Delayed Reaction: Host

Premise: A group of friends summon a malevolent spirit during a zoom call.

 

Is this the first good COVID-inspired movie? It came out July 2020, exists because of COVID, and is very good. So, I think it has to be.

 

It's pretty obvious that I would love this movie. I'm one of the people who saw Unfriended opening weekend. Searching remains one of my favorite movies of the last decade. I eat up any found-footage movies almost regardless of quality. Better yet, this movie is lean and effectively made.

 

It's structured around the length of a standard free zoom call. These friends are trying to come up with remote activities to pass the time, so they try a virtual seance. A prank gone wrong actually summons an evil spirit. Then, one by one, everyone on the chat is picked off by it. It uses all the found footage tricks of moving furniture, unreliable feeds, and objects appearing under sheets. I can't say that all the ways the spirit attacks the characters make sense, but it's fun to watch. That's all that really matters. And did I mention it's short? That can't be praised enough.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Whip It

Premise: A teen falls in love with and decides to join a roller derby league.

 

Remind me again why Drew Barrymore didn't direct more movies after this? That's not to say she will never direct again. She's still shockingly young for how long she's been around and how many phases her career has had. That her feature directing career started and seemingly ended with Whip It is a real shame.

 

I feel like a lot of actors get it wrong when they decide to direct. They look at it as a way to prove they are more serious. They are directing because they have a vision. While you occasionally get something great right out the gate like A Star is Born, just as often it's an American Pastoral. I respect the actors who lean the other way and make Whip Its or That Thing You Dos. They are lightweight movies that don't get bogged down in plot and leave a lot of room for the performers to just perform.

 

I like when a movie is just fun. The stakes in Whip It are pretty low. Most of the drama is about Bliss's (Elliot Page) family finding out about her* roller derby double-life and letting her do it. It's a found family movie, which I have a weakness for. It seems like Drew Barrymore got a bunch of friends together for most of the roles. It's a great hang.

 

*Still figuring out trans-verbiage, but I assume since the character is female, it's safe to use "she". This is really highlighting a lack of discipline in my writing since I normally refer to the performer as the character in these reactions. That’s not normally confusing to follow but very much is here.

 

What I really loved about the movie was how often it took the easier path. And I don't mean lazy. I mean that everywhere the movie could've leaned into histrionics it opted for something more subdued. Bliss dispatches of the guy cheating on her simply. The movie constantly reminds us that, while the women on the Roller Derby teams take it seriously, everyone knows it's just a game. Juliet Lewis doesn't turn Page in for being too young. The team doesn't abandon Page when they find out the truth. There's almost no fallout other than Page being temporarily ineligible. The movie is more concerned about navigating the complexities of life than creating extra complications.

 

I was not at all prepared to like this movie as much as I did. Drew Barrymore understands the assignment. Now I'm disappointed there haven't been 2 or 3 more movies from Barrymore like this.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Quick Reaction: The Red Shoes

Like An American in Paris, this is another one of those movies that came highly rated from my watchlist. It's less obvious why though. It got decent Oscar attention. It was more of an arthouse hit though with less notable stars. I even check the critical response on the Wikipedia and that seems mixed too. It's an OK movie. I like the long ballet sequence in the middle The acting is fine, and the story is familiar but effective. It must be one of those movies where the filmmaking included new stuff that's common now but ahead of its time in 1948.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Hell House LLC 3: Lake of Fire

Premise: A theater troupe prepares for an interactive play at the curse Abaddon Hotel.

 

This is a really nice return to form for the series. The first Hell House LLC blew me away and instantly become one of my favorite horror movies. The second movie struggled a bit to figure out what worked from the formula for the first movie. It tried to be a little too polished which is death in the found footage style*. I still really enjoyed the movie, only with more reservations.

 

*It takes very little money to make something look like a home video. It takes considerably more money to make something look like a real news broadcast or more.

 

Lake of Fire doesn't overthink things. It's more or less just doing the first movie over again**. It's a different group of people preparing for a show at the hotel and shit goes down on opening night. It doesn't offer much that's new, but it effectively mines all the things that work in the original. It was annoying how much it called back clips from the first two movies to remind the audience of what people are talking about. It's like this was made assuming people hadn't seen the first two movies. That's not the kind of series this is though. It's pretty serialized. I wish they would've been more sparring in their reliance on it.

 

**Now that I think about it. It's a similar series arc to the Ocean's trilogy.

 

I'm a little less interested in where things end. I imagine this is meant to be the final movie in the series now that Russell stopped the lake of fire or whatever. I never really knew or cared about what was causing the Abaddon Hotel to be scary. Getting too deep into it creates the same problem that Paranormal Activity ran into. It's a nice enough twist though with Russell looking like the villain until the end. I enjoy how with the spell broken, all the old victims survive, but Russell and the group from the original are still stuck there. And their response to learning that is funny. They barely seem to care.

 

Even with these issues though, the Hell House LLC series remains at the top of my horror series list. Excellent use of found footage. Nice mythology. Great setup for a lot of scares. It's also, as of when I'm writing this, one of the few movies I've written about with no Wikipedia page. In a way, that's as scary as any movie I'll see.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: An American in Paris

Premise: There's this American who lives in Paris...and, music and romance happen.

 

I mistakenly have said that I only had a single Best Picture winner left to see. I'm not sure how, but I miscounted by two. I still had this, A Man For All Seasons, and Around the World in 80 Days left. That means I have a small project now, I guess.

 

I have an intense watchlist spreadsheet for all the movies I plan to see. I put a lot of factors into the list and weight the movies based on recommendation (from friends and podcasts), awards, box office, best of lists, genres, cast, and crew. An American in Paris is one of the two or three highest rated from my list of about 3000 (at the moment). That makes a lot of sense. It was a hit with the Oscars and other awards-givers. Director Vincente Minnelli and star Gene Kelly are big names. It was a hit at the box office and is among the best of an era of film in a genre.

 

Here's what I've learned though. The movies that fit that description tend to underwhelm me. It turns out being a National Board of Review top ten movie isn't that useful as an indicator of what would hold my interest best. It's why I attempt to weight friend or podcast recommendations higher. I like to keep these movies on the list as an academic exercise though. I like the historical context of what was popular or well-regarded in a specific era. In that sense, I got what I needed out of An American in Paris.

 

It's a perfectly fine movie. How could I not enjoy that much Gene Kelly singing and dancing? That closing ballet number is pretty breathtaking in scope. I get the feeling it inspired a lot of the closing to La La Land. It's a good movie. I just don't think I'd call An American in Paris an undeniable great like I would West Side Story.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Pact 2

Premise: A woman comes to believe that the Judas Killer or a copycat is killing people in her area.

 

When making a horror movie into a franchise, there needs to be an identifiable hook. It can be thin, like Halloween. That series is about Michael Myers in the mask killing people. It can be more specific, like I Know What You Did Last Summer with the murder coverup and killer with, well, a literal hook. Amityville Horror has the haunted house. The Exorcist has the demonic possessions. There's something about these series that can be summed up easily.

 

That's not as clear with The Pact. Its gimmick is the secret room. The Judas Killer is creepy but not in a distinctive way. In fact, he becomes less creepy in the first movie simply by being revealed to exist. So, The Pact 2 was set up to fail. The lead actress duties shift from Caity Lotz to Camilla Luddington. The Judas Killer having a copycat isn't that interesting. The movie could just as easily be an original movie with very few changes.

 

The title still doesn't make sense, and the poster makes even less sense this time. It still has the cool image of something screaming through the walls, but the "hiding in a secret room" gimmick is gone in this movie. And I still don't know what pact it is referring to.

 

Oddly enough, I did prefer this movie over the original, slightly. The cast is a bit more notable. Luddington is a lateral move from Lotz, and Lotz comes back anyway. Scott Michael Foster and Patrick Fischler are very recognizable to anyone who watches TV. They bring a little more to the vibe of this movie. It's still feels like a fancy movie-of-the-week, but the story matches the style more. It would be a stretch to say I liked the movie; however, this plays better as a trashy thriller than the first movie did as a sincere scary movie.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Pact

Premise: After her sister goes missing in the house they grew up in, a woman investigates a mysterious evil coming from there.

 

The home I grew up in was a simple 3 bedroom, 1 bath, single story house. It's a moderately-sized house. Not much to it. For the first 8 years of my life, I was convinced we had a basement. I just decided we had one. Other people had basements. We should too. Maybe there was a door that my parents missed. I remember thinking our hallway was so long that there had to be space between the kitchen and bathroom for there to be a hidden door and staircase. Also, simply being a child, I had a curiosity to explore everything. Even my own tiny closet was a new world to explore.

 

What I'm trying to say is, I was a child, and you couldn't sneak a fake hidden room by me. The entirety of The Pact relies on the idea that young children grew up in a modest sized house with a secret room that they never noticed. And that's just the tip of it. A man had to be able to live in the room unnoticed for decades, still finding time to murder people...I...I just can't with this movie. That's too much to ask from me. Perhaps I'm just jealous that this house actually did have as secret room. Even if I could forgive young children for not noticing the huge gap in the floor plan, certainly teens would. Definitely adults. I would notice that immediately when I came back to the house for the first time in years. "Why's there a big gap in the middle of this house?"

 

There's a lot of other stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why's it called The Pact? Is it Caity Lotz's pact to never return to the house? I don't remember such a pact being made. Is it the pact Lotz's mother made to hide her murderous brother? I don't think that's a pact, really. The answer is that the title is mysterious and simple, which studios like for horror movies.

 

This is also an inexplicably supernatural horror movie. A lot of movies do this. It works for many premises. The Conjuring is a haunted house. Being supernatural is the cause of the scares. In The Ring, Samara is a supernatural force causing all this. But what's the reason for a supernatural force dragging Lotz in this movie? Her uncle is a murderer, not a wizard. All the supernatural elements are just included to add scares and intrigue. They don't make any sense for the plot.

 

As you can tell, I didn't care much for this movie (which is going to make my next movie choice very confusing). It fits in that genre that I'm now calling "R-rated Lifetime Horror movie". It plays like a movie of the week. It stars people who are recognizable more than famous. The story plays out like it was one of ten written from an exec pitch session. With how much success horror has when looking cheap, I don't understand these low-budget horror movies that try to look like a major studio horror movie.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Heaven Can Wait

Premise: A football player is pulled up to heaven too soon then put into a new body as a compromise.

 

I know this is missing the point, but I spend so much of this movie bewildered by the idea that this got serious Oscar love. Like, it was one of the big Oscar players of that year. Probably second behind The Deer Hunter. I simply can't imagine a movie like this getting that much love now. I mean, maybe Lady Bird is the closest thing to this tone doing well with modern Oscar voters. That's not me saying the love was underserved for Heaven Can Wait. Just difficult to imagine.

 

This is a very efficient and entertaining movie. Warren Beatty, on the strength of Elaine May's script work, made a movie that hits every mark. It doesn't get bogged down in the mechanics of the afterlife. It was a bold choice to never show what Beatty's new body actually looks like. The chance to make a sight gag would've been too much for most filmmakers to resist but knowing what the new body looks like doesn't really matter. Beatty's onscreen charisma carries the movie. How the body-swapping all works really doesn't matter.

 

I do have one aspect of the story I can't resolve though. He gets that final body when another player on the Rams dies*. Part of the deal though is that his brain gets wiped soon after. How is that a new body for him then? I guess this is a brain vs. soul debate, but Beatty's character sure got the short end of that deal. Also, while his brain was wiped, no one else's was. So, Jack Warden's character gets to walk around with this knowledge but not the guy who actually lost his body? I suppose what I'm getting at is this isn't a good movie to pick at. Just enjoy it for the screwball escapism that it is.

 

*Were on-field deaths more common back then? Because everyone seemed way too chill for witnessing a death in-play during the Super Bowl.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The First Time

Premise: Two teens fall into a relationship quickly and hard.

 

This movie falls into such a sweet spot for me, that it's almost pointless for me to write anything about it. It's a flawed movie that I nonetheless enjoyed a lot. It's doesn't have the feel of a Sundance movie at all. It's more of a latter-day studio teen comedy - the kind studios hadn't been able to figure out since the early 2000's until Netflix cracked the code in the last couple years. It's got two attractive leads in Britt Robertson and Dylan O'Brien. The movie doesn't hit too hard on pretending they are social outcasts. O'Brien has spent too much time pursuing Victoria Justice, who has freindzoned him hard. Robertson has an older boyfriend already. OK, maybe it's a little hard to believe someone as chiseled as O'Brien would be friendzoned, but that's the only thing I have trouble believing. Otherwise, both leads feel like standard mid-to-upper popularity teens. They go to parties. They have no trouble gathering a group to go to the movies. The movie isn't asking me to believe too much.

 

The whole movie takes place over an impossibly long weekend (I think). Robertson and O'Brien have nice chemistry. They are typical high school movie teens. I'm rooting for them. The series of complications they work through are typical. The best and worst things about the movie happen back-to-back. I like the scene building up to them having sex. It's a horny scene. It captures their mix of hesitation and eagerness well. Movies don't typically build it up for that long. That was very effective. After they have sex though, their fallout makes very little sense. I get that they feel awkward, and it wasn't very good for either of them. The series of saying the wrong lines and overreactions felt very insincere though. Awkward silence would've been plenty.

 

For me, it does all come down to the casting of the central roles. If I like that, I'm going to like the movie. I'm a huge Britt Robertson fan and I have nothing against Dylan O'Brien. In balance, that's a net-plus. It was fun seeing Christine Taylor and Joshua Malina as Robertson's parents. Maggie Elizabeth Jones is cute as O'Brien's little sister. James Frecheville is appropriately insufferable as Robertson's boyfriend. I like that Victoria Justice* is more oblivious than villainous. I spent an enjoyable 95 minutes watching this. I have little to complain about.

 

*Am I the only one surprised that Victoria Justice hasn't had bigger opportunities? She is absurdly attractive. She has 16-years of experience, and the Nickelodeon/Disney Channel stars who stick with acting tend to turn into really good TV stars if nothing else. They have the timing and work ethic down. Justice has been much more of an actress than singer for the last several years. How much longer before she has a "calling card" movie or TV show in her grown-up filmography to point to? Or is she not a very good actress and I'm blinded by the fact that she's attractive? I really don't know.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Revenge

Premise: After being assaulted and left for dead, a woman turns the tables on her abusers and gets bloody revenge.

 

This is a movie I've been looking for to a while and it doesn't make a lot of sense why. I really hate the I Spit on Your Grave movies. Revenge is the same basic structure. I don't have a good reason other than, for whatever reason, I assumed Revenge wouldn't be quite as exploitative. I was mostly right in the sense that the movie doesn't force the audience to watch the rape with leering fascination. It's not a pretty scene, but the movie does pull away before I begin to question the filmmaker's motivation for shooting a rape scene. That's not to say the film is without exploitation. Early on, the film is very much about how attractive Matilda Lutz is. The director - who is female - loves Lutz's ass and come up with any excuse to get a shot of it.

 

After the assault, the move does turn into a pretty satisfying revenge movie. Lutz turns into a desert badass. It doesn't explain how she's so good at survival. That's not really the point. The movie is a bit of a fantasy in that way. Lutz survives losing her weight in blood, getting impaled, getting shot, and heat stroke with little water. Her badass-ery is probably why this has been dubbed a "feminist revenge flick"...I mean, sure, I guess. Call it that, I guess. That sort of feels like people are trying too hard to explain how they could enjoy an exploitation movie: intellectualizing it.

 

In reality, it's just fun to see how director Caralie Fargeat and company shoot the movie. It's stylish. The revenge scenarios have a nice variety. The final fight in the house at the end is a bloody mess.

 

My only issue with the movie is a common one. It's too long. There are only three men she's getting revenge on. This movie should be a tight 90 minutes. Instead, it's 108 and drags by the end. There is a point in a thriller where going on too long dulls the effect. Like, in the house at the end, how many laps did they make around the circle in the floorplan? I hit a "just get to it" point of irritation watching that. The slovenlier henchman could've used a little more shading too. When he starts revealing that he's a master hunter to Lutz when she went after him, that came out of nowhere. Until that point, I assumed he was more of a dunce character.

 

These are small gripes though. Overall, the movie delivered exactly the thrills that I wanted without being so exploitative that I felt like a bad person for liking it.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Spiral (2019)

Premise: A gay couple in 1995 move into a small lake community where bad things start happening.

 

There's the kernel of a really great horror movie in this. I think it's clever to make an LGBTQ horror movie that isn't explicitly about the antagonists being homophobic. The couple's "value" is their otherness: the fact that the rest of the world ignores them. It's what makes them perfect targets to disappear. The movie reveals that this is part of a cycle, and the community has targeted different kinds of people over the years (ending the film with a middle eastern American family in 2005).

 

Unfortunately, the movie overall is pretty mediocre. It gave me "What if Hallmark made R-rated horror movies?" vibes. It's the kind of movie where every house looks like it's about to have an open house. None of them look lived in. The story relies on us knowing what the beats of a movie like this should be rather than pulling them off successfully in the movie. Like, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman - who is giving better than the movie deserves - going insane is not set up well in this movie. It's that annoying thing where characters start treating him like he's crazy before he's actually acting crazy. For example, his partner is angry for setting up a security system in the house even though they are a mixed-race gay couple in 1995 moving into a non-urban community where they don't know everyone. I'm sorry, but Bowyer-Chapman isn't the crazy one for thinking a security system is needed. Anyway, didn't something legitimate set off the alarm? It's just a sloppy screenplay that doesn't know what to do with its good ideas.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Mary Magdalene

Premise: The Gospels from Mary Magdalene’s perspective.

 

They called my bluff. I tend to mention that religious movies don't put together real casts with real filmmakers to make real movies. Instead, it's stuff like The Shack, which is dreadfully dull and everyone is there to collect a paycheck. And whenever I watch a Shack, I say that I'd appreciate a Christian movie that put in a real effort to get dirty. Well, Mary Magdalene is a real movie. I think it's even pretty kind about the Jesus story through Mary Magdalene’s eyes. It's a more grounded look at the Jesus story that wasn't that blasphemous. Like, it's not a movie that's trying to tear down the Gospels. It's a pretty earnest movie.

 

Even though the movie seemingly does everything I ask for a Christian movie to do, I still didn't like this. I'm sure some of this is my lifelong atheism* despite going through 12 years of Catholic schooling talking, but the Jesus story is dull as hell. As pure literature, it's not that interesting. It doesn't help that I've heard the story so many times.

 

*I'm not a lapsed Catholic. I don't count my very early years. As soon as I had any critical thinking faculties, I put a word to how I felt about religion, which turned out to be 'atheist'.

 

Mary Magdalene makes a fatal mistake. The Jesus story needs to be more Luke than Mark. Play up the miracles. Make Jesus a spectacle. Taking a ground level view of Rooney Mara watching a bearded Joaquin Phoenix give a few speeches is boring to watch. Impressive cast though. Mara. Phoenix. Chiwetel Ejiofor. It's low on actual Middle-Easterners, but that's far from the main problem.

 

The weird thing is, I was really looking forward to this movie. That cast with an Oscar nominated director and nice production values sounded like a treat. I didn't realize how much it was just the Jesus story as seen by Mary Magdalene. I figured at worst it would be more of an Ophelia perspective.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Premise: A musical about a lovable whorehouse that gets exposed on the news.

 

This movie is a god damn delight. I was somewhat surprised to see it had such a low Rotten Tomatoes score. Yes, RT is useless for anything released before the RT era. Even still, the movie got Oscar and Globe attention. It has a pretty decent legacy. I wasn't expecting it to have a sub-50% rating. Then again, I always look to Clue to remind me that sometimes people need some distance from a film's release to realize the fun of it.

 

I don't have much knowledge of the Broadway show this is based on. It seems like the film adapts it pretty well though. The songs are catchy. Once I realized it was in fact a musical, I was able to adapt pretty quickly. Dolly Parton is a treat. Burt Reynolds a little less so, but he's fine. Dom DeLuise is effectively annoying. I even appreciated Jim Nabors as the part-time narrator to a certain degree.

 

The main issue I have with the movie is the issue I have with most musical films. It feels longer than it is. You see, the plots of musicals are pretty simple, because they have to leave so much time for the songs. So, in effect, I'm watching a move with about an hour of plot that takes almost 2 hours. I have a hard time adjusting my brain to that, so even if I'm enjoying the songs, my mental clock is moving at a different pace.

 

I really do like the cheeky tone of the whole thing. I enjoy the way that it paints the whorehouse as as wholesome as little league baseball. The local law is on the side of the Chicken Coop. It's a really pleasant world the film builds up. It's a good time.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: The French Dispatch

Formula: (1/3 * Wes Anderson Movie) + (1/3 * Wes Anderson Movie) + (1/3 * Wes Anderson Movie)

 

At this point, if you are surprised by a Wes Anderson movie, it’s on you. Perhaps in the days of The Life Aquatic or The Darjeeling Limited, with the likes of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore not that far in the rear view, you could remark on how you didn’t expect that language, wry sense of humor, or strict camera work. We’re over 20 years and 10 films in now. At this point, you can debate if he’s improving as a filmmaker, but he’s certainly getting better at making a Wes Anderson movie. Personally, Anderson is a director I don’t have the stamina for. His films tend to feel oppressively structured in dialogue, performance, and framing. I get how he has such diehard fans. It just doesn’t click with me the same way.

 

On paper, The French Dispatch is a great formula for a Wes Anderson movie for my optimal enjoyment. It’s an anthology film broken into three parts with a couple small interstitials. It’s structured like an issue of the fictional magazine that gives the film its name. Each short is ~25 minutes with a different narrator and slightly different voice. Breaking an Anderson movie into bite-sized chunks means that a story is over before it gets too tedious. Certainly, that’s how I felt after a very short travelogue segment with Owen Wilson and the first major short, about Benicio Del Toro as a genius but violently insane artist working from prison. It ended right when it needed to and I was quite optimistic about the movie. Then came the second segment with Frances McDormand following a student rebellion led by Timothree Chalamet and Lyna Khoudri. That’s when I realized that several segments meant even more place-setting, loquacious narration, and detailed camera shots. I realized The French Dispatch isn’t Wes Anderson broken into digestible chunks. It’s Wes Anderson compacting entire meals of flavor into each course of a three-course meal. In other words, The French Dispatching got exhausting. By the time it got to the final segment about Jeffrey Wright as a food critic enjoying a renowned prison chef’s cooking on a particularly eventful night, I was too drained to enjoy it as much as I’d’ve liked.

 

I think The French Dispatch is a really good Wes Anderson movie. Had I been able to watch each part on separate days, I may even be raving about it. Altogether, it’s a lot of Wes Anderson and best enjoyed by his specific fans. The movie feels like an excuse for Anderson to flesh out a few ideas that he could never turn into a full feature. I wouldn’t mind if more directors did that. The movie does feel a little lazy though. Two of the three stories use the backdrop of a prison. Is that the only thing he can come up with for this fictional French town in the 1970s? At that point, I’d almost prefer that the stories were interconnected. As always, I did hit a point in the movie where I just wanted to shake Wes Anderson and say “We get it. You’re smart”. That’s common with all of his movies though. The variety is the main thing about the movie that kept me positive about it.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: The Eternals

Formula: The Muppet Movie ^ Avengers: Endgame

 

When you take a step back, it’s crazy how deep into the rabbit hole Marvel has taken worldwide audiences. There was a time when the X-Men and Spider-Man were considered risky prospects. Then they worried that Iron Man and Captain America would be too obscure. Over the years, they’ve gotten increasingly wonky with the likes of the Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Panther. The world of the narrative has moved from straightforward villains to multi-verses and intergalactic travel. Movies they are making now couldn’t have gotten past the pitch stage a decade ago. Eternals is a movie that would’ve scared away audiences in droves. It’s a cast of mostly familiar actors who the casual movie goer doesn’t know by name. It’s about timelords who have guided humans for thousands of years and is about the very nature of humanity. That this movie had the second biggest opening of 2021 (worldwide) rather than a Seventh Son-sized weekend is an accomplishment.

 

My take is that The Eternals fits in that C+ to A- range that all MCU movies fit into. I think the rotten Tomato score has only a little to do with the movie itself, but I won’t get into that*. This movie is about a group of immortal beings called Eternals. They were sent to Earth 5000 years ago to protect humans from creatures called Deviants. Otherwise, they stay out of mankind’s way. For example, they weren’t involved in any previous MCU movies because none involved Deviants. Even though the Deviants have been gone for centuries, the Eternals remain on Earth waiting to be told that their mission is complete. They live lives as normal people. Well, as normal as ageless eternal beings can. When one of them dies and new Deviants are discovered, they decide to get the gang back together after hundreds of years. The bare bones of this movie are pretty simple. It’s The Muppet Movie except instead of recruiting for a show, it’s to save the world.

 

*Short version: People seem unsure whether to rate this as a Marvel movie or a Chloe Zhao movie. There’s pent up Marvel fatigue, especially with the post-Thanos uncertainty. And frankly, Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t know what to do with reviews that say “I respect what the movie attempted even though it wasn’t wholly successful at it”. RT judges good vs. bad. It doesn’t know what to do with middling.

 

Where the movie gets complicated is the size of the group. There are 10 Eternals. Most have separate stories that each need some time. So, 10 minutes for each character already puts this at nearly two hours with credits. And the film almost casts too well. This cast is stacked. Gemma Chan plays an Eternal named Sersi and is the functional lead of the movie. Her fellow Eternals include A-listers Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek, leading man in search of a franchise, Richard Madden, over-qualified scene-stealers Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, and Ma Donh-seok, and promising newcomers Lia McHugh and Lauren Ridloff. As that syntactically complex run-on sentence confirms: that’s a lot of mouths to feed. Not to mention Kit Harrington floating around on the side. I liked most of the performances. Chan is a pitch-perfect hero not ready to accept her call to action. Madden is best when he’s just left-of-center of the leading man roles. He’s not quite Superman. He’s better as Superman’s brother with a gambling problem or an entitled upbringing. It’s amazing how willing Jolie is to be underused in the movie. Much was made of Nanjiani’s physical transformation, but it doesn’t get in the way of his ability to deliver the jokes. It feels like the ideal version of this movie would have half as many characters but I don’t know which ones I’d want to get rid of.

 

Tied into the giant cast is the inarguable problem with the movie. It’s too ambitious. Most MCU movies start small. The introductory story is about a business disagreement (Iron Man), a lost throne (Black Panther), or an identity crisis (Captain Marvel): something to get the audience introduced to the characters, sneak in some exposition, and explain their place in the larger universe. The scale of The Eternals on the other hand is second only two an Avengers movie. Too many characters. Too many storylines. Too much exposition. I can’t understand if director Chloe Zhao misunderstood the assignment or if Marvel got too cocky about their ability to make event movies. My guess is it’s the latter. Either way, it’s a problem.

 

I actually really liked Zhao’s direction. She fits a lot of excuses for the characters to be out in a dusty field, which is her specialty. Despite having so many characters, almost every relationship between two was unique and full of its own strengths and complications. I was very impressed by her control of the action sequences. That’s where these directors moving from small indies to blockbusters tend to falter. She really captured the scale of it. I’m upset I didn’t try and track this down at an Imax or XD screen.

 

The Eternals feels like a 2-part movie that was forced into one. There’s too much going on yet it has pacing issues in the middle. Zhao and company put together arguably the most interesting cast of any first MCU movie. The story has a lot on its mind and helps move the MCU along this more esoteric path of multi-verses and elemental forces. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie despite the weaknesses, which is exactly where I land on nearly every MCU movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend