is exactly what makes it so incredibly satisfying. 

It's a triumph of aesthetic, world-building, character-creation, and political urgency, and I highly recommend it. But it's still a Marvel movie, y'know? Thank heavens they're taking risks, but they're never going to make something one hundred percent new. There's no shame in that, but there's also no   longevity.

TL;DR: Black Panther contains a lot of material we've seen before, but it's presented with a vision that we certainly haven't.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1767
Reviews In This Series
Captain America: Civil War (Russo & Russo, 2016)
Black Panther (Coogler, 2018)
Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo, 2018)
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)

Spanks For The Memories

Year: 2018

Director: James Foley

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Kim Basinger

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

If that's not the best poster tagline you've ever seen, you've either seen a lot of posters or you have much better taste than I do. "Don't miss the climax" is precisely what this franchise needed, throwing caution to the wind and unabashedly embracing its status as frothy, sexy trash. Pretending to be anything else is futile and tedious. Of course, "pretending to be anything else" is exactly what the franchise loves to do, so let's not kid ourselves that Fifty Shades Freed was great, but props to whatever genius made that poster a reality.

Like, let's not kid ourselves about the reason people are watching these movies.

Fifty Shades Freed opens with the wedding of tenacious submissive Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and BDSM stalker-maniac Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), which is treated with all the gravity and care that the people who have waited years for this deserve: as a thirty-second montage during the opening credits. So now they're married, and boy oh boy does that not fix their problems!

Christian is still a control-freak who wants to punish her every time she disobeys an order (you know, like good husbands give). Anastasia still wants to live her own life in addition to fixing Christian (you know, like all good wives must do). And Anastasia's abusive former boss Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson) has somehow transformed from a vaguely sexy book editor into a Mission: Impossible villain and is doing everything in his considerable, inexplicable power to take down the Greys, including car chases, attempted kidnapping, and literally planting a bomb in Christian's file room.

Also, they argue a lot about whether or not they want to have a baby, because that's totally a conversation you should have two days after the wedding.

Is it just me, or are they getting married in front of President Obama's official portrait backdrop?

Just like Fifty Shades Darker, I do kind of love how the movie just throws you into the deep end of the plot, sink or swim. Don't remember that two-second scene where Ana pointed at a house while sailing to a Taylor Swift song? Don't remember the auction sequence that was sandwiched between Ben Wa ball sex scenes? Well f**k you, because they are major plot points now, and if you don't remember what happened, you clearly didn't spend enough money on the Fifty Shades franchise to deserve to know what's going on.

Unfortunately, that's just about the biggest compliment I can give to the film, and I'm not entirely convinced that a callous disregard for newcomers goes in the "pro" column for anybody but me. Sure, some of the (very few) good things about the franchise have continued on here, but they're considerably weaker this time around. For instance, Dakota Johnson is, as ever, the best thing about the movie. Although she almost exclusively is forced to interact with Jamie Dornan, whose powerful emotive vacuum leaches the shine off her talents, she still finds the opportunity to deliver the franchise's only genuine belly laugh (an embarrassed admission about the couple owning a pair of handcuffs during a tense moment).

And there are some campy moments that can be squeezed out of this sponge of a movie. I myself quite fancied the honeymoon sequence where, among the riches and elegance of Paris, Christian buys Ana a tacky charm bracelet. And I'm pretty sure a quick jet ski ride completes the franchise's bingo card of putting this couple on every form of transportation ever conceived by humanity. Also, the brazenly conspicuous way that pop songs are injected into the very tissue of this movie, at the expense of all dialogue and plot, is admirably mercenary.

I'm pretty sure you hear more words spoken by Ellie Goulding than by Anastasia Steele.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough camp here to generate more than a passing interest. It's enough that I never felt like the film was a slog at any particular point, but that's about the best I can say for it. Most of what's at play here is just plain bad-bad. The plotting, which has even more unpredictable, inscrutable, low-stakes melodrama than the previous film (which features a helicopter crash with absolutely no setup) and thus should be that much more delightful, is too dizzying and fragmented to be properly picked apart.

Plus, they've really doubled down on the sex here, which really also should have been a bonus, but the love scenes have historically been the least exciting thing about this all-too vanilla franchise. Sure, there are actual handcuffs in this one, which I don't think have actually appeared in the series thus far in spite of being on the cover of at least one of the books, but the artifacts in the massively appointed red room are just used as garnishes to frustratingly dull missionary sex. One gratuitously extensive scene involves ice cream being spooned onto body parts and achieves a remarkable kind of anti-eroticism that just turns the stomach. The only thing to recommend any of these scenes is that Christian Grey's ratty, nudity-obliterating sex jeans have basically become their own character in the most hilarious and faux-meaningful way ever.

But the sad fact remains that Dornan and Johnson have absolutely zero chemistry. It doesn't help that the film's overzealous casting director has given us both Tyler Hoechlin and Brant Daugherty in small roles, thus assuring that Jamie Dornan will literally never be the sexiest person in the frame. This is no slight on Dornan or his body, but just like Tom Cruise needs you to hire short people on set so he looks taller, you can't hide his light under the bushel of a former Teen Wolf.

So, yeah. Fifty Shades Freed is about as average as a big-budget kink picture can be, which makes it massively disappointing. This trilogy has wasted all its incredible potential to sink into trashy excess, and though between the three of them there is probably an 80-minute supercut of bad-good delights, there is no reason to watch any of these movies ever again.

TL;DR: Fifty Shades Freed has a ridiculous plot, certainly, but it's too focused on its boring sex to be a true camp classic.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1057
Reviews In This Series
Fifty Shades of Grey (Taylor-Johnson, 2015)
Fifty Shades Darker (Foley, 2017)
Fifty Shades Freed (Foley, 2018)

Rabbit Season

Year: 2018

Director: Will Gluck

Cast: James Corden, Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Over the past month, my heart has warmed considerably to children's entertainment. After being bowled over by Babe, Paddington and Paddington 2 swept in with a double decker blow of adorable earnestness that laid me flat. I've always been open to watching kids' movies, but I'm typically a hard sell, so I was wondering if my resistance was finally beginning to crumble. So Peter Rabbit came at the perfect time to see if my dulled resistance just needed a non-masterpiece as a whetstone.

As an updated feature based on a classic British children's story, it has a very similar pedigree to Paddington, so what could go wrong?

Peter Rabbit begins with a story you know well. Mischievous bunny rabbit Peter (James Corden), with the support of his sisters Flopsy (Margot Robbie, for some reason), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki, for slightly more understandable reasons), and Cottontail (Daisy Ridley, for no reason whatsoever) among other woodland creatures, sneaks into the garden of Old Farmer McGregor (Sam Neill, for a reason so nanoscopic that scientists are still debating its existence) to steal some delicious vegetables. So far, so familiar. Until the part where Peter Rabbit tries to shove a carrot up the old man's ass and then he dies of a heart attack. Yeah, I don't remember Beatrix Potter jotting down that one.

Bring in the younger, sexier cast! The rabbits have always been cared for by McGregor's sensitive painter neighbor Bea (Rose Byrne), but when McGregor's fussy, city-boy nephew Thomas (Domhnall Gleeson) moves in, the rabbits are frustrated to discover that the two are falling in love. Thomas has managed to convince Bea that he is a wildlife lover, but in the meantime, he is engaging in a war against Peter Rabbit and his cronies, attempting to keep them off the property he has inherited and is attempting to sell.

Also, his laundry bill must be insane, considering all the produce that gets smashed into the fabric.

Peter Rabbit is actually two movies that are constantly warring with one another. The first is a delightful romantic comedy starring a pair absurdly underrated and hilarious actors. The second is an execrable "family friendly" hash of violent slapstick and clunky gags starring irritating CGI monstrosities. Peter Rabbit obviously only desires to be the latter, but the former keeps accidentally slipping in and reminding you how pleasurable this whole experience had the opportunity to be.

But let's focus on that good - perhaps even great - movie for the time being. Domhnall Gleeson is in terrific form here, flipping between big physical comedy and subtle, character-based humor without breaking a sweat. There's a sequence where he attempts to understand birdwatching that frankly belongs on his future lifetime achievement reel. Rose Byrne is given considerably less to do, considering that her character is clueless of the entire plot, but she provides an excellent foil for Gleeson's antics, and has a couple standout moments of her own.

The human plot is so swell that a huge belly laugh line is even given to a taxi driver character who appears in two scenes. There's more than enough to go around here.

But I literally can't even find a proper still of Rose Byrne, so that just goes to show how little the filmmakers value this film's strongest elements.

Ay, there's the rub. There's no way Peter Rabbit wasn't going to be about Peter Rabbit, but when he hops into the frame he brings with him everything that's unbearable and generic about the movie. At least the anthropomorphic animal CGI is mostly fine (save for one scene involving the rabbits in a football huddle, which we see at an angle that's downright criminal in its ugliness), but the second he opens his mouth you know you've been locked into an iron maiden of subpar children's movie material.

James Corden's performance style is what makes him perfect for a late night show: every word out of his mouth drips with the desperate demand that you find him charming and lovable. Honestly, this isn't a liability for a kids' flick, but when you combine that with the fact that the character is an unmitigated asshole, it's incredibly grating, like rubbing sandpaper directly on your eyes. For some reason, the screenwriters seem to think that the height of comedy is having a character make a joke, then immediately undermine it by either explaining it to death or making a quip about just how wacky they're being. 

Every gag is a one-two punch; an unfunny joke, then a follow-up that saps whatever minuscule scrap of energy it had to its name. Then there are all the requisite cliché details that come with being a movie for children in the 2010's: a million unnecessary dance sequences, random jokes "for the adults" (including a horribly misguided "pour one out for a fallen homie" gag that is repeated more than once, for heaven's sake), and an obnoxiously trendy soundtracks full of on-the-nose needle drops, including the most inescapable songs of the day (most egregiously "Feel It Still" by Portugal the Man, which is the most dangerously saccharine earworm this side of "Can't Stop the Feeling!" and "Happy").

None of them are BAD songs per se, but you wouldn't want to meet one in a darkened alley.

All of this is interspersed with incredibly violent slapstick that is just plain cruel (there's a gag about inflicting anaphylactic shock that has no business being in a movie not directed by, say, Quentin Tarantino) and occasionally nonsensical (a scene about McGregor being pelted with fruit while attempting to hold a conversation with Bea really tests the limits of Rose Byrne's ability to play oblivious). 

In short, almost nothing about these scenes that form 70 percent of the movie works on any level. There's the occasional spot of brilliance, like the 2D animated flashback sequence that uses the aesthetic of the original novels to tremendous effect, or a montage of Old McGregor's unhealthy choices that shows the filmmakers probably at least saw the trailer to Paddington. But in the end, it's all for naught. It's a noxious, irritating experience made even more painful by the fact that it mars what could have honestly been a pretty fun movie about two humans navigating a relationship, though it's quite self-evident that that was in no way the movie anybody wanted to make.

I'm happy those splendid moments are there, but there's no way they're worth sitting though the rest of this drivel. Also, on the Babe front, there's a "that'll do, pig" joke that made me want to screech with righteous fury. Rule of thumb: Don't strive to remind audiences of movies that blow yours so far out of the water you've entered the Earth's orbit.

TL;DR: Peter Rabbit is an irritating kids' movie, with just enough of a much better movie peeking through that it's not entirely a slog.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1170

I'm Only Here For The Commercials

Year: 2018

Director: Julius Onah

Cast: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl 

Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes

MPAA Rating: TV-MA

I had to be at work during the Super Bowl this past Sunday, which I certainly didn't mind. I didn't have to pretend to care about football beyond a general distaste for anything Tom Brady says or does. I didn't have to will myself into watching the halftime show - normally my favorite part of the broadcast - put on by the human equivalent of a big bowl of vanilla extract. But I also didn't get to see the historically bold move by Netflix, dropping the newest entry in the Cloverfield franchise with a trailer announcing that the movie would be available to stream the instant the game ended.

Now that's a rollout you just can't ignore. And don't let the immediate social media blowback fool you, this project is exactly like Beyoncé's similarly released self-titled album: only OK.

But since when have you ever heard an online hot take expressing how fine something was? It can only be one way or the other.

The Cloverfield Paradox takes place in a not-too-distant future where an energy crisis is causing major strife on good ol' Earth. To help save a world that's teetering on the brink of a major war, a team of international scientists build the Shepard space station, their mission being to experiment with the world's largest particle accelerator to create a sustainable source for clean energy.

Only, they're playing in God's domain (and by God, I mean J. J. Abrams), so there's a high risk factor.  If the crew - including grieving-mother-who-is-basically-Sandra-Bullock-from-Gravity Ava (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the stern Captain Kiel (David Oyelowo), the Irish maintenance crew member Mundy (Chris O'Dowd), German scientist Schmidt (Daniel Brühl, who has been cropping up in more and more projects since his turn as the milquetoast villain Zemo in Captain America: Civil War), and Chinese engineer Tam (Ziyi Zhang of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha) - succeeds in their experiments, they might just tear a rift in the space-time continuum and cause a massive dimensional collision, unleashing a variety of monsters and adverse effects on the world in the past, present, and for however long it will take for these movies to stop making money.

I don't wanna spoil the plot here, but c'mon. They do the thing.

The Cloverfield Paradox is probably the worst Cloverfield movie, but what even is a Cloverfield movie anyway? The franchise itself doesn't seem to know. And if they keep just attaching the Cloverfield name to films that were developed without any plans of fitting into an increasingly massive monster series, they won't last long enough to figure it out. But if you have the foresight to detach yourself from any expectation at all that the film will be in any way remotely similar to the original film (hopes which 10 Cloverfield Lane should have dashed long ago), it's still a fun little sci-fi romp that's worth a look, though there's no way it could live up to the hullabaloo surrounding its rollout.

I'm going to say something that probably won't carry a lot of weight, but is exactly how I feel: if you liked the 2017 space horror movie Life, then you might just really dig The Cloverfield Paradox. It's a solid meat and potatoes sci-fi B-picture, with all the flatness of character that that implies. But hey, even Alien didn't bother giving anybody but its protagonist more than one trait.

The movie doles out a lot of bizarre plot developments that frequently seem contradictory or lack a proper explanation, but each individual moment is uncanny and watchable, keeping up a propulsive pace that sucks you in like the vacuum of space. Sure, The Cloverfield Paradox is a lot of goopy sci-fi nonsense, but since when is that a bad thing? The twists and turns that launch the plot into more and more deranged heights are fascinating and intense, promising another moment of gasp-inducing drama or solid body horror around each corner.

I bet Black Mirror is looking pretty safe and cozy right about now, huh?

And that cast! The players assembled here are vastly overqualified, and although not too many of their talents are taxed in any real way, Gugu Mbatha-Raw gives an astounding lead performance that grounds even the more forced plot moments in raw, genuine emotion. This woman is a movie star and she deserves all the success that Hollywood has to offer in this supremely weird time for motion pictures.

The only other actor who really makes a major impression is Chris O'Dowd, but unfortunately that's because he delivers some of the most odious comic relief this side of Jupiter Ascending. It's a testament to his skills as a comic that he can make some of his jokes land, but he sticks from the side of this movie like a rusty nail, ready to catch on your clothes when you least expect it.

OK, fine, maybe The Cloverfield Paradox is no masterpiece. But it delivers some gently futuristic background machines that whir pleasantly, plenty of Spielberg-adjacent flashing lights and special effects to gawk at in awe, and a largeness of scope that defies Netflix's limits as a streaming service. I've sat through spacebound flicks with a lot less to offer than this one, and it certainly doesn't deserve the disdain that comes from being attached to the increasingly worn Cloverfield name.

TL;DR: The Cloverfield Paradox is a loopy sci-fi thriller that does even less to serve Cloverfield fans than the previous entry, but it's still a fun genre riff.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 943

Reviews In This Series

10 Cloverfield Lane (Trachtenberg, 2016)

The Cloverfield Paradox (Onah, 2018)

The Mysteries Of Sarah

Year: 2018

Director: The Spierig Brothers

Cast: Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke, Angus Sampson

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

The Winchester Mystery House is probably the most interesting, strange landmark in America to date. A seven-story maze of halls with staircases that led to nowhere and doorways that open onto ten foot drops that was under construction 24 hours a day, it's the kind of tourist trap that's both of architectural and paranormal interest. Any way you slice it, it's the perfect place to set a movie, and it's astonishing it has taken the world this long. What's even more astonishing is that the Winchester estate chose to make their big screen debut with this myopic dud.

The presence of Helen Mirren certainly must have helped, but why would SHE choose to be here? This film is just like the house itself, an enigma wrapped in a mystery.

The plot of Winchester is barbarically simple. The lawyers at the Winchester Repeating Arms company are "worried" that the majority shareholder Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) - who has become a recluse in her ever-expanding sprawl of a mansion, believing herself to be haunted by the spirits of every person ever killed by a Winchester rifle - is too mentally unsound to run the company. They hire hallucinogenic-addicted, grief-riddled psychologist Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke) to assess her mental state and see if they can have her shares taken away from her.

I daresay it doesn't even count as a spoiler to tell you that she sure as sh*t ain't crazy. The house is riddled with ghosts, who spook Dr. Price to no end in a variety of mostly disconnected little vignettes until the Big Bad ghost reveals itself, whereupon this turns into a Conjuring rip-off starring Helen Mirren as Lin Shaye from Insidious. Bada bing, bada boom.

This is probably the only place in the world where tourism would actually increase after you make a horror movie about it.

I gotta hand it to the screenwriters here, they really did find a way to linguistically capture all the false starts and dead-ends that make up the twisted passageways of the Winchester house. The screenplay sets up so many threads that are either completely forgotten (like the good doctor's addiction to laudanum, which is completely dropped by the halfway point - though I really don't mind because there's nothing I like less than a "what's fantasy and what's reality?" theme in a movie where CGI ghosts are f**king people up) or hastily wrapped up in the turgid, busy finale.

And I shan't spoil things, if you somehow have such poor reading comprehension that you reach the end of this review and still want to check the movie for yourself. But let's just say that the final twenty-five minutes are some of the most exhausting horror movie boilerplate I've ever seen, erratically leaping from using well-worn tropes to paper over gaping plot holes to just pulling contradictory nonsense out of its ass in a weak, aching attempt to keep viewers invested. And the manner in which the Big Bad is vanquished is so laughably dumb, it'll remain in my quiver of awful movie scenes to discuss at parties for years to come.

You know what, I actually kind of like this screenshot. But don't be fooled into thinking it represents anything consistent or valuable about the movie.

The most astounding accomplishment of Winchester is that it achieves something I would have thought objectively impossible: it makes the Winchester Mystery House seem boring and bland. The bizarre geography and haphazard interiors should have provided at least an iota of interest and tension. Paranormal movie thrive on the inexplicable, and this house should have provided plenty of fuel to power a sense of menace, even if the ghosts weren't really providing (which they aren't, as the movie forces them through the hoops of a desperately generic haunting before undermining that with a revelation that just makes everything that came before confusing).

But no, this sprawling pile is rendered flat and lifeless by dull lighting that reduces it to a hazy gray background object, and a jagged editing style that refuses to connect any single room with another and make it all seem like a consistent structure. It's incoherent, but not in a way that highlights the natural incoherence of the structure. It bristles against every scrap of interest at every possible opportunity, plopping every scene into a jumbled pile that doesn't comment on any other in any meaningful way.

Just look at that... curtain? It's so... weird? Maybe?

But what of Helen Mirren, you ask? Well, she's certainly in the movie. And she probably had a lot of fun, but that certainly doesn't show here. It's not that she's not trying, but she's not pushed to do much of anything except sit still and stare gravely. The only way she could have saved the movie is if she milked the role of a reclusive, eccentric widow for all it was worth, making everything as big and purely camp as possible. By actually trying to do something realistic with her role, she recuses herself from that responsibility and tragically fades into the harried hash of a screenplay.

As for everyone else in the film, I could hardly pay them the compliment of saying they're even present. An actor I really like, the Aussie hulk Angus Sampson, has a scene or two and I'm happy to see him, but he might as well be the wallpaper. Scratch that, the wallpaper in the Winchester house would actually be interesting. And the de facto lead Jason Clarke can't justify the litany of Obviously Idiotic Horror Movie Character decisions he must make. 

At the end of the day, Winchester is an insult to the idea of the Mystery House, actively railing against the gargantuan promise and failing to do justice to a real life story that is loads more interesting than the rote, creaking ghost story told here.

TL;DR: Winchester is a major disappointment, wasting the incredible potential of a truly great setting and true story.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1019

Popcorn Kernels: Best Picture Contenders, Vol. 1

In which I once again attempt to sit through all the nominees for Best Picture, knowing full well that the presence of Darkest Hour shall surely prevent me from accomplishing this goal. Here are two of those efforts.

The Post

Year: 2017
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk
Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

When the Washington Post gets ahold of the Pentagon Papers, which expose a decade of government secrets, they must decide whether or not to publish them, which could potentially shut down the paper and send them to jail.

Look, I admitted that Spotlight was good, even though it's preposterous that it won Best Picture. And I dislike the state of the country as much as any reasonable American. But as timely as The Post is, it will never feel like anything other than Spotlight 2 (and in fact, it was co-written by one of the co-writers of Spotlight, if it wasn't already watered down enough for you). And as much as director Steven Spielberg has proven time and again he's a genius, we all have our bad days. The Post is such a huge waste of everyone's time and effort that it's not even funny.

Not that it was meant to be funny. The film finds Spielberg in intensely sober-minded Oscarbait mode, with only one scene (the best scene in the movie, involving a little girl selling lemonade) providing a moment of levity in this grandiose, self-important, completely arid awards season trifle.

The Post has a cruelly inflated sense of its own relevance, tying the problems of the past to current affairs in the most blunt, obvious way possible. Look, I'm all for arguments in favor of the free press, but they don't have to be couched in a series of artless, implacable zooms while characters monologue about how important the themes of the movie are. It hardly pretends to be dialogue, it's just one long essay mummifying an admittedly important historical event.

It's honestly rather clumsy, constantly framing Meryl Streep in drifts of men to pointedly remind you that she's not in a woman's space, all while the dialogue revolves around her being a woman in a man's space. It's very pointedly a message movie, and while shots like that can work - I'm thinking of Clarice Starling in the elevator at Quantico in Silence of the Lambs - it's forced down your throat so hard you start gagging before the fifteen minute mark.

It's just kind of a generally lousy movie, bookended by its worst scenes (a shoehorned-in Saving Private Ryan moment in Vietnam and a hilariously terrible Marvel-esque coda involving the world's worst Richard Nixon impersonator frantically waving his arms like a caffeinated mime and not even attempting to time his movements to the actual Nixon recording posing as dialogue) and endlessly unspooling trite, uninspired dialogue in between ("That picture makes me sad," exclaims Sarah Paulson, hopelessly drowning in a nothing role).

There's just no feeling involved here, it's all lecturing. And considering that The Post contains two of the world's most charismatic movie stars, it's astonishing how this could have even been accomplished. Meryl Streep is fine, as always, but she's snoozing through a role she could play with both hands and feet tied behind her back. And Tom Hanks is acting SO. HARD. But no matter how much he rakishly props his leg up on desks or undoes his sleeves, he's straining through an inexplicable old timey radio host accent that just drips with insincerity.

The Post was never going to be a great movie. It could only have ever been a acceptably Important prestige picture. But the way it fails its actors and the audience so substantially is frankly shocking. The music (John Williams, again visibly bored) seems to actively rebel against the tone of the film, the script is begging for attention yet barely there, and the coterie of strong performers (including, randomly, a handful of comic actors like Zach Woods and David Cross) is given nothing to do but be conduits for a firehose stream of flop sweat. One to miss.

Rating: 4/10

Dunkirk

Year: 2017

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

We follow a fighter pilot, a civilian ship, and some ground troops through the effort to rescue the British military from the beach at Dunkirk during World War II.

Dunkirk is about as boldly experimental as a big budget blockbuster can get. But the thing is, experimentation leads to failure about half the time. Not that Dunkirk is a failure; what it gets right outweighs what it gets wrong, but its open risk-taking comes with some very odd choices that don't quite work.

For one thing, take the peculiar dilation of time that occurs over the course of the film. One story elapses over a week, one over a day, and one over an hour. The film cuts between these stories simultaneously, and they overlap at certain key moments. But the way they are presented doesn't really allow for any more insight or intrigue than if they had just been shown chronologically. And the landing of a fighter plane is dragged out over the course of what feels like half an hour of excruciatingly long screen time, milked for all it's worth in the film's biggest patch of jingoistic militarism.

Luckily, that doesn't seem to be the prevailing sentiment over the rest of the film. Dunkirk is a film that is above all else about the terror and constant, oppressive violence of war (despite the conspicuously pulled punches of its PG-13 rating), doled out by an omnipresent enemy that is literally never shown, except in the form of bomber planes that whistle by periodically. It eschews character arcs and even dialogue at times (especially in the sequences on the beach, it plays out more like a silent film, which fortunately prevents Harry Styles from screwing anything up) in favor of this all-important, nerve-rattling atmosphere.

And there is absolutely no denying that this is an utterly gorgeous motion picture. Between what are probably some of the best airplane action sequences ever filmed, Nolan provides us bleakly stunning, expansive vistas that blast your corneas with the sheer wideness of devastation and desolation on this beach. The single distracting thing about the visuals is that - at least on the home video release, I can't speak to the theatrical - it has been decided that the aspect ratios switch between the footage shot on 70mm and 65mm. The black bars constantly blotting out the huge screen-filling vistas are hugely distracting and an entirely odd choice.

Much more thoroughly satisfying is the soundscape, which is as harsh and alarming as you would expect any good war picture to be, slashed through with Hans Zimmer's droning, atonal, staccato score that ratchets up the tension to an unbearable degree.

It's a good thing that Dunkirk is so visually and aurally stunning and goes all in on those elements, because most of the dialogue sequences are the worst parts of the movie. Whether its generals dumping piles of exposition on the top of your head or Mark Rylance spouting nothing but affectless patriotic quotes for the better part of an hour, these scenes are generally worth much less of your time than the tense beach sequences - especially a scene where bullets begin to blast through the hull of a ship where stowaway soldiers are waiting for high tide.

I'm not usually a fan of war movies, and I wouldn't say I'd ever want to watch this again, but I'm glad I saw it in the first place. If you've already seen Lady Bird, Get Out, and The Shape of Water, this should certainly be next on your Oscars checklist.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1306

Spank You Very Much

Year: 2017

Director: James Foley

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eric Johnson

Run Time: 1 hour 58 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Now that Fifty Shades Freed is swift approaching, there's no way I could let my blog ignore the bridge between that and Fifty Shades of Grey for one second longer. Although I wrote a brief snippet in sorta-praise of that second film back in February 2017, it was during the brief time that I wasn't writing full reviews for current releases. What a fool I was! Please allow me to rectify that with this belated, beloved review of Fifty Shades Darker, a film I have owned on DVD for some months now, because I am nothing if not a lunatic.

It's all part of the reason I'm so sexually irresistible.

So, Fifty Shades Darker is - obviously - a continuation of the massively popular mommy-porn fanfic lit phenomenon. We join our heroine, who was called Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) by some parents whose story must be far more interesting than that of their daughter considering their decision to commit to that name, as we left her: broken up with handsome millionaire BDSM-obssessed boyfriend Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). She immediately finds him back in her life, buying photos she modeled for so nobody else can look at her, forcing her to accept a gift of $24,000, giving her a laptop and phone then demanding she dream of him, and getting in the face of her sexy new boss at the book publishing agency, Jack (Eric Johnson) before literally just buying the company so he can be in charge of her career. You know, like good boyfriends do.

This is all literally in the first twenty minutes of a movie that inexplicably brushes the two hour mark.

Anyway guess what, they end up back together, although they struggle with the terms and boundaries of their new commitment. Anastasia wants a vanilla, normal relationship, but the audience demands some kinky-ass sex, so she wavers back and forth in her desires. Many road blocks to their relationship arrive, but the most important are the manipulative presence of his former sexual abuser Elena Lincoln (Kim Basinger) and the violent obsession of a former sub named Leila (Bella Heathcoate). Thus must Anastasia quite literally grapple with Christian's past, if she truly means to be with him.

And I don't know why she wouldn't. Just look at how pale and disinterested he is. Scrumptious.

One thing I like about Fifty Shades Darker is that it does not give a SH*T if you don't remember the first one. I certainly don't remember it nor do I wish to, but this movie just throws you right on into the deep end anyway. And why not? It's not like any of these characters or plot lines really matter.

And that's exactly why Darker is a marked improvement on the original. The franchise has finally started to lean into the fact that all it ever was and is supposed to be is unfettered trashiness. Don't come to these movies looking for plot or dynamic character arcs. Don't come to them for a reflection of realistic relationships or sexual mores (seriously, please don't do that). Come here for an exercise in melodramatic froth interspersed with some of the best-worst fake BDSM designed to appeal to Wisconsin housewives who want to be titillated but only just a little.

Fifty Shades Darker still doesn't quite fulfill the lurid, absurd promise that the books provide, but it's substantially closer to achieving that atmosphere, to the point that it ends up being a marginally enjoyable trash odyssey into heterosexual camp. 

And only a straight person could have picked out this outfit.

But you know me. I'll take a bad-good movie over a bad-boring one any day, and though Darker still has its fair share of tedious moments, there is plenty for a bad movie lover to feast upon, starting with the fact that every huge plot twist is cleared up in about two minutes of screen time, including HERE BE SPOILERS a major helicopter crash that comes out of literally nowhere and sees Christian casually walk back into his apartment with hardly a scratch in less time than it takes for them to remove each other's clothes. END SPOILERS The abortive drama is deliciously inane, and just keeps on lobbing softballs toward our heroes from out of left field.

Of course, it's not like we expected a script that is forced to include the straight-from-the-source lines "Laters, baby" and "you distract me with your kinky f*ckery" to be particularly on the ball about its dramatic developments. It's not great, but frankly it's fascinating, if only as an exercise in watching the bizarre sublimated desires of one fanfiction author playing out ten feet high with a fifty million dollar budget.

The filmmaking also seems to have endeavored to fail in such a thorough way that it fills in all the gaps where the script rises to the level of "competent." This movie is chock full of unmotivated cuts to exteriors in the middle of scenes, props that teleport into people's hands, and blocking that has a woman bring Ana a mug of tea which she promptly sets a flat eight feet away from her.

And may the movie gods bless the production designer who had the brilliant idea to put an inexplicable Chronicles of Riddick poster in Christian's childhood bedroom, an omnipresent touch during one particular sex scene that is grandly perplexing and amusing.

But, as always, there's at least one thing that propels this film from the depths of the blandly smutty muck, and that is Dakota Johnson. She isn't given a particular showcase like the contract scene in the previous film, but she's still pretty genuinely great in the role, instilling Anastasia with a sharp sense of humor that is in no way present on the page. She also strikes a terrific balance between the character's requisite shy, awkward side (the one that makes her relatable to the audience and also desirable to Christian's kinky f*ckery), and her burgeoning confidence. She's frankly exquisite in an early interaction with her new boss, where after a fumbled initial interaction, she settles into her skin when she starts to focus on work, her passion cutting the tension and allowing her to focus.

Of course, not even Meryl Streep could have handled some of the lines thrown her way, and she does stumble occasionally, especially when she must pretend to have any sort of chemistry with Jamie Dornan (in spite of their much-publicized mutual contempt). But Johnson continues to be the sparkling gem of this franchise, redeeming the most awful lows with surprising charm and magnetism.

And I've made it this far without really talking about the sex, but who am I kidding? It's what people are here for, and it is... fine. Christian literally never takes his jeans off, which is frankly disturbing, but they up the ante on the kinkiness to a certain, satisfying degree. Of course, it's not hard to hit a higher tier than the first film, which literally just shows some spanking and calls it a day. And any couples who are actually into BDSM will find this film so vanilla they'll get brain freeze. But still, there's not many Hollywood big budget feature films that have scenes which specifically and explicitly revolve around ben wa balls, so that's something at least.

I certainly wouldn't recommend this film to the discerning viewer, but if you're looking for a little fun with one author's unfiltered id, it's as close to a slam dunk as this franchise has gotten. I have my fingers crossed that Fifty Shades Freed doubles down on no-holds-barred sex and extravagantly idiotic plotting, and if it accomplishes that, it might just be a hands down camp classic.

TL;DR: Fifty Shades Darker improves on the original film by not taking itself quite as seriously, although it's still just as drama-free and pointless.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1332

Reviews In This Series

Fifty Shades of Grey (Taylor-Johnson, 2015)

Fifty Shades Darker (Foley, 2017)

Fifty Shades Freed (Foley, 2018)