Best Movies of the Decade

2010

The Social Network

Inception

Black Swan

Exit Through the Gift Shop

2011

Bridesmaids

Take Shelter

Midnight in Paris

2012

Silver Linings Playbook

Django Unchained

Skyfall

2013

Inside Llewyn Davis

The Act of Killing

Gravity

2014

Birdman

Guardians of the Galaxy

The Grand Budapest Hotel

American Sniper

2015

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Results

Inside Out

2016

The Lobster

Hacksaw Ridge

Toni Erdmann

2017

The Florida Project

Lady Bird

Thor: Ragnarok

2018

Sorry to Bother You

Avengers: Infinity War

The Death of Stalin

2019

Parasite

The Farewell

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2/5 Stars)

In my review of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, I stated that the quality of Episode VIII would rely on how Episode IX resolved the interesting questions that were raised. I found especially intriguing the idea that Rey would not be related to any of the other main characters, this usually being a prerequisite for importance in a Star Wars movie. The idea posited was that the Force is self-balancing. In this way, a being that was either very light or very dark would naturally bring about their opposite at some other place in the universe. With this understanding, Luke Skywalker felt it prudent to leave behind the force altogether in order to not further provoke more Sith Lords.

It turns out none of this matters or even happened, which kind of renders both Episode VIII and Episode IX pointless, which in turn renders Episode VII pointless too. To watch this new trilogy is to watch the most expensive interplay between bad improvisors in the history of movies. At the very least, as things were being made up as they went along, the contributors could have abided by the first and only important rule of improvisation, “Yes And…” That is if you are to not have a plan, the very least you can do is not undercut your fellow collaborators. This basic concept is lost on the director of the Episode VII and Episode IX J.J. Abrams and the director of VIII, Rian Johnson.

For certain movies, a warning against spoilers is warranted. “Parasite” is a good example. Its plot twists are nonobvious and are brought about with Hitchcockian suspense that is quite pleasurable to experience in the moment. For other movies, warnings against spoilers behaves more like a marketing tool. By begging reviewers to not allow spoilers, the mega corporations involved keep away from the audience certain unimaginative details that would be complete let-downs if revealed.

For instance, Rey is not a total nobody as presented in Episode VIII. Actually, she is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine from “Return of the Jedi”. What a let-down. That sound is the most interesting development in Episode VIII hitting the bottom of the dust-bin. What is more disappointing is the reason why Rey is a Palpatine. It seems entirely do with the decision to hew as closely to the structure and development of the plot of “Return of the Jedi” as possible. Looking back, I don’t see why I expected anything less. After all, Director J.J. Abrams did the same thing with Episode VII, making that movie’s plot an almost retread of Episode IV: A New Hope and Director Rian Johnson did the same thing with Episode VIII, making that movie’s plot structure a retread of Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

It should be noted that Director J.J. Abrams is once more complicit in the murder of billions of people. With an amazing lack of originality, a weapon that destroys planets has been developed by the bad guys. Mr. Abrams once more shows no hesitation at all in using this weapon, incinerating a planet as an afterthought and not particularly caring about treating the aftermath with the sort of respect that should be called for amongst such an extraordinary loss of life. The movie, like all Disney movies, is PG-13, because there is not a hint of sex involved anywhere. Even Poe, played by Oscar Isaac, the Han Solo-ish character, is not getting lucky anytime soon. A sad development given that he is instrumental in saving the galaxy by the end of the movie.

There are certain things about this movie that do not come remotely close to making sense. However, it is hard to talk about them in a critical manner because the movie moves so fast from plot point to plot point that it hardly matters what has just happened. “Look Something Shiny and New,” is the name of the game here. When the original Star Wars trilogy came out, the critics wailed about its reliance on special effects and lack of character development. What glory days those were, when characters engaged each other in half a minute-long conversations and military tactics, however limited, were considered. In Episode IV, the main characters land a ship in the Death Star and by subterfuge, loosely defined, rescued the princess. Here, the main characters land a ship in an enemy star destroyer and the first thing they do is come out guns blazing as if three people with blasters could take down a gigantic ship by brute force. The original trilogy at least gave the audience certain outs for unlikely scenarios. To experience this trilogy without rolling your eyes you must be a total idiot.

The ending bespeaks a recent trend in the ever-escalating stupidity of movie villains. Like the army of the undead in “Game of Thrones”, the evil forces here are both impossibly powerful and also can be take down with the capture of a single target. I would posit that fair fights that are resolved by strategy are more interesting that lopsided battles won by technicalities. But this idea is lost on the makers of Star Wars.

There is a bright spot in this movie and that is the basically good acting of Adam Driver as Kylo Ren and Daisy Ridley as Rey. This is helped by a storyline that gives these characters things to do and emotions to develop. The same cannot be said for the characters of Poe, played by Oscar Isaac, or Finn, played by John Boyega. They do not do anything in this movie but run around from plot point to plot point. From the promise of Episode VII, it is rather disappointing that Poe and Finn do not ultimately have interesting story arcs. However, at least these characters had the promise of an interesting story arc. There are several characters in this trilogy who were introduced and then promptly forgotten. Rosie, a seemingly important character in Episode VIII hardly shows up in Episode IX (Maybe the focus groups found that the world was not ready for a Black-Asian romance). Benicio Del Toro from Episode VIII does not appear at all in IX. Domnhall Gleeson has a fate that suggests he wasn’t willing to work for more than a week. Keri Russell literally phones it in, perhaps only showing up to work for one day to dub the lines for her bemasked minor character. Several other characters are introduced in this episode seemingly for the limited purpose of introducing new series on Disney+. But is there actually a plan to make these series or are these scenes just bait for the focus groups where the real decisions would be made? If that series starring Lando Calrissian does not come to fruition, Episode IX will harbor an utterly pointless scene in a few years’ time.

There is a way to plan out a franchise and that way was ably demonstrated by Marvel over the past decade. Not every movie in the Marvel franchise is a must-see-most-important-installment-of-the-franchise movie. Most movies focus on a single character which in coordination with other smaller movies build into the bigger spectacle movies every four or five years. Star Wars has not done this. The sad thing is that it probably could have. What really helped Marvel was its library of over fifty years of comic book storylines that the movies could pick and choose plots from. Star Wars has a library substantially similar to this: four decades of books written by professional fans and blessed as canon by George Lucas. None of this material was considered for Episodes VII, VIII, or IX. Why?

Corporate cynicism comes to mind. The new trilogy is the same thing as the old, but with better special effects and a more diverse cast. Why take a risk making something new, when you can repackage the old as a presentation to international audiences unfamiliar with the old movies. The global marketplace is where the real movie is made. My appetite for Star Wars has officially been sated. I do not plan on seeing any further of these movies in theaters. 

The Lighthouse (4/5 Stars)

“The Lighthouse” is firmly rooted in that David Lynch territory where realism and continuity are sacrificed to effect and mood. What we are seeing on the screen is not so much what the characters are experiencing but what they feel they are experiencing. And what they are feeling looks to be the sailor’s version of cabin fever. There are two men, an experienced lighthouse operator played by Willem Dafoe and his new apprentice played by Robert Pattinson. What happened to the last apprentice that worked here asks Pattinson. He ended his own life, explains Dafoe, after going mad.

“The Lighthouse” was directed by Robert Eggers, written in cooperation with his brother Max Eggers. Writer/Director teams of brothers (Coens, Wachowskis, Nolans) have led to some of the more confidently weird movies in existence. This team of brothers can be added to that shortlist. The Eggers are relatively new. They have only one other mainstream movie (The Witch) which I have just added to my Netflix queue.

There is much to the “The Lighthouse” that makes it a unique experience. To start, the movie is shot in black and white and has a narrow aspect ratio. The time of the story looks like the late 1800s or early 1900s. There is only one location, a lighthouse on a deserted rock. The original score blares ominously, and much delusions of mermaids and pigeons. Then there is the ACTING, which involves much yelling in Irish/Scottish/pirate brogue. The dialect is given special mention in the credits because it is not of this time and seemingly not of this world. Willem Dafoe, not a particularly handsome man, and Robert Pattinson, who I insist does not look normal, successfully inhabit this alien land. They spend much of the time drinking moonshine and colorfully cursing each other.

There is some character background and plot but it doesn’t much get in the way of the weirdness. To summarize, Robert Pattinson is new to the lighthouse, drawn to the job because the wages are higher for work on desolate rocks in the middle of nowhere. Willem Dafoe appears to have been there forever. He is a hard taskmaster, but when a storm grounds all work (preventing the new man from leaving at the end of his tour), and there is nothing to do all day but get piss drunk and dance, the professionalism of the lighthouse suffers quite a bit.

This is one of the those movies I would love to hear a director’s commentary for (not that these things are done much these days) because I can only imagine how crazy it was to be on the set with Willem Dafoe cursing up a piratical storm. I bet there are a lot more good stories there.

Parasite (5/5 Stars)

Once upon a time there were two families, one rich and one poor. The rich lived at the top of the hill. At the bottom lived the poor. “Parasite” is the latest effort from writer/director Bong Joon Ho (“The Host”, “Okja”). Its scope is specific, it concerns itself with two families in Seoul, South Korea, one rich and one poor and takes place almost entirely within two homes. Its effect is broad. I expect families all over the world regardless of location or language would immediately understand the themes. Like most great cinema, “Parasite” finds in the details a larger universal truth. No wonder this Korean film won the Palme D’or a Cannes and has grossed over $100 million outside South Korea. I think this movie has the better chance at a Best Picture Oscar than any other foreign language film I have ever seen.

The poor family’s name is Kim. The patriarch is played by Kang-ho Song, the only actor I recognized. The parents are unemployed and the family earns the rent for his basement apartment by taking on gig jobs like folding pizza boxes. One day, the son is presented with an opportunity to be recommended as a English language tutor for daughter of the Park family, the rich family at the top of the hill. The son asks the school friend that wants to recommend him for the job: “Why pick a loser like me?” The school friend explains that he has a crush on the rich daughter and does not want to recommend a tutor that the daughter would ever consider. The poor son takes no offense. He know he is poor.

Deceit is required to be hired. Educational degrees are forged. The rich mother (played here by Yea-Jeong Jo) is particularly gullible and says things that make the poor son believe she could be further deceived. Step by step the Kims insert themselves into employment in the Park household. The poor daughter becomes the art therapist for the rich son. The poor father becomes the chauffeur of the rich father. The poor mother becomes the full-time maid. The Parks are not exactly being taken advantage. The Kims are totally competent and do their jobs well. The people that suffer are the other employees the Kims succeed in defaming and having terminated. The Parks are more unaware than anything. The Kims are

Now we are at the midpoint of the movie. The Parks leave town for a camping trip. In the night, the old housekeeper comes back claiming she has forgotten something in the basement. At this point, the movie twists in a weird, suspenseful, and supremely satisfying way that all marketing have deftly avoided spoiling. I too would not dream of saying anymore about the plot and from here on out will only wax philosophical.

In one scene, the Kims are discussing the Parks. The poor son says, “They are rich, but nice.” The mother disagrees: “The are nice because they are rich. If I were rich, I would be soooo nice.”

And why wouldn’t the Parks be nice people? They are secure and comfortable and are treated nicely by everyone they meet. One would be tempted to conclude that it is the poor Kims that are treating the rich Parks poorly. But then an unexpected tragedy occurs, and the rich Parks, in particular the naïve rich mother, perform an act so extraordinarily insensitive that it approaches cruelty, except of course, that the Parks have no idea that they are acting cruelly because the Kims have been so thoroughly dishonest. Mayhem follows and the movie resolves itself in such an unexpected symmetry that the story elevates itself into the realm of timeless parable.

What is the responsibility of the Parks to know what is going on around them? How much fault do the Kims have for their part in sheltering the Parks. I was reminded by the chapter in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” where the protagonist, a black student at a black college in the south, accidentally chauffeurs a white trustee of the college to the wrong side of town. The white trustee is appalled by the poverty, seemingly seeing it for the first time. Back at the college, the black college president expels the student for showing the white trustee the poor conditions of the community. As the black college president explains, his power over the protagonist comes from his efforts to make the whites feel good about themselves and he does this by keeping from them societal truths. That is not so different from the story of the Kims and Parks. The rich live in bliss on the clouds. Down below the starving poor eat each other.

Ford v. Ferrari (3/5 Stars)

Ford v. Ferrari is a pretty good snapshot of all the contradictions of the sport of car racing. The fan base of this sport are red blooded Americans from those parts of the country that are all about less government and more bootstrap. They wear cowboy hats, eat steak, and drive cars, that most singular way to travel. But is there a sport out there that is less beholden to corporate interests? Look at those NASCAR cars. They are covered head to toe with advertisements. No car racer owns his own car. It is the corporation's car. This is because it takes a hell of a lot of money and engineering to build a car that can compete in these races. So much so that it may be a question as to whether the individual driver is all that important. Particularly in long races like the one at issue in this movie, the 24-hour race at Le Mans. No individual racer drives all the race. It is the car that goes the distance. But how do you tell a story about the car to the NASCAR fan base who are highly individualistic. (Were Carol Shelby and Ken Miles really ignorant of the rule that affects the end of this race? I mean, really?)

Ford v. Ferrari is a basic and competent sports story about simple and rebellious protagonists and affluent and beholden antagonists. It works on this basic level and is anchored by a cast of manly men: Matt Damon as coach/car builder Carol Shelby and Christian Bale as the driver Ken Miles get the job done on the ground. In the Ford office are Tracy Letts as Ford CEO Henry Ford II and two of his senior employees Jon Bernthal as Lee Iacocca and Josh Lucas as Leo Beebe. Ferrari is not played by a name actor and actually does not have much to do in this movie. The main conflict is between Lee Iacocca who wants to give our heroes (Damon and Bale) more discretion and Leo Beebe who is mainly interested in marketing. Why can’t our driver be more photogenic, asks Leo, we could totally sell more cars that way? This question becomes the linchpin of the movie. Will the corporation give the renegades enough leeway to succeed? Leo Beebe is portrayed as a scheming pretty boy. Josh Lucas does his smarmy best (I remember him from American Psycho).

Is Ford really an underdog here? It has all the money and talent and a willingness akin to the NFL’s Patriots to undertake courses of action that aren’t technically cheating, but probably should be. Reading between the lines, I got the feeling that Ferrari did not have much of a chance. All Ford needed to do was show up and care. The main impetus for the whole rivalry was the hurt feelings of Henry Ford II after Ferrari used the Ford Company’s interest in acquiring his company to run up the price on the other buyer, Fiat. Lee Iacocca reports this failure back to Henry Ford II and adds that Ferrari called Ford cars ugly and Henry II fat. Henry Ford II gruffly declares that the Le Mans racing team has a blank check. The rest is history. Ford won the next five years. I expect Ford stopped winning because it stopped caring. It made its point and went back to more profitable ventures, like selling cars to regular people. Meanwhile, we are told that Ferrari went bankrupt chasing perfection at Le Mans. There is a female character in this movie, the wife of Ken Miles. She feels out of place in this exorbitant high-stakes pissing contest.

This is one of those movies where I sort of wish there was a less Hollywood version. I would like to know more about the engineering and science of making a car go really fast for a very long time and less about the mystical and intangible qualities of race car drivers. Having said that, Christian Bale once again showcases his superhuman ability to gain/lose weight. Last time I saw him, he had the gut of Dick Cheney. Now, he is thin and wiry again. That talented jerk.

Jojo Rabbit (4/5 Stars)

In 2006, I visited family friends in Uberach, Germany as a prelude to my study abroad in college. During my time there, I happened be introduced to this little old lady that lived in the village. After she had left the general area, for whatever reason, my hosts informed me that she had been in the Hitler Youth and after the war spent her entire life helping refugees escape from the Soviet Union. Her? Yes, that little old lady with the kind eyes had once been a Nazi. I saw “Jojo Rabbit” the new film by Taika Waititi and thought of her.

“Jojo Rabbit” is about a ten-year-old boy in the Hitler Youth. It is a club like the Boy Scouts. The boys are taken out to the woods by camp counselors where they dress in uniforms, learn survival crafts, and sleep in tents. Not like the Boy Scouts they also burn books, are taught how to handle guns and grenades and are counseled in basic cruelty. One day, Jojo is picked out of the crowd and instructed to strangle a rabbit. Poor Jojo can’t bring himself to do it and all the other boys make fun of him. Jojo runs off into the woods where his imaginary friend comforts him. His imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler or, more accurately, what a timid would-be Nazi boy would imagine Adolf Hitler to be like. Hitler here is played by the Writer/Director himself, Taika Waititi, and well, he is zealous but in a goofy way. He's funny.

Apparently, Taika Waititi adapted this screenplay from a novel. It is hard to believe that the novel is anything like the movie in terms of tone. I expect the novel had a boy in the Hitler Youth and that was about where the similarities end. There is just too much here that seems from the same mind as "Flight of the Conchords" and "Thor: Ragnorak". For whatever reason, Waititi thought it would be appropriate for a native of New Zealand like himself to make this movie. Good for him. We need more filmmakers with balls like that in this day and age. I especially approve of his application of white-face to play Hitler.

 “Jojo Rabbit” is as much of a comedy that a movie with this subject matter could be and still be plausibly respectful. The movie has bright colors, gorgeous weather, and colorful characters. Chewing up the scenery in supporting roles are Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson and Stephen Merchant, three inspired casting choices for comic Nazis. Scarlett Johannsson plays Jojo’s mother, Rosie. Thomasin McKenzie plays the jew who is hiding in the walls of the house. Jojo’s discovery of the jew, the first one he has ever actually met, kicks off the movie’s second half.

A storytelling technique that Waititi deftly employs is to limit the information about the war. The audience basically know as much as Jojo and it is only gradually revealed that the Nazis are losing and have been losing from the start of the movie. (One of the reasons that the kids are being taught how to handle weapons has to do with Hitler’s late war plan of using children in the fighting.) The movie takes place between the lines. We understand Jojo is not evil because he is ten-years-old and barely knows what is happening around him. But what about his mother? What does she believe? Has she allowed Jojo to take part in the Hitler Youth to protect him, to protect herself, or what? What about the other Nazis? They seem to know at some point that the war is unwinnable. Their choices in the face of that situation are never boring. Because Jojo’s understanding is somewhat limited, our understanding is limited to, and in that way “Jojo Rabbit” may be very good movie to see twice.

I am amazed again at the acting chops of a child actor. Jojo is played by Roman Griff Davis. This is that kid's first major role in anything (although he does come from a family in the movie business). He couldn’t be any cuter. Almost by default is is heart-rending/warming to see a kid like that go through the Huck Finn transformation in which a good heart ultimately triumphs over the evil indoctrination. This development necessarily pits Jojo against his imaginary friend Adolf. The climatic scene is unfortunately too short, I felt, and my one disappointment.

 Taika Waititi has cemented himself in my mind as one of the more interesting storytellers around. I expect I expect I will try to see all of his work going forward and look up everything I missed in the past.

Joker (3/5 Stars)

Politically Correct Psycho Killer

Paul Schrader, screenwriter of Taxi Driver, once stated in an oral history of the movie:

“I had written the character of the pimp [that Harvel Keitel plays] as black, and we were told by Colombia we had to change it to a white guy because the lawyers were concerned “if we do this and Travis kills all those black people at the end, then we’re going to have a riot. And we’re going to be liable for this.”

Imagine for a moment that Taxi Driver had not cast Harvey Keitel as the pimp. That the movie instead had cast a black man and that Travis Bickle ends the movie by murdering that black man to save the thirteen-year-old prostitute played by Jodie Foster. Such a scenario would make sense for Travis Bickle’s character. He is a racist. That isn’t the end all be all of his personality, but it is there. He has a great disgust for the city he is living in (1970s New York) and black people are clearly a part of his disgust. If this detail were more overt, would anyone have had the guts to think of Taxi Driver as a great movie? Or would it have been completely overwhelmed by the political reaction? If Scorsese had made the decision to stick with the original plan in casting, would that have been an act of racism? Is it itself racist to make a good movie about a racist?

This kind of question is relevant now given the several controversies over the movie Joker, wherein the creators have been accused of providing a platform for incels and other kinds of gloomy white men to expound their hatred. Little do these critics know that they have already won the war. (Most have only seen the trailer). Joker preemptively self-censored itself. This gloomy white man named Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix, only targets rich white men and ends up creating a protest movement against income inequality. Now, who could argue about that?

There is a strange disconnect in the setting of this movie. Everything looks like it takes place in the “bad old days” of New York. It is painted in the bad fashion, subway graffiti, and super rats of inner-city decay. There is even a very important scene that initiates Arthur Fleck on his journey to become the nihilistic arch-villain of Gotham. He is jumped on the subway, pulls a gun, and kills the men who attacked him. Does this remind you of anyone? Clearly, it is Bernie Goetz, the subway killer, reborn in movie form. In the early 1980s, this man shot four would-be muggers in a city subway and was lionized by a large section of the city who were also sick of getting mugged. Of course, the difference between Goetz and Arthur Fleck is that Goetz shot four black teenagers. Here, Arthur Fleck kills three drunk white wall street assholes.

I’m making a big deal about this because of what Joker is supposed to be: a gritty realistic origin story of a villain. It would make sense if the audience didn’t approve of the man’s motives and it would have made the movie far more weighty and interesting if the motives matched the environment being evoked. But it seems that the movie’s creators were too scared to make the character controversial out of concerns that certain critics wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the point of view of movie makers and characters within a movie. In effect, we have a movie that wants to instill a mood akin to great 1970s movies but lacks the emotional depth to actually do so. It’s like a player piano. It hits all the correct notes, but has no feeling. You won’t walk out of it unnerved like the way you felt when you watched Taxi Driver. It probably will make far more money though.

Joker contains a very good performance by Joaquin Phoenix, great production design, and an evocative score. It was directed by Todd Phillips, best known for comedies like Old School and The Hangover who shows that he can at least play the right notes in a drama. If anything, it is much better than all the recent D.C. comic fare. They ought to make more movies like this one, more character based and less effects driven. I only wish, well, that it wasn’t a comic book movie. That would be more interesting.

IT: Chapter Two (3/5 Stars)

I read Stephen King’s IT in high school and remember it provoking a couple of sleepless nights. It was a very good book, but it had certain flaws. For one thing, it was incredibly long, over 1000 pages. It seemed to me at the time, then and now, that the book had no editor. Noone at the publisher ever thought to read the manuscript and suggest that any portions of the book be cut for time. By this point, Stephen King had more than a decade of bestsellers behind him. Maybe as a rule the printers felt his words, all of them, were sacrosanct. Secondly, I never really understood IT. I wasn’t sure whether it was a form of imagination whose power would wane if someone didn’t believe in it, or whether it was a real thing that could kill you whether you believed it was real or not. And then there was the general weirdness of IT, which I will explore more later.

The movie “IT: Chapter 2” is a good movie whose sum is less than its parts. It has problems, and to its credit, they are the same problems of the book. The movie is too long with too many scenes of two many characters that the Director Andy Muschietti did not have the courage to cut. And it isn’t really clear what IT is or how it really functions. And its weird. So the movie has the same problems of the book, which in turn make it a mediocre movie. However, if what you wanted to see was a faithful adaptation of IT, well, you got it, weirdness and all.

The book has been wisely separated into two chapters. The first chapter came out a few years ago and told the story of the main characters as kids. They had an initial victory against IT, personified by a nasty clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgaard), but did not ultimately vanquish IT. Then six of the original seven kids left town and generally forgot about their haunted town of Derry, Maine. As grown-ups they receive a message from the one person who stayed Mike Hanlon (played by Isaiah Mustafa). IT is back. The others don’t quite remember yet, but they all show up in Derry. Their numbers include Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain), Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy), Richie Tozer (Bill Hader), Ben Hanscrom (Jay Ryan), Eddie Kasparak (James Ransome). They called themselves the losers club back then and each had their pet “loser” qualification. Bill had a stutter, Ben was fat, Mike was black, etc. Of course, there were also seven of them and they were all friends, so how much of a loser could each possibly be. Like the heroes in Stranger Things (shout out to the cross-over Finn Wolfhard), who played ceaseless hours of Dungeons and Dragons together, I felt like this Losers Club had a lot of fun and support, besides, of course the evil town and its murderous clown.

It is hard to describe what IT is because it seems to have extraordinary capabilities (it can show up anywhere and look like anything) but weirdly unable to kill people when it really wants to. To put it another way, a lot of non-main characters die horrible deaths by IT. The main characters get put in the exact same positions but generally escape through no particular kind of sustained logic. Whether IT is harmful or harmless seems to gyrate wildly in the movie (as it did in the book).

IT the movie like IT the book is of a highly episodic nature. The talented cast are together in a few scenes, but generally move on to do their own things. Something that from a character development standpoint, is welcome, but when it needs to be done six times, takes a long time to do. It is interesting though how in the first chapter the most interesting characters were Bill, and Ben. The most interesting characters in this chapter are Richie and Eddie, who coincidentally also provide most of the comic relief. There are plenty of computer-generated effects in this movie. If it weren’t for the multitudinous amount of fantastical episodes, I could point to this movie as a good way to use special effects to develop character.

Then things get weird. It think Stephen King may have smoking a good deal of peyote when he wrote the ending to IT. There are giant turtles and weird rituals and at least one scene that would be very very illegal if it was adapted for the movie screen. The movie doesn’t get as weird as the book, but it certainly does get weird. I’m glad for it even though the weirdness makes the ending a whole bunch of nonsense. I rather they did it this way, got as close to the weirdness in the book, without breaking any laws, then to see something stupidly simplistic. The ending is not going to work either way because IT never really makes any realistic sort of sense. At least then you can make the climax memorably weird.

One last general observation: What is a movie star anymore? This is a very good cast with leading actors who I have seen in many movies. But is any one of them what you think of when you think of a movie star? Do we have movie stars anymore? The biggest movies out there are franchises with giant casts (James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain’s biggest movies sales-wise were in the X-Men franchise). Who do we have left that is a genuine movie star the way that Humphrey Bogart or John Wayne were movie stars? Perhaps Tom Cruise, Leonardo Dicaprio, and Brad Pitt. But they are all getting relatively old. Do we have any young movie stars? Such a thing has perhaps been lost with the general splintering of entertainment and culture.

The Nightingale (4/5 Stars)

The Nightingale takes place in 1825 in the Australian state of Tasmania. I had to look up the Wikipedia article for movies located and filmed in Tasmania to make sure whether this was the first movie I had ever seen that took place there. To my surprise, I had seen a 2016 movie called Lion starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman. I thought that movie had taken place in Sydney or whatever. Anyway, The Nightingale is the second Tasmanian movie I have seen.

The Nightingale was written and directed by Jennifer Kent. This is her second movie following up on her exceptional debut, The Babadook. That movie, though rightly classified as a horror film, was also an exceptional piece of drama, its main villain symbolically interwoven with actual medical diagnoses of depression and sleep psychosis.  The Nightingale does something similar. It too can be classified as a horror movie, however there is no supernatural killer on the loose. Instead Jennifer Kent has simply chosen as her setting a terrible place and time: the penal colony of Tasmania. There is little to this that I know of, but given that Australia was but a large British penal colony at the time, it is fair to say that the British colony on Tasmania was probably worst. There was hardly any civilization to speak of: just men and women with guns in a strange forest populated by hostile aboriginals. I have seen several great gritty movies set in the Australian outback (The Proposition, Wake in Fright). The Nightingale can take its place amongst the best of them.

The plot of The Nightingale would be entirely cliché if you modernized the setting and switched the genders. A person whose family is murdered seeks revenge. Usually its an old white guy this happens too (Rambo just did this again for the nth time last week). But here the surviving member is a woman and the setting of 1820’s Tasmania actually makes her vigilantism necessary. There really is no one else that can see that justice be done here. The law, if you can call them that, were the perpetrators, and they have already left, probably never to return. The absent presence of cliché lends the movie considerable dramatic weight, which Jennifer Kent presents in an unflinching straightforward manner. I cried at a specific point in this movie. That’s all. I won’t say more.

To hunt down the men who murdered her family, Clare (played by Aisling Franciosi) enlists the help of a local aboriginal named Billy (played by Baykali Ganambarr). One night by the fire they trade conversation on who is the most oppressed: the aboriginal whose culture was broken and land was stolen or the Irish woman who was sent to Tasmania for a petty crime, who has been the constant victim of sexual abuse, and whose family was murdered before her eyes. It is interesting to note that their initial reluctance to sympathize with the other’s experience has less to do with an ignorance of the hardships the other has suffered  but more to a belief that they have suffered more. That is, why should I sympathize with you when it is I that deserves your sympathy. In the end, they form a unique respect for each other and their shared travails.

Jennifer Kent is an exceptional filmmaker. I try to make a point of saying that after seeing two very good first films. She is the type of talent that you hope makes a movie every two to three years. Unfortunately, it took four years for her to make this movie after The Babadook. That is too long of a time to wait for her next movie. Female directors have a way of making very good movies and falling off the face of the earth. I hope if the industry should change in any way that it changes in this regard and we get a new Jennifer Kent movie sooner rather than later.

The Farewell (5/5 Stars)

May I make a confession. I have been obsessed with the Chinese economy for the many years. In particular, I have been awed by the existence of so-called ghost cities. These are entire cities, complete with skyscrapers, that are built solely from local government debt. The idea is that once built, people will move into these cities, get jobs somehow, and become urban consumers. This does not happen. The cities remain empty and look like something from a zombie apocalypse movie. Capitalism, that natural system in which economies grow or die, abhors dishonesty. The Chinese economic miracle is riddled and rotted with so many lies. After all, it doesn’t matter how much GDP growth you tally by taking out loans and building skyscrapers. The growth only becomes real when people move into these buildings and pay enough rent to pay back the mortgage. This won’t happen if there isn’t an economy (that is people performing work that other people will pay for) already in place. The Chinese economy is the superficial top-down image of what a vibrant economy should look like. But it is not real and never will be because the communist government won’t allow the type of human behavior that makes economies grow, that is individuals making entrepreneurial decisions.

“The Farewell” does not concern itself with a macro overview of Chinese economics. It is about the many white lies that take place within a single family. There is one large lie every other lie revovles around: the family’s matriarch Nai Nai (played by Shuzhen Zhao) has been diagnosed with terminal stage four lung cancer, but the Chinese doctor in conspiracy with the immediate family will not tell her that she is sick. Instead, they pull off an elaborate fraud: a grandson currently living in Japan is going to return home and pretend to be married so that the rest of the family can see their grandmother one more time. This is what "The Farewell" is mainly about, but the general dishonest culture of China pops up continually in the context of the story. The new hotel in town does not a have a working elevator and so few guests that most of the lights in the building are always out. The wedding banquet hall promises lobster and then unapologetically serves up crab. The supposedly communist society seems overly concerned with status. Relatives argue over dinner whether kids growing up in China, Japan, or America will make more money. And then there is the issue of cancer itself: China has a terrible environmental record and there are such things as cancer villages. The grandma apparently used to live in a village before the government took the land and moved her to her ugly mass-produced and cookie cutter apartment complex. Is it possible her cancer was caused by environmental pollution? Could the problem of environmental pollution be understated in China because, as is suggested in this movie, families and medical professionals routinely lie about cancer? Only in China could twenty million people die of starvation on accident like what happened in the late 1950s. They were too busy pretending everything was fine to save face.

“The Farewell” would make a great double feature with the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl”. The point of that miniseries was how dishonesty could have serious consequences on a large scale using an explosion of a nuclear power plant reactor as a backdrop. “The Farewell” is much smaller scale but is replete with examples of about how small lives cause heartbreak within families. One of the best and saddest scenes concern the American raised grandchild Billi having one of the few truthful conversations in the movie with her mother. She describes how the family kept from her the terminal sickness of her grandfather several years before. She was oblivious to the whole thing and then one day her grandfather was dead and the family house and garden were sold. It was all just gone.

Really, the whole situation is a dramatic and ironic turnaround against the family matriarch Nai Nai who proves to be an equally adept liar in her own right. It is likely easier for everyone involved to lie to her because she is so blatantly untruthful about certain things herself. No, I’m not in a hospital right now, she lies over the phone. We need to get the big banquet hall for the wedding, we don’t everyone else to think we can't afford it. She hires professional criers to wail and scream in grief and anguish when the family visits the grave of the grandfather. That scene has one of the funnier lies in the movie. The family is leaving tokens for the grandfather to enjoy in the afterlife. Nai Nai objects when her son lights a cigarette for the grandfather. Don’t do that, Nai Nai says, he quit smoking. Mom, explains the son, he only told you he quit.

“The Farewell” is frequently funny. The jokes are read between the lines of what people say and what they mean. This would be a great movie to structure a drinking game around: spot the lie, take a drink. There is a particularly subtle exchange between the American Billi and the hotel bell boy who carries up her bags for what has to be twenty flights of stairs. Once they get to her room, the hotel bell boy asks several times what the difference is between America and China and which is better.

What is the bell boy really saying? You cannot be sure because of the way he is asking the questions, but he is surely trying to prompt Billi to tip him because bell boys are tipped for carrying up bags to rooms in America whereas in China they are not. Billi doesn’t get it and thinks he’s just being nosy. That poor bell boy, to simply ask for a tip (and he really deserves one) would require him to lose face. His pride prompts his lying and results in him not being tipped by someone who likely would have done it if he had simply been honest. This is the first movie of writer/director Lulu Wang, who apparently has lived this movie with her own family, and her writing at least needs to be recognized by awards season. “The Farewell” is certainly one of the best movies of the year and one of those movies that define a year. It is a very 2019 (or more accurately late 2010s) story.

If there is something to say in defense of Chinese culture in this movie, it is best presented in the form of the character of Billi. She grew up in America and was given an American education. What has happened to her? She aspires to be a writer, in effect has no real job or sense of direction, and cannot pay her rent. She is a bit of a loser. Being a stereotypical self-involved American individual does not help that fact. It would be better for the judgment of her character to be more family-oriented. Who is to say American culture is better than Chinese culture when someone like Billi is a typical outcome of the former?

Billi is portrayed by Awkwafina, who I have heard is the stage name for a rap musician. I have no idea whether her music is any good, but she is a fine actress and perfectly cast in this movie. Filling in supporting roles are mainly Chinese actors unknown to me though I am familiar with the father of Billi, Tzi Ma, who was the Chinese general in the movie Arrival. It is telling that this movie seemed to come out with much less fanfare than last year’s “Crazy Rich Asians”, a good movie that unfortunately came along with a bunch of idiots disingenuously proclaiming that it was the first whatever with Asians ever. It is with relief that I can simply watch a great movie like “The Farewell” without the marketing machine of a giant corporation telling me that it is my progressive imperative to do so.

One last thing. We are treated with a postscript in this movie that relates the grandmother is still alive and well six years after her initial diagnosis. Isn’t it pretty to think so. Well, you just witnessed this family lie continually about this exact sort of thing for two hours. Why would you believe them now? Do you think it is probable that an old lady with Stage 4 terminal lung cancer is still alive after six years with nothing but vague Japanese pills to help her out? Isn’t this the exact sort of thing this family would lie about because it would make you feel better? You actually walked out of that theater thinking Nai Nai was still alive, didn't you Mr. Gullible. Nai Nai is dead. People with terminal cancer die. That’s the American truth. 

Hobbs and Shaw (4/5 Stars)

I have never had the opportunity to admit this in my movie review blog, but I have actually seen several of the Fast & Furious movies. I forget exactly which ones, but it hardly matters. They are all the same. Alpha males, fast cars, good-looking women. Oh and family, every single Fast & Furious movie is about family.

You need to be a good sport to watch a Fast & Furious movie. They are stupid, but if you play their game, well the stupid works. In this movie, a kidnapping takes place in a skyscraper. The bad guys bust through the window about fifty stories up and haul off a woman down the side of the building using very long ropes. Shaw decides to take the elevator down. Hobbs decides to jump out the window. His plan is to use gravity to catch up on the escaping bad guys heading down the ropes, to grab a hold of one to stop his fall, punch him in the face, and then jump to the next bad guy etc. This plan is stupid but it works. One must lend a lot of credit to the actors, in particular Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who is one of the best at keeping it straight in the face of endless absurdities.

This movie is shameless. It stars a few of the newer stars of the Fast & Furious movies, Jason Statham (“Shaw”) and Dwayne Johnson (“Hobbs”) and adds the one and only Idris Elba (“Black Superman”) and a kick ass lady named Vanessa Kirby. The bad guy introduces himself as “Bad Guy”. He has a plan to spread a super-virus that will wipe out most of the world in an attempt to weed out the weak and kickstart human evolution. One of the better scenes involves a scientist explaining a real easy way to stop the plot (kill one person who is the room) and a really really hard way to stop the plot (infiltrate the bad guys lair in the middle of an army base in a completely different country within 12 hours). The World is at stake. The first option is not seriously considered. Another great scene involves a car mechanic trying to repair a complex biological contraption with no training and no special equipment while Hobbs and Shaw yell at him to hurry up. Amazingly, the yelling helps and the car mechanic gets the contraption to work. Shameless. During the climatic battle, our guys Hobbs and Shaw realize that the way to beat the bad guy is to work together as a team. Shameless, shameless, shameless.

The most enjoyably shameless part of these movies is the Fast & Furious physics. Cars can’t do this shit. You can’t shoot people from the cab of a jeep while its doing a barrel roll, but there it is up on the screen proving your sense of reality and logic wrong. The director of the movie is David Leitch, who is more of a stunt coordinator that has been converted into a director. His one previous movie  was the very good Deadpool 2. You can tell because he fills out the supporting cast with actors from that movie: see Eddie Marsan, Ryan Reynolds, and Rob Delaney. I’m beginning to like the idea of stunt coordinators becoming directors. The other good movie this year that was directed by a stunt coordinator was John Wick 3. The fight scenes were of a higher caliber in John Wick 3, however, this movie however is funnier. The jokes are a bit clunky in the first half of the movie, but as everyone settles in, they start coming out smoother. Then Kevin Hart shows up and is hilarious for about forty seconds.

Let me give you a test: The movie relocates to Samoa for its third act for no particular story reason. The only conceivable reason it happens is to provide an excuse to see Dwayne Johnson dress in traditional Samoan warrior club and have a traditional Samoan brawl with a traditional Samoan warrior club. Before the climatic battle, The Rock stands on a bluff and with a totally straight face states, “I can’t believe this is where we’re going to save The World.” If that makes you chuckle, I’ve got a direct commercial flight from Moscow to Samoa to sell you.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (5/5 Stars)

Whenever some crazy person does some horrible thing in the world, deranged manifestos from the extremes of society are festooned upon us by a media exploiting our collective morbid curiosity. The dead are victimized twice. First they are robbed of their live, then their lives are forever connected and largely overshadowed by the attention spent on the perpetrators. Sharon Tate is a perfect example. This utterly blameless young woman was horrifically murdered by the Manson cult. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood uses this real event from 1969 Hollywood as its reason for being. However, upon exiting the theater, you may notice that during the course of the movie, you have learned far more about Sharon Tate then Charles Manson. Writer/Director Quentin Tarantino to his great credit has flipped the murders on their head. He showers attention on the victims and treats the perpetrator dismissively. This is too my great relief. I was very worried coming into this movie about what Tarantino would do with the material given that Roman Polanski was still alive. Coming out of the movie theater, I can marvel at the deft way Tarantino handled it all.

Reappearing in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained are Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt respectively. Tarantino writes them some tailor-made roles. Leonardo Dicarprio plays Rick Dalton, former star of Bounty Law, on the downward trajectory of his show business career (in an early scene, he gets presented the ‘opportunity’ to move to Italy and star in westerns over there). Brad Pitt plays Rick Dalton’s former stunt double, Cliff Booth. Cliff may or may not have been involved in the tragic death of his wife in the style of Natalie Wood’s mysterious fate. Nobody can prove whether or not Cliff did what and Tarantino makes it purposefully ambiguous. Enough people think Cliff might have to the point where he no longer is a working man (he also got into a fist fight with Bruce Lee). He spends his days doing odd jobs for Rick and feeding his bulldog.

Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth are completely fictional. It is a testament to the movie that we become highly invested in them while waiting for the real occurrences to occur in the last half hour of an almost three hour movie. It must be noted that Brad Pitt at 55 years old still has a six-pack of abs. It’s absurd. While Leo plays worn and tragic, a type of role he has become very good at.

As a very present character is Hollywood itself. The 1969 production value, the neon details, the cars, the Playboy mansion, the year round sun. Most of all, that feel of innocence before those dirty hippies ruined the party and gave the sixties their hangover.

I very much don’t want to ruin this movie for you. If you don’t know anything about it, I think you should do some historical homework and then listen to nothing else. You should know something about the Manson murdes. Read the Wikipedia article. Then watch this movie. You will not be disappointed.

Would you believe me if I told you that this is Tarantino least vulgar and arguably least violent movie. It is on the same violence level of pre-Kill Bill. As far as cursing is concerning, not that much at all really. It’s kind of refreshing. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is top-tier Tarantino. Put it up there with Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. Highly recommended.

Toy Story 4 (3/5 Stars)

The first scene in Toy Story 4 takes place nine years before the main plot. Woody and the gang are still Andy’s toys. Andy’s family gets a visit from a neighbor/friend who is in the market for household items. Among a few other trinkets, Andy’s family gives away the Bo Peep lamp because Andy’s sister has grown out of it. Bo Peep, you may remember from the first two films, is the romantic interest of Woody. Before Bo Peep is packed up in a box and shipped away forever, she and Woody have a sad moment. And for some reason, I’m sitting there weirdly reminded of that scene in slave movies where the mother is sold down the river.

In the first two movies, the audience wasn’t asked to explore existential questions about the “human condition” of these toys. The third movie had serious undertones, parodies of political science and at least one scene of toy adultery but didn’t ask questions that made me feel weird. Toy Story 4 ventures there. To a certain extent, I am fine with this, but I have to ask: would a child like this film?

When we last left off, Woody and the gang had been bequeathed to a cute little girl named Bonnie. She’s a good kid, but unfortunately for Woody, isn’t as interested in male cowboys than Andy had been. (She’s likes playing with Jessie more). Woody is left in the closet most days where he becomes increasingly lonely and increasingly desperate. On Bonnie’s first day of kindergarten, she uses some arts and crafts to make a new toy out of a spork, some popsicle sticks and some googly eyes. She names him Forky, writes her name on his feet, and, incredibly, the toy comes to life (Forky is voiced by Tony Hale). The toy is essentially born before our eyes and I’m sitting there weirdly thinking “Frankenstein’s Monster”. This Forky is an ugly abomination of a toy.

Forky knows this. He has an immediate suspicion he is not a toy and should not have been created. There are several scenes of him declaring himself trash and trying to throw himself away into various trashcans. And I’m sitting there weirdly thinking Forky is attempting suicide over and over again. The situation is played for laughs, and it is definitely funnier that what I’m making it sound like here, but the existential implications are unmistakably there.

Bonnie’s family goes on a road trip. They stop over at a place with a traveling carnival. Here, against all possibilities, Andy meets Bo Peep. Bo Peep is a lost toy now. She is homeless but does not seem all that bothered about it. After all, she ain’t working on Maggie’s Farm no’ mo. She likes kids but no longer measures her worth by how much she is loved by one. The arc of Toy Story 4 is essentially Woody realizing that he doesn’t need Bonnie and that there is a world elsewhere: the Emancipation of Woody.

Are these just toys? Woody has thoughts, feelings, friends, and an interest in romance. Isn’t he essentially human in the ways that count? If he’s human, shouldn’t he have rights? Shouldn’t he be getting paid for the work he is doing for that kid? Why does he just blindly do whatever he is told? When he states with certainty that there is nothing more noble than being a child’s toy, doesn’t he come off as brainwashed? The more Toy Story 4 explores the “human condition” of these toys, the weirder the franchise gets.

Do these toys ever die? If Forky can come alive through a child’s imagination, shouldn’t he die through the inverse of that situation. Wouldn’t it make more sense for lost toys to once again become inanimate objects. Maybe that would instill the fear of god in these toys and create that sense of fear that would bound them in perpetual and desperate servitude to their child masters. Just something I was thinking about when I left the theater. Are the children pondering the same things?

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2/5 Stars)

“Don Quixote” is a very old book. So old that it is often forgotten to be two books. The first book published in 1605 by Miguel de Cervantes is a purely comic work about a crazy person and his simple sidekick roaming the countryside on a quest to bring back the lost age of chivalry. The first book proved to be enormously popular, so much so that Cervantes had to write a sequel if only to circumvent the copycats that were pretending to write sequels in his name. One of the more fantastical conceits of the second book is that everyone in it has either read or at least heard of Don Quixote’s adventures from the first book. The result is that Don Quixote is looked at by the people he meets in a completely different light in the second book. He’s still crazy, but he is also famous and his fame lends him a weird credibility. It is not uncommon that an observer in the second book will relate that they cannot tell whether Quixote is crazy or very wise. But Quixote has not changed. It is only the observer’s view of him, clouded by fame, that has changed. Unfortunately, this interesting facet of Quixote has never been developed by any movie or TV show that has adapted the story.

There have been several adaptations of the original work, none of them particularly good or definitive. Orson started and failed to finish a Quixote movie. John Lithgow starred in a TV version in 2000. The most well-known is the musical “Man of La Mancha” from 1972. I don’t believe any of them were particularly funny, which is too bad because the first book of Quixote is hilarious. All of them instead dwell on the mistaken notion, only found in the second book, that there might be more to Quixote’s madness that lets on, that he may in fact be wiser than the rest of us. Terry Gilliam’s “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” falls into this trap too and once again we have a movie that errs on the tragic side of Quixote. “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is about a present-day movie director (played by Adam Driver) who discovers that an actor he hired to play Don Quixote in a student film has since turned madman and now believes he is Don Quixote. This movie assumes the audience already knows everything about the books and many allusions are made to instances from them. However, most people won’t have read the books and there does not yet exist a definitive movie adaptation of them. Why didn’t Gilliam just make a straight adaptation? That would almost certainly have been a good movie in his hands. This one is a jumbled mess of irrelevant themes and distorted reality. And now we still don’t have a good Quixote adaptation.

It would be hard to describe the plot. The best parts involve Don Quixot. Jonathan Pryce plays the actor turned mad man with characteristic fervor and gusto. Less fun or interesting to watch is Adam Driver as the director. Movies about people who make movies belong to an oversaturated genre characterized by self-important indulgence. This one is no exception. Here, the director is beset by some sort of creative crisis and takes a vacation from an active movie shoot. He finds the madman who believes the director is Sancho Panza, a few implausible things happen, and they find themselves roaming the countryside as knight and squire.

Adam Driver is a terrible Sancho Panza. Unfortunately, this movie does not have anything that resembles a Sancho character. I say there will not be a good adaptation of Quixote until someone treats Sancha as an equally important character. To the extent they are filp sides of crazy. Quixote is a nobleman who spent way too much time reading fantastical books in his study and his ideas about the world are completely abstract. Sancho is illiterate, has never left his hometown, and thinks and acts in the most literal way possible. The odd couple relationship between Quixote and himself are the strongest comic element in the tale. What we have in “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is a journey involving two people who think in the abstract, Quixote and a movie director. There is nothing funny about their interactions.

Where the movie falls furthest from the books is in the character of the Peerless Dolcinella of Tabaso. In the books, she is just a regular woman who works on a farm. This is really all she should be because Don Quixote, if you can remember, is a crazy person. Here, like previous movies, the role has once again been given to a tragically beautiful woman. Once again, this renders the comic potential of Quixote’s madness ineffectual. Much of the plot involves this Dolcinella and her interactions with the possessive jerky men in the film. I couldn’t really understand what was going on except to say that where it went hardly seemed related to where it was going. There is a memorable moment of cruelty that was as out of place as it was uncomfortable.

I guess something has to be said about Gilliam’s thirty-year effort to get this film made. Sometimes the story behind the movie makes watching it more interesting but this generally only happens when the movie’s backstory reinforces the themes of the movie itself. It helps watching Fitzcarraldo, a story about an obsessive person trying to do an impossible thing, with the knowledge that the director Werner Herzog unnecessarily went into the jungle to recreate this impossible thing because he too is an obsessive person. Do the horror stories behind the making of this movie make it more interesting? Well, not really. I could not point out in this movie where the influence of all the dramatic delays could be felt. In ways, the fact that it took thirty years to make this movie makes it worse. You’d think with all those delays, the script at least could be cleaned up and made coherent.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (5/5 Stars)

“EDITH, is this real?” asks Peter Parker in the denouement of the penultimate scene. Spider-Man has just seemingly vanquished an enemy that was made up of intricate and complex technological illusions, something not unlike what you would see in a Marvel movie. But unlike all those other Marvel movies with spectacular otherworldly dangers, this one was not really there? Or was it? Peter Parker can’t immediately tell. This is a line that could not have existed fifty years or maybe even fifteen years ago. It is very 2019. When the movies can do anything, when video and photography can be so intricately manipulated, how can you tell what is real anymore? We usually say, “I’ll believe it when I see it?” What do we do when we can’t rely on that.

The villainous plot that befalls Peter Parker (played by Tom Holland) on his school trip is way over his head. All he wanted to do with go on a school trip to Europe with his friends. He wanted to buy a gift for his secret crush MJ (played by Zendaya) and give it to her on the Eifel Tower. He really deserves such a trip too. Put aside that he is superhero doing superhero things around his friendly neighborhood of Queens. Peter Parker along with half of his high school class were victims of what is being called the Blip, the five years between Infinity War and Endgame where half the life in the neighborhood vanished and then reappeared. The weight of this happening is deftly lifted within the parody of a high-school news program wherein Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow are shown in montage to the tune of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”. A particularly interesting development is that the high school has essentially been held back five years and are now sharing classrooms with kids that used to be five years younger. One of the new kids in the class is a guy named Brad Davis (played by Remy Davis) who seems to have used up all his puberty overnight and is now a competitor in love for the affections of Parker’s girl MJ.

This ability to utilize otherworldy and extraordinary events in the service of minor jokes is the hallmark of two of my favorite writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers returning from Spider-Man: Homecoming. (They are also responsible for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and several of the best episodes of the TV show Community). What these two very much excel at is finding a heart of the story amidst special effects sequences and making sure that it isn’t being shunted aside or treated as Story B. Spider-Man: Far From Home has two goals here: Save the Planet and Tell MJ How I Feel. The second story is always as equally important as the first.

It is such a relief that Peter Parker does not have a crush on the head cheerleader at his high school. MJ looks like a normal person. She has a personality, albeit a little dark and sarcastic, but it is her own. It is a credit to Peter Parker that he would like her. And it is a credit to MJ that she would be willing to drop her sarcasm for a moment to become vulnerable enough to like Peter back. I have a running critique of high-school movies where I simply do not believe that the put-upon nerd male protagonist is good enough for the hottest girl in the school. This is not that at all. I found both Peter and MJ endearing as fuck and their entire storyline was really sweet.

Our villain of the week is Mr. Quentin Beck aka Mysterio. He is played by Jake Gyllenhaal, an actor who is one of the best at walking the line between affable and super creepy. Mr. Quentin Beck is from another dimension. He does not seem to be aware of the recent Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, but he could have explained the situation by referencing that movie. Mr. Beck says that a powerful natural force called Elementals are afoot and he is attempting to stop it here before it destroys more Earths. Peter Parker is party correct in thinking that he is not qualified enough for this particular mission. He tries to get out of it but the storyline keeps drawing him back in.

Meanwhile because of all the outside forces revolving around Spider-Man, the school trip gets routinely upset by extraordinary events. In this respect, the continuing Marvel saga shows its utility by bringing in many old characters that do not need to be reintroduced. Among them are agents of S.H.E.I.L.D Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) that had large roles in the Captain America movies. There is Happy Hogan (played by Jon Favreau) from the Iron Man franchise. And then there is Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), side-kick Ned Leeds (Jacob Batolon), and Mr. Harrington (Martin Starr). One of the more pleasurable aspects of this movie is watching Mr. Harrington and the newly introduced Mr. Dell (J.B. Smoove) get increasingly frazzled when more and more crazy shit happens on a trip they are ostensibly responsible for all the young lives on.

The one thing to talk about left is EDITH. I was not under the impression that STARK enterprises had this type of technology (basically armed space drones) and that the whole point of Captain America: Winter Soldier was that this type of capability was UnAmerican. Why does a corporation have it now? Why would you will its capabilities to a kid? This isn’t the responsible and democratic Tony Stark I got behind in Captain America: Civil War. Someone should do something about this whole EDITH thing. Maybe break the glasses.

John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum

It surprises me that I have not seen a Keanu Reeves movie in a theater since 2006's A Scanner Darkly. It has been a long time and this will be the first time that I will have written down an opinion of the man: a fascinating subject in its own right. Keanu Reeves is an enigma in itself. It is hard to think of a worst actor who has been the star in so many great movies. I generally avoid blaming a movie for bad acting. What seems like bad acting a lot of the time is bad writing, bad directing, bad editing, or all of the above. But I have seen some bad acting from Keanu Reeves. He has a basic character that does well enough in action blockbusters but can be woefully miscast when venturing outside basic Keanu. What were they thinking when they cast him as Siddhartha Buddha?

Still even his dramatic failures reveal decent taste. Why is he doing Shakespeare? He can't perform it, but we can give him credit for choosing the roles. A movie star does not have to appear in one of the smaller roles in Much Ado About Nothing. And though The Matrix triology did not depend on its inner philosophical tones to work, it is clear that Keanu understood it well enough. Further, what he lacks in great acting ability he can make up for being incredibly dependable guy. His reputation is divorced from any particular character. It is the man himself. That man, though nominally John Wick, shows up in this movie doing all of his own actions scenes and stunts. Like a decent Buster Keaton or Jackie Chan movie, the plot machinations of John Wick are hardly important. They merely set up action sequences whose existence are in and of themselves impressive. This is a movie whose "making-of" documentary would be just as exciting and for the same reasons. I watched this movie with a person who was impressed with the movie's work ethic of all things.

Unlike a mediocre blockbuster that is content to limit itself to endless battles with machine guns, there isn't an action sequence in John Wick that isn't unique. He fights a giant with a book, he fights two small twins with knives, he fights a few guys in a horse stable (uses the horses too), fights with shotguns, pistols, and throwing knives. You never see the same fight twice and all the fights are lightly edited and in a wide enough camera so that you can tell always what is happening and know that nobody is cheating...too much. The best fight however has to do with superbly trained dog actors. For reasons we don't have to explain, Keanu Reeves and Halle Berry fight a bunch of bad dudes with guns and with Berry's two trained dogs. The dogs do incredible stunts with hopefully well-padded victims/dog-trainers. One dog must have jumped at least ten feet in one scene.

I never saw John Wick or John Wick 2. I was told that all I needed to know was that the bad dudes killed John Wick's dog in the first movie and stole his car in the second. Turns out, that appears all I needed to know. At the beginning of John Wick 3, which apparently starts minutes after John Wick 2 ends and a few weeks from John Wick, there is a huge price put on John Wick's head. All the assassin's in the world are out to kill him. What a great excuse for a lot of fight scenes. Fittingly, the director, Chad Stahelski, had been Keanu's stunt double for many movies, including the Matrix trilogy.

In between fights, Keanu has several serious conversations with older heavyweight actors like Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, and Angelica Huston. Interestingly everyone is somehow connected to Eastern European or Islamic civilizations. This lends to the many dour lectures on humanity and authority. John Wick is the first character I have seen who hails from Belarus. Who knew such characters existed? It is also quite fun to consider the character of Ian McShane who steadfastly refuses to provide anything but terse language and the imbibing of very good looking alochol in an otherwise action-packed movie. Mark Dascascos plays the main nemesis, Zero. Like the more entertaining villains, he prefers to kill with a sword.

Don't call it a trilogy. John Wick is being divided into chapters and this book is likely to contain many. After all, John Wick's dog remains shot and more bad guys are left to kill.