Movie Review: Ready Player One

Ready Player One **** / *****

Directed by: Steven Spielberg.

Written by: Zak Penn and Ernest Cline based on the novel by Cline.

Starring: Tye Sheridan (Wade Owen Watts / Parzival), Olivia Cooke (Samantha Evelyn Cook / Art3mis), Ben Mendelsohn (Nolan Sorrento), Lena Waithe (Aech), T.J. Miller (i-R0k), Simon Pegg (Ogden Morrow / Og), Mark Rylance (James Donovan Halliday / Anorak), Hannah John-Kamen (F'Nale Zandor), Win Morisaki (Daito), Philip Zhao (Sho).

Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One is a mess of contradictions – but in the most wonderful way possible. It’s both a celebration of pop culture, nostalgia and fandom as well as a condemnation of those three things at the same time. It’s a film that probably only Spielberg could make – and make work – at least in the way it’s currently constructed. It’s an interesting move for Spielberg – and seems like a direct response to those who want him to go back and do the kind of fun adventure films he used to make in the 1970s and 1980s – proof that he can still do that if he wants to, while acknowledging why he doesn’t do that much anymore. He’s a different filmmaker than he used to be. A Steven Spielberg version of Ready Player One made in 1982 (which isn’t really possible, but you know what I mean) would be much more aligned with the main character of Ready Player One – Wade Watts, an orphan with a horrible home life escaping into a world of his obsessions. The Ready Player One Spielberg made in 2018 is more in line with Halliday (Mark Rylance) – the creator of the digital play world Wade (and nearly everyone else) loses themselves in. In many ways, he is responsible for the situation, but knows how dangerous it all is.

The film is set in 2045, and the world has essentially become a giant trash heap. To escape from the dreary reality of everyday life, people spend most of their time in the Oasis – a giant computer simulation where you can be pretty much whatever you want to be. The creator of the Oasis was Halliday – and he became incredibly rich. When he died – 5 years ago – there was also an announcement. The first person to win three keys – from three different games – would inherit everything from Halliday – who was a lonely, single recluse. In all that time, no one has even won one key – everyone knows you have to win a car race, which is impossible, to get the first key – but no one can do it.

The main character is Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) – who goes by Parzival in the Oasis – and he is obsessed with Halliday and his life, and Halliday’s own obsession (which is basically 1980s pop culture) – and determined to win the keys. Eventually, he will team up with others – the beautiful Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), his best friend Aech (Lena Waithe) and a couple of Japanese brothers – Daito and Sho (Win Morisaki and Philip Zhao). They want one of them to win – because the alternative is that IOI – a greedy corporation, who want to infect the purity of the Oasis and is led by Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) – wins. Sorrento will do anything to win.

You can pick apart the flaws in Ready Player One if you want to – there are quite a few nits to pick here. The storytelling is more than a little sloppy here – there are plot holes, and plot contrivances, weird moments of character motivation (Wade doesn’t seem too broken up by a key death for instance – the next scene, it’s like it never happened). Spielberg’s film usually click along like a fine Swiss watch, but this film is messy. Part of that is by design – the film is awash in 1980s references that crowd nearly every frame in the film, there is switching back and forth from the completely digital world to the real world. The movie is based on a very popular book by Ernest Cline – and I think Spielberg wants to give fans of the book – and those coming from action and spectacle – what they want. He delivers of course – Spielberg directs action better than most, and uses special effects better than just about anyone.

In this vein, there is one sequence – about halfway through the movie – that will go down as one of the best things Spielberg has ever done. This is a sequence where the characters have to go inside the world of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining – and it is an absolute blast. Spielberg, a huge Kubrick admirer – clearly loved recreating parts of The Shining, and twisting other parts of it for this warped version of it – and it something truly special.

I think pointing out those flaws are more than fair in regards to Ready Player One – even if I think part of the reason the film does work is because of its messiness – that doesn’t make up for some of the lazy writing in the film, but I think it does point out the things about the movie that Spielberg found most interesting – the things he wanted to get across, instead of focusing on the story. I do think this is the grown up Spielberg version of the old childlike Spielberg movies (in his excellent review of Ready Player One – the best piece of film criticism I’ve read this year – Bilge Ebiri makes the fascinating case that the dividing line isn’t Schindler’s List, as many think, but actually halfway through the much maligned Hook – when the story changes from a middle aged man trying to recapture his youth to that of a father, who realizes he needs to be there for his kids). I think Spielberg clearly sees parts of himself in both Wade and Halliday (note the glasses on Wade in the real world scenes – he looks kind of like a young Spielberg). Spielberg has always been a movie geek – in love with old movies and their directors. He also clearly sees that it is not the whole world – and that getting lost in it is a way to live a lonely existence.

Ready Player One works as spectacle for me – a fine, fun blockbuster ride by a filmmaker who does this type of thing better than just about anyone. Its storytelling if messy, the message is admittedly muddled – they are selling the film as the biggest crossover event ever, and playing off that nostalgia, while also arguing against that nostalgia. But the whole messy package is wonderfully fascinating to me – and makes me think that even though I don’t think Ready Player One will go as one of Spielberg’s best films, it may well become one of his most studied films. Spielberg isn’t quite the “creator who hates his creation” as one person referenced in the movie is – but he has his doubts.

                                                    

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Movie Review: Pacific Rim: Uprising

Pacific Rim Uprising ** / *****

Directed by: Steven S. DeKnight.

Written by: Emily Carmichael & Kira Snyder and Steven S. DeKnight and T.S. Nowlin based on characters created by Travis Beacham.

Starring: John Boyega (Jake Pentecost), Scott Eastwood (Nate Lambert), Cailee Spaeny (Amara Namani), Rinko Kikuchi (Mako Mori), Charlie Day (Dr. Newton Geiszler), Burn Gorman (Dr. Hermann Gottlieb),Tian Jing (Liwen Shao), Adria Arjona (Jules Reyes), Jin Zhang (Marshal Quan), Karan Brar (Suresh), Ivanna Sakhno (Vik), Mackenyu (Ryoichi), Shyrley Rodriguez (Renata), Levi Meaden (Ilya), Rahart Adams (Tahima Shaheen), Zhu Zhu (Juen), Nick E. Tarabay (Sonny).

You can count me as one of the people who really liked Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim – a film that I thought married spectacle and emotion quite well – had some truly remarkable scenes, and was basically blockbuster filmmaking at its finest – even with a bland lead. Unfortunately, you can pretty much flip everything about Pacific Rim around, and you get the sequel. The lead this time is charming and fun and played by John Boyega, who is anything but bland. If nothing else, the movie proves Boyega is a true movie star – he carries the movie on the basis of his charisma alone, because there really isn’t much else here.

Set 10 years after the first film – the war is now over, and the world has recovered for the most part. Boyega plays Jake Pentecost – son of the Idris Elba character in the first film (you remember him – he cancelled the apocalypse) – who is now basically making his living as a thief – stealing part off of the old jaegers to sell to idiots who want to make their own. One thing leads to another, and soon Pentecost is forced back into the jaeger pilot program he fled years ago – this time with a very smart teenage girl, Cailee Spaeny in tow – even as it appears like the jaegers pilot program is all but done. Soon, there will be drones to run the jaegers – and besides, without the kaiju (those giant monsters) – who needs them anyway. You can guess what happens from there – and you’d pretty much be right. Drones go crazy, the kaiju return – and everyone has to mount up, and do the same thing all over again.

This time, the film is not directed by Del Toro, and his touch is sorely missing. Steven S. DeKnight is making his feature directing debut – and the direction is more workmanlike than anything. Yes, there are still giant robots fighting giant monsters, but the film lacks anything beyond that. It takes a long time before we really get to see those fights – and when we do, in the last act, it’s pretty much continuous, monotonous noise.

The cast of the first film was effortlessly diverse – bringing an international cast together with ease. This time, every choice seems more cynical – the first film was a much bigger hit in China than in North America, so they throw in a bunch of Chinese actors. In theory, this is a good thing (Asian representation in American movies is abysmal) – but the film basically feels like just sticking them in there is good enough – they don’t actually give them anything interesting to do. The comic relief of the first film – played by Charlie Day and Burn Gorman – is pretty tired this time around. The most interesting characters from the first film are either dead, or basically cameos (I love Rinko Kikuchi in almost everything I’ve seen her in – she does nothing here).

Basically, Pacific Rim: Uprising pretty much encapsulates everything that is wrong with sequel culture in Hollywood movies – a cynical attempt to recapture a movie that made money the first time, without really understanding what made that movie something special. A hollow copy of a very good original.

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Movie Review: Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Roar Uthaug.

Written by: Geneva Robertson-Dworet & Alastair Siddons.

Starring: Alicia Vikander (Lara Croft), Dominic West (Lord Richard Croft), Walton Goggins (Mathias Vogel), Daniel Wu (Lu Ren), Kristin Scott Thomas (Ana Miller), Derek Jacobi (Mr. Yaffe), Hannah John-Kamen (Sophie), Nick Frost (Max).

 

A part of me admires the new Tomb Raider, which is, of course, a completely unnecessary and unasked for reboot of a movie franchise that died 15 years ago, and hasn’t once been brought up in a conversation since. All those years ago, it was Angelina Jolie as the ass-kicking, brilliant Lara Croft, who had to shoot people and solve puzzles in equal doses. Now it’s Alicia Vikander, who turns out to be shockingly perfect for the role, and carries the movie much farther than she should be able to. Throw in decent action direction by Roar Uthaug (getting his wish that was evident in his 2015 Norwegian film The Wave – which was to come to Hollywood to make big studio movies), who is refreshing more inspired by the likes of Spielberg than most current action directors, who seem to want to be Michael Bay for some reason (if you want to be generous, say Paul Greengrass instead). All this carries the movie farther than it should, considering how poorly plotted the film is, and how any character not named Lara Croft is basically one dimensional. Still, for this type of film, it’s better than it probably should be.

 

When the film opens, Lara isn’t the globe-trotting, ass-kicking, puzzle solver yet – but a young woman living in London, still angry at her father (Dominic West) for disappearing seven years previous. She could have him declared dead, and get a boatload of money out of the deal – he was very rich – but instead, she prefers to be poor – making her living as a bike courier (an early highlight is a terrific bike sequence with Lara as the fox in a fox hunt). But soon, Lara discovers a secret room of her fathers, full of research on Himiko – a Japanese queen, with secret, deadly powers. The video her dad left tells her to destroy everything about Himiko and move on with her life – so, of course, she does the exact opposite. She ends up teaming up with a drunken boat captain, Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), whose father also disappeared along with Lara’s, to travel to the remote, uninhabited Japanese island their fathers were travelling to all those years ago. What they find there is scary – not least because of Vogel (Walton Goggins), who has been stuck there for years, trying to find Himiko’s tomb, and whose bosses won’t let him leave until he does.

 

The film is basically a 1980s style action adventure film in the Indiana Jones vein, with Vikander proving herself to be a wonderful action star. Her chiseled body is admired throughout the film, but not in a creepy, leering sexual way. The same goes for her relationship with Wu’s Lu Ren – they have instant chemistry, but it’s not sexual – he’s not there to be a love interest, but their respect for each other is mutual. Throughout the sequences on the island, Vikander has to run, jump, swim, fight and shoot a bow and arrow, all of which she does so with style and grace. She even manages to sell the films more badly manipulative emotional moments, by not overplaying them. An Oscar winner for Ex Machina (what’s that you say, she won for The Danish Girl – sorry, you’re wrong), Vikander is proof that sometimes having a great actor in the lead role of an action movie can go a long way to saving it.

 

Basically though, the film eventually wears out its welcome. The film is rather obviously plotted, and really does drag to a halt whenever the characters have to sit around and talk about what’s happening, what just happened, or what will happen. Characters who are not Lara often get good introductions, but then the film doesn’t do much with them – witness the way they shunt Lu Ren to the side once they reach the island, in favor of Goggins’ villain – who makes a big impression in his opening scenes, and then not much afterwards.

 

Yet, when the film is basically Vikander and action sequences, it works just about as well as a film like this could. Yes, you can tell it’s based on a video game, because it kind of has that structure to it. But those moments work well enough that I’d look forward to another Vikander action vehicle – even a sequel to this – much more than I did for the second Lara Croft movie with Jolie all those years ago.

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Movie Review: Death Wish

Death Wish ** / *****

Directed by: Eli Roth.

Written by: Joe Carnahan based on the novel by Brian Garfield and the screenplay by Wendell Mayes.

Starring: Bruce Willis (Paul Kersey), Vincent D'Onofrio (Frank Kersey), Elisabeth Shue (Lucy Kersey), Camila Morrone (Jordan Kersey), Dean Norris (Detective Kevin Raines), Beau Knapp (Knox), Kimberly Elise (Detective Leonore Jackson), Len Cariou (Ben), Jack Kesy (The Fish), Ronnie Gene Blevins (Joe), Kirby Bliss Blanton (Bethany).

 

I can easily see a way that a version of Death Wish could be updated, and relevant, for 2018 – but the version directed by Eli Roth is not that film. The 1974 original starred Charles Bronson, as a man pushed too far, after his wife and daughter victims of a home invasion – the wife raped and murdered, the daughter raped and traumatized – Bronson decides to strike back at the “animals” who did this too his family – even if he doesn’t really know who those people are. That spoke to audiences in 1974 – when violent crime in America really was on the rise, and people in major cities were afraid to go out at night. In 2018, violent crime is actually down – the lowest it’s been in decades – but there are places (Fox News, the NRA among them) who still want to make people afraid – it’s good for business. I think a new version of Death Wish should at least address that. But this movie doesn’t really do that – it is basically a feature length version of the NRA tagline “Nothing will stop a bad guy with a gun, except a good guy with a gun”.

 

This time the movie takes place in Chicago, not New York (it’s no coincidence, they’ve picked the most violent city in America), and Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is now a surgeon, not an architect (or an accountant, as he was in the original novel). He has a beautiful wife (Elisabeth Shue) and teenage daughter (Camila Morrone) about to go off to college. The same basic thing happens as in the original – a trio of thugs break into the house when Paul isn’t there – his wife ends up dead, his daughter in a coma (thankfully, the movie spares us of either of them getting raped, although the threat is certainly there with the daughter). Paul ends up getting himself a gun, and going out onto the streets to get revenge on all the bad people out there. Two detectives, Raines and Jackson (Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise) try to find out who attacked his family. When Kersey visits Raines at work one day, and sees a bulletin board full of open homicides, he is assured that most of those crimes are gang related – “asshole on asshole” crimes that won’t be solved. But Kersey’s case is different. He doesn’t say why, but then again, he doesn’t need to.

 

The movie gets bloody – as you expect from a movie from Roth. He lingers over one scene of torture in particular, but all of the violence in the film is over-the-top in how bloody and ridiculous it can be. Roth cannot seem to decide if he wants to go full on exploitation and fun with the violence (hell, there’s a scene in which one of the bad guy literally gets hit in the head with a bowling ball) or he wants to make something where the violence hurts – where you feel it in the audience.

 

The original novel that Death Wish is based on is actually very anti-vigilante justice – the novel’s Paul Kersey essentially goes insane, and by the end of the novel is killing unarmed kids because he doesn’t like the way they look. He even wrote a sequel after the original movie came out to make his stance even more explicit (that book was turned into a much better, underseen movie by James Wan in 2007 – although it doesn’t have all that much to do with the novel either). The original movie at least pays lip service to being anti-vigilante as well – the cop investigating the crimes figures out who is behind them, and wants to arrest him – but his hands are tied by the higher ups. No matter what Roth says in interviews about the film (and by the way, whenever I read interviews with Roth, I am always struck by the feeling that I would really like the movie he thought he made – it just rarely matches the movie he actually made), that’s basically gone here. There is one good sequence in the film – a montage of Kersey the surgeon removing bullets from shooting victims, and Kersey the vigilante dad loading his gun that points out the absurdity of the two sides of him), but the film never really delves into that. There are talk radio montages that debate the killings Kersey does – when he becomes a social media celebrity the “Grim Reaper” because of YouTube videos of him in action.

 

I think much of this undercut though by the fact that unlike the original novel or film, this Kersey actually does track down those responsible for hurting his family. It’s harder to question that sort of justice being meted out against people we know are guilty, and have seen do horrible things. This Kersey is far easier to understand and root for.

 

Willis is probably the wrong actor to play this role – but then again, so was Bronson (originally, the 1974 film was supposed to be directed by Sidney Lumet, and Jack Lemmon was to star – Bronson always said that he thought the role should have gone to Dustin Hoffman – although, Hoffman did a version of it in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs in 1971). Willis is an action hero, so we immediately accept him as a killing machine and a hero. The film is essentially a fantasy version for every civilian with a gun, who knows – just KNOWS – that if he was at that school, that concert, that mall when that asshole started shooting everyone with an AR-15, that he would run in, and put an end to it. There was a possibility that a new Death Wish could reflect on, or at least mirror, the America that exists today. This isn’t that film.

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Movie Review: Black Panther

Black Panther **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Ryan Coogler.

Written by: Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole based on the Marvel comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Starring: Chadwick Boseman (T'Challa / Black Panther), Michael B. Jordan (Erik Killmonger), Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Martin Freeman (Everett K. Ross), Daniel Kaluuya (W'Kabi), Andy Serkis (Ulysses Klaue / Klaw), Angela Bassett (Ramonda), Forest Whitaker (Zuri), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Winston Duke (M'Baku), Sterling K. Brown (N'Jobu), John Kani (King T'Chaka), Florence Kasumba (Ayo), David S. Lee (Limbani), Atandwa Kani (Young T'Chaka).

 

With Black Panther, director Ryan Coogler doesn’t really re-invent the Marvel movie – but he finds room inside of its structure to create something unique. The film hits the story beats you expect any superhero origin movie to, and yet it does so in new and different ways – basically because Coogler fully embraces what it is about Black Panther than makes the character, and his origins, different from the superheroes that came before. He does a better job than any director before him in this series in building a new, unique world and from making a movie that doesn’t look like all the other films. I have mentioned before that basically directors of Marvel movies act like television directors – they are brought in to make movies off a template. Coogler, more than anyone before him, ignores that template and does his own thing, even while respecting the overall universe his film is in. He doesn’t blow up the Marvel universe, as much as he expands it – and in the process, he’s made arguably the best film in the MCU so far.

 

We were introduced to Black Panther – aka T’Challa, crown Prince of the African nation of Wakanda, in Captain America: Civil War – but we really didn’t learn much about him, other than he was on a mission of vengeance to catch the man who detonated a bomb that killed his father – King T’Chaka. This film takes place in the aftermath of that death, as T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns to Wakanda to officially be crowned King. In order to do that, he has to go through rituals, which include allowing any of the members of the other tribes in Wakanda with Royal Blood, to challenge him in ritual combat – something that will arise again later in the film, with the return of Wakanda’s prodigal son – a kid from Oakland known as Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). Killmonger instantly becomes the best villain in the MCU so far, because he’s really the first villain in the 18 films who you can look at and actually think he’s making valid points. He isn’t a power hungry madman hell-bent on world domination – at least not for his own purposes. He, reasonably, thinks that Wakanda could have helped “people who look like you” across the globe who have been oppressed forever, but instead Wakanda has sat back, and stayed out of everything. You can disagree with Killmonger’s methods – which is basically to kill anyone who doesn’t agree with him – and still think he makes a valid point. Smartly, the movie knows this, and doesn’t try to hide that fact.

 

Before the movie gets there though, it does a wonderful job at world building in terms of Wakanda – who we get our first real glimpse of here. Wakanda is a rich country (because of their wealth of Vibranium, the strongest metal on earth, that they have used to become a technological wonder), posing as a poor one, and the film’s art direction is a brilliant mixture of the futuristic and the ancient. Coogler and his collaborators have taken aspects of many African cultures and countries, and combined them to create something both recognizable and unique. This is clearly the best looking film the MCU has had to date – with amazing production design and costumes, to go along with the expected flair of visual effects, and expert cinematography by Rachel Morrison.

 

The movie could have spent its entire runtime simply on the inner workings of Wakanda itself – it certainly has more interesting characters than any other Marvel movie to date. The film has many strong, female characters (strong in multiple ways), like Nakia (Luptia Nyong’o), as T’Challa’s ex (who he is still in love with), who has sentiments similar to Killmonger’s, but a different outlook on how to achieve them. T’Challa’s little sister Shuri (Letita Wright) – my favorite character in the film other than Killmonger – who is essentially a cooler version of James Bond’s Q - and Okoye (Danai Gurira), the General of the all-female elite army, tasked with protecting Wakanda, and its king. That doesn’t even mention some of the rival tribe leaders - M'Baku (Winston Duke), who heads up the mountain tribe, who has kept their distance from Wakanda and its technology, and Daniel Kaluuya as W’Kabi, more open to Killmonger’s ideas than anyone. When Killmonger comes to Wakanda, he gets as far as he does not because he convinces every one of his ideas, but because the seeds of discourse are already there – he’s simply exploiting them.

 

By design, Boseman’s T’Challa/Black Panther is pretty much the dullest character in the film. He is conflicted, of course, because he wants to be a good man and a good king – and it’s difficult to be both. Like in Thor: Ragnorok, the film’s main conflict arises because of the beloved patriarch’s hidden sins and lies, that expose the myths of their country being noble as just that – myths. This is a thread that has run through at least some of the MCU films, and its rather daring – it’s even hinted at in the Captain America movies, that the ultimate symbol of American patriotism, no longer stands for the same things the country does – but it hasn’t gone wholly there (yet).

 

If this sounds like a lot for any one movie to handle, it is – and if I had a complaint about Black Panther, it’s that it rushes a little too much through some of it in order to get to the things that any Marvel movie needs – action scenes, car chases and a CGI generated big battle at the end. Coogler handles this better than most directors – a highlighted is a terrific fight sequence in a casino, followed by an excellent car chase – but even I have to admit that by the time the final battle introduced battle rhinos, it had gone perhaps a touch too far over-the-top.

 

Yet the movie remains satisfying until the end – giving Michael B. Jordan one of the best last lines a movie villain has ever had, which tops off one of the great performances the superhero genre has ever seen. In the span of three films – Fruitvale Station, Creed and now Black Panther, Coogler has become one of the best directors working, and shows everyone who to make huge budget movies, in the biggest franchise around, and still be personal movies. Yes, I hope he escapes franchise mode at some point – but he’s still shown everyone else exactly how this type of film should be done.

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Movie Review: Den of Thieves

Den of Thieves ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Christian Gudegast.

Written by: Christian Gudegast and Paul Scheuring.

Starring: Gerard Butler (Nick Flanagan), Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson (Levi Enson), Pablo Schreiber (Ray Merrimen), O'Shea Jackson Jr. (Donnie), Evan Jones (Bosco), Cooper Andrews (Mack), Maurice Compte (Benny 'Borracho' Megalob), Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau (Tony Z Zapata), Dawn Olivieri (Debbie O'Brien), Lewis Tan (Actor), Mo McRae (Gus Henderson), Meadow Williams (Holly), Brian Van Holt (Murph), Max Holloway (Bas).

 

If you’re going to steal, you may as well steal from the best. Den of Thieves is a L.A. set bank robbery film that desperately wants to be Michael Mann’s Heat, but of course cannot be, because nothing can be that great. It’s a film that flashes back and forth between the crooks and the cops, drawing parallels between the two of them, wanting to put them all on the same, morally dubious footing. The problem is that writer/director Christian Gudegast is no Michael Mann (no shame in that, no one is) –and he isn’t a William Friedkin either (To Live and Die in L.A. is another key influence here). Unlike those two directors, Gudegast cannot pull off the tricky balancing act between cops and criminals like they did, and he gets bogged down in a twisty, turny plot that wants to (and admittedly does) succeed in pulling the rug out from under us. Mann and Friedkin didn’t need to do that, because their films had some much else going for it. You almost wish that Gudegast had abandoned some of his delusions of grandeur here, and made what he clearly really wanted to – a pure heist movie. That’s where the movie is at its best. It’s when it strains to be serious, that the film feels like the 140 minute film that it is.

 

The film opens with a robbery by a professional crew, basically wearing paramilitary gear, as the rob an armored truck making an early morning donut stop. They don’t want the money inside the truck – they hadn’t picked any up yet, it’s empty – they want to truck itself. Things don’t go precisely as planned, and they end up killing a half dozen cops or so, but they get out. The crew is led by Merriman (Pablo Schreiber), along with Lieutenant Levi (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) and his driver, Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) – among others. Because of all the dead cops, the crime draws the attention of the Major Crimes unit, led by Nick (Gerard Butler), whose crew of cops is basically a criminal gang itself – they seemingly operate with no barriers at all, have lots of money, and if they feel like it, will kidnap and beat-up suspects. Eventually it becomes clear that Nick knows Merriman is planning something, and Merriman knows he knows, and the two basically engage in a dick measuring context to see who will back down first.

 

There is a lot I liked about Den of Thieves. The robbery sequences are well handled, and the various shootouts work better than most of their kind. The performances are, for the most part, quite good. Pablo Schreiber is particular is excellent as Merriman, and with this alongside Straight Outta Compton and Ingrid Goes West, I’m willing to say now that O’Shea Jackson Jr. is a better actor than his father. Even Gerard Butler, an actor I don’t normally like, and 50 Cent – who can come across as emotionless – basically work here. While the film is way too long, it’s never boring.

 

I do think the film strains too much for seriousness, that doesn’t make much sense. You could jettison everything involving Butler’s wife and kids (which plays like Butler and company doing a juvenile version of the scenes in Heat, where Pacino and his wife’s marriage collapses, and he takes his TV) and not lose a thing. Likewise, you could lose a scene involving 50 Cent taking his daughter’s prom date to the garage for a taking to (you don’t see that daughter before than scene, or after) which is Gudegast basically trying to outdo a similar scene in Bad Boys II. Whenever the film strays too far from its main narrative it becomes more than a little awkward and stilted.

There is much to like about Den of Thieves, but I don’t think the film ever completely comes together. It’s trying too hard to do too much, and as a result, it doesn’t do any of it particularly well. This is Gudegast’s debut film, and if nothing else, it proves he has good taste in influences. Now, he needs to do something more with them, other than simply try and copy them.

 

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Movie Review: The Commuter

The Commuter ** / *****

Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra.

Written by: Byron Willinger & Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle. 

Starring: Liam Neeson (Michael MacCauley), Vera Farmiga (Joanna), Patrick Wilson (Alex Murphy), Jonathan Banks (Walt), Sam Neill (Captain Hawthorne), Elizabeth McGovern (Karen MacCauley),  Killian Scott (Dylan), Shazad Latif (Vince), Andy Nyman (Tony), Clara Lago (Eva), Roland Møller (Jackson), Florence Pugh (Gwen), Dean-Charles Chapman (Danny MacCauley), Ella-Rae Smith (Sofia).

 

The Commuter is the latest entry in the Liam Neeson punches people genre – a genre that hasn’t really produced any good movies, but have basically been decent time wasters. He is teamed up with director Jaume Collet-Serra for the fourth time, but although I know I have seen the previous three – Unknown, Non-Stop and Run All Night – I also couldn’t give you a detailed breakdown of anything that happens in any of them (I don’t even remember the premise of Unknown if I’m being completely honest). So, walking into The Commuter, I really didn’t expect all that much – I was basically going because I commute every day on the train myself, so I kind of wanted to see how they made by every day life into an action movie. The film is a somewhat entertaining time waster for the first 70-80 minutes or so, but really does fly off the rails (literally) in the last act. It’s also got a somewhat downbeat, depressing tone to it, which it makes it harder for it to operate as a guilty pleasure than any movie involving Liam Neeson punching people on a train should be.

 

In the film, Neeson plays Michael MacCauley, a one-time cop, who gave that up to sell insurance – presumably because it was a safer and more lucrative job that being a cop was after his savings were wiped out in the 2008 Financial Crisis. Things finally seem to be close to be back on track again – his son is about to go to college, his marriage is basically okay, and while they aren’t rich, they are getting by. And then, one day, he gets fired – and his severance package isn’t even a payout, but rather an insurance policy (which, to an insurance company, is probably cheaper to get). He doesn’t know how he’s going to pay for anything, he doesn’t know how he’s going to tell his wife he’s out of a job – and someone just stole his cell phone. He’s trying to piece this altogether as he gets on his regular commuter train, from New York to somewhere outside the city – when an attractive woman (Vera Farmiga) sits down across from him. She tells him that if he can find someone on this train – someone who doesn’t belong – and places a tracking chip on their bag, he will get $100K. To prove she’s serious, she tells him to go to the bathroom, and find $25K hidden there. He does, and by doing so, essentially agrees to the terms of the deal. All he knows is that the person goes by the name of Prynne, and is getting off at Cold Springs – the last stop on the train.

 

The films opening scenes are filled with information we are sure will be relevant later – a news story about a city planner who recently killed himself, a train car with malfunctioning A/C, recognizable actors (Patrick Wilson, Sam Neill) in apparently meaningless roles, etc. And, of course, those all do become relevant along the commute – as Michael is able to piece together more and more of the story, and realizes just how in over his head he has gotten.

 

The film starts with an intriguing premise – and its best scene is the one between Neeson and Farmiga. It’s basically a premise like out of Richard Matheson’s The Box – do something, and you’ll get money, and someone you don’t know will get hurt. But the film really isn’t interested in that moral question – rather it just wants to get Neeson unravelling the mystery, and punching people. Like Non-Stop, it places him in an enclosed space – and sets him up to be the fall guy should something go wrong.

 

I enjoyed much of the movie, on its very limited level. Neeson is good at this type of film – he should be, he’s done enough of them – and its kind of fun to see him unravel the mystery, and get an applause moment by giving someone who works at Goldman Sachs the finger (the film knows it audience is basically working class white people, who whether they Trump or Sanders, hates Goldman Sachs). The film though feels the need to go from implausible and fun, to downright ridiculous in its last act – somehow even more so AFTER Neeson decouples a car from the train.

 

These movies are designed to be cheap, disposable counter programming in the cold winter months – something for adults to go to once they’ve seen the Oscar contenders, or for those who don’t give a crap about those Oscar contenders. You probably already know if you’ll like the movie or not, based on your feelings on the Liam Neeson punches people genre. There are no surprises here.

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Movie Review: Bright

Bright * / *****

Directed by: David Ayer.   

Written by: Max Landis.

Starring: Will Smith (Daryl Ward), Joel Edgerton (Nick Jakoby), Noomi Rapace (Leilah), Lucy Fry (Tikka), Édgar Ramírez (Kandomere), Ike Barinholtz (Gary Harmeyer), Happy Anderson (Montehugh), Kenneth Choi (Agent Coleman).

 

I’ve defended Netflix for most of 2017, as it certainly seems like the streaming service has taken its lumps from critics and cinephiles who wish that some of their films got theatrical releases, instead of showing up directly onto their website. Sure, films like Okja, Mudbound and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) would not feel out of place in art house theaters around the country – but I understand that’s not really Netflix’s business model, and say that the problem isn’t that Netflix is putting these films on their site – but that no other studio in town would finance them in the first place. Any studio could have bought Mudbound for instance – but none of them did, except for Netflix. The site has also been a boon to documentaries as well. Sure, I have nits to pick with them – they still haven’t figured out how to make their original movies into events like they have with their TV shows. Sadly, the first real blockbuster Netflix has attempted – that has apparently gotten the views – is the worst Netflix original (of any kind) that I have seen so far. David Ayer’s Bright is a confused and confusing mess of a film, with big writing, bad acting and bad everything else bringing the film down to ridiculous levels.

 

The film is directed by David Ayer – who before he made last year’s horrible Suicide Squad, had made any number of films about the tough cops of the LAPD – some great (he wrote Training Day and Dark Blue, and wrote and directed End of Watch), some not so great (Sabotage, Harsh Times). With Bright, he has essentially returned to the genre – except in some sort of weird alternate universe, which humans lives alongside orcs and fairies, and other strange creatures. The screenplay, by Max Landis, tries very, very hard to draw racial parallels to the way orcs are treated in this world, and how African Americans are treated in ours (a rather insulting comparison, if you think about it) – none of it really works.

 

In the film, Will Smith stars as Daryl Ward, a veteran beat cop who has been teamed up with Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton) – the first ever Orc cop on the LAPD. The opening scene sees Daryl get shot, and Nick failing to capture the criminal who did it – everyone thinks that he let the shooter get away because it was another orc, and orcs cannot be trusted. Everyone wants Nick out – and go to Daryl to try and help them do it. Then, through a series of events too complicated to comprehend, the two partners essentially have to go on the run together – they have a wand, and everyone wants the wand, and everyone will kill for the wand – including their own fellow cops.

 

I wish I could work up much hatred for Bright – hatred at least makes things interesting – but I really can’t. To be honest, I was pretty much bored from beginning to end of the film. The cast is full of talented stars – not least of which is Smith, who you could normally count on to deliver great amounts of charm in his roles, but now just seems to be coasting. The rest of the cast is wasted – with not even the great Edgerton being able to leave an impact on the film.

 

Up until Bright, I could defend the choices Netflix was making by saying that were funding the kind of films no one else would – they were daring, and edgy – and even if they didn’t all work, you admire them for going for it. Bright is the exact opposite of those films in pretty much every way.  

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Movie Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star Wars: The Last Jedi **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Rian Johnson.

Written by: Rian Johnson based on characters created by George Lucas.

Starring: Daisy Ridley (Rey), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), John Boyega (Finn), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico), Carrie Fisher (Leia), Andy Serkis (Supreme Leader Snoke), Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux), Laura Dern (Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo), Benicio Del Toro (DJ), Gwendoline Christie (Captain Phasma), Lupita Nyong'o (Maz Kanata), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Jimmy Vee (R2-D2).

 

JJ Abrams was the right choice to direct The Force Awakens, because the number one job that film had being the first Star Wars movies since the hated prequels (which I don’t hate, but let’s not get into that) was to get fans back on board with the franchise. If they hated it like they did the prequels, the new series was sunk – not financially of course, but in terms of having any real impact. And for the most part, Abrams delivered in spades – basically giving Star Wars fans everything they wanted from their old, beloved characters, and introducing great new characters t the universe as well. When the only real complaint some overgrown man babies had about the film was “Ew, a girl can’t be this good at being a Jedi”, you know you pretty much hit the nail on the head. But in order for the series to grow, to be something more than simply fan service – which can be satisfying and fun, but isn’t overly daring – you needed a different filmmaker to come in, and do something more with the series. And that is what Rian Johnson has done with The Last Jedi. I understand there are some fans who dislike some of the things Johnson did in this film – and unlike the whining over Rey being a girl, I actually get it this time. But I loved the direction Johnson took with this film, I loved the misdirection’s, and subversions of expectations, and even the tangents that ultimately prove fruitless in terms of the plot, because they are fruitful in other ways. The Last Jedi is the first Star Wars film since I was a child that actually, legitimately surprised me – and that was thrilling to experience in this franchise again.

 

The film pretty much picks up exactly where the last one left off – with the Resistance scattered a little bit, and the First Order in hot pursuit. Most of the Resistance is in one fleet, and they are trying to flee – but the First Order, led by General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) isn’t letting them get away – and shocking, they’ve now developed the ability to track them even when they go through hyperspace. The Resistance cannot escape, and cannot destroy them – unless they come up with a miracle – which is what leads Finn (John Boyega) to team up with new character Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), to try and do just that. Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) as made contact with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) – but he doesn’t want anything to do with the Jedi. More dangerously, Rey is communicating with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), becoming increasingly convinced that he can still be saved – although the risk is still there that she could turn herself.

 

That’s about all I’ll talk about the plot of the film. Like The Empire Strikes Back – the original middle chapter (and still, the best Star Wars film ever made), the film has multiple plot threads, and multiple locations, playing out simultaneously, and Rian Johnson has to juggle them all. For the most part, he succeeds, and if there’s a clunky transition or two, that’s to be expected. The film is probably too long – it does run two-and-a-half hours, but it’s hard to think of what you would cut (I know a lot of people will say trim back Finn and Rose’s adventure, but those people are wrong).

 

The film is not subtle about its themes of the past, and letting it go (perhaps this is really what fans don’t like – the idea of letting go of something from the childhoods that they have held sacred for years). But it’s not as simple as that. All the characters in the movie – both good and bad – want to build a new future, but they don’t all look at the past in the same way, Kylo Ren wants to burn it all to the ground – only from the ashes can something new be built. But Rey respects the past, wants to learn from it and move forward. Luke isn’t ready for that – he is mired in regret for the mistakes he has made in the past – with Kylo Ren, yes, but also in his abandoning of the Jedi in general. By the end of the film, the past has been mostly destroyed – this is a series about the new characters wholly now – and hopefully they’ve learned from the mistakes of the previous generation. (The film is also about how a group of strong, intelligent women try to get a bunch of idiot man children to grow up and listen, although they never do – perhaps that’s why some fans hate it?).

 

The film does contain everything you could want in a Star Wars film – there is a killer Light Saber battle that involves Rey, Kylo Ren, and others, which ranks among the best in the series, and more interesting world building, and special effects. There are also some new, mostly good characters – the best of which is Rose (who of course some fans hate, but that has nothing to do with the fact she’s a woman, don’t be silly), but I enjoyed Benicio Del Toro as well as a Thief. The film is also filled with humor for the first time in a long time for a Star Wars film (I don’t know if every writer who came along assumed they had to be as bad at writing dialogue as Lucas, which is why the films have lacked in jokes, but it was a welcome addition. It delivers everything you could want in a Star Wars film – and then some.

 

What I really liked about the film though – what makes it the best Star Wars film for me since Empire – is the fact that Johnson is deliberately undermining your expectations through. Abrams setup so many things in Force Awakens, and then had them play out precisely how you expect them to, precisely how they have precisely, and Johnson pretty much does the opposite. The setups are still there, but this time, it doesn’t turn out the way you think it would, or perhaps how you think it should. If that sticks in your craw, so be it – but for me, it made this film feel genuinely exciting. I didn’t know what was going to happen moment to moment, scene to scene, and that made the film more alive – and also ending up deepening everything else about the film. If we really are going to get one new Star Wars film a year for the foreseeable future (and given how much money Disney spent on the franchise, we’re going to), we need people to take some risks, take some chances – even if that means pissing off some fans.

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Classic Movie Review: The Warriors (1979)

The Warriors

Directed by: Walter Hill.   

Written by: David Shaber and Walter Hill based on the novel by Sol Yurick. 

Starring: Michael Beck (Swan), James Remar (Ajax), Dorsey Wright (Cleon), Brian Tyler (Snow), David Harris (Cochise), Tom McKitterick (Cowboy), Marcelino Sánchez (Rembrandt), Terry Michos (Vermin), Deborah Van Valkenburgh (Mercy), Roger Hill (Cyrus), David Patrick Kelly (Luther), Lynne Thigpen (D.J.).

 

If nobody told you that The Warriors was controversial in 1979, you would never be able to tell it was, watching in in 2017. This vision of gang life in the “near future” in essentially an escapist fantasy, with simple characters that director co-writer/director Walter Hill gives a romantic view – comparing these street gangs with the fighters in Ancient Greece (I watched the directors cut, which highlights this comparison in the beginning – and adds unnecessary comic book panels at various points). Apparently in 1979, this film riled up real street gangs – and inspired violence at screenings, although the extent of which seems to have been exaggerated. Hill says the reason that young people responded to the film so strongly, was because it was a film that didn’t judge or condemn its street gang members – which is true. But the film doesn’t really show us the gang doing anything that we could judge them for. This is a street gang whose whole existence seems to be about being a street gang – with none of the crime that goes along with it. They don’t rob anyone, steal anything or beat up anyone who isn’t a rival gang member – or a cop trying to keep them down. They aren’t racist – all the gangs seem to be fully integrated. What precisely their purpose in being a gang is unclear – they just are.

 

The plot of The Warriors is simple. The title gang is from Coney Island, who come to Manhattan (I think, they’ll end up more than one of the boroughs however) for a huge gang summit. The leader of the biggest gang is killed during his inspirational gang speech, and The Warriors are framed for his murder – their leader essentially beaten to death in the melee. The rest of the gang somehow escape though – and head out on the run. They need to make it make to their own turf, and quick, because word has gotten out (via a DJ, who I assume is the official DJ of gangland, I guess) that they are dead meat. Through the streets and subways, this gang has to fight their way home. There is some infighting – Swan (Michael Beck) and Ajax (James Remar) don’t agree on which one of them should be the leader – but mainly, the eight of them stick together. They even pick up a girl along the way (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) – mainly it appears so that Swan can say misogynistic things to her until she falls in love with him.

 

It’s hard to see the controversy this movie inspired today – everything about its themes, characters and dialogue is so simplistic, straight forward and frankly, dull, that it’s tough to take it seriously as a film about, well, pretty much anything. Yet, the film has become a cult item – something many people still gravitate to. And, to be honest, there is still value to the film. Most of that comes from Hill’s direction – this is a fluid action movies, with a great pace, and a camera that follows, often at length, as these characters go to the dark places in New York. Hill, who has always been a fine director of action (and, for me anyway, not much else), knows precisely what he’s doing in the staging of the action sequences – most of which have an extended buildup, and then are over quickly. As a purely visual experience, I enjoyed The Warriors.

 

As anything approaching social commentary, the film fails though. It presents a New York gang scene that never was, and is never going to be – sanitizing it to the point of making it dull. No, the film didn’t judge its characters – and maybe the gangs of the time liked seeing themselves as heroes. But they’re hardly even that in The Warriors – more than anything, they are bland, boring, one-dimensional characters in a film that works as a visual experience, and not much else.

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Movie Review: Justice League

Justice League ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Zack Snyder.

Written by: Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon and Zack Snyder based on characters created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and William Moulton Marston and Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel.

Starring:Ben Affleck (Bruce Wayne / Batman), Henry Cavill (Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Gal Gadot (Diana Prince / Wonder Woman), Ezra Miller (Barry Allen / The Flash), Jason Momoa (Arthur Curry / Aquaman), Ray Fisher (Victor Stone / Cyborg), Jeremy Irons (Alfred Pennyworth), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), Connie Nielsen (Hippolyta), J. K. Simmons (James Gordon), Ciarán Hinds (Steppenwolf), Joe Morton (Silas Stone), Amber Heard (Mera), Billy Crudup (Henry Allen).

 

Justice League is a big, entertaining mess of a film from beginning to end. It would be easy to find fault with much – perhaps even most of it – and rip it to shreds in a review. The movie has a lot of problems – the two biggest ones are probably that it forgets to tell a coherent story for most of its runtime and the second is that the villain is awful in almost every conceivable way imaginable – and yet, oddly enough, I kind of liked the movie. It is a step up from last year’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad – the second and third film in the DCU, but a massive step down from this year’s Wonder Woman – one of the best comic movies in years. The movie doesn’t really work in any conventional sense, and yet it’s all kind of fun – and actually, for the first time, has me thinking that perhaps DC can pull all this crap together someday into a decent series. It ain’t there yet – but it’s getting better.

 

The film takes place in the aftermath of Batman v. Superman – with Superman still dead, Wonder Woman still hiding, and Batman wondering what he needs to do to protect humanity. What he wants is to assemble a team – a justice league if you will – of people with special powers. That includes Wonder Woman of course – but he’s also got his eye on teenager Barry Allen aka the Flash who can run really fast, Arthur Curry aka Aquaman, who swims a lot, and can speak to fish, and Victor Stone aka Cyborg who is, well, a cyborg. Batman needs this team together – and pronto – because an ancient villain has return to earth. This is Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hings) – who invaded earth thousands of years ago with the help of three boxes (please don’t ask) – and is back again. Last time, he only lost because everyone on earth banded together to fight him. Now, with Superman dead, everyone on earth is demoralized. All Steppenwolf has to do is assemble the boxes, and he’s won.

 

I said earlier, it would be easy to rip Justice League to shreds in a review – and it would be. A lot about this film doesn’t really work. Out of the three new additions to the team – only Ezra Miller’s Flash is an unabashed success – I’d watch a movie of just him right now, as Miller brings something that has been missing from the previous Zack Snyder superhero films – unabashed joy. He’s a riot. Jason Momoa’s Aquaman is, um, interesting, I guess. He isn’t the Aquaman I grew up – but everyone mocks the Aquaman I grew up with, so maybe that’s why they’ve turned him into an Entourage extra in this film (seriously, I kept expecting him to ask Flash “Do you even lift, bro?”). I may be persuaded to like Ray Fisher’s Cyborg at some point – but they really need to decide what the hell this guy can do – because in this film, he’s seems to be able to do anything the screenplay needs him to do at even given time, even if it’s never been mentioned that he can do that before. Also, if there’s something this series of movies did NOT need it was more damn brooding – and Cyborg (who I mainly know from Teen Titans, where’s he a lovable goofball hanging out with Beast Boy) is nothing if not brooding. This is Affleck’s second time as Batman (okay, third – he did have a scene in Suicide Squad) – and I still cannot tell if he’s bored, or just has the most flat, one note reading of Batman imaginable. Gal Gadot kills it again as Wonder Woman – making me want a sequel to that film as soon as possible.

 

We know the film was cobbled together now by two different directors – that Zack Snyder shot the film, and delivered a rough cut, before having to step away because of a family tragedy – and being replaced by Joss Whedon, who came in, reshot a bunch of stuff, and took over post-production. The film certainly does have a cobbled together feel to it – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This series needed to the lighten the hell up, and Whedon’s trademark banter fits the mold for this film just fine. The film still has too much slow motion – a Snyder trademark – but at least there it makes sense to a certain extent here.

 

I could go on pointing out flaws here – seriously, Steppenwolf is awful – but I have to admit one thing about Justice League: it’s kind of fun. Yeah, it’s goofy fun – and the fun is fleeting (this is a parking lot movie, in that you’ll forget it as soon as you leave the theater and hit the parking lot) – but it’s still fun. Batman v. Superman was a long, dull, slog of a film – no fun at all. Suicide Squad wasn’t much fun, unless it featured Margot Robbie bouncing off the walls as Harley Quinn. This movie is lighter and a hell of a lot more fun than it really should be. Is it a good movie? Not really. But it’s a step in the right direction for this huge, lumbering franchise.

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Movie Review: Thor: Ragnarok

Thor: Ragnarok **** / *****

Directed by: Taika Waititi.

Written by: Eric Pearson and Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost based on the comics by Stan Lee & Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby.

Starring: Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Cate Blanchett (Hela), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Jeff Goldblum (Grandmaster), Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie), Karl Urban (Skurge), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner / Hulk), Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Taika Waititi (Korg), Rachel House (Topaz), Clancy Brown (Surtur), Tadanobu Asano (Hogun).

 

I have to think that somewhere inside the massive company of Marvel, who produces these massive blockbuster movies, that someone was starting to feel the same way I have been in the last few years. We are now a decade into this shared Marvel Cinematic Universe – with a total of 16 films – and for the most part, I have always admitted that the film have been remarkably consistent in terms of overall quality, and yet still feel too much the same – as if they weren’t making movies at all, but rather a big screen TV show in which directors were being asked to deliver based on a template – an admittedly fun and enjoyable template – but a template just the same. Perhaps though, because of the massive success of the franchise, they are loosening the reigns a little more than they would have even just a couple of years ago, when they fired Edgar Wright from Ant-Man, and when Joss Whedon left after Avengers: Age of Ultron. I say this in hope because with Thor: Ragnarok, I certainly do feel the influence of its director Taika Waititi, in a way I haven’t with a Marvel film in quite some time, and the trailer for Black Panther, has me hopeful that they have let Ryan Coogler make the film his way as well. To be fair, the Marvel films have always tried to peruse different genres – paranoid, 1970s thriller with Captain America: The Winter Solider, space opera with Guardians of the Galaxy, John Hughes teen comedy with Spider-Man: Homecoming to name a few examples – but they all still feel too beholden to a template, too much like the company, and not the filmmakers, are the real auteurs if you will. Thor: Ragnarok doesn’t completely blow this up – yes, it still very much delivers what you expect from a Marvel film – but it also delivers what you expect from the filmmaker who made What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. This may be small process – but I’ll take, mostly because this film is an absolute blast to sit through.

 

The story of the film involves Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who finds himself on a distant planet, the prisoner of its ruler, the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) and trying to get off, because the sister he didn’t know he had, Hela – the Goddess of Death (Cate Blanchett), has returned, and wants to enslave all of Asgard, so she can then enslave, well, everyone everywhere. The movie flashes back and forth in terms of the action from Asgard, where Hela is putting her plan in motion, to the other planet where Thor is captured by Valkyrie (a great Tessa Thompson), and forced into gladiatorial combat against the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), who barely remembers Bruce Banner anymore.

 

From its opening scene – Thor being held captive by a different villain, for a different purpose – you can tell that this time, the Marvel film will focus more heavily on comedy than ever before. I’m not quite sure what took them so long to realize that Chris Hemsworth is hilarious (there were quite a few funny fish-out-of-water bits in the first Thor movie), but I’m glad they finally did, because Hemsworth is a delight here (they even make a joke about Natalie Portman not wanting to come back as Jane). The film leans into the comedic aspect of Thor, gives Tom Hiddleston’ s Loki some comedy to work with, and basically lets Jeff Goldblum be his most Jeff Goldblum-est here. Taika Waititi himself shows up doing the voice of Korg – and he delivers precisely the type of comedy you expect from him.

 

The film isn’t all comedy to be sure – the film is able to make the stakes of what is happening feel real, in part because Blanchett is smart enough to go boldly over the top, and yet not like everyone else, she doesn’t go for the campy laughs that many would in her role – she takes it seriously. There is an art to doing this sort of over-the-top villain – and not everyone can do it. Blanchett can, meaning we still haven’t found something she cannot do.

 

Yes, the film is still a little too long, and many of the same complaints you could level at most Marvel films could also be leveled here – it tries to cram too much in, the action all looks the same, etc. But the tone is right, and for once, I didn’t feel the length getting to me. The film simply worked at its chosen level – it doesn’t reinvent the Marvel film, but it tinkers with it enough to surprise and delight.

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