Mini Movie Review Marathon, Part 3 · 9:19pm May 15th, 2023
Hello again, everyone.
Been a while since I posted a blog. Even longer since I really posted about anything movie-related. Hope that you all are doing okay.
Decided to play some catch-up on what movies I'd seen, both for the rest of 2022, and so far in 2023. Some of them will be familiar, no doubt, and others may be a bit more of a surprise. 
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022; watched July 21st))
At the time, I enjoyed myself "well enough" with this one, but upon subsequent reflection and hindsight, I'd honestly label this one something of a dud. Not just because "it has too many jokes," or what have you (though I do think that yeah, a lot of the gags in this movie are rather hit-and-miss; did we really need to spend so much time seeing New Asgard as a tourist attraction?), but more because I thought the movie's plot and tone jumped all over the place. The God Butcher is our Big Bad, but he barely kills any gods, and the horror and mystique that made his comics self such a memorable and gruesome villain is, frankly, expunged given that we open right away with his origin and see his fall from grace right away. No disrespect to Christian Bale, who actually does a fine job with what he is given, but as someone who was a big fan of the original God Butcher saga, I can't help but wonder why they used the character here if they were going to water him down so much.
This movie really lived and died by its star, and Chris Hemsworth did the best out of the cast. He was funny and buffoonish when he needed to be; proud and jealous when he needed to; and yet heroic and serious when the chips were down as well. Props to Natalie Portman as Jane Foster too. Seeing her return, and her and Chris play off of each other, was very nice. The scene where Thor and Jane are on the boat to the shadow-realm, talking about love and living, is where the movie really came together for me.
A final observation. The whole plot about the children of the gods (plus everything to do with Zeus' thunderbolt, and the King of Olympus being a lazy selfish jerk as well) really gave me Percy Jackson vibes. For a Marvel superhero movie, this movie did a fine job with capturing more of the spirit of a Percy Jackson book than the ACTUAL Percy Jackson movies so far.
See How They Run (2022; watched Sep 20th)
This British murder mystery / comedy started out really strong, sagged some in the middle, but rallied for a fine climax and conclusion. The opening narration by Adrien Brody's delightfully obnoxious movie producer is a great lead-in, and the buildup and payoff of the murder itself is very well done. The mystery investigation itself - conducted by Sam Rockwell as the world-weary and long-suffering Inspector Stoppard, and Saoirse Ronan as the eager rookie Constable Stalker - isn't bad by any means, even if I feel like the movie overplayed one joke in particular.
Still, the mystery is nicely done, and throws a few curveballs at the viewer without feeling like the story is cheating. The finale is very nicely constructed and pays off a much earlier bit of setup in the movie in a great fashion. All in all, this was a perfectly amiable watch, and I'm glad to have seen it in the theater. 
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022 release; watched January 3rd, 2023)
"But the effects were decent."
That quote, from a much better series called "Avatar," would sum this one up nicely. Yes, the return to James Cameron's alien world of Pandora may look like a feast for the eyes, but the story has got to be one of the most boilerplate things I've ever seen put to film. One may not be able to make a drinking game out of how many times the word "family" is used here, but it's a close thing. The characters are paper-thin (the army dad who treats his sons like soldiers and only learns to truly appreciate them after disaster; the kid who feels like a perpetual screwup; the kid with special abilities who feels like a freak; etc.) and the entire plot point about whaling has all the subtlety of a 2x4 to the head. (I nearly laughed out loud at the bit in the opening where we learn that Sigourney Weaver's character, Kiri, was born by a miracle with no father known.)
The best aspect of this movie for me was Spider, the human boy who was left behind on Pandora from the first movie and has been raised by Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and family, only to wind up in the clutches of the resurrected Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) for much of the film. Spider (played by Jack Champion) made for a good human presence amid all the blue alien catfolk, and the concept of his story arc - torn between the father he's never known versus the people who actually raised him - provided a good enough plot for me to keep a surface level (no pun intended!) engagement with his scenes.
Though, speaking of Quaritch... I'm sorry, but the matter of his return just feels silly to me. In this movie, it is established that Quaritch's resurrection comes about from the RDA having created 'recombinant' Avatars: Na'vi bodies 'programmed' with the memories, personality, and genetic information of RDA soldiers. And I find myself asking, if the RDA can back up an entire person's genes, memories, and personality, on a piece of hardware the size of a smartphone, and program that into a specially-grown human/alien hybrid, what the hell are they futzing around hunting whales on Pandora for? With THAT command of science, couldn't they go terraform some other moon to live on? Or use a more effective means of fighting the Na'vi than just sending human goons in robot suits after them?
I wanted to like this movie, but honestly it just made me appreciate the 2009 film a lot more. That one told a complete story, with no major promise (or need) for a follow-up. Hell, this movie made me better appreciate some of the MCU movies I had a lukewarm response to. At least "Dr. Strange 2" and "Thor Love and Thunder" provoked more of a response from me than this visually gorgeous but hollow story of aliens and space soldiers, speaking in cliches and predictable as a stopwatch.
The Fabelmans (2022 release; watched February 7th, 2023)
Now THIS was a solid movie. Steven Spielberg's revisited / reimagined telling of his upbringing - from his love for movies, to the pain of his parents' divorce and the misery of high school - was a solid and engaging story about the ups and downs of family, and (as I see it) the beauty and the burden of art. Making movies shapes much of the childhood of Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel Labelle), but it also through his work with the camera that he eventually comes to the painful realization that his mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams) is having an affair.
I must say, it floored me to watch this movie and realize that the dad of the Fabelman family, Burt (Paul Dano) is the same actor who was the Riddler in 2022's "The Batman". Or also, that the family's honorary uncle Bennie was played by Seth Rogen; normally an actor I have no patience or tolerance for, Rogen proves to have a real heart in his role. The scene where Bennie gives Sammy a new camera, with the plea to keep making movies, for his mom's sake if no one else's, is genuinely moving, and a real highlight of the movie's midpoint.
Though I must not leave out Michelle Williams' performance either. As Sammy's mother, she is both tender and loving, encouraging her son's creativity and passion for moviemaking... but she is also flighty, and probably suffering something emotionally. As the movie progresses, you really see the strength and weakness of both parents (the dad is a great provider and very smart, but he struggles a little to show his love, and doesn't respect Sammy's movie interest as an actual career; the mom loves her kids but makes some extreme decisions, to say nothing of her infidelity - the act itself being condemned, but the guilty parties being portrayed with sympathy). Watching "The Fabelmans," one really gets the sense that Spielberg is using this story as a way of finding closure with his own youth, and trying to figure out and make peace with the memory of his real life parents.
The section of the movie dealing with Sammy's high school life is well-done, largely for capturing the painfulness of that time of life. (I have to say, it was depressingly familiar to see Sammy face anti-Semitic bullying in the school and realize that here in the 2020s that kind of bullshit is still going strong.) The ending of the movie is interesting; I felt that it could have ended at a few different points, perhaps I would have chosen the scene after prom where Sammy comes home and has a morning chat with his mom. That would have been a good "fade to white" moment, but I also enjoyed, on an introspective level, the later scene with a college-age Sammy finally getting his father's permission to pursue filmmaking as a career. It felt like Spielberg putting rest to some old family memories.
As a whole, highly enjoyed this movie. It is a serious watch, but it is very smart about it. (And would have been well worth seeing anyway, just for the cameo at the end by David Lynch, playing the role of legendary Western director John Ford. My God, that was worth the price of admission right there! 
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Moonstruck (1987; watched February 13, 2023)
A romantic comedy starring Cher and Nicolas Cage. Amazingly, it works. I may not have *loved* it, but it made me smile throughout and it kept me engaged. There is a lot of heart in the story about the members of an Italian household, and the driving question of love for several of its family. The relationship between the characters played by Cher (here, a widower looking for marriage out of fear of dying old and alone) and Nic Cage (the fiery-tempered brother of Cher's clueless drip of a boyfriend) is quite engaging. Cage's character Ronnie gets a powerful speech about the painfulness of love in particular.
Though really, the majority of the cast are great. This is a movie you watch not just for the romantic entanglement that springs up between Loretta and Ronnie, but also for the interpersonal lives of the other people around them: Loretta's parents, her grandfather, to name some good examples right there.
All in all, glad to have seen this one. May not be a blatantly romantic, feel-good movie, but it was very appropriate for Valentine's Day all the same.
Operation Fortune: Ruse du Guerre (2023; watched March 7th)
This Guy Ritchie caper about a skilled, if somewhat quirky, team of operators working to infiltrate a top-secret black market deal and retrieve a world-threatening piece of stolen technology, is quite interesting to watch just on the basis that Ritchie - a director famous for his gangster movies - is making a movie where the protagonists are actually on the side of the law this time.
"Operation Fortune" is a smart and funny movie, that works without going too far. It's self-aware without being too wink-wink about it, and it's clever without becoming self-congratulatory. The cast is all quite strong, ranging from Jason Statham as the lead agent Orson Fortune; but I would really have to praise Aubrey Plaza as the team's comms and hacking expert as well. Hugh Grant is a comedic delight as the international arms dealer Greg Simmonds, managing to be funny without falling into scene-grabbing or obnoxious territory. The characters all play off each other in interesting ways and it is a delight seeing the cast come together to get out of a crisis.
The movie's plot feels rather indebted to James Bond (particularly in the ultimate plot of our buyers at the auction), and the movie's doomsday device / McGuffin feels all-too-relevant, which I appreciated. The action scenes are solid and move briskly along, and the settings of the movie all look like a million bucks.
Quite fun! 
The Commitments (1991; watched March 13th, 2023)
I wasn't readily sure what I might make of this one, but I'm glad to have seen it. This movie about a young man in 1980s Dublin and his struggle to put together a soul music group, makes for a relatable story about the ups and downs of pursuing any creative undertaking. (Especially one involving a big group of people.)
There's plenty of humor in this movie, but it's a very bittersweet, very Irish kind. For all the highs that come from the band making something work, there's various woes along the way, that eventually culminate in a blowout at the end. But at the same time, when all is said and done, there's still the journey that counts. And sometimes, that's the thing that matters most.
The music in this movie is excellent. I've never thought much about soul music prior to watching this movie, but I definitely felt each song and the effort put into each one. The characters were quite an eclectic bunch - you have the manager struggling to corral everyone; the old veteran musician who may not be who he says he is; the lead singer who's talented but is a real jerk; the drummer who started out as the band's bouncer, to name just a few - and I liked them all, and the way that they played off each other... and yes, the way that they clashed too.
All in all, enjoyable movie. Good to have on my moviegoing resume.
John Wick: Chapter Four (2023; watched April 3rd)
The first movie will still be my personal favorite, but this was a fine conclusion to the story of John "Baba Yaga" Wick.
In deeper trouble than ever with the leadership of the secretive world of assassins, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) hunts for a way out of his predicament and an end to the parade of killers after him. Sadly, as his old friend Winston (Ian McShane) spells out to him, even John Wick cannot kill *everyone* that the High Table sends after him. Thanks to John's actions in the previous movie, the assassin leadership has granted emergency powers to the Marquis (Bill Skarsgard) to make sure that John is killed, his allies punished, and all memory of his legend is expunged. Under the watchful eye of the Harbinger (Clancy Brown), the Marquis turns loose a veritable army of hitmen, most deadly among them the man known as Caine (Donnie Yen).
Hunted across the globe, John Wick has to resort to calling on the oldest rites of the High Table to try and have a potential out: a duel to the death with the Marquis. All or nothing, win or lose, live or die, it at least offers a way out. Though of course, it's rarely ever that simple in a John Wick movie...
The movie's plot is fairly straightforward, but it flows smoothly and gracefully. There are quite a share of new characters to introduce in the runtime, but they play their parts well, and the through-line is easy enough to follow. (Interestingly, watching this movie, I found a fascinating theme at work about the burden of loyalty, be it to others or to friends. One can easily trace the domino effect caused by one clash of loyalties in particular, early on in the movie. People who are truly loyal to someone often suffer for their debts owed, but on the other hand, the most despicable characters in the film are those whose only loyalty is to themselves. It's not explicitly spelled out here, but you could make a good case that the theme of this movie is about loyalties due and how one faces up to that.)
Now of course, for a movie like this, the real point of interest is in the action, and on that front, John Wick Chapter Four well and truly delivers. There's some truly impressive action sequences and stuntwork carried out in this movie (my personal favorite being a top-down shoot'em up inside a derelict French building), but even as many times as John Wick may tear through, or get smacked around, by legions of thugs, I never lost my engagement. I was always curious to see HOW he was going to get out of this one.
The movie's cast is full of winners. Clancy Brown is solid as the judicial and quietly authoritative Harbinger. Bill Skarsgard is effete but vicious as the Marquis. Shamier Anderson is a great wild card as a mysterious tracker out for his own interests in the movie too. And of course, returning faces like Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, and (however briefly) Lance Reddick (RIP) are most welcome too. Donnie Yen is outstanding as the deadly blind master Caine, but you also see he is a real character not dissimilar from John himself. And Keanu Reeves is still in fine form as the long-suffering, long-battered, but implacable and magnificently efficient Mr. Wick. He truly goes through hell in this story, but does it all with such ruthless effectiveness that your attention is held up to the final, bloody end.
The Covenant (2023; watched April 25th)
Another Guy Ritchie movie, this one even more of a departure from the norm in many ways for Ritchie's usually bright and stylized method, but in doing so, it works. This story of an American sergeant in Afghanistan (Jake Gyllenhaal) moving heaven and earth to come back and try to rescue the Afghan interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim) is quite restrained in its presentation but all the more effective for it.
The strongest portion of this movie is definitely the sequence where Ahmed, the interpreter, has to carry the wounded sergeant Kinley across 100 miles of Afghan mountain country. That was some fantastic cinematography, and very suspenseful and powerful throughout. (The preceding raid on an IED factory gone wrong, and the shootout that goes with it, is also some fantastic action. Very well constructed and effective.)
Unlike a typical Guy Ritchie movie, which usually has a large cast of a lot of various quirky characters, this movie's emphasis is very much on Sergeant Kinley and Ahmed. And it works. Kinley is nicely portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, but I'd really have to say the MVP of this film to my view was Dar Salim as Ahmed. He had a fantastic presence and you really rooted for him throughout the story.
The climactic act of the movie isn't as intense as the whole trip through the mountains, but it's still a solid enough finish to the movie. The ending text onscreen about the state of affairs for Afghan interpreters gave me pause, and took me back to the end of "Wind River."
Solid movie. 
To anyone who made it through this entire read... thanks. 
Hope you all enjoyed, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
I personally enjoyed the Thor movie but that's also bias as I read the arcs it was basing itself on and found the movie a.... BETTER take on them so personal bias on my part is to be taken into consideration.
Edit: ALSO HEY DUDE! Been a hot minute!
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I don't *hate* Love and Thunder by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely a movie where I think that it overplays its hand. Each to their own taste and all that, no worries.
And also, hey there yourself. XD It *has* been a while, hasn't it?
Marvel seems to not want to keep any of its villains, except Loki, alive to come back and be a threat in the future. Which is weird, because I think that it could be interesting, having Gorr be a recurring threat to Thor that he can't just hit with his axe until it goes away.
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You make a very good point there. It would be nice to have some recurring enemies, and for Thor, an enemy like Gorr would be VERY potent as a recurring enemy. (Especially given that the movies have already gone through Loki, Malekith, Kurse, and Hela.)
All of these sound completely fair to me. To be honest I haven't seen most of these, aside from Thor. I thought that was an okay movie, I just wanted to enjoy an hour and a half.
I... still do not have any interest in Avatar. I dunno, I hear a lot of people say it's really great, but it's just not driving me to see it.
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That's quite fair, regarding Thor. And I admit to probably being somewhat biased myself there. I really got a bang out of the original comic arc that influenced so much of that film's story, so I more than likely judged it harsher than others would have.
As for Avatar... for the Cameron movies, I wouldn't say that you're missing out. The 2009 movie isn't BAD, I'd say, but it's nothing essential either. Probably best viewed as a popcorn flick, on a big TV. For the Nickelodeon Avatar... I love the original series, but I don't want to twist your arm or anything about it either. I know the damage that hype and overhype can do.
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I forgot to correct myself, I meant the Cameron movies. I'm still open to the cartoon. ^^
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Aha, I see. Good to know!
(I *figured* you meant the movies, rather than the cartoon, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.)
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Fair enough. And when I say the arcs I don't mean The God Butcher stuff. That... yeah I agree that could've been done a bit better.... but I meant like. Jane as Lady Thor. Her stuff in the comics when she wielded Mjolnir were.... NOT the.... GREATEST I feel. Especially since Jason Aaron kept insisting Thor was a title and not... you know the guy's NAME.