Men (2/5 Stars)

 

 Looking at the trailer for “Men”, I had a feeling that this was going to be either a bad or weird movie and probably both. But, the movie was written and directed by Alex Garland, who has made some of the better movies in the past five years including “Annihilation” and the exceptional “Ex Machina”. So, I thought I would give “Men” a chance. The movie is both weird and bad. 

The story is simple (or maybe not). A woman named Harper (played by Jessie Buckley) has been recently widowed. She broke up with a man who couldn’t handle it and committed suicide by jumping off the roof. She decides to visit a cottage in the English countryside for rest and relaxation. The visit is not relaxing for very long. She is stalked by a naked man and then has a series of encounters with other creepy men from the village. Actually, the men are all the same man. Each one is played by Rory Kinnear with different accents, makeup, and costumes. There is a metaphor in here somewhere, but I’m not sure what it is supposed to be. 

This is the second Jessie Buckley movie that I’ve seen that features her wandering around a weird home with weird inhabitants. The first was “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”. (Come to think of it, that movie too had a weird love interest.) “Men” though is more of a horror movie. I think. Well, at least there is more violence and much more gore. Actually the ending is quite gruesome, but after it goes on for quite awhile, you may find yourself considering the spectacle with the expression of Jessie Buckley, as in: Is this still going on now? and where did I leave that hatchet so I can finally put an end to this movie? 

As I said, the men in “Men” are all played by one actor, Rory Kinnear, who is generally underrated. I have seen him play the comic relief in rom-coms like “Man Up” and meld into the bureaucratic background in James Bond movies like “Skyfall” and “No Time to Die”. Given that he is usually a supporting actor, one may then be surprised that he can throw down with great orations as he does in “Peterloo” where he plays the historical public speaker Henry Hunt. In this movie, the most we can say about Rory Kinnear is that he is a very good sport. He gives up the full frontal nudity, grows plants from his face, and tries some silly accents. I hope Alex Garland got what he was looking for at least because one might characterize the performance as embarrassing. 

What is this movie about? I can only really glean one attempt at metaphor. There is an apple tree in the front yard of the house that might be analogous to the apple tree in the garden of Eden. Beyond that though, what is anything else supposed to be? I suspect there may be some message critical about men or how men treat women, but why do you need a vague metaphor for that? Aren’t there enough real world examples that don’t require the use of metaphor? Am I supposed to watch this movie, and come to the realization that a woman’s experience is like being chased around a british cottage by Rory Kinnear in different costumes? 

Is this movie offensive to men? Well, I don’t think so, but maybe that is just because I didn’t understand what the movie may have been trying to tell me. After all, to be truly offended requires understanding. For instance, I got Jordan Peele’s message in “Get Out”. I was offended because I understood it. I can’t say the same for “Men” and this is not one of those movies that was at least interesting enough where I would be curious to hear the director’s commentary. 

One last thing: like “Thor: Love and Thunder” there is a scene that employs CGI to digitally enhance a human body where it should be totally unnecessary. There is a boy character whose face is digitally enhanced so it looks like a young Rory Kinnear. The CGI is really obvious and distracting in a bad way. I don’t understand why a young actor that vaguely looks like Rory Kinnear couldn't be used or why regular makeup was not utilized.

Thor: Love and Thunder (3/5 Stars)

 

I don’t think anyone could have predicted that Thor would be the Marvel character to be the first to get a fourth movie. After all, Iron Man had gotten his third before anyone had even gotten their second and Thor’s second movie “The Dark World” is arguably the worst Marvel movie ever made. But Marvel took a fairly substantial and ultimately successful risk with the third movie “Ragnarok”, replacing the pseudo-Shakespearean seriousness of the first two installments with the rainbow goofiness of Taika Waititi, the new director of “Ragnarok” and here as well “Love and Thunder”. So dramatic was the reorientation of the Thor franchise, that the third movie left out entirely the largest subplot of the first two movies, Thor’s romantic relationship with the scientist Jane Foster, played by Natalie Portman. Say all you want about the acting chops of Natalie Portman (and there is much to say), but she isn’t all that funny. Given the new direction, ditching her was probably a wise move. But her story was still out there to wrap up. This “Love and Thunder” does while expanding dramatically the “Thor” universe of the “Marvel Universe”. 

There’s a lot of expanding going on all over the place in the Marvel Universe Phase 4. I watched the TV Series “Loki” and that introduced an infinite amount of timelines. I watched “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and that introduced an infinite amount of universes. I didn’t watch “The Eternals” but it seemed from the trailer that Marvel had decided to start its own religion (diverse and abnormally good looking, just like the world’s present elite). Now “Love and Thunder” establishes that every polytheistic religion in history has real gods that all hang out together in Omnipotent City. There is, among others, Queztalcoatl the Aztec god, Bast the Egyptian god, some sort of Samurai god, and Bao the god of dumplings. They are ostensibly led by Zeus, played here by a fat Russel Crowe with a Greek accent. It is hard to tell where Marvel is eventually going with all of this, but I expect it will be a bit more difficult to tie together something with the weightiness of the previous Avengers movie. After all, what does it matter what occurs in an Avengers movie when it has been established that we are watching but one timeline in one universe with an infinite amount of other timelines and other universes where something else entirely different occurs. I expect Marvel was always going to have this problem no matter what if had gotten so successful that it eventually introduced all of its characters. It seems like an exceedingly wise decision looking back to start the journey with the simplest of heroes, Iron Man, whose superpower was mechanical in nature. It helps to ease the audience into it. 

It was once opined by some person whose name escapes me that the advent of comic book characters was like the resurrection of the old polytheism. (I only remember that this person went on to prepare a thesis about this topic and then became a professor who taught this class for his entire career). I think that is only fitting that a villain of the “Thor” universe be a character named Gorr, The God Butcher, who vaguely resembles Jesus. What do I mean by that? Well, for one he is played by a thin Christian Bale and is dressed in sandals and a robe. He looks vaguely like Jesus might if he were a character in a Marvel movie. Also like Jesus (at least as compared to the old polytheistic gods) he lacks a sense of humor and is a bit of zealot. But really, the biggest similarity is that he is going around killing all of the gods, much like the intolerant Christians (and also Muslims) of history. It is not a mistake that Marvel did not include Jesus (and especially not the Prophet Mohammed) in the crowd in Omnipotent City. There would have been protests in America and riots in the Middle East. 

In “Ragnarok” the villain played by Cate Blanchett was kind of by-the-numbers and the weakest part of the movie. Here, Gorr the Butcher is one of the strongest parts. In particular, Christian Bale’s performance is so strong and his arguments so on point there is a real danger that his seriousness might overpower the goofiness of Thor’s new groove. Here is an example of how Taika Waititi (and his co-writer Jennifer Kaitlin Robinson) deftly avoid that. In one scene the children of New Asgaard (appropriately now a tourist attraction in the Disney owned Marvel Universe, see The Northman) are kidnapped by Gorr the Butcher, spirited to the Shadow Realm and threatened with death. Thor explains to the children that they are in a tight spot, but as they are Vikings of Asgaard, they will gain eternal reward in Valhalla should they die in glorious battle. Classic Thor. 

Two more notes. First, in one scene Thor gets his clothes blown off. The movie clearly uses CGI on Thor’s naked body. Really? Is even Chris Hemsworth not good looking enough for a Marvel movie? Second, one of the throw-away scenes involves an allusion to gay romance. I don’t think Marvel should get diversity credit for that unless they keep it in the Chinese version.