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.

Avengers: End Game (5/5 Stars)

A victory lap is the perfect description of Avengers: Endgame. It is a good enough story on its own, but is not afraid to tack on much earned nostalgia. If Lord of the Rings: Return of the King garnered a Best Picture Oscar in part because it was the culmination of a gorgeously executed triology, I don't see why the same logic wouldn't apply to Avengers: Endgame which is the perfect culmination of ten years and twenty-two movies of Marvel storytelling

Leaving off where Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp ended, half the life in the universe has been snapped out of existence by Thanos and his Inifinity Guantlet. The Avengers not snapped out of existence conveniently include the original assembly: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, The Hulk, and Hawkeye. Captain Marvel shows up almost immediately after and they all get in a spaceship and track down Thanos. Unfortunately by the time they get to him, he has already destroyed the Infinity Stones. It's over. What happened cannot be fixed.

Then the movie jumps five years. It is a ballsy move and cements a feeling of reality over the events of Avengers: Infinity War. Usually comic book movies don't have dramatically acted scenes, but this one contains a particularly good bit of acting by Robert Downey Jr, as Tony Stark/Tony Stark, who excoriates Chris Evans, Steve Rogers/Captain America, decision several movies ago in Captain America: Civil War which broke up the Avengers and made Thanos harder to stop.

There is a catch of course as there must be. It comes in the form of Ant-Man who was stuck in the quantum realm when the Snappening happened and comes back five years later. (There is an emotional scene where Paul Rudd, Scott Lang/Ant-Man, finds his name on a memorial for those who died during the Snappening and when he reunites with his daughter.) Scott shows up at the Avengers headquarters with an idea that has to do with time-travel through the quantum realm. Much exposition is needed in this movie and quite a bit of it is people explaining things to Ant-Man who hasn't been around in the last five years. Most of it is quite funny.

Alot of this is quite funny. Some characters' arcs are rather dramatic like Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow. But other characters are firmly in the camp of comic relief. Two characters that have completely hit their stride are Hulk, who is now Professor Hulk, a big, green and unangry Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). Then there is Thor. What happened to him over the past five years is the stuff of comedic legends.

The question here isn't if Avengers: Endgame will reverse the outcome of Infinity War. We know it must simply due to sheer amount of marketable product that was snapped out of existence. The question is whether how this is accomplished is too predictable or too confusing. It isn't predictable and it generally makes sense (in a comic book science sort of way). A few times in the movie I was sitting there wondering how they were going to accomplish what they had set out to do and then how they did was quite satisfying.

Without giving away too much of the plot, the Avengers actually visit previous movies. Three in particular: The Avengers, The Dark World, and The Guardians of the Galaxy. The team splits up into groups to go back in time and retrieve what they need from those films. It is always when you have many full formed characters and then mix and match teams so people who have not really met or interacted before are doing so for the first time. Thor's interactions with the Guardians of the Galaxy is great in particular. Captain American fights himself and that is satisfying too. There is a lot of good stuff all over the place here. One particular moment, where Captain America finds himself standing alone in front of an evil army, and the moment right after, garnered cheers from the audience that I was in. I felt like cheering too. I really like these guys.

Following the example of other great culmination of movies, the last hour of Avengers: End Game has a lot of goodbyes in it. I believe the movie earned these moments. I look forward to the next twenty films.