Delayed Reaction: Batman Returns

Premise: The Penguin takes over Gotham.

 

1989's Batman was an unbelievable success. It was behind only E.T. as the biggest movie of the 80s. It's blew away the opening weekend record at the time. It could not have been a bigger movie. Given that that success, Tim Burton was given all the freedom he wanted to make the sequel...and it shows.

 

I saw Batman Returns a ton as a young child when it first came to cable, but I last saw it now over 20 years ago. I needed a rewatch. Oh my god is this movie "full Burton". It's grotesque. It's weird. It's funny. It's silly. I would've loved to be in the room with Burton and the studio execs as he made this movie. I want to hear the studio notes and see the way that Burton shut them down. I can't believe he was able to make this movie this weird.

 

The style, score, and design are all back from the first movie. Everything else is amped up too. I'm amazed that he found a way to go bigger than Jack Nicholson playing The Joker. Danny DeVito is an inspired (if not obvious) pick for the Penguin. That guy is delighted to get as weird and disgusting as anyone asks him to be. Michelle Pfeiffer remains the best Catwoman. At the time, she was the opposite of casting Danny DeVito. She was known for being beautiful and glamorous, so it's such a thrill to see her so odd in this. Like any good Batman movie, Batman mostly falls to the background of this. Michael Keaton is fine in it. He's just asked to be way more serious than anyone else.

 

This is easily my favorite of the Pre-Nolan Batman movies. It's not the most action-packed and it's maybe a little too focused on all the things that could be turned into toys. However, it's a genuinely creepy and unsettling movie at times. Gotham is so visually striking, and it has my favorite villain pair. Part of me wonders what a third Burton Batman movie would've looked like. Or would that have pushed things too far?

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Work It

Premise: Step Up meets She's All That.

 

I guess I'm just not growing out of the teen movie phase. Put a bunch of pretty 20-somethings playing teens in a movie with a hint of edginess and I'm on board. Apparently, that's just always going to be true for me. Netflix has been doing god's work, making these movies when major studios have largely (and rightfully*) abandoned them.

 

*Look, I'm sad to see them go, but I understand the financial structure that made that undesirable for theaters.

 

Work It is a mash up of virtually everything we like from past teen movies. It's got the dancing of Step Up (which is name-checked), the rag-tag team-building of Bring It On, and the attractive lead who is supposed to be a nerd of She's All That. There's even a nice Fast Times at Ridgemont High homage. Seriously, if you are a fan of the Can't Hardly Waits, She's The Mans, and Can't Buy Me Loves of the past, the only thing different is how old you are. Pretty much everyone in the cast has a Disney Channel or Nickelodeon show or movie in their filmography. Some have Broadway experience or pop albums. I don't really care that no one is high-school aged because they are consistently-aged. That's the thing about high-school movies. The cast doesn't all have to be teens for it to work. They just all need to look the same age. Because there's a very real difference between a young-looking 26-year-old and an actual 18-year-old.

 

There's also the whole thing where I'm supposed to buy Sabrina Carpentar as a nerd who can't dance. They didn't even try the old glasses trick with her. Instead, they just put her in sweaters. It was fascinating watching her dance poorly early on, because she still had too much rhythm. It's similar to the difference between an actual fall and a prat-fall. You can just tell. It was then really satisfying when they finally let her dance to her ability.

 

Overall, the movie was funny and short with a solid cast and pretty good dancing. My only complaints were Duke-related.

 

First of all, why did it need to be Duke that she wanted to go to? I appreciate the attempt to choose a non-Ivy League school for a change. Couldn't it be Vanderbilt or Stanford though? It's really hard for me to root for a character to win so she can go to Duke. Really, the big success of the movie is that she's tempted to go to NYU instead at the end.

 

Second, she mentions fond memories of going to Duke football games. I'm sorry. No one has fond memories of going to Duke football games. If you got to anything Duke, it's a basketball game. That's how you know the people making Work It just pulled Duke out of a pile of names. Otherwise, they would've changed that line. Which leads me again to ask "why Duke?"

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: All Together Now

Premise: A high school girl attempts to make the best of the many hardships in her life.

 

At some point Auli'i Cravalho is going to grow up, and that's going to make me sad. If you know her, it's as the voice of Moana, which is a Disney Animated film that's really grown on me. I really first because aware of her when she performed "How Far I'll Go" at the Oscars. The performance started a little rough, when one of the backup dancers accidentally bumped the 16-year old, but she powered through it impressively. It was a star-making performance as far as I was concerned. I then saw her in the rightly forgotten NBC series Rise, in which she was the easiest part to root for. What's been nice is that she's a Disney star without having to go through the Disney Channel crucible. As a result, she hasn't really chaffed against her image. She just seems nice and seems to like being nice. That's going to end at some point. It always does, so I'll appreciate it as long as it lasts.

 

In All Together Now, Cravalho plays a saintly high school Senior named Amber who refuses to let her life get her down. And her life is hard. She and her mother (Justina Machado) are homeless. Amber spends her time working at a donut shop, working at a nursing home, teaching ESL classes, and going to school, where she does stuff like organize fundraisers for the Marching band. Throw in the fact that her mother is an alcoholic with an abusive boyfriend, and Amber just got a coverall on a Rough Life Bingo card. Luckily, she has a can-do spirit, great friends, and a dog she goes everywhere with. Can she overcome her hardships and stubbornness to get into the prestigious Carnegie-Melon school (because of course she's a gifted singer)?

 

The plot of this is pretty basic. The first hour throws one piece of bad news after another at Amber. The last half hour is the world paying her back for all the good things she's done. It's pure wish fulfillment, but it totally worked for me. It's really damn hard to root against Cravalho, so by the end, I was just happy to see everything work out. Oh, sorry. Is saying everything works out a spoiler? If you think it is, then you are watching the wrong movie.

 

It helps that the supporting cast is unexpectedly strong. Fred Armisen tones down his weirdest impulses to play one of Amber's teachers. Judy Reyes is used well as a family friend. I already mentioned Justina Machado, who is always nice to see. Carol Burnett even turns up. I know she's not the most discriminating person when choosing roles, but I'll never stop respecting Carol Burnett devoting her time to anything. The young cast is pleasantly diverse in the way that's become common-place in teen movies now.

 

Most of the movie falls on Auli'i Cravalho though. I really have to buy that she's the nicest, kindest person in the world, and I do. That's about all her performance needs. I'm sure she'll flex more acting muscles at some point, but this isn't the movie for that.

This is just a charming movie that worked for me due to earnestness despite it being transparent and predictable.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: C.H.U.D.

Premise: A sewer creature starts killing people.

 

I have a hard time defining what a B-movie is. I tend to take the "I know it when I see it" approach. B-movie doesn't quite mean "bad movie" or "cheap movie". Like, I don't think Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 is a B-movie, but someone could probably convince me that it counts. Other than the genre, can you really explain to me how the Hallmark movies aren't B-movies? No, B-movies tend to refer to genre movies. That has a lot to do with perception.

 

You see, technically there's aren't B-movie anymore. That term stems from the old Hollywood practice of pairing films for distribution. The first film was a big-budget, star-driven feature. The second movie would be shorter, cheaper, and normally just plain worse. Movies aren't really paired anymore, but the idea of B-movies never went away. It has come to mean cheap movies that aren't arthouse movies. "Arthouse" is the key word there. If you make a cheap drama/comedy/dramedy/romance like Once or Tangerine, even if they have some of the same characteristics of a B-movie - cheap, experimental, boundary pushing, formally inventive - they'll be considered "arthouse" movies, since they are a "respectable" genre. The genres that people normally dismiss as frivolous like horror, action, sci-fi, westerns, etc. get labelled as B-movies when they fit the same description.

 

I'm not a big B-movie person and I consider that a personal failing. There's a lot of passion in B-movies. They often come from filmmakers who are fans first. They aren't burdened by the same rules that a studio enforces. Often, the first step in making a topic acceptable in film is being featured in B-movies. There's something cutting edge about B-movies. Then again, there are a lot of B-movies. The vast majority of them are bad. Most are a strong argument for why craft matters more than passion in filmmaking. Personally, I just don't want to spend all the time sifting through the bad B-movies to find the good ones.

 

Still, it's fun to watch a good B-movie from time to time. I don't really remember how C.H.U.D. ended up on my watchlist. It's certainly not the best movie I've seen lately. What it is though is only 88 minutes and decently fun. With John Heard and Daniel Stern, it has more star power than I expected. The story is reasonably engaging. The monsters are creepy enough. The costuming and effects somewhat veer into comedy, which I'm not sure was the intent at the time. Keeping the creatures under the sewer was a nice trick to not have to show them much. I like when horror takes advantage of the idea that what you can't see is often scarier than what you can. This was some nice, empty-calories viewing, even though, yeah, it's not technically a great movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Pride

Premise: Gay and lesbian activists raise money for the British miners' strike in 1984.

 

My selection process for what movie to watch next isn't simply "What movie do I think I'll like the best?". I'm often looking for surprises or to get through movies that will give me a better understanding of film or actual history. If I only chose the movies I thought I'd like the best, I would've seen Pride five years ago. I had little doubt about this movie. I've never heard anyone say a bad thing about it. It presents itself as exactly what it is: a feel-good culture clash movie. I could've told you every beat of the movie going in, and that's exactly what I wanted from it.

 

So, yeah. This movie is a god-damn delight. It's a very simple movie about two groups of people finding common ground and growing to like each other. Since it's set 30 years ago, the compromise it's asking for doesn't feel like a stretch. It also removes events enough from the current dialogue that it's hard for any group to feel attacked*. The real magic trick of the movie is that it calibrates the sentimentality pretty perfectly. It stops just short of feeling preachy. The approach isn't so much to shame the people for prejudices. Instead, it concludes that it's silly to get so worked up about this.

 

*I call this the Green Book principle. "People sure were racist back then, right?"

 

I am happy I waited until now to see it for one reason though. The cast is even stronger now. Thanks to 2019, I have stronger feelings about people like Andrew Scott and George MacKay, so the movie didn't have to work as hard to endear me to the ensemble. Not that it needed to work that hard. Imelda Staunton, Paddy Considine, and the other miners/supporters fill their performers with so much earnest decency. Having Bill Nighy cast as one of the miners almost feels like subterfuge in the casting. It's surprising that I haven't seen Ben Schnetzer in more since this, because he's got great "good guy" energy.

 

One note I will make is that Pride is more of a "comedy of good feelings". It has a few good laughs in there - I especially loved Menna Trussler's fascination with the lesbians. Most of the time though, I was smiling rather than laughing. The older I get, the more I appreciate seeing the simple act of people getting along. I really needed this movie.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Quick Reaction: Cavalcade

Well, at least it didn't beat any true classics for Best Picture that year. Cavalcade answers the question I've long wondered: "What if Forrest Gump, but earlier?" It really is a survey of the early 20th century, covering everything from the Second Boer War to the sinking of the Titanic to The Great War (you know, because they didn't know about a WWII yet). It really is an ambitious movie that takes on a lot. I do love comparing how one generation looks back on a time period differently than another generation does. Like, where was the Great Gatsby view of the Roaring 20s? That's not really in here, but that's the 20s I've been trained to expect. The First World War gets a doomsday treatment that we don't see anymore, since it was eclipsed by the Second World War. I fully understand why this was the movie of 1933 for the Oscars. It carries itself like the big and important movie of that time. It sure is a snoozer that has been rightly forgotten. The only reason I'm not harsher about it is because I lost interest too quickly and too often to really go after it. There aren't any famous lines or scenes. It doesn't have any well-remembered stars. The director is just some guy.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Secretary

Premise: A woman's new job at a law office unlocks a kinky relationship between her and her boss.

Is Maggie Gyllenhaal underappreciated or appropriately appreciated?* She has one Oscar nomination, even though it's probably for the wrong movie (Crazy Heart). She's collected an Emmy nomination and four Golden Globe nominations (1 win) across film and TV. She's had a few Oscar close-calls. She doesn't actually work as much as you'd think, which makes those numbers look a little better. I have a hard time putting her in a tier though. Compared to her Mona Lisa Smile contemporaries, she has less of an underappreciated argument than Kirsten Dunst who fully deserves more recognition. I'd say she's had the better career than Julia Stiles or Ginnifer Goodwin so far. I don't know. 

*I will not accept an overappreciated verdict in my presence.

In my opinion, she's always great. She just has the problem of taking the right roles for the wrong films. Her big movies are girlfriend or wife roles (The Dark Knight, White House Down, World Trade Center). I love her eternally for Stranger Than Fiction, but that movie was too marred by genre confusion over casting Will Ferrell and many people's inability to separate it from Charlie Kaufman comparisons. Her best roles are in movies and shows that have a hard time getting awards attention. She's a reckless addict with a history of being molested in Sherrybaby. She's a prostitute turned porn film director in The Deuce. In Secretary, her breakout role, she's a BDSM enthusiast. Frankly, she was probably one line of coke from losing her Crazy Heart nomination in 2009. 

I remember when Secretary came out. It was a big coming out for Maggie Gyllenhaal. Her only calling card before that was a small role in Donnie Darko, which was still growing to cult status. Secretary was the right mix of strong performance and buzzy subject matter to make her the most popular performance to have no chance of an Oscar nomination that year. I'm not sure why it took me so long to see this movie. If I want to be really reductive about it, it's a movie with boobs in it that came out when I was 15. That was the whole game back then. Still, somehow, I missed it, and my love of Maggie Gyllenhaal grew regardless. So, I was excited to go back to where it started.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is great in Secretary. She plays an odd mix of innocence, shame, kink, and eventually pride. I fully see why she came out of this with so much buzz. I wish I could say I liked the rest of the movie as much.* James Spader is fine in it. I needed to increase the volume on my TV repeatedly because I kept missing what he was saying. It's definitely fun to think about this as a continuation of his sex, lies & videotapes character. There's a TV Movie quality to the filmmaking which I unfairly counted against it. I know I should be more forgiving of small budgets, but the movie really did just seem cheap. Maggie Gyllenhaal is the thing that makes it work, which is OK since it is a character spotlight movie. The BDSM of it all still feels a little scandalous nearly 2 decades later, which is an accomplishment. Then again, this does sort of play like the defense of every person who has been #MeToo-ed ("See, some women actually like it"). 

*Full disclosure: I saw this movie in bed with a significant hangover, so some percentage of my negative feelings of the movie came from that no doubt. 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Doubt

Premise: Nuns working at a school in the 1960s confront their priest about his suspicious relationship with a student.

 

Doubt is one of those movies that I put off forever even though I knew I'd like it. After all it stars Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis (all Oscar nominated). It's written and directed by John Patrick Shanely* (also Oscar nominated). At absolute worst, this movie would be highly watchable. However, it's a hard movie to get excited about. Everyone is dressed in drab blacks and whites. It's hard to get excited about anything with old school Catholicism. It's based on a play, so it's certain to be talky. The specific subject matter (child molestation) is a hard sell. So, I kept putting it off.

 

*Such a weird filmography as a director. Just Doubt and Joe Versus the Volcano (which I’ve come to really love). Those are no similar movies at all.

 

I finally got to the movie now, and, no surprise, it's good. It isn't my favorite Meryl performance. Instead, it's the type we take for granted. This is one of her forgettable performances and it would be a career best for most people. It's weird how likable Philip Seymour Hoffman was as a public figure given though he had a real knack for playing creeps. As a comparison, I’m sure Peter Sarsgaard is a perfectly nice guy, but I’d be a little uneasy if I ever met him. Hoffman sows just enough doubt into his performance to make it genuinely engaging. Amy Adams is effortless. She better be getting that Oscar soon, because I forget how long she's been this good. And props to Viola Davis for getting an Oscar nomination on what's practically a one-scene role. She earned it too.

 

Mostly, the movie does a good job masking the fact that it's based on a play. It adds in enough short scenes, especially early on so that it doesn't feel like 10 really long conversations packaged as a movie. It drops that effort later on when I really was sucked in enough to want the scenes to keep going. I nearly followed this up with Spotlight, but I figured that would be a questionable double-feature.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

2021 Emmy Predictions

This is my oldest tradition on my blog (since 2011!), and the idea is very simple. The 2021 Emmys are about a year away. I'm going to make 10 predictions about them now and see how I do in a year. This year is going to be especially hard since COVID has thrown the TV schedule into complete disarray. Wish me luck.

 

(Disclaimer: These are predictions, not hopes. I want to be wrong about many of these)

 

Netflix will finally get that Series win it desires.

After this year, Netflix is 0/30 for the Comedy, Drama, and Limited series awards. In 2021, that will change. I don't even have a show in mind (maybe The Crown). My logic is this. When everything shut down because of COVID, Netflix proudly announced that they already had all their programming for 2020 completed, and that's a massive amount of content. Many other networks have faced delays getting production back up or had to push things ahead in order to have something to air. Netflix will capitalize on this disarray and get the win that Hulu and Amazon beat them to.

 

HBO won't win any of the big three series awards.

This isn't that unthinkable. In 2014, HBO failed to win the Comedy, Drama, or Limited series trophies. I think it's a bold prediction though. Schitt's Creek ended, so Comedy is wide open again. Succession will probably be back in time for a third season in time for the 2021 awards. HBO always has a few great limited series bouncing around. Their schedule has hardly seemed impacted by COVID (so far).

 

The TV Movie winner will be a movie that was originally supposed to have a theatrical release.

This isn't as much of a layup as it sounds. The Oscars have said that for this year only, if there was an intention to release a movie in theaters, even if that didn't happen because of COVID, it will still be eligible in the Academy's eyes. It's not entirely clear at this time how those will be treated by the Emmys. In the past, documentaries have been able to get nominated for both the Oscar and Emmys. TV movies have to pick one or the other. That's why The Irishman wasn't collecting statues this week, even though it was a Netflix movie. Due to the massive increase in streaming service premieres though, I suspect a few movies will give up on the Oscar and opt for the less competitive Emmy.

 

Last Week Tonight loses the Talk Series and/or writing category.

John Oliver's show doesn't feel particularly vulnerable, but even The Daily Show with Jon Stewart occasionally lost the writing Emmy during its reign. Speaking of which, Trevor Noah's Daily Show keeps gaining momentum, and that's a brand that Emmy voters recognize. I could easily see that or another show giving Last Week Tonight its first setback in years.

 

Regina King gets another Emmy nomination.

Look. I don't even know what her schedule is. I just know she has 5 nomination in the last 6 years for playing 5 different characters on 3 different shows. She also won 4 times in that span. Now, I think another win is a bit much to ask. Between the Emmy love and a recent Oscar win (possibly more Oscar attention on its way), even Emmy voters may get tired of always awarding her. I just figure if she's any anything that's eligible though, she'll at least be nominated.

 

RuPaul's Drag race loses.

A fourth consecutive win wouldn't be unthinkable in the category where The Amazing Race won 7 consecutive. There are more real competitors in the category now compared to those early days though. The Voice only won three times before being dethroned by Drag Race. I could easily see The Voice sneaking in for another win. More likely though, we're in a golden age of food shows right now, so Nailed It! or another baking show could easily slide in.

 

The "Other" streaming services get fewer nominations than in 2020.

By that, I mean the ones other than Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. I'm talking about Disney+, Apple TV+, Peacock, CBS All Access (soon to be Paramount +), and HBO Max. For those keeping track, that's 5 nominations for Apple TV+ (The Morning Show) and 1 for Disney+ (The Mandalorian) in 2020. That number is going down for the main ceremony next year. I don't see any gaining enough traction by then, and The Morning Show doesn't seem like a show to make a second season leap. And, to be clear, HBO Max and HBO are different entities. Succession is HBO. Love Life is HBO Max.

 

Fargo will drop in the nomination count significantly.

Let's say 8 total nominations. The fewest any of the first 3 seasons got was 16 for season 3. It's been 3 years since the last season. The show was already slowing down in wins. Since the last season, showrunner Noah Hawley's reputation has taken a hit from the disastrous Lucy in the Sky and a couple pretentious seasons of Legion. Finally, I love Chris Rock, but season 4 just isn't packing the same punch in terms of casting. I think voters will find enough else to champion in the Limited series field.

 

The Mandalorian gets another Drama Series nomination.

That was a surprise announcement on nomination morning this year. The lack other major nominations though* suggests it barely snuck in the field and will be quick to fall out. Here's the thing. A lot of seasons were delayed by COVID. The Crown is the only other Drama series nominee that I know will have another season ready in time. The Handmaid's Tale, Killing Eve, and Stranger Things are all on the downswing of Emmy favor. What new shows are really knocking The Mandalorian off?

 

*The next biggest nomination The Mandalorian got was in Guest Actor which is more of a Giancarlo Esposito nomination than a Mandalorian nomination.

 

Steve Carrell finally wins an Emmy.

This is probably going to have to come from The Morning Show, unless Space Force takes a massive leap in the second season. This year, he was miscategorized as a lead on The Morning Show, which he only really was for one episode. That no doubt hurt him. Either next season, he'll wisely move down to Supporting where I think the "remember how Steve Carrell never won for The Office" chatter will get louder, or the show gives him more to do after blowing everything up in the season one finale.

 

There you go. 10 predictions that all could happen. I'd like to include a few more about upcoming series like HBO's The Gilded Age or the hundred shows on Netflix's schedule, but I don't trust when any will actually be released/completed or, in the case of Netflix shows, what will actually hit. I mean, remember when Maniac sounded like a slam dunk? See you next year.

 

Delayed Reaction: Project Power

Premise: A father and a cop both try to put a stop to a company that has developed a drug that temporarily gives people superpowers.

 

Dammit, the Netflix algorithm is working on me. A couple weeks ago I examined what "Netflix popular" means when talking about The Old Guard. My basic conclusion was that it's different from being a blockbuster. It's more about watchability than being an event. Netflix is getting good at making movies that get me to say "I might as well watch". Other than their obvious Oscar plays (Roma, Marriage Story, The Irishman) there haven't been Netflix movies I was eagerly awaiting the release of. Normally they just show up on the home page and I decide they are a nice distraction. I have a huge list of movies I need to watch that I'm sure I'll like more, but it's so much easier to watch Extraction than Solaris.

 

Project Power is another movie that's easy to watch. It's not quite pulpy, but it's not far off. It definitely leans on its own ridiculousness. After all, the movie opens with Rodrigo Santoro announcing that they are distributing a drug that gives super powers for exactly five minutes and that they are handing it out to dealers for free. There's no way to make sense of this except by saying it's a movie. It owns that and doesn't run from it.

 

I'm not sure when Joseph Gordon-Levitt went from "the next big thing" to "actor who jumps at the chance to do voice performances" but here we are. I really feel like they sold him on this role by telling him he can be as Louisiana as he wants in this. I feel like they got Jamie Foxx on board in a similar way. I think there's a lot of Wesley Snipes in Jamie Foxx. One of the moments I remember the most from Passenger 57 is that there's a scene where the movie basically stops for a minute so a woman can comment on how handsome Snipes is. That played to me like it was included for his vanity. It's funny how there's a similar scene here for Jamie Foxx. In other words, the movie bends where needed to what image-conscious Foxx wants. Both JGL and Foxx are really solid in this. They give this movie some clout the way that Logan Marshall-Green couldn't in Upgrade.

 

Dominique Fishback is good too, but it was really odd to see her in this. I mainly know her from The Deuce, in which she plays a prostitute in a show with a lot of nudity. It's odd to then see her in this as a high school student. It's like she's taking these roles in the wrong order. Once I see someone as a grown-up actor, I can't see them in high school anymore. Like, maybe Zoey Deutch could still pass for a high school student in the right movie. She still looks quite young, but I've seen he as an adult in too many things to not think "she's way too old to be in high school". Or, as a counter-point, take Vanessa Marano (April on Gilmore Girls). At 27 years old, she was a high-schooler in the movie Saving Zoe last year. I didn't really have a problem with that because, even though she's a decade too old, she's been playing teens for the last decade. If she's in a Scorsese movie tomorrow as a mobster's wife, then I would stop buying her as a high-school student in future roles.

 

Whoa, sorry. I didn't realize I had such a rant in me about that.

 

Apparently, my big criticism of this movie isn't a unique one. It doesn't do nearly enough with the premise. It's about a drug that makes anyone a superhero or supervillain for 5 minutes and the powers are different for everyone. That's an idea with unlimited potential. Everyone is an X-Man* and we get to see everyone discover their power. I'm incredibly let down that Fishback never takes the pill. This movie could've been completely nuts. Instead, it was just a paint-by-numbers action movie. It had set pieces in all the expected places at the expected intensity. Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman aren’t the most gifted action directors (not yet, at least). The script doesn't help them very much either.

 

*The singular form of X-Men really doesn’t look right, does it?

 

It's all open-ended enough though that I'd love to see a sequel. Different stars, directors, or screenplays could do a ton with this basic idea. And, like most Netflix action movies, Project Power is still an easy watch.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Don't Look Back

Premise: A film crew follows Bob Dylan around for an English tour in 1965.

 

This movie made me feel really old. Which is weird. The movie came out 20 years before I was born. It's in black-and-white. That should make me feel like a baby, but that's not what happened. You see, I listened to Bob Dylan go on different rants and musings for 90 minutes, and my main thought was "Will someone shut this kid up?"

 

Look. I'm a Bob Dylan fan. I think he's one of the most important musicians of the 20th century. He's a gifted songwriter and an important cultural icon. His longevity and versatility are underappreciated. But, I wanted nothing more than for him to stop talking throughout this movie. He's kind of a dick. He bloviates constantly. It's like being on any college campus, listening to a 20-something who took his first philosophy or sociology class talk about profound topics he thinks he discovered. It's definitely a great example of the difference between being smart and being clever. The Times interview where Dylan goes off on the reporter: Dylan is making some smart points. He's not actually outfoxing the reporter though.

 

Other than the fact that I came away from this with the old man wish for Dylan to just "shut up and sing", I did quite enjoy this. The few performances were solid. I really love Dylan shutting Donovan down. The movie is a nice reminder of Dylan's situation. Everyone is always expecting him to be profound, and that's a lot to put on him. I had a teacher once who pointed out that Dylan went through the same fame as The Beatles but he did it alone. That takes a toll. Maybe The Beatles grew to dislike one another, but they always had someone else who knew what they were going through. It's a nice reminder why stars like Michael Jackson or Britney Spears have these breakdowns. Don't Look Back in its own way captures some of that. In terms of older documentaries, this is a good one, because it's a different view of celebrity life in that era than I normally see.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Mulan

Formula: (Mulan - Disney Renaissance) * Pirates of the Caribbean

No, I didn't see Mulan in a theater, so calling this a "Movie Reaction" isn't quite accurate*. I paid $30 to see it though, so it counts as far as I'm concerned.

*Yeah, I do realize no one really cares about how to define my different kind of Reactions.

The important part about any of these Disney Live-Action remakes going in is mentioning one's relationship with the original. It's striking how much my personal connection to the animated counter-part defines how I feel about the new movie. As it turns out, I care less about Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and The Jungle Book than Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, so it's not a surprise that I had more complaints about the latter three remakes than the former three. I wish I could say that I rate all movies objectively, but I'm not that foolhardy. It makes sense too. If I thought a movie worked one way, then changing it means there's a lower chance it will work as well. It's like getting a 90% on a test and changing the answer. Sure, it's possible you improve the grade, but odds are you'll lower it.

The 1998 Mulan is not a sacred text for me. I remember liking it. The songs were good. Eddie Murphy was funny. The animation was cool. I haven't seen it in nearly 20 years though. I maybe only saw it 2-3 times. I have nothing against it. It just didn't make the same impression on me as it apparently did on many others, so this was one of the Live-Action remakes I thought had the most potential to be good. And frankly, I think Disney made a lot of the right decisions on it. They dropped the music*. They turned it into a PG-13 Pirates style action movie. They stuck with a Chinese (or at least Asian - I haven't checked everyone) cast. They didn't sneak in a Matt Damon or Tom Cruise. It was one of the movies I was looking forward to the most this Spring in a more innocent time.

*Look, I like the music too, but all of the movies that have tried to include the songs have badly failed to match up to the original numbers. Animation just gives more options for showstopping numbers.

The core story is still intact. Invaders from the north are attacking China. The Emperor (Jet Li, who has finally aged) requires that every family supply a male to enlist in the army. Mulan (Yifei Liu) is the oldest daughter of Hua Zhou (Tzi Ma), who has no sons. Since Mulan has never been the subservient wife type, she secretly takes her father's place in the army, pretending to be his son. While in disguise, Mulan becomes a respected soldier in the army. When her identity is eventually revealed, her commander (Donnie Yen) must decide if the rules are more important than accepting the value she adds to the Emperor's army. But, this time, there are also witches.

I think a lot of the criticisms I've heard for the movie are fair. The movie is a little too self-serious without Mushu's comic relief. The lack of music makes it lifeless at points. The plausibility of no one figuring out Mulan is a woman is more questionable in live-action. The movie treats chi like midiclorians (that's not a good thing).

Still, I liked this movie. Yifei Liu is a good Mulan. She really sells the physicality of the character. The big addition to this movie is Gong Li as a shapeshifting witch helping the enemy. First of all, she just looks cool. Secondly, she adds a new flavor to the story. Also, I'd just like to point out that I don't know Gong Li from anything else and was shocked to learn she was 54. The reason why the witch isn't out of place is because Mulan happily leans into its martial arts movie lineage. Battle scenes are packed with wall-running, horse jumping, and spear kicking. At that point, they might as well add a witch. This would've been a fun movie in theaters for that reason.

I have a hard time with a certain kind of Chinese-style cinema. It's hard to distinguish self-parody from a ham-fisted homage. This martial arts action style can look a little silly at times. Maybe that's just because I'm not used to it. I haven had decades of being barraged by Chines films the way the rest of the world has with American films. At times though, I wonder if this movie is someone doing a poor-taste approximation of the Chinese style. Among the topline creatives involved in this movie, I don't see anyone involved with Asian cinema. While I get that Disney likely picked from in-house people, it seems strange that they wouldn't pull in more people with an understanding of that kind of cinema when that's the kind of movie they were making. As a result, the action sequences were good, but they could've been better.

I'm not here to say that Mulan is or isn't worth the $30 (divided by the number of people with your password) to watch now instead of December. That's between you and your checkbook. What I can say is that it was nice to see a new, big, well-produced event movie. I haven't seen one of those, depending on your definition, since The Rise of Skywalker. Mulan is imperfect. Diehard fans of the animated movie will have trouble getting over what it's not. It's certainly part of a worrisome and short-sighted strategy of Disney's, investing in retreads rather than developing new properties. The movie itself is perfectly fine though. It's entertaining. It makes an attempt to be different than the original. The cast is good. I even love that Ming-Na (the voice of 1998 Mulan) gets a cameo. This is the movie I hoped it would be. It met my expectations. 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend