Red Rocket (5/5 Stars)

 

I once heard an ex-police officer discourse on the types of people he would encounter in a normal course of his rounds. He related that most people, when being approached by an officer of the law, woul just shut up and do what they are told. Then there were not so bright people who would have hostile reactions, and usually that did not end so well with them. Then there was this one particular type of person, neither hostile nor compliant and regardless of their level of obvious guilt, could always be counted on to try to talk themselves out of their situation for far longer than any civilian. These guys, and all of them are guys, were pimps and their stamina for bullshitting was and is notorious and unsurpassed.

We don’t know anything about Mikey Saber (played by Simon Rex) when he shows up at his ex-wife’s house in Galveston, Texas one hot summer afternoon. He’s just this guy with no luggage, no money, and bruises on his face. But, boy does he have a lot to say. Neither his ex-wife, Lexi (played by Bree Elrod) or her mother Lil (played by Brenda Deiss) want anything to do with him. They tell him to go away something like ten times over the course of a five minute conversation. But he keeps talking and talking and talking and by the end of it, he’s inside taking a shower and sleeping on the couch (commando style). He just needs a place to crash for a little bit. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ll recognize this guy. He has nothing and he won’t stop bragging about it. No prospects but a lot of plans. He’s that guy.

The writer/director of “Red Rocket” is one of the best around, Sean Baker. I was so impressed by two movies of his, “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project”, that I searched for and saw every movie he has ever made. They are all very good especially in light of that fact that he has no money. His first film, “Take Out” is about as good a movie can be with a budget of $3,000 (yes, I double checked that amazing figure). Sean Baker specializes in movies about people on the margins of society, a lot of them involved in the sex industry, but his movies aren’t exposes, sob stories, or indictments. They are simply stories about these people. His movie “Starlet” was centered on a pornographic actress and although she interacted with characters from the industry, the main plot was her relationship with an elderly woman she met at a garage sale who liked to play bingo. The main plot was so normal that it could have been found in any independent film. What made it so unlike any other movie though is that halfway through the movie, the main character performs an explicit sex scene in a room with a camera crew, as if Sean Baker’s cinematic mission is to demonstrate that the people you see delivering your food (“Take Out”), selling counterfeit bags on Canal Street (“Prince of Broadway”), streetwalking (“Tangerine”) have full lives outside the narrow interactions they have with the mainstream.

Mikey Saber we learn is a veteran male porn star. This, he explains, is why he has a twenty year gap in the resume he is submitting to various local businesses. Mikey’s job search is getting anywhere so he looks up the woman he used to sell weed to like twenty years ago. She is suspicious, but gives him a bag to see what he can do with it. The movie does a smart thing by having every character dislike Mikey without explaining why. In response, the audience’s natural inclination is to feel like Mikey is being treated unfairly, and since Mikey has charm, we become seduced (to an extent). After all, Mikey is actively trying to make it back on his feet. He mows the lawn, is nice enough, and once his marijuana business starts blooming, he starts paying rent. Then he starts saying and doing things that slowly throw up a bunch of red flags. Then a few other things happen and now we have a better idea of why noone wanted Mikey back in town. There is an eminently satisfying third act, that like all great third acts, feels both unpredictable and inevitable. The storytelling craft involved is so professional that you are surprised it could exist in a movie that has such an indie down-to-earth feel to it, that is until you remember that Sean Baker made this movie and that he always brings the story home in the clutch.

This movie is a great demonstration between empathy and sympathy. As Roger Ebert once put it, movie’s are empathy machines. They place the viewer in the shoes of different people in different situations and make them feel how they feel. But, this is not to say that it makes the viewer agree with the choices of different people. That would be sympathy. All empathy does is explain different points of view. Sean Baker handles all the scenes in this movie with empathy, that is he provides the viewer a clear understanding of what is going on with the characters, but he doesn’t sermonize and he doesn’t have a lot of weird camera angles and a musical score to suggest how you should feel about it. In particular, Mikey Saber, while crashing on the couch of his ex-wife, strikes up an affair with a teenager who works at a local coffee and donut shop. There is a twenty year age difference here. Your normal movie would proactively let the viewer know that it disapproves. “Red Rocket” doesn’t do that. It just shows it to you and let’s you figure out how you feel about it. All of Baker’s movies are kind of incredible like that. The movie has a point of view, but it keeps in hidden, in order to better entertain you. (That is, once a movie shows its ideological viewpoint, it becomes a predictable exercise in propaganda. Propaganda as Oliver Stone once quipped, is boring because it takes all conflict out of a story, much like how a professional sports game becomes boring once it becomes a blowout.)

If there is one criticism I may throw at Sean Baker, it is an unfair one. When I watch the early films of other great directors, you can discover hitherto unknown great performances by then unknown actors that later became respected stars. You don’t get that with Sean because twenty years in, he does not reuse actors and still casts complete unknowns in all his movies. Two of the best performances here (Ethan Darbone as Lonnie and Brenda Deiss as Lil) are from non-actors. None of the actual actors have ever been in a Sean Baker film before. (Having said that, in her film debut as Ms. Phan, the great deadpan owner of the donut shop, is none other than Shih-Ching Tsou, Baker’s co-producer on every single one of his films since “Take Out”. I’m not sure what she does, but clearly, she deserves a lot of credit). Mikey Saber is played by Simon Rex, who is a long time MTV Disc Jockey with the stage name of “Dirt Nasty” and whose film credits include “Scary Movie 4” “Superhero Movie” and “Scary Movie 5”. His performance is so good that I wouldn’t be surprised he got nominated for an Academy Award. And either that means he was a diamond in the rough that no-one noticed for twenty years, or perhaps, with the right material and crew, acting isn’t that hard. The only recurring actor in Sean Baker’s movies is Karren Karagulian, who has several main roles in Sean Baker’s earlier movies “Prince of Broadway”, “Starlet”, and “Tangerine” (He’s the married-with-children Armenian immigrant taxi-driver who prefers transgender prostitutes). But Karren only has cameos in Baker’s last two films and will never blow up to movie stardom because, well, he’s looks like a normal Armenian man. Look, if Baker did reuse actors maybe his movies wouldn’t feel so raw and real all the time. So the criticism is unfair. I’ll take what I can get.

Nightmare Alley (3/5 Stars)

“Nightmare Alley” was directed by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water) and adapted from a novel that had earlier been made into a movie in the 1940s (I haven’t seen it). Ostensibly it is a horror film, but it felt more like the devolving efforts of Tim Burton, that is, much competent and loving attention is paid to the macabre look of the film, the creepiness of carnivals, the moodiness of 1930s-1940s noir style and fashion, but not so much to the underlying emotional landscape. In other words, Nightmare Alley looks like it might be scary, but it isn’t.

The movie looks very good on paper. It has a large talented cast including Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara in romantic leads, Cate Blanchett as a psychiatrist/femme fatale, Willem Dafoe as an unscrupulous carnival operator. In supporting roles are Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, and David Strathairn. It has great production design and costumes and in general, looks really good. The writing is at its most interesting when carnival techniques are explored. In particular, the David Strathairn character is a mentalist, that is a person who can read other people’s minds (and perhaps communicate with ghosts). Mentalists cannot actually read minds, but like magic in general, sometimes the technique and artistry of how they appear to do so is just as interesting or even more so than the act demanded to be believed. Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) shows up to the carnival as a no-name drifter. He does odd jobs until he becomes involved with Pete (David Strathairn) and his wife Zeena the Seer (Toni Collette). Soon they begin to teach him the art of mentalism. These details, and later scenes in which Stanton Carlisle performs a mentalist show in front of a well-heeled audience in Chicago, are the best in the movie.

What seems to be the problem is that the movie has no hook. As such, the plot progresses without anticipation and/or suspense. We are presented with Stanton Carlisle, a man with no background, and must take him as he is. As he is a poor drifter, my first inclination is to want him to gain a living. Stanton Carlisle starts learning and performing mentalism, first in an emergency situation and then as real bona fide act. The movie appears to frown upon this, with a character or two making vague suggestions that he don’t get into the ghost part of the business. My first inclination is that I support him in his new venture. Stanton woos a fellow circus performer Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara) and proposes that they ditch the carnival and move their mentalism show to Chicago where they will make lots more money and live in a nice hotel. The movie appears to frown upon this. Bruno, the strongman in the carnival, (Ron Perlman), tells Stanton to stop being so friendly with the girl and that he is watching him. My first inclination is that Molly works for a carnival. She should take this opportunity to make more money with Bradley Cooper, who is nice enough, good-looking and ambitious.

It is hard to say, but I’m not sure the movie was aiming at my first inclinations. I think Guillermo del Toro wanted instead some sense of growing dread that the whole thing wouldn’t turn out so good. If this is the case, I think he miscast Bradley Cooper, who wasn’t giving off “bad guy” vibes at all. Moreover, when things do go wrong, they don’t quite seem to have the proper motivation. Like, I don’t understand what Dr. Lillith Rader’s (Cate Blanchett) motivations are, or why Stanton, if he is assuming she is untrustworthy, would trust her so blindly. I also didn’t get why Stanton starts drinking whiskey after swearing that he never touches the stuff, or after all the inevitable bad things happen, why Stanton doesn’t just start over. I mean, isn’t he at the end of the movie exactly where he was at the beginning. Why are there no options? Why doesn’t he just move his mentalist act to Canada? Perhaps there are explanations but I did not pick up on them.

The movie seems to want to say something about a certain set piece of a carnival show: the geek. This is a guy that goes in front of everyone and bites the heads off of chickens. The geek we see is unkempt, dirty, and wild. I thought for certain he may have a mental disability. Instead, it is explained that he is an alcoholic that Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe) surreptiously got hooked on heroine. (If this is the case though, why can’t the geek speak a language. Here his ability to communicate is limited to grunts and screams.) In this way, the movie appears to be saying that even Stanton Carlisle. who once successfully swore off drink, worked hard, wooed a beautiful girl, and performed as a perfectly fine mentalist, could subsequently become so degraded by life as to become a carnival geek. I’m sorry, I don’t buy that, which ultimately means, that I didn’t get the whole point of this movie. Oh well, they can’t all be winners.

The French Dispatch (5/5 Stars)

 

The masterpiece train keeps on rolling. That makes four in a row from Wes Anderson and the machine, an ever expanding cast of remarkable actors, production designers led by Adam Stockhausen, musicians led by Alexandre Desplat, costumes by Milena Canonero, etc etc. This time, Mr. Anderson, writer/director, spins an appetizer and three course meal of the fictional Ennui-sur-Blase, France in the form of a travelogue and three stories of the French Dispatch, a fictional satellite production of the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun.

This movie is delightful. I came to that conclusion about two minutes into the feature when the movie takes about a twenty seconds to film a French waiter stocking a tray with an assortment of apertifs, confections, and hors-d’oeurvres for delivery to Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (played by Bill Murray), editor of the title production. Like Wes Anderson’s best work, there is a loving attention to the detail here that most movies lack the ability to attempt.

The French Dispatch is in a newspaper but is not really news. It tells offbeat stories about curious people. It is a pleasant diversion about a small corner of the world that nobody in Kansas would likely visit. I believe that would be the whole point. There are many small things in life that lack formal importance, but as an antidote to the daily grind, are essential to living well. This idea is voiced with beautiful particularity in the third story by writer Roebuck Wright (played by Jeffrey Wright) when he is asked why he devotes so much space in his articles to the experience of dining. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would you choose? You could do much worse than a curated evening with Wes Anderson. (Actually you can choose this, but without the Wes, he curated a version of pullman dining on a British Train. https://www.belmond.com/trains/europe/uk/belmond-british-pullman/search-results. Tickets are around $600, give or take).

The danger of the Wes Anderson experience, as evident in his first fifteen years of making movies, is that his upper class tastes can come off as tone deaf or snooty. He has by and large avoided this pitfall in his last four great movies by focusing not on the rich people, but the servants, artisans, (dogs) that cater to them. It is a delicate balancing act to be sure. Since Wes Anderson is so very much rich himself (I highly suspect), to speak for the poor could easily come off as presumptuous and contrived. He avoids this by showing an unsurpassed appreciation for the artistry, whether it be a lobby boy attending to his duties in a hotel, a boy scout troupe leader searching for his charges, or a dog looking out for his master. Wes Anderson merely supposes, rightly I believe, that the people who curate his experiences care about their art in a manner that is separate and apart from the status of the ultimate consumer. Do such people like the celebrated police chef Nescaffier (played by Steve Park, yes that Steve Park from Coen Brothers’ movies like Fargo and A Serious Man), exist. They must. If they didn’t, how could there be so much beauty in the world?

To consider Wes Anderson’s movies chronologically, is to witness a writer-director become increasingly competent and confident in not only his distinct cinematic voice but the very tools of cinema. The French Dispatch is notable in its sheer amount of sets and cinematography techniques. To take one example, the first story, is a news article by J.K.L Berenson (played by Tilda Swinton) that turns into a lecture, which narrates a story of a psychotic inmate named Moses Rosenthaler (played by Benicio Del Toro) who might be a genius of modern art. The lecture is in color, but the story with Moses is in black and white, until of course, it isn’t. That is, Wes Anderson is not just using black and white because he wants to be artsy, he is doing it to make important scenes in the story “pop” with color. There are several of these moments in this movie whether it be a first glimpse of a fresco, the taste of a delicious apertif, or the blue eyes of Saorise Ronan, and the effect is undeniable. The realm of moviedom has not seen an artist with such innovative control of film, as a medium, since Oliver Stone was at the height of his creative powers in the early nineties (see JFK and Natural Born Killers). Add to this is Wes Anderson’s interesting use of foreign languages (In the second story, that concerns itself with insufferably woke university students, all the boys speak English, and the girls speak French with subtitles. To be clear, they are all speaking French, Wes is just being interesting) and his absolute refusal to shoot anything resembling a conventional action scene (a prison riot is shown in freeze frame, a car chase turns into a cartoon).

But more than anything, what is particularly impressive about The French Dispatch is the writing. The movie’s screenplay, which Wes Anderson wrote by himself, is based on four fictional articles by four fictional writers with four different styles. Each story, though all written by Wes, leaves a distinct impression of a unique artistic voice, each one a very good writer in their own regard. I ask you, could there possibly be a movie this year that is more “written” than the The French Dispatch. Have you ever seen a movie, more “literary”. Can we just give him his first Oscar ever for Best Original Screenplay right now?

If there is a criticism to be directed at this movie, it is that there is too much of it, at least in one sitting. I think this movie, or something like it, would make a very good TV show. That is, since each story could stand on its own, you could split the movie up into 30 minutes segments like say Documentary Now, thereby giving the audience a chance to catch its breath between stories. The French Dispatch is an appetizer and three entrees in a row. We need more time to comfortably digest. After all, I haven’t even mentioned Adrian Brody’s brilliant dissection of the economics of modern art, or Timothee Chalamet’s hair, or the fact that I got to see Lea Seydoux naked (worth the ticket price by itself).

Dune (5/5 Stars)

 

Frank Herbert’s epic novel “Dune” has long been the white whale of movie adaptations. After its popular publication in 1965, several filmmakers have attempted an adaptation only for their efforts to more or less fail. Jodorowky had great ambitions but lacked funding. This became the subject of a 2013 documentary. In 1984, director David Lynch successfully produced a feature film of the book, an absolute mess of confusing exposition and fast forward plot which stood as an expensive warning to the impossibility of a coherent adaptation for over three decades. I tried to watch that movie and did not venture past the first twenty minutes. The overarching problem, once solved, is Dune’s greatest strength. Dune is a fascinating, exotic and dangerous world, but in order to tell a story of anything that occurs there, much world-building needs to occur. The 1984 version attempted to accomplish this through voiceover, a tedious succession of name dropping that succeeded in explaining thousands of years of fiction, but not why the viewer should care. Like I said, I lasted twenty minutes.

It is then with considerable acclamation that I report that this Dune, directed by Denis Villenueve, is a coherent and dramatic work of art. Yes, I understood what was going on and the exposition was paced in such a way that it did not bore me. That is not an easy feat to accomplish. I am not about to try to explain the plot in depth here. Like I said, that is a near impossible task, but I can attempt the briefest of outlines: “Dune” is a story about power, a struggle between an emperor which we do not meet, several of his vassal states, a mystical sect, and an indigenous tribe of a desert world that holds the galaxy’s most valuable resource. The emperor sets his vassals against each other to weaken them, and fight and weaken each other they do.

The vassals connive and maneuver against each other in elegant architecture, dressed in impressive fashion and surrounded by distinctive cinematography. There are also very ugly bad guys and gigantic sand worms. The look and feel of “Dune” is an artistic achievement. Denis Villeneuve, I’m sure, is a great part of that process having already made several of the best looking films of the past decade with the great cinematography Roger Deakins: “Prisoners”, “Sicario”, and “Blade Runner 2049”. I half-expected Roger Deakins to be present here, but he is not. The cinematographer is instead Greig Fraser, who I did not know on a name basis before, but whose work I have admired in “Zero Dark Thirty” “Foxcatcher” and “Lion” (He also did this thing I’ve heard of “The Mandalorian” but which I have not seen).

As striking as the architecture, fashion, and cinematography, is the excellent cast which is filled with interesting actors like Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Stellan Skarskgard, Javier Bardem, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian and Timothee Chalamet (presently having his breakout moment). It is a truth acknowledged in movies that the best way to procure a great cast is to make each character a main character in the scene that they find themselves in. This is usually done in one of two ways: have an episodic story in which the main characters in each part are not the same actors, or to have a character’s arc begin and completely end within the movie. I don’t necessarily mean kill the character, but good actors that have many different plans and options for work I believe will be more willing to take a bit part in a larger story if they know they don’t have to stick around for the entirety of the production. With the risk of making this paragraph even more of a spoiler than I’ve already made it, I will only say further that I believe it will be difficult for Dune Part Two to have as good a cast as Part One.

As I said, I will not bother trying to explain the plot. I will merely state that Dune mainly concerns itself with power. There are not democracies or republics present. Just empires, feudal lords, religious cults and native tribes. Frank Herbert seemed to understand the dynamics present quite well. We are somewhat removed from the contours of this world and the behaviors that inhabit it, but part of what makes science fiction fun, is that you can set up your own rules and see how people act within the made up system. Sometimes this is as pretentious as you think it would be and the science fiction element seems to just be a disguise for a straw man argument (say Star Trek or The Twilight Zone). Other times, you get something like Dune, which is so different, it hardly seems to be a commentary on anything on Earth. Earth details may have inspired it, but it is its own thing, content to have its message stay on its desert planet. It has nothing to do with anything else. It is pure escapism, which brings with its own type of pleasure.

No Time to Die (5/5 Stars)

 

James Bond was never intended to be the adult in the room. The early films are exercises in juvenile wish fulfillment, specifically those of white boys. Imagine being a very important person (agent of a world superpower government) possessed with extraordinary skills and intelligence in exceedingly dangerous (see exciting) situations that will never have to actually deal with any of the repercussions. The cleanup is another department. As a bonus to all of this, as a very important person dealing with the less civilized parts of the world, you are offered exotic women by the local power brokers, and if other situations, the women just naturally flock to you because you are more handsome, wealthier, the plot calls for it, etc. I like the old James Bond movies, in particular I recommend “You Only Live Twice” but I will admit they are a guilty pleasure, you know like pornography.

I bring this up in this review for “No Time to Die” because it is quite extraordinary how grown up the franchise has become. With massive popularity comes responsibility (via criticism) and the James Bond of 2021 is more an elder statesman than a juvenile delinquent. What is even more amazing is that the quality of the movies have not diminished. “No Time to Die” is just as entertaining as “You Only Live Twice.” Indeed, “No Time to Die” retains many of the old James Bond tropes: exotic locales, gorgeous women, a disfigured villain in an island fortress, but the mood and tone are of an entirely different genre. “No Time to Die” is like a great cover version song of an old classic. You know the song, but you had no idea it could work so well in such a completely different way.

This is Daniel Craig’s fifth outing as James Bond. The story picks up right where “Spectre” of several years ago left with the hopeful retirement of James Bond with Lea Seydoux, that gorgeous French woman. This one is directed by Cary Fukunaga (True Detective Season 1, Sin Nombre) who also shares a writing credit with the duo of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. (Purvis and Wade, IMDB relates, have written the last seven James Bond movies dating back to 1999’s “The World is Not Enough.” They are getting very good at it.) The retirement does not last very long though as Lea Seydoux’s past comes back to haunt her with James as the collateral damage. This movie is two and a half hours long, its locales span continents from Italy, to Cuba, to Sweden, to Japan, the main villain’s plot, and even his identity, comes quite late, yet it never moved slow and I never felt restless. I was in good super competent hands.

In particular, this movie is a course in actions sequences that work. Unlike the digital acrobatics of Marvel blockbusters, the stunts in “No Time to Die” have a down-to-earth visceral feel to them. It looks like that car really crashed and rolled, that the telephone pole fell down on a live set, that the stunt man really did drive that motorcycle up the side of that Italian building (wow!). At one point, in an extended one shot sequence, Daniel Craig shoots and fist-fights his way up a crowded stairwell. Whatever they are doing, it is just so much better than “Shang-Chi”.

A good James Bond movie is a series of fun set pieces, strong men, and beautiful women. The opening car/motorcycle chase with Lea Seydoux through the Italian village is great. So is the spy mission in Havana, Cuba with Ana de Armas as sidekick. Finally the infiltration of a villain’s island fortress with Lashana Lynch. In between there is humor deftly brought to the fore by wisecracking Ben Whishaw as Q and Naomie Harris as Moneypenney and the classic James Bond score providing the punctuation. In the villain department, Christoph Waltz reprises his Spectre mastermind Blofeld now locked away in a maximum security prison while outside a new threat in the form of Rami Malek.

It is the villain subplot that is finally where this movie comes up short. The danger is real enough. The British government was secretly developing a type of airborne weapon that attacks certain genomic sequences. In this way, the government could conceivably release the virus in a room and it would only kill one person, the intended target. Of course, this weapon is stolen and repurposed so that it may attack whole groups of people with similar genomic sequences, maybe an entire race of people. Evil enough, but the movie does not actually go so far as to suggest what group of people the bad guy is interested in killing. The bad guy’s island fortress is located between Russia and Japan and a simulation of the weapon seems to mainly central Europe. Noone in the movie is from Central Europe. Perhaps the franchise felt that to actually pinpoint a target was not necessary given that the members of the audience could all agree that the idea is nefarious supervillain territory regardless of what group is being targeted. Still, the lack of this detail, harms the viewer’s ability to understand the motivation of the villain, which in turn harms the drama. A minor quibble. Otherwise Rami Malek with his creepy delivery and bug eyes are classic Bond villain.

At the end of this movie, you may come to the realization that this really will be Daniel Craig’s last dance and that the franchise will have to turn to a different actor in any new installment. So who should it be? Well, I think whoever it is, they should redo the entire feel of the franchise, taking it perhaps down a few notches from the stripped down, brutish, and semi-seriousness of Daniel Craig. How about Dev Patel and, please, more irresponsible sex. Being responsible is great for a few movies, as a change of pace, but overall, James Bond should be having more fun.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (3/5 Stars)

 

When I penned a review of the “The Guardians of the Galaxy” in 2014, I wrote that within the first scene, I knew I was watching something new, something interesting, and something fun. The Marvel Universe had before that time stumbled into a run of too-serious melodramatic CGI slug-fests (the nadir being Thor: the Dark World), but here came Director James Gunn to liven things up a bit. It would lead to a string of great Marvel movies between 2014-2018. But greatness cannot last, and lately we have seen Marvel hit run of melodramatic CGI slugfests. The problems are not the same. In the first nadir, Marvel was having trouble making some of its very old characters like Thor, Hulk, and Captain America new and fresh. But they got around this by turning Hulk and Thor into comedians and introducing more facets to the personality of Captain America that weren’t so conformist (I’m still Team Iron Man by the way).

This second nadir involves Marvel’s attempt to branch out past the core fans of comic books by introducing more diverse and gendered super heroes. The problem is not that Marvel has superheroes with these types of identities, the problem is that these superheroes are not interesting. Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and now Shang-Chi all have a “Thor” problem. Polka-Dot Man from “The Suicide Squad” is a more interesting character than these three.

Shang-Chi in particular is just too safe of a character. He is a played by Simu Liu who would otherwise be a perfect casting choice for a mannequin. He is tall, broad-shouldered, and devoid of personality. Imagine instead that Marvel had cast Randall Park. Yes, I know that Randall Park is already a recurring character in Marvel’s Ant-Man and is Korean, not Chinese. I’m just saying imagine this character as someone interesting. Shang-Chi emigrated to San Francisco with his motion has a child and now goes by the name Shawn. Shawn lives alone in an apartment that is not really expensive, but still pretty good digs for a single guy in San Francisco. He works as a chauffeur with his best friend Katy (played by Awkwafina). So you know that he’s not privileged, but then Awkwafina quips that she graduated with honors at Berkeley and Shang-Chi knows four languages, so they clearly aren’t disadvantaged either. He’s just right there in the middle, not offending anybody.

One day while riding the bus, Shawn is attacked by a bunch of goons sent by his still-alive and very powerful gangster of a father Xu Wenwu (played by Tony Leung). A martial arts fight ensues and it turns out that Shawn knows Kung Fu (and that Katy can drive a bus under pressure). The action in this movie makes one nostalgia for prime Jackie Chan movies. They take place in impractical locales that Jackie would have used like on a bus, or in the bamboo scaffolding of a building, but the action in Shang Chi is just so computerized. It lacks the visceral qualities of a Jackie Chan film. So by directing the cinephiles attention to these past great action movies, one is rewarded by nostalgia, but also the distinct impression that they are watching something inferior. I wonder if it is even possible to make a Jackie Chan film like the ones he made in the 1980-90s. Perhaps it is just too dangerous. In any event, the computer scientists have yet to be able to perfect an equal alternative in quality.

Shawn and Katy discover that the father thought dead by Shawn is hatching an evil conspiracy and travel to Hong Kong to find Shawn’s sister and warn her. Instead, Shawn’s sister Xia Ling (played by Meng’er Zhang) finds him and reveals herself to be the head of a brutal gambling syndicate that hosts deadly fights in a Shanghai skyscraper. When asked how she came to be so powerful and influential she replies that her father would not allow her to be a part of his club, so when she decided at 16 years of age to run away and make her own. Fast forward ten years and here she is. There are no follow up questions. It is the sort of backstory only Ayn Rand would find believable.

It is further revealed that Shawn’s father is searching for an extradimensional village called Lu’an, which guards the prison of an ancient and evil dragon that would Consume The World if released. We see this village, it is hidden in a bamboo forest and contains large Chinese dream beasts and a water dragon. It reminds one of Wakanda but does not measure up to the experience. For one thing, Black Panther was the first time any corporation spent hundreds of millions of dollars making an African Xanadu. In China, a movie that with the budget and scope of Shang-Chi comes out every month. In 2004, I saw Jet Li’s “Hero” in an American movie theater. That’s a bigger and better movie than Shang-Chi so don’t give me the marketing pitch that Shang-Chi represents the coming out of Asian cinema. It’s only the first Marvel movie with an Asian main character. That distinction is not an important one. Asians have been producing great and influential movies since Japanese cinema came into its own in the 1950s. I have plenty of recommendations if you want them.

There are bright parts to this movie. For one thing, everything Awkwafina does is funny. At another point, Ben Kingsley reprises his actor character from “Iron Man 3” and he too is consistently funny. Here’s a novel idea. How about making the Shang-Chi sequel about Awkwafina and calling it “Katy with the No Powers”. It could be about her and Ben Kingsley’s efforts to sell a screenplay based on their adventures in this movie and then attempting to remake this movie with no budget. (I bet the no-budget car chases would be better than the ones in this movie). That fake movie could also have a great subplot about Katy’s efforts to kow-tow to the strictrues of the Communist Party of China in order to get the movie a release inside the country. Katy could be like “this is funny,” and CCP would be like “too funny,” and “this is interesting,” and CCP like “too interesting,” and then this is something, and then CCP like “make it nothing”. At the end Katy could come to the realization that communists won’t be okay with anything because they would rather people not say or think anything other than what they tell them to.

I’m throwing shade. It is Marvel that should come to this realization. This year they might. They have gone to great lengths to present China and the Chinese in the least controversial most boring light possible. For all their efforts, CCP still won’t allow “Shang-Chi” to be released in the country. CCP has also made it clear that the next Marvel movie “The Eternals” will not be released because it is helmed by Oscar Winning Director Chloe Zhang. Marvel must have thought it would have been a plus with CCP to hire a Chinese-American Director like Ms. Zhang for one of their movies. But no, Ms. Zhang once had an opinion about China, calling it a “place of lies” and CCP decided that it was insulting to China and the Chinese for anyone, and perhaps especially a Chinese person, to point out all of CCP’s lies. This may be a good thing. Perhaps Marvel with stop positioning for the approval of a totalitarian government and, as a result, make better movies.

Pig (4/5 Stars)

 

The “John Wick” franchise stars Keanu Reeves as an assassin retired from the life whose dog is killed. So he comes back and kills a lot of people. “Pig” is sort of like that. It stars Nicholas Cage as a chef retired from the life whose truffle pig is pignapped. So he comes back and devastates a lot of people emotionally.

This is a simple movie. The setup is as described above. Nicholas Cage lives alone in the woods with his pig. He strolls the woods looking for perfect truffles which he sells to a young wanna-be restaurateur (Alex Wolff) for big money. The truffles are then used to enliven the dishes of pretentious Portland restaurants. Nicholas Cage speaks little and does less. He has no technology, no electricity or even a phone in the woods. Then one night, a couple of junkies break into his shack and steal his pig. Nicholas Cage goes into the city to search for it. The movie is competently made has some sublime moments and a few confusing scenes.

Since there really isn’t much action and the plot is bare boned, the movie relies on the acting. And here Cage and the supporting actors put in fine work. Nicolas Cage is well cast in the main role. The man himself has been sort of in the movie wilderness for over a decade now as well. He does about five films a year almost all of them straight to video (I hear they are terrible, but admit I have not seen any of them). As an explanation, he says that he needs the money (he has made bad financial decisions before like buying a castle in Bavaria) and that he likes to work (he says that when he does not have the structure of a work day, he can be pretty self-destructive on his own). So it works to see him come in from the woods, walking around the city and refusing the take a shower or put on a fresh set of clothes. In one particularly good scene he explains to his anxious co-star that none of this matters. Every 200 years the Pacific Northwest suffers a catastrophic earthquake, the last occurring approximately 200 years ago. Those that survive the earthquake will die in the resulting tsunami. Cage delivers this line in a perfect monotone. It’s pretty funny.

Playing the foil is Alex Wolff, who I have seen several times before (Hereditary, Jumanji, Patriot’s Day, Bad Education) but still did not immediately recognize. I think it might be because his skin color seems to vary wildly depending on the lighting. I’m sure to recognize him next time. He does a serviceable job of not really holding his own with the Nicolas Cage character.

Pig has some sublime moments usually consisting of two men in a room talking to each other about meaning, grief, and pigs. It also has some confusing scenes. At one point, we are transported into an underground fight club for restaurant workers. Except it isn’t really a fight club. The fights consist of one person tied up and the other just punching them a bunch of times. I’m still not sure what that was about. But overall, I would recommend this movie. It’s likely better than the other four Nicolas Cage starred in this year. (Although I must admit I am generally intrigued by a movie coming out next year called The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent in which Nicolas Cage plays an actor named Nic Cage. That sounds fun.)

The Suicide Squad (4/5 Stars)

 

This one is for all us losers.

The conceit of “The Suicide Squad” is a classic stock plot. I couldn’t tell you where it first was used, I expect B-movies have done something like it many times over since the early days of cinema, but one of the best examples is the 1967 movie “The Dirty Dozen”. The idea is that there is this important military objective that needs to be accomplished, but the chances of successful mission are minimal, so a bunch of guys with no future, like criminals serving life sentences, are given the opportunity to take a shot at it. They will probably die in the attempt, but they were going to rot in prison anyway, so what do they have to lose?

“The Suicide Squad” updates this premise with a modern comic book movie twist by making all of the criminals super-heroes. But you wouldn’t send Batman on a suicide mission. He’s a billionaire that works for himself. You need some more expendable product, super-heroes that wouldn’t be too much of a loss if they were going to die. Turns out, D.C. Comics has plenty of them. So much so that within the first fifteen of the minutes of the movie, at least half the squad is dispatched, and I don’t think anyone is going to miss the Swedish guy with the javelin known as (...looking it up by IMDB…) “Javelin”.

The remaining squad are as follows:

Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) superpower: competence, moral compass, leadership

Bloodsport (Idris Elba), superpower – good at weapons, killing people

Peacemaker (John Cena), superpower – good at weapons, killing people

Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchio) superpower – can control rats

King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone) superpower – indestructible sharkman

Polka-Dot Man (David Dasmalchian) superpower – throws polka dots at people

Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) superpower – likely insane, innovative with melee weapons

Writer/Director James Gunn has a long storied history of juggling misfits in a group setting. He is the writer/director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies after all. Now, you are not supposed to switch between rivals like Marvel and D.C. Comics like he is doing here, but then again Marvel fired him for uncouth Twitter jokes (before waiting a year while the cultures vultures attention went elsewhere and then hired him back) so I figure he doesn’t owe anybody anything. He does a very good James Gunn here. I especially liked the fact that Bloodsport and Peacemaker have essentially the same superpower which sets up a childish competition between them; how King Shark is so big and dumb; and how Polka-Dot Man, who shoots polka dots at people, is as sad, crazy, and pathetic as he sounds. (It is revealed that his motion injected him with radioactive stuff because she wanted superhero children which gave him polka dot powers but also daily polka dot rashes and he has to puke rainbows each day or die of polka dot exposure.) He fits right in. Rounding out the suicide squad is the only half-way well known superhero and the only one that also starred in the original and lessor “Suicide Squad” movie from a few years back, Harley Quinn. Harley gets the full James Gunn treatment in a scene where she dispatches plenty of nameless bad guys to the tune of Louie Prima singing Just a Gigolo.

This movie is frequently funny and has plenty of good action set pieces. And the final battle, which involves an especially B-movie type boss monster is big and ridiculous in a good way. There is also real pathos here (via certain cameos by fellow director and character actor Taika Waititi). In particular, James Gunn is decidedly for the underdogs, a very sympathetic note to take. However, his glorification of the underappreciated is a little belied by the many many gratuitous deaths of unknown extras. Let me ask you this: when was the last time you saw a SWAT team head into a combat zone in any movie vaguely like this one and thought that a single one would leave alive. These guys have all the body armor and automatic weapons yet they never don’t stand a chance. You want an underdog, make a movie about a SWAT team that fights superheroes.

What is left is the politics of this movie. It isn’t meant to be front and center, but it is interesting to talk about as, like many comic book movies, the message it contains is meant for a very large mainstream movie, and therefore kind of needs to be safe.

The mission is as follows: A fictional South American banana republic has recently suffered a military coup. The previous government was corrupt and so is this new one, but the previous government was tolerated by the United States because, it is revealed, it was willing to serve as a base for the United States to develop alien technology, which involves the experimentation and torture of political dissidents. This would not be the first time it was revealed in a movie that the American led team found out that the United States was really the bad guy, and like everything in this movie, it is a trope competently recycled. But what does this trope mean? Why do American movies so often reveal that America is the ultimate bad guy?

First of all, we should point out that the reveal of America being the bad guy leads to conflicts between the members of the Suicide Squad, which is a diverse group of people and at least one fish. How will this mainstream movie sidestep awkward political battles that may double as racial conflicts. Easy, the conflicts will be mano a mano between members of the same race. For instance Colonel Rick Flag (white) has his major conflict with Peacemaker (white) while Bloodsport (black) has his main conflict with Amanda Waller who is played by Viola Davis (black). Whew, dodged a bullet there.\

But why is the mainstream movie so hesitant to sidestep racial conflict but it still quite comfortable with laying an evil fictional plot at the feet of the United States government. There are a few possibilities to explore.

The most obvious is the movie industry’s leftist tilt. It is an urban industry, mainly centered in two very blue cities Los Angeles and New York City and, like seemingly all businesses within the realm of the arts and humanities, it draws a certain type of person with blindspots. For example, Oliver Stone who can brilliantly articulate all the bad things America has done in Latin America in the past one hundred years and in the next breath make a puff piece documentaries about autocrats like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

Second, it may have something to do with corporate cowardice. The movie business is well acquainted with its free speech rights and is not fearful of retaliation from the American government. In contrast, a hint of any criticism towards the Chinese government may result in an American movie being completely banned from China’s gigantic market. Because of this, America’s government gets routinely trashed while China’s government, which is presently disappearing its citizens into gulags, is never criticized.

But there may also be something else at work here. I recently read Charlie Kaufman’s latest book Antkind which was about a ficitional movie critic B. Rosenberg Rosenberg, an insufferably woke white man who rails against white privilege and toxic masculinity (and expects credit for it), uses non-binary verbs (that he invented and only he uses), and calls himself an ally of every last victim on Earth (without asking whether or not they want his help). Half-way through this hilarious book it dawns on the reader that this character’s obsequiousness masks in even deeper pretentiousness. After all, in order to feel like you need to apologize for everything, one must first believe they are responsible for everything, which, if you think about it, is an extraordinarily egotistical view of the world. B. Rosenberg Rosenberg inflates his own importance by constantly apologizing for the terrible influence people like him have on the world. Perhaps the trope of America being the ultimate bad guy is but an exercise in vanity. Ultimately, it matters less whether or not we are the good or bad guy, what matters is that we matter. Think about it.