Dr. Strange (4/5 Stars)

I read somewhere that Marvel had just made the 13^th successful blockbuster in a row. It speaks to the strength of the brand. True, it has a tremendous advantage in having a backlog of sixty years of story and the built-in audience to boot over other great brands such as Pixar, but that shouldn’t take away from the great franchise craft that can be found in these movies. “Dr. Strange” is one of my favorites already. It was so good that I saw it twice in a theater and took my family to see it over Thanksgiving.

Blockbusters are mainly to be seen for Spectacle. Spectacle should be big but also unique as should convey a sense of awe on the viewer. Given the consistent multitude of Spectacles that all look alike it is hard for any single one to have a great deal of their impact. A city being blown up hardly excites me anymore. I’ve already seen it many times.“Dr. Stange” to its great credit, showed me Spectacle I had never seen before. It was awesome.

To explain how, here is a character from the movie: “The Avengers protect the world from more physical dangers. We protect the world from supernatural forces from other worldly dimensions.” Like many comic books, “Dr. Strange” melds modern science with ancient bullshit. Dr. Strange practices magic but this magic comes in the form of 21^st century mathematical babbel about relativity, the multiverse, and particle physics. The audience hardly understands either so I guess it makes sense to put them together. Anyway during certain fight scenes, the magic works less on the participants of the fight than on their surroundings. Spells are casts and buildings fold up and down, the axis of the world tilts, gravity goes every which way, and then everything splits up in a crazy fantastical kaleidoscopic effect. You really have to see it to believe it. I was blown away a couple of times by what was going on.

What makes it great of course is not necessarily that things are crazy, but that these things are explained, have rules, and follow them. The biggest laugh in the movie contains a fight between two ghosts of two physically comatose people in a hospital emergency room. How the movie gets there is just superb story-telling. It is a very nice ‘aha!’ moment.

Dr. Stephen Strange of course believes none of this in the beginning. He is a famous and successful brain surgeon dedicated to science. Like many Marvel Superheroes, his main flaw is arrogance (an all too common flaw for superheroes I still believe) and after an accident that ruins his hands, he humbles himself and seeks help from The Ancient One who lives in a monastery in Tibet. The background of these training scenes are perhaps more interesting than what takes place during them as it illustrates the benefits and limitations of corporate marketing.

This Tibetan monastary is an exceptionally diverse Tibetan monastary. The three main wizards are a Black Man named Mordo (Chiwetal Ejiofor), a Chinese man (Benedict Wong), and a Woman (Tilda Swinton). There are a multitude of others in the background. I spotted a Japanase guy somewhere at some point. White men are represented by our main protagonist, Dr. Steven Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch playing another snarky genius) and our main antagonist, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson). Everybody seems to be here except, well, Tibetans. Now the Tilda Swinton character, The Ancient One, used to be Tibetan in the comic book. But she was changed to a Celtic sorceress in the movie. Why? Well, one of the main markets for Marvel movies is China and the Chinese don’t like it when you say good things about Tibetan monks. Also notice that the three main sanctuaries for the wizards are located in New York, London, and Hong Kong. Now why would these three locations be all that special in terms of magic. The answer is they aren’t. What these three places happen to have in common is that they are major financial hubs, the three biggest in the world actually.

You can take a look at this and see crass manipulation of character and location for marketing reasons and corporate gain as well as craven capitulation in the face of a corrupt Chinese government. But you can look at the glass half-full as well. For instance, when corporations try to make as money as possible, they follow a strategy of inclusion. So these stories contain as many different and diverse people as possible. And really its the Chinese government, not Marvel, that are jerks at the end of the day. If Marvel wasn’t being pressured (i.e. the market was more free in China) The Ancient one would have remained Tibetan and we would have all enjoyed a movie that would have been even more cosmopolitan.

p.s. Conveniently, I can date back the start of the Marvel Universe (I put that at 2008’s Iron Man) with my arrival in New York. Yes, every time the Avengers and their enemies destroyed New York City, I was living there.

Moonlight (4/5 Stars)

 “Moonlight” is the type of movie that provokes an IMDB search after watching it. I was vaguely familiar with some of the actors. Mahershala Ali I know from ‘House of Cards’ and Andre Holland I know from ‘The Knick.’ Naomie Harris is the latest Moneypenny in the James Bond Franchise. But I hadn’t heard of Barry Jenkins who wrote and directed this movie. Turns out the last time he made a movie was six years ago. And that’s too bad, because from watching this movie it is plain that he is a storyteller who excels at not only writing words and coaching actors but also for visual framing and sound design. In other words, he is a complete writer/director. Such a person should be making a new movie every one or two years, not six. We are missing out by not keeping him continuously employed.

“Moonlight” is one of the small intimate pictures that is done to perfection. The story is split into three chapters all named after the various incarnations of the main character. The first story is called ‘Little’ and takes place when the boy is a child. The second is called ‘Chiron’ and takes place in high school. The third is called ‘Black’ and takes place in adulthood. The elements of the story are not particularly new: A bad childhood and awkward adolescence with bullies. Two other elements, themselves not particularly new, become novel when put together: 1) an African American boy with an absentee father and a drug-addicted mother and 2) the boy happens to be a homosexual in a community that has way too many other problems to be progressive in that respect. But the movies strength comes not from the fact it checks off these boxes in the world of identity politics (it could have and a lesser and lazier movie would have been all about it), it is a great movie because this is a story about the identity of this one particular person, and the movie in no way excludes portions of the audience from empathizing with this one particular person’s search for identity. He ultimately defines himself from the inside-out, as opposed to say from the outside-in in contrast with some exterior societal force.

A movie that focuses so much on the interior development of a character will focus as much on the good times as well as the bad, and though this character has dark forces around him, the movie’s memorable scenes are moments of kindness. “Little” escapes into a crack-house to escape bullies and is found by a drug dealer (Mahershala Ali). This man turns into a kind of mentor through time and at one point teaches ‘Little’ how to swim. (To give a sense of how completely the Director uses the artform, this tiny sounding scene is one of the best parts in a great movie complete with poetic exchanges and a striking orchestral score). “Chiron” dealing with a deteriorating home life finds solace in the home of Theresa, the surviving spouse of the drug dealer. And in all three timelines Little/Chiron/Black starts, continues, and reignites a friendship with Kevin (Old Kevin is played by Andre Holland).

I feel like I’m doing a disservice to the movie by trying to describe it. All I’m going to say more is that this movie will likely be high on my made up Oscar category Best Use of a Song. It’s ‘Hello Stranger’ by Barbara Lewis. It occupies a moment that makes the picture worth a thousand words. And my main criticism of the movie is that it wasn’t long enough.