I carry on my quest to have more articles on my website this year with another handful of movie reviews! Most of these are films that most folks already knew whether or not they wanted to see them, as the marketing for them was pretty unavoidable. Nevertheless, I figured I'd share my thoughts on these blockbusters, but to start off, let's go with a much more obscure, indie film!
So this is a bit of a weird one. Whenever I go to see movies with my father, we're generally a little early, so we've taken to walking around the theater and looking at posters for upcoming movies. When we saw the poster for this one, we knew absolutely nothing about it, but that it looked kinda cool. Digging a little more, we saw that it was going to be a foreign film about a gold digger in Finland who deals with some Nazis at the end of World War 2. We knew none of the actors or other people involved and were intrigued by the premise. However, the film never came to our theaters (despite having the poster for it), so we ended up watching it independently of each other at home. While my dad loved it, I was more mixed about what I saw.
During World War 2, Finland made a pact with Russia that required them to kick all of the Nazis they had stationed in their country. The Nazis then resorted to a scorched earth policy, destroying everything in their path as they tried to escape the country north through Norway. In the meantime, an old solider who was tired of war decided to go digging for gold in Northern Finland, and he finds some. When he runs into a German Death Squad on his way to town, they take try to take his gold and leave him for dead. From there, the old soldier (who turns out to be a wild veteran of the Winter War that the Russians called "The Immortal") goes through tons of punishment in order to get his revenge on the Death Squad. (For what it's worth, the word sisu is a Finnish word that's kind of a combination of grit and determination that has since become something of a national characteristic for Finland.)
So, basically a revenge fantasy where an old guy gets to tear up through a bunch of Nazis. Not a bad premise for an over the top action film, and it seems the cast is largely game for it. While I won't deny the ride was fun, I couldn't help but feel like the movie was rather inconsistent and arbitrary at times. At first, it seems like they're going for a kind of gritty hyper-realism style of action, but then you get these scenes where the hero does something pretty preposterous, almost cartoony at times, and any sense of realism gets thrown out the window. It's hard to know if the hero is succeeding because of his characteristic grit, or because he gets just plain lucky, especially when dealing with a group of pretty incompetent bad guys.
Still, it's not a bad movie, especially if you don't want to think too hard about it. While there is some pretty gory moments (like when the hero has to manually staple a wound on his stomach with spare wire), and a lot of profanity, there are also some pretty solid cinematography aspects, including some moments that made think they were inspired by the Spaghetti Westerns of the '60s. The soundtrack was minimal, but effective, and while some of the sets looked a little cheap, they still allowed for some interesting, set-piece driven action scenes. A decent film, but probably not one I'd recommend for the squeamish or those who are not entertained with just sheer violence.
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I admit seeing this one came with quite a bit of trepidation. Considering the problems it had through production, the off-screen behavior of the lead actor, and the general malaise that DC's live-action films have generated, I naturally assumed this would be another disaster (and many reviews said as much), buoyed by the promise of seeing Michael Keaton be Batman again. So it was much to my delight that the movie actually ended being pretty good, much to my surprise.
While Barry Allen is getting into the swing of things as a superhero, his efforts to exonerate his father (wrongly accused of killing his mother) take a rough turn, and in his frustration, starts running so fast that he can go back in time. Despite being told that this is a bad idea, he immediately jumps back to save his mother and prevent the whole disaster from happening. However, as he tries to jump back forward in time, he gets attacked by some speedster and ends up in a timeline where he runs into his teenager alternate version of himself. This sets off a massive chain of events where he has to train this other Barry Allen how to use his powers and gather what heroes there are in order to fight this timeline's version of General Zod just as he's trying to wipe out earth. I won't deny that this is all quite a lot, and the movie is kinda sloppy with things from time to time, but it does a very good job of keeping things grounded to the main character's emotional stakes. Everything he's doing related to his goal, with each new turn providing complications to that goal. In the end, there is a pretty intense emotional payoff, making for a decently satisfying story.
It's not perfect, though. The humor can be kind of hit or miss, as a lot of revolves the awkwardness of Barry having to deal with a younger version of himself. While Michael Keaton does a decent job of playing a weathered, nearly retired Batman, there are a lot of other cameos, often using CGI to make them work, with mixed results. (The last cameo before the credits is the best one, though.) However, much of the action is very well done, not only showing some of Flash's cool speed powers, but also getting rather surreal and artistic in showing how the Speedforce can work through time. While I don't know if the DCEU will be remembered for much beyond their many mistakes, The Flash ends up being one of the best of the bunch because it does a good job of keeping things focused, even when it feels like too much is going on.
After feeling underwhelmed by the last one, I started this one with some trepidation, as these movies are the epitome of fluff. However, I must have been in a better mindset for this one, as I feel like this was a step up in some ways, even if the stupidity is still around.
Once again, someone from Dom's past is coming back to haunt him and his family, this time drawing from the stunts they pulled in the fifth film. Jason Momoa plays Dante Reyes, the son of a drug lord who Dom's crew had ruined back in Rio, and so the son has spent the subsequent 10 years looking for ways to ruin Dom's life. At first, he gets them framed for a wild terrorist attack on Rome before getting much more personal with them all, eventually coming after Dom's son Brian. As usual, this results in threadbare leaps of plot that chain sequences of explosions together, and it's mostly satisfying.
However, much of the same problems rise up from before. Most of the dialog is pretty weak, though the time spent to put the rest of the cast on a side plot turns out alright as it largely remains relevant. Of course, Jason Momoa is definitely getting his "Heath Ledger Joker" act on, as he prances around and plays at being a villain in a rather whimsical way. For the record, while I liked Ledger's Joker well enough, I was never as blown away as everyone else was with the performance, but I can recognize that it certainly had an impact, and unfortunately, Momoa doesn't really get beyond the shadow it casts over what he's trying to do.
Of course, the big deal here is that the movie ends on a cliffhanger, as it seems all the good guys are in quite a bit of peril when the credits start. It's hard to take seriously, though, given all the plot armor these guys have. The cameos are decently fun, if ridiculous, but I suppose that's par for the course. Still, I'm curious to see where this goes in part two (and I guess there are rumors of a part three as well?). At the very least, I plan to dig up my thunderwear in time for the next one.
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Despite the memes, I had no interest in the Barbie movie whatsoever. (My general attitude is that I got my super-serious big robot fantasy fulfilled with Pacific Rim, so I have no problem with other folks having their Barbie movie be what they wanted it to be.) Setting aside the ridiculous circumstances of why I even have to bring up the Barbie movie at all in the context of reviewing this one, Oppenheimer was on my radar simply because it was Christopher Nolan directing. While Tenet left me pretty lukewarm (and confused as to what the characters were even saying as I couldn't hear them very well), this one benefits by having an adamant focus on the lead character and his various moral and technical hurdles.
The movie works as a pretty straight-forward (if non-linear) biography of the scientist, mostly focusing on his education and rise in the American scientific community, his work on the Manhattan Project, and his controversial 1954 security hearing. At first, the movie feels like its going a little too fast, but once you get what Nolan is doing and how he's handling it, it's relatively easy to follow as long as you're picking up the details. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them, and Nolan isn't really content on letting any moment rest for very long. It's mostly able to get away with it be largely being focused on the title character, even when he isn't on screen. In the end, we have a movie that really gets inside Oppenheimer's mind, often resorting to abstract visuals to show how his intellect puts pieces together. It also spends a lot of time exploring his morals, as on one hand, he's eager to help the US get the atomic bomb before the Germans do, he's not really thrilled about how devastating the weapon will be to the future of the world. This gets contrasted with his own insecurities and moral infidelity, and along with folks either seeing him as some special chosen one or a pariah, you really get the idea that Oppenheimer was "burdened with greatness" and eventually failed in the effort to handle it.
The cast is great. Even Cillian Murphey's restrained performance of the scientist works well for the story Nolan wants to tell, and everyone else performs as Nolan needs, moving them around as pieces on a chessboard, almost. While Robert Downey Jr. does ham it up a little as Lewis Strauss (a politician who ended up meeting Oppenheimer later and tried to use him for his own gains), I think the stand out role was Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves, the no-nonsense military commander in charge of the Manhattan project. If there is a problem with the cast, it's that there just might be too many characters, making it hard to follow who everyone is and why they matter, but again, the laser-focus on Oppenheimer lets Nolan get away with it.
If there is another problem that the movie has (other than it's 3 hour length that may test some viewers), it's the sheer intensity that the movie builds up over the course of its run time. At multiple points, I had to force myself to relax the muscles in my shoulders and remember that I'm just watching a movie. Ludwig Göransson's score is very much a part of this intensity, finding the right blend of ambient notes to drive up the tension of what's going on and the high stakes of the circumstances. While I do think Nolan has done a great work of cinema here, it's hard to recommend to others who aren't already interested in the subject matter (and the brief but blunt sex scenes certainly don't help). As far as I'm concerned, Inception is still Nolan's best movie, but this one certainly sees the director firing on all cylinders and succeeding in making a very unique and powerful biopic.
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