We’ve established that maybe I watch a bit too much YouTube, right? But hey, at least I’m actually getting a decent amount of education value out of my viewing! Not only am I learning recipes and cooking techniques (an excuse I love for watching Shokugeki no Soma!) but I also really love watching video essays about film.
Sometime at the beginning of high school, I started to watch movies differently. I think this was triggered by 2 things:
My parents bought a box set of all the Best Picture Oscar winners and we had begun watching them for our weekly family movie nights. I suppose I began trying to see what set these movies apart from the rest.
I watched a bootleg copy of Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride & Prejudice, which remains one of my favorite movies because of what was interesting about this copy of it. When I turned on subtitles because the audio was a little bit off, I actually ended up with the director’s commentary captioning the movie instead of the audio. The result was that having the curtain pulled back on the director’s choices and intent helped me start looking for these things in other movies.
It’s very easy to critique movies without knowing the language of film; all art is able to be consumed at different levels and therefore to be critiqued at those different levels. I have a parent who works with film so it’s a medium that is near and dear to me, and I have begun to learn how to evaluate films in a different critical way.Read More »
Thanks to The City Vault for sending me to this early screening!
Note: I have not read the The Dark Tower book series, nor have I seen… any Stephen King movie? Or read any of his books? (Horror is not my thing. I am a scaredy cat.)
There has been SO MUCH HYPE for this much-beloved epic book series to come to life on the big screen, but there has also been so much strife for this film to actually come to fruition. Stephen King fans have been waiting with bated breath for a movie that they knew could never match the fantastical world crafted over nine books that is the link between all of King’s other novels.
Recognize the hotel in the picture frame?
To put it in perspective for people unfamiliar with the source material: You know how there are theories that say things like all Pixar movies are in the same universe? That’s what The Dark Tower is to Stephen King novels, on a Lord of the Rings-esque scale. So… it’s a big a** deal.
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
I learned that The Dark Tower movie is meant to be a sequel/continuation of the books, so fans who are expecting a faithful adaptation of the Gunslinger book will be disappointed. There is no man in black fleeing across the desert to open the movie; that war is done when the film begins.
The Gunslinger (Idris Elba) is the standout star of this film. He channels so much of that Man With No Name energy that Stephen King based the character on with this immense gravitas in his eyes and his voice and his posture. And while it’s obvious, it is very worth mentioning how freaking cool he is with his forged-from-Excalibur guns.
I’m sure the books have a lot more backstory on Roland, the last of the Gunslingers, but we don’t really know what his deal is in the movie. Why is he the last? What do you mean guns forged from King Arthur’s Excalibur? Why is he able to resist the Man in Black’s magics, and why is this not a bigger mystery to either of them?
I just really love Idris Elba, okay, he deserves more, always
Speaking of the Man in Black, Matthew McConaughey plays the villain I never knew I wanted him to be all these years of watching his career grow from the rom-coms I loved him in to an Oscar-winning actor. He has this eerie stillness to him, a complete control of the situation, and a psychopathic way of getting in people’s heads while having zero empathy for them.
Despite all of that, the Man in Black in The Dark Tower falls victim to the same fate as many blockbuster movie villains: A poorly fleshed out motive and a, there, uncompelling foil to our protagonists. Walter (as his real name is, apparently) is this all-powerful man with at least hundreds of minions at his fingertips. He has magic that allows hims to stop bullets and tell people to stop breathing and do some straight-up Matrix-type stuff. But why? Why does he want the Dark Tower to fall? Why does he want to allow hellish creatures into the universe? And my personal beef when it comes to magical powers is always: What is the limit of these powers? (Still mad about Elsa’s vague but frighteningly limitless ice powers…)
Tom Taylor‘s Jake Chambers showed a lot of very real emotions for the anchor of this story: he’s frustrated that no one is taking his dreams seriously, he’s mad at his stepfather for wanting to send him away to get help, he’s terrified of the monsters in his dreams coming after him in real life, he’s disappointed that even the heroes of his dreams aren’t what he expected, he’s sad about having lost his father.
Unfortunately, with Jake, we are literally only TOLD that he has great powers, but we really aren’t shown this. Before he crosses through a portal, he has to fight off some kind of demon in the woodwork of the house and, apparently, the reason he is able to do so is because he has mega-strong psychic abilities? But we see no real indication of this until we’re told that he has these powers. It’s not like Harry Potter talking to a snake or Anakin Skywalker using the Force to win a race. We really don’t get an inkling here, and it’s a rather big failure to show, not tell by the movie, since it is the reason that Jake is important as a character in the context of the events of this story!
TL;DR The movie falls short of the epic potential it promises, and does some strange and unnecessary showing without telling. (Indicative of some strange editing decisions, maybe?) It also leans a bit too much on the fish-out-of-water humor to get by. It’s still a good time to watch, but I don’t feel compelled to watch a sequel or even the potential TV show to come based on this film.
But it is a lot of fun to watch Idris Elba and his revolvers.
The Dark Tower is in theaters today. Spoilers below the trailer.
Thanks to Sony Screenings for allowing me to see Baby Driver before its release and to Edgar Wright for a great Q&A session afterwards!
A few weeks ago, I was able to attend a really special advanced screening for Edgar Wright‘s latest film, Baby Driver, made special because the director himself was available afterward to answer questions! I’ll go into more detail about the Q&A after I talk about the movie itself (spoiler alert: Jake Tapper moderated!) so let’s get right into it!
Honestly, the reason this movie was on my radar was because I follow Ansel Elgort on Instagram and he promoted the movie. When Ben and I first saw the trailer, I was like “???” and Ben was very interested until the title appeared on the screen, at which point he went, “Aw, what, the title is Baby Driver are you serious I wanted to watch this movie, too…”
Baby Driver is about a getaway driver named… Baby, and he’s played by Ansel Elgort, whose incredible charm I had somehow underestimated despite following him on social media. (The boy has a great smile.) He listens to music on a variety of iPods virtually constantly because the car accident that killed his parents also left him with debilitating tinnitus – the permanent ringing in the ears that, in some people, can drive folks mad. He helps Kevin Spacey‘s Doc drive in his various heists because he owes Doc money from stealing from him in the past. The other members of the heist crews always change, leading Baby to meet characters like Bats (Jamie Foxx), the batsh*t crazy one eager for a fight, Buddy (Jon Hamm), the cool and easy-going one who is in love with Darling (Eiza González), the beautiful and troublemaking member of the lovebird duo.
I’ll just say outright that the story and its progression are just okay, but it is very easy to forgive because this movie is not a movie. It is an incredibly fun, nearly 2-hour-long, beautifully-styled music video.
The movie does not exist without the soundtrack. We listen to whatever Baby is listening to and that frames our experience of the film, just as it frames Baby’s experience. There’s a great one-take long-shot of Baby walking down the street to get coffee while listening to music, but of course, and the sounds in the background begin to sync up with the instrumentals and beat of Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle”. During the Q&A, I actually learned that this scene is a bit of a lyric video, where the lyrics of the song playing can be seen in the background! I hadn’t noticed at all, but there is graffiti that shows the lyrics, and when Baby walks back over, the graffiti has already changed to reflect the new lyrics.
That’s the way the entire movie feels. It is how the movie was written in fact: Edgar Wright listened to The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms” and imagined a car chase scene every time he listened to it, praying for years and years that it wouldn’t be used in a car chase scene by another director before he could use it as the soundtrack for the opening heist scene.
The moments of the movie hit the beats of the songs. High-action moments come with high-action beats, and slower, more intimate moments are accompanied by slower jams.
So don’t get caught up in the dialogue. Don’t get caught up in “why would they do that”? Don’t get caught up in the things that usually break a movie.
This isn’t just a movie. It’s a highly-stylized, super fun series of music videos that tell a large story. And it was so much fun. And it was so well-done.
You’re free to attempt to not do this while watching, but it’s much more enjoyable if you let yourself have fun.
Baby Driver is in theaters June 28. I’ll talk about the great Q&A session with Edgar Wright and Jake Tapper after the trailer.
[ NOTE: This review is in-progress but my wifi is spotty so I’m putting it up now for you to enjoy. Thank you for your patience and support! ]
Thank you to Hotchka DC for inviting me to view Wonder Woman early and to the Spy Museum for helping me win my 2nd-ever in-person raffle!
At. Long. Last. After actual decades of a Wonder Woman movie being discussed and passed from studio to studio, director to director, actress to actress, we finally have our first-ever live-action Wonder Woman feature film! Can you believe it’s taken so long? It has taken decades of pressure on studios to convince them that yes, a female standalone superhero movie is not even a gamble at the box office. People are interested in the character and her being a woman will not hurt your profit margin. In fact, women, who are also in possession of money to spend at the movie, are eager to buy tickets to see a movie starring a strong female superhero, THE strong female superhero.
TL;DR: Wonder Woman is a pretty standard Marvel movie with Zac Snyder’s visual signature and a female superhero.
Quick confession: I have not been keeping up with the DC Extended Universe movies. I begrudgingly watched Man of Steel and found it as meh as friends’ reviews indicated, and I had almost no interest in watching Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad. So, admittedly, my comments about the rest of the DCEU aren’t entirely fair, since I don’t have firsthand experience of seeing those films.
I say that Wonder Woman felt like a standard Marvel movie because it is very familiar, both with its positive and negative qualities. Even the structure and basic premise is quite familiar: Diana, aka Wonder Woman (although no one calls her that in the movie), is a bad-ass and optimistic character who does not understand the strangeness of our human ways and finds herself fighting in a world war with literal brute force. Many critics are saying that her origin story is like a mix of Thor + Captain America. (My faves! Chris Squared!)
However, I think it has similar pitfalls to many superhero movies now. I’ve complained about it here before and I probably will never stop but I found the villain(s) to be poorly developed and lacking of compelling characterization and motivations. “Because he’s a bad guy” doesn’t cut it anymore as the answer to “Why is the bad guy doing the bad things?” We have several antagonists in this movie and I found myself not knowing very much about them at all. Just some menacing looks and vague ambitions of prolonging World War I in the face of an armistice and for what? Because! (I’ll discuss more of our villain characterization in the spoilers below the trailer.)
One of my favorite, too-short, parts of this movie was the scenes on Themyscira, not least of all because they are uncharacteristically sunny for a DC movie! (Don’t worry, the rest of the film remains very blue-grey with spectacular flashes of yellow+orange for effect.) While the slow-motion that Zac Snyder often gets criticized for now gets tired, I liked watching the Amazons be bad-ass in slow-mo. Themyscira seemed very beautiful, if poorly protected from outsiders. (It’s an island in the middle of the ocean that is always a sunny paradise but around it is dark and cloudy and the seas are rough. Which means that, as per the trailer, a plane can just fly in. But also boats can basically just cruise on through. Whatever, it was refreshing to see a bright and sunny scene in this cinematic universe and all these amazing women doing awesome stunts. (Don’t fret, most of the movie is filmed in the dark or on suspiciously overcast days, as per the other DC films.)
What’s not to love?????
Gal Gadot was a pretty good choice to play Diana, Princess of the Amazons. It goes without saying that she is incredibly beautiful. (My boyfriend and I became fans of hers when Fast Five came out.) She is also very bad-ass, as someone who trained in the Israeli military. While I did find myself wishing she was a little more expressive, she was very good at being naive and finding little pleasures in things like snow and babies. She also pulled off subtle comedic moments quite well. Her chemistry with Chris Pine, who always plays a charming guy with differing levels of douche-baggery (see: Star Trek, Into the Woods), was great. I really have to commend Chris Pine on playing Steve Trevor as a charming hero who recognizes that Diana is amazing and does not go hypermasculine in response to that. (It is unfortunate that this very basic demonstration of decency is commendable, but it is.) I felt that almost every other actor was… underutilized.
Robin Wright gets top billing as the greatest Amazonian warrior of all time, Antiope, but she is so stoic and doesn’t have much depth, as with most of the characters in this movie. She is a general, she fights, she trains. She trains Diana to become an Amazon warrior against her sister, Queen Hippolyta’s, wishes. Why does Hippolyta, played by Connie Nielsen, think that she can get away with just sheltering Diana away forever, anyway? It doesn’t look like Amazons age (and I mean, we know Diana doesn’t age at all between World War I and when she meets Bruce Wayne so I mean…) so trying to just wait it out seems foolish. That is never made very clear and, in the context of the events in the film and the very little circumstantial context we are given, it seems dangerously unreasonable.
I must say that this movie is… not the kind of feminist movie I think I was expecting it to be. There’s a reversal of the male gaze trope where Diana walks in on Steve Trevor emerging from a bath. There really is no reason for him to be naked in this scene, or for him to be naked for as long as he is, but he is naked because nude Chris Pine serves as eye candy, both for the audience and for Diana, who has to ask if the first man she has ever laid eyes upon is “average for his sex”. Even with so many awesome Amazonian women, I feel like maybe there were scenes cut out of the film that would have fleshed some of them out more. For example, at one particularly emotional scene near the beginning of the movie, one of the Amazons runs forward in tears. I have no idea who she is or why she is moved more than the rest of the Amazons? She is visually differentiated from them when she runs forward but I don’t have a clue who she is, she doesn’t even look familiar to me, don’t even ask me to tell you her name. While looking for the movie poster for this post, I wondered if she is the mysterious 4th Amazon woman on some of the posters that feature the powerful women of Themyscira but, again, I just don’t know? And there is a severe dearth of women with depth throughout the movie, aside from Diana. Etta Candy, Steve’s secretary, is sassy and loyal. Doctor Isabel Maru, aka Doctor Poison, is……. uh… she likes poison gas? I don’t know?? It’s a similar problem that we encounter with the villains.
Before I forget, I also was bothered that, while Wonder Woman and Sameer speak a few lines of a few different languages in one scene, the Germans are all speaking English. (Some with German accents…) Steve Trevor does, however, put on a German accent when acting as a spy and talking to Germans. (???!) We know that we aren’t simply suspending disbelief because Steve Trevor remarks that Diana and the other Amazons speak very good English. Not perfect English, as everyone on Themyscira speak with a variation of Gal Gadot’s accent, but very good. I think if that line was left out of the movie, I wouldn’t be as bothered about the language thing but it is what it is.
(Also, I’m not sure I like Wonder Woman’s musical theme. It just doesn’t seem quite in character for her, and it plays several times throughout the movie and is featured prominently in the trailer. Not a fan of it, personally, for Wonder Woman.)
I liked this movie. It was a lot of fun and I think it will send the message that Hollywood can stop avoiding making films with female protagonists and should especially stop making excuses to not make female superhero movies. (How long have we been begging for a standalone Black Widow movie???) It isn’t a perfect movie and I don’t think it deserves all the hype it has been getting. Criticism that the fight scene at the end ruin the tone and pacing of the movie is valid, as is other criticism about what about Diana is actually valued by other characters. (Has she been reduced to a token female? Eye candy? The girl who men want to bang because she acts a bit outside of her gender role?)
Still, this movie is important. It’s so important for young girls to see a character like Diana on the big screen because it’s astoundingly important to see yourself represented in the media. So to see Wonder Woman, a beautiful woman who does not compromise on who she is or the things that make her a woman, a person who does not fully understand why wars happen and the complicated nature of mankind, is extremely powerful. And it will be similarly powerful for movie audiences to use their ticket purchases to show Hollywood that this movie is overdue and that we want more like it.
Wonder Woman is in theaters everywhere today. Discussion of some spoilers after the trailer.
Can you believe we have 8 Fast and Furious movies now?
Can you believe there will be [at least] 2 more?
What amazes me the most about the ridiculous franchise isn’t just that it keeps going and going and going, but that… people really love these movies! There isn’t much street racing in them anymore, but you get a few things pretty reliably:
I’ve seen every Fast and Furious movie since the 4th (Fast & Furious, the worst-named one) in theaters, movies 4 through 8. But you know what, I have a hard time recalling the first 3 movies. I definitely understand that Tokyo Drift happened, but I don’t know much about the first movie or 2 Fast 2 Furious, although I think I may have caught bits and pieces of the first 3 movies when they aired on TV.
With that being said, I love this franchise. It’s so absurd but pretty pure entertainment. It follows the above formula and always delivers. The plots have become less about street racing and more about elaborate heists that involve highly trained people who also love cars and are skilled drivers. (At least since the fourth movie, but my impressions from the first three are that there was a heavier emphasis on street races.)
I’ll talk more about my relationship with this franchise after the cut, but Fast 8 (“F8” of the Furious, as it were!) (really grateful that someone exercised the restraint to not stylize the title this way) raises the stakes. Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), who spends so many of these movies growling about family and strengthening his team…
… goes rogue, betrays his team and his loved ones. Dom is the core of the team and of these movies (aside from Paul Walker’s character, Brian), so seeing the family try to figure out not only how to maneuver without him but maneuver to catch him is interesting.
With antagonist “Cipher”, played by Charlize Theron. She has these gross locks-esque things on her head that make sense when we first meet her character in Havana (she seems like a harmless hippie tourist) but I don’t know why she has to have them throughout the entire film. Like sure, you can have beautiful female hackers, but if she’s the bad guy, then she can’t be too together, let’s give her this hair??
At the risk of spoiling too much, I’ll just leave it at that, but I enjoyed the movie. I thought that the reason for Dom going rogue was… not entirely convincing. And some of the action sequences were definitely straight up ridiculous. (Remember the absuuuuurd car leap in the last movie?) But they’re still fun and entertaining!
I mean, at the end of the day, the Fast and Furious franchise doesn’t try to make sense. It aims to entertain, with an emotional core of family, padded out with hot cars, hot bodies, and hot locations. (Although F8’s climax happens in Russia, so… hot cars on cold ice!)
Rest in peace Paul Walker, whose character is mentioned in the movie, but again, it’s not quite satisfying how they explain why Brian doesn’t get involved when Dom goes rogue. (Because they promised to leave Brian and Mia alone to raise their family and live in peace… which is a good reason but I feel like Dom threatening the safety of the world is a pretty good reason to call them up?)
I am a bit conflicted that as they have characters leave the franchise, they just kind of tack on new ones? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is fantastic in these movies, and the addition of Scott Eastwood in this movie was pretty fun, but how big does this family need to be? It just feels strange given that I’m not done mourning Han and Gisele and Brian and now I have to just welcome all these new characters to the roster? I like Nathalie Emmanuel but I didn’t think she would be back for this movie, to be honest. (Ultimately, I’m glad she was.)
ALSO, lemme just say that I love the soundtracks of these movies. They always serve as great dance music for whatever summer they are released. So good.
Spoilers and more ranting about this franchise after the trailer.
The Fate of the Furious is out in theaters today. Let me know what you think if you see it!
Lemme talk about The Rock some more, okay, he is just a machine?!
Also, I liked the bromance between him and Deckard (Jason Statham) that develops over the movie. They have a good moment where he realizes that Deckard has a similar background – they’re both in prison despite serving their countries so well and with high honors. And Deckard becoming a part of the team is pretty natural, as everything he did in the 7th movie was to avenge his brother. (Who makes an appearance in this movie!)
Helen Mirren plays the Shaw brothers’ mother, and it’s fantastic, she has this great accent and it’s beautiful and Helen Mirren is wonderful, thank you for all your gifts.
One of my FAVORITE PARTS of this movie was when The Rock led his daughter’s soccer team in performing a haka. I’ll just leave this here for you to watch if you’re not that familiar with it and/or want to see what kind of care they did/didn’t take to do it. (Also, The Rock as a father figure is still debatable but he seems to try a bit harder in this one!)
I know that before he voiced Maui in Moana, a lot of people didn’t know The Rock was of Samoan descent, and I’m glad he doesn’t seem to want people to let that factoid go unknown anymore. The Rock is awesome, full stop.
I was unsurprised to see that Dom went rogue because he is a father. This is foreshadowed a few times, and he and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) even discuss the topic. But I assumed that Letty had lied to him about not being pregnant but Cipher had the proof and used that against Dom. Imagine my surprise when we find Elena (Elsa Pataky) and her son by Dom are captive. I have no idea how long Dom was with Elena during the time that Letty was “dead” but not really, because they got together at the very end of Fast Five. (Elena has always gotten the short end of the stick in these storylines.) (It doesn’t help her that she gets killed in this movie. She doesn’t really have any agency through any of the films she’s in….)
The baby is so cute though!!! Such a cute fat baby!!!
And the scene where Jason Statham takes out the plane full of henchmen while carrying the baby carrier is really fun and very cute, although needless for the sake of entertainment, as he could have easily neutralized everyone on the plane BEFORE picking up the baby carrier?
Another ridiculous scene? Everything with the submarine. Nothing made sense, and at that point, nothing really needed to I guess.
????????
I did think it was interesting that there was a scene where cars are hacked to basically storm a target in the streets of New York. I have always been concerned about car hacking with them becoming Internet-connected, and this movie kind of illustrated the worst of those fears. JEEZ.
These movies are still not great to women and how they treat them… but you can’t care about these things TOO much when the rest of the movie also is just ludicrous. (Shout-out to Ludacris, who plays a nerd hacker and who I have always loved.) (Please start an organization soon to get kids interested in coding instead of helping sell Xfinity packages.)
Anyway, I was still so happy coming out of that movie, and you bet I’ll see the next 2 in theaters. Whatever, I don’t care! Go see it and let me know what you think!
Sip of Starrshine 