Thor: Ragnarok (4/5 Stars)

For those that felt Thor would be more entertaining if his tragic flaw was stupidity as opposed to pride (see my review of “Thor”) and did not bother seeing the second movie because it looked more stilted and oppressive than the first, the third movie in the “Thor” saga is exactly the course-correction the character and story sorely needed.

One half of the story is business-as-usual. There is a political crisis in Asgaard. Odin has finally died (or has he?) and his long-lost daughter, Hella, played by none other than Cate Blanchett, has come back from the throne. As she is Odin’s eldest issue and apparently was his right-hand person in establishing Odin’s empire, she has a pretty good argument for being Queen. Thor, played by Chris Hemsworth, and his brother Loki, Tom Hiddleston, aren’t going for it though and try to start a fight. She defeats them handily and even crushes Thor’s mighty hammer.

Thor lost his hammer in the first movie, but whereas in that movie the event inspired soul-searching and just a little bit of crying, in this movie Thor’s loss of his hammer merely serves to knock a few power notches off the characters ability points so the fights he undertakes afterwards are fairer and funnier. Thor finds himself on a garbage dump planet ruled by the Grandmaster, Jeff Goldblum, who specializes in providing gladiatorial contests. The whole scene feels like the color scheme and outgoing nature of “Guardians of the Galaxy” has been injected into the Thor universe (or that Thor has taken a vacation in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” universe for a spell.) This works much better than one would perhaps think. Thor has never been especially funny, but becomes quite useful for initiating and returning jokes in this movie. It helps that Chris Hemsworth is an underrated comic actor and is particularly good at being a dumb blonde hunk (see the recent “Ghostbusters” reboot).

Surrounding Thor in the trash world are other routinely funny characters. Jeff Goldblum, an inspired piece of casting if there ever was, is essentially playing a meme-version of himself. Given that he is technically the bad guy, his weirdly punctual way of stilted speaking deprives any sense of foreboding in the story. He enters Thor in a non-consensual gladiatorial contest. There Thor meets a rock giant named Korg whose accent and style of speaking is reminiscent of the “The Flight of the Conchords.” That is no mistake. He is voiced by a director of that series, Taika Watiti, who also is the director of this movie. Thor also meets the reigning champion, none other than the Incredible Hulk, who has eschewed his Dr. Jekkyl-Bruce Banner persona for a running two years because this garbage planet actually likes the other guy. Thor without his hammer is a bit like Superman consistently surrounded by Kryptonite. It brings him down to earth where Hemsworth comic abilities allow the rest of us to laugh at him. It also helps that they shaved off his pretentious long hair.

The battle scenes in Thor: Ragnarok are spectacular and not so cringe-inducing as most other blockbuster movies. I’ve complained ad infinitum about nameless and countless humans being destroyed in great movie spectacles of violence without anyone in the story particularly caring. This is less of a concern when the characters are gods and cannot actually die or get all that much hurt. The gladiatorial contest between Thor and The Hulk is especially pleasurable.

Given that one-half of the movie is consistently funny and fun to be around, the other half seems to lull in parts. This has got to be the first time that I have written that Cate Blanchett does not inhabit the most interesting part of a movie. Here it is true, but it is mainly because the Thor-Hulk story-line is so entertaining. I got a great kick out of it and look forward to the next Thor movie.

p.s. If Thor is the God of Thunder and he can summon thunderbolts, why would he not be immune to tasers that use electric shocks.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (1/5 Stars)

Last year, I saw writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos’s film “The Lobster” and stated that it was one of the most original romantic comedies I had ever seen. It was the only film I had seen of Mr. Lanthimos, who at that point, had been making movies since the 1990s. After watching “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” I may never see another of his movies again.

The Lobster’s idiosyncrasies, it’s quirky characters, and its weird dialogue had the appearance of making sense because of the absurd fictional world that they inhabited. Having never seen a Lanthimos film, I suppose I just assumed that when he set stories in the real world, he would not expect to people to speak and act in the same unreal way. My assumption was wrong. “The Killing of Sacred Deer” has no place being set in the real world, but there it is. The unreality of what is happening on the screen and the unbelievable way the characters react to it makes it impossible for the viewer to empathize or care about what is occurring in the story. As a drama, it failed dramatically. As a comedy, the only laughs it garnered were the bad kind.

“The Killing of a Sacred Deer” takes its sweet time in getting to the main conceit of the story. As it meanders, you are left to wonder what might be happening. Several interesting story-lines seem possible, slowly the story is developed and you realize that the story-line that has indeed been chosen is one of the stupider ones. I will now give it away. A surgeon, played by Colin Farrell, once negligently caused the death of a man during a surgery. The son of that man, a shifty and sweaty Barry Keoghan, has put a hex on the surgeon’s family. Actually, to say it is a “hex” is doing more explaining than the movie cares to. What happens is that Colin’s family one-by-one slowly become paralyzed, stop eating, and start bleeding out the eyes. This happens to Colin’s son first before happening to his daughter. We do not know how Barry Keoghan is doing this or whether it a unique hex or has been attempted by anyone before. There is literally no attempt to explain it.

I guess that would not matter so much if other things were not missing. After all, many movies are based on otherwise impossible things happening. But the movie is so deadpan toward the situation, and its characters reactions are so absurdly understated, that it seems the movie is making a point of how pathetic  they are as they are confronted with otherworldly horror. Is the situation being played for laughs? People in the theater were indeed laughing when the story called for the kids crawling along the floor using just their elbows. But did Lanthimos want us to find children crawling on the floor because they can’t use their legs anymore funny? Really?

Characters in movies are fictional, yes I know this. But it also says something about a writer/director who seems to be purposefully positioning his characters in ways where it is impossible to empathize with them. What is left is ultimately is a waste of time. After all, if Lanthimos doesn’t care about whether or not the sacred deer is killed, why should we?