Delayed Reaction: Teeth

Premise: A teenage girl realizes that she has teeth in her vagina.

This is a good example of a movie that’s hurt by its reputation. I definitely expected Teeth to be a much worse movie than it was. I mean, it’s the vagina teeth movie. Horror is lousy with movies where a filmmaker had one interesting idea and no idea how to fill out a movie around it. That’s what I expected from Teeth: a B-movie with a good pitch. I won’t pretend that Teeth is a masterpiece, but it is better than that expectation.

 

The biggest warning sign for me going in is that it’s labelled as a Horror Comedy. With that premise, I was very scared of the jokes that would lead to. Much to my delight, the comedy is in how straight they play the movie. It’s a silly premise with exaggerated characters – that’s what makes it funny – but the story is taken seriously. It’s really just the end when the film fully embraces the fun.

 

The challenge with this movie is, to put it bluntly, in order for Jess Weixler’s Dawn to get retribution, she must first get penetrated. It’s a premise that almost demands sexual assault. I don’t trust a lot of low budget horror filmmakers to handle that challenge with grace. For the most part, Teeth shows restraint though. Except for hinting at it early on, it waits a long time for the first bite. That is set up as an assault to get there, but the movie relishes in the bite, not the assault leading up to it. She bites the creepy gynecologist before he could do anything really bad. By the time she bites the classmate who turned out to sleep with her as a bet, she has control of the situation. And the climactic bite has her as the aggressor.

 

The movie is still bad in a lot of ways. Intentional or not, a lot of the acting is pretty broad. It’s not surprising that I recognize exactly one actor from something else I’ve seen. The cinematography had me thinking about The Room repeatedly. The filmmaker has leveled up in his productions since then and he hasn’t quite returned to this kind of movie. That’s probably for the best. Teeth does feel like a happy accident.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Quick Reaction: May the Devil Take You

This is a good example of horror that I don’t really understand the plot, but I liked it because it looked cool. I get the basics: the father made a deal with the devil for riches, betrays the satanic priestess, and curses his family. My main takeaway from the movie though is that the supernatural forces look gnarly and the voodoo stuff looks cool. From the little international horror I’ve seen, the films tend to fall into two camps: the original ideas that Hollywood takes and normally messes up and the really common horror idea that gets some local flair. May the Devil Take You is in that latter category. That’s less interesting in the scheme of things, but I’ll take well-made horror however I can get it.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Bros

Formula: Fire Island * Forgetting Sarah Marshall

A lot of effort went into the ad campaign for Bros to point out the ways that it is groundbreaking. I think it settled on “the first gay RomCom made by a major studio” or “the first gay RomCom that received a wide theatrical release”. I’m not a fan of that. Not because I think that the more qualifiers you add, the less remarkable the accomplishment is. It’s because that builds the movie up as some kind of standard-bearer, when really Bros is to look at as another film in the bunch. If you strip it of any firsts, Bros is an Apatow-produced film from a fist time leading man and a capable but not starry supporting cast. It was released in a time when comedies in general and RomComs more specifically struggle to get theatrical releases and struggle even more to really break out. Given all those factors, it’s hard to look at Bros as anything but a reasonable success.

 

The story itself is standard RomCom fare. Bobby (Billy Eichner) is a 40-something man who has never been in a relationship before. He meets Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) who prefers to be similarly unattached. They fall into a relationship and have to work through their assorted hang-ups in order to be together. And it hits all those RomCom beats successfully enough that I wondered yet again, why this genre has been dying the last decade or two.

 

Of course, being about a gay couple, there are a lot of details here that add specificity. That’s what I really appreciated about the movie. The nature of Bobby and Aaron’s relationship is just different than the boy/girl RomCom. The dating scene is different. The emotional hurdles are different. The personal journeys are different. It’s a little tricky recommending this movie because in many ways “It’s just like any other RomCom”, however I also like it for how it’s different from the normal RomCom.

 

I’m on the fence about Billy Eichner as the lead of this. I’ve come to like him a lot in general after I was introduced to him in Parks & Rec as “the loud guy”. He’s good in this in a similar way to how Pete Davidson is good in The King of Staten Island. It’s a film co-written by Eichner with a character that plays to all of Eichner’s strengths. He’s pretty good in this, but it’s not a revelation that makes me wonder what else he has in him. But he definitely works in this movie. Luke Macfarlane is definitely in the film for the Rom more than the Com. I can already tell he’s going to end up in my “Sam Worthington Face Blindness” category of actor. Again, he’s good in Bros, but I have no real need to see him in anything else.

 

Honestly, Bros felt a lot like any other Nicholas Stoller movie. That’s not a negative in any way. I love Neighbors. I like Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I at least enjoyed everything of his I’ve seen. Bros has a lot of the same DNA. It meanders a bit in the middle. The sincere moments sometimes feel like they are battling with the funny moments. Like, Eichner gives a really touching speech at one point outlining his origin story that is also a momentum killer. The movie has an improvisational feel which leads to some really funny jokes but a sometimes clunky story. It’s the tradeoff I expected going in, and I was happy that the film embraced it.

 

Bros. Not perfect, but likely the best RomCom I’ll see in theaters this year. I do wish it had more competition for that title though.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Smile

Formula: Oculus + Truth or Dare

There is no way I’m writing this without bringing up my beloved Oculus a dozen times, so I’m just going to lean into it. You can break down my love of Oculus into two parts: 1) It’s an obstacle that even the most reasonable people can’t beat. 2) As it relates to destroying the mirror, Karen Gillan is incredibly reasonable in the movie. That’s it. Give me a good antagonist and don’t take shortcuts. That’s all it takes to make me blissfully happy watching a horror movie. I can still love horror if it doesn’t follow those rules, but I can’t think of any meeting those requirements that I don’t like and didn’t leave me shook for days. It’s what I also like about It Follows or The Ring.

 

Smile is a very similar movie to those others. It’s a simple yet unsettling premise. Sosie Bacon plays a psychiatrist at a hospital. One day she gets a patient in hysterics saying that she’s being followed by a shapeshifting creature who looks like people with a disturbing smile. The patient kills herself in front of Bacon and passes this onto her. Bacon then must figure out what’s going on before it kills her. This is a classic “pass it on” horror story. We get a lot of good scares from this following her while she tries to hold it together long enough to stop it.

 

This movie has the scares nailed. The creepy smile is super effective. The nature of this creature, having no clear form, gives the film great opportunities to scare. The filmmaker uses abrupt cuts wisely. I really did have so much fun watching this. It is as deserving of its popularity as any horror movie I’ve seen this year.

 

I do find aspects of the movie very frustrating. It has a lot of narrative crutches that it doesn’t need. Simply put, Sosie Bacon’s character is a very unimpressive horror protagonist. She isn’t positioned that way. She starts off very reasonable. Damaged, but reasonable. She’s a mental health professional, so if there’s anyone who would approach this kind of madness reasonably, it’s her. Instead, repeatedly, the movie has her explain what’s happening to her in the worst possible way. Look, what’s happening to her is crazy. She could go up to her fiancé or therapist or sister and cogently explain what’s happening to her. It would still make sense if they don’t believe her. It wouldn’t make the smile monster an iota less stoppable. I am much more interested in horror where someone does everything right and still may not be able to stop whatever is after them. Smile choses instead to manufacture unneeded adversity for the protagonist. In the scheme of things, this is a small gripe that hits a very specific bugaboo of mine. It may not even bother me that much by the time I watch this again. However, it is the only thing keeping Smile from immediately going into my top tier of horror films.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Enough Said

Premise: A middle-aged woman begins dating a man and makes a new friend not realizing that the man and friend used to be married.

What to do about a movie that I liked everything about except the central conflict? This is a pretty great movie about being in the empty-nester age where you don’t feel old or young. The cast is really tremendous. I have to assume the only reason Julia Louis-Dreyfus doesn’t do more dramedies like this is that she doesn’t feel like it, because she’s excellent in this. James Gandolfini is super charming. Toni Collette gets to be Australian! What’s not to like here? It’s a “good hang” of a movie.

 

I just can’t deal with Louis-Dreyfus keeping the secret for so much of the movie. I don’t even know that it feels like artificial conflict; dating and befriending exes without either knowing. It’s just so painfully awkward, and I don’t deal with awkward well. I spend the whole time thinking about all the easy ways she could’ve made the situation better or easier. Any non-recommendation coming from me is on me and not really the film’s fault. The film is doing what it intends to well.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Purge: Election Year

Premise: In case you missed the subtle commentary of the Purge, we’re going to really spell it out this time.

I think I’m finally coming close to coming around on the Purge movies. I still don’t know that I like them. At times, it feels like they are patting themselves on the back too much for pointing out some deep-seated desire in the human psyche. They also have trouble deciding how seriously to take the movies. Because, this is a very silly idea. There is no way to present the “Purge” as an actual viable proposal. However, I’ve learned that if I only pay attention to style, not substance, I can have some fun. These movies look cool. 90% of the effort goes into crafting the best assorted purge looks. The Purge is good in the way The Warriors is good. As long as I can ignore the parts where it’s trying to be Network, that’s a good time.

 

Election Year has some good looks. I like the cars with Christmas lights and the extravagance of the people literally worshiping at the altar of the Purge. Frank Grillo is exactly the kind of central protagonist for this. The film does a good job exploring assorted parts of the city for Purge activities. I actually did like the idea of Murder Tourism. While, the logistics of it make little sense, I appreciate the film admitting that the US doesn’t have all the sickos. I’ll probably get to the rest of the series eventually. The First Purge suggests a less formed premise, which could be fun and The Forever Purge indicates they are accepting the natural conclusion of the premise.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Premise: Freddy is back to killing young people again.

This is a silly franchise. I’ll admit, I’m mostly watching them because that’s a thing you do as a horror fan. Slashers don’t quite do it for me. There isn’t a lot of tension because I know Jason is always coming back and there’s no iconic final girl. The cast are all red shirts. I’m not a creative deaths critiquer either. Still, they are some nice, mindless fun.

 

What’s also entertaining with the Friday the 13^th franchise has been tracking the arc of it. None of the movies are truly generic. The first is the originator. The second is the first where Jason is actually the killer. The third introduces the mask. Now, the fourth is the first attempt to end it. At least, the title suggests it’s supposed to be the end. I love looking in hindsight to see that the next movie is “A New Beginning” and it came out just a year later. I don’t know why I’m so tickled by that, but I am.

 

Nothing really stands out about this installment. The cast is decent. It’s fun to see a young Corey Feldman. Otherwise, it’s your typical blood and boobs affair with Jason.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Halloween II

Premise: Halloween did really well, so let’s do it again.

Watching the Halloween movies reminds me some of when I wrote fantasy novels in middle and high school. I had this big series with a complex mythology that I worked on with my cousin. We spent years crafting backstories, organizing events, and deepening the mythology. Sadly, I have very little evidence of these stories anymore because I kept writing them, then throwing them away when I had an idea of how to do them differently.

 

It would be nice if the Halloween Franchise was some 13-film franchise that followed some masterplan and/or all tied together, but that’s not the way it is. It’s a franchise with repeated stops and starts. While the initial idea is great, they keep picking and choosing what to continue with. Maybe it needs Laurie Strode. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe Laurie and Michael need to be related. Maybe they don’t. Maybe the sequel should pull from the original movie. Maybe it should continue from the second. Maybe it should be a clean reboot. It’s kind of nice to know that creatives at the highest levels* are just as unable to stick to a story as I was as a teenager. Granted, they at least completed their movies and I just have unfinished drafts in folders.

 

*I’m considering people who can make a living pursuing their creative endeavors as “the highest levels”. Get pretentious all you want, but they’re still in the top 1% in terms of creatives living the dream.

 

Halloween of course also has the problem that sequels were never a consideration when they made the original. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is more what they had in mind until the original Halloween became such a monstrous hit that a true sequel was a necessity. Halloween II does play like a movie that’s trying to figure out how this is a franchise. It doesn’t know what to do with Laurie. She no longer has the wool pulled over her eyes from the beginning, so they have to figure out how to use her. They aren’t quite ready to turn Jamie Lee Curtis into a badass, especially because this takes place on the same night. So, she’s left in limbo for much of this.

 

This has the closest feel to the original movie for obvious reasons. It has a lot of the original cast and crew on board. The movie is OK. Suffers from comparison to the original. The score doesn’t drive it as much. The kills are decently interesting. I like setting so much of it in a hospital. I wish I could be more interesting in my takes on this. It makes sense why this isn’t considered cannon for all the later sequels.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Blonde

Premise: Imagine how much Marilyn Monroe’s life must’ve sucked.

I sure was rooting for this movie. I’m one of those people who saw writer/director Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and have chased that high ever since. It’s such a gorgeous looking movie. Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, among many others, give such measured and appealing performances. I didn’t care for Dominik’s follow up, Killing Them Softly, in 2012. I’ve had to wait a decade for his next film, Blonde. On paper, Blonde sounded promising too. It was supposed to be long and dreamy. He made that work in Assassination. If he could bring the same beauty of the Wild West to Marilyn Monroe and her iconography, that would be something. And he cast Ana De Armas as Marilyn? What an interesting choice. De Armas rules, and it’s hard to find a star’s career more impacted by COVID than hers. Remember, she had Knives Out in late 2019 as her star turn. No Time To Die was supposed to put her on a bigger stage just a couple months later. Blonde was then expected to be her prestige turn later in 2020. She’s still doing just fine for herself, but there’s a narrative where she left 2020 in that “2012 Jennifer Lawrence, my god she’s everywhere” tier.

 

Or maybe Blonde would’ve been just as grueling to sit through in 2020.

 

Blonde is an exquisitely shot movie. It looks great. Dominik has a lot of nice flourishes throughout the film. De Armas makes a much better Marilyn than I ever imagined. I suppose that shouldn’t be so surprising. Both Marilyn and Ana de Armas as stunning. Perhaps I’m easily fooled by the brunette to blonde thing.

 

This movie is grueling and unpleasant though. Overlong too. It’s told in a dreamlike way. Scenes are sometimes literal and other times interpretive. The throughlines are that Norma Jeane (Marilyn Monroe’s real name) gets abused and has daddy issues. I wish that was just me being glib, but that really is the movie. It starts with Norma Jeane as a child being told her father is a famous actor who will never acknowledge her. Her mother has mental problems. This all leaves a hole in Norma Jeane that she spends her life trying to fill. She calls almost all the men she dates “daddy”. There are some failed and aborted pregnancies that follow her. Between assaults and indignities, she is unfulfilled by acting and turns to drugs which eventually kill her. It’s a bummer of a movie that gives Norma Jeanne no agency either.

 

This isn’t really a biopic. The source material is technically a fiction novel. That said, it’s fiction masquerading as a biopic; similar to Citizen Kane really being about William Randolph Hearst but the official stance was “Any similarities to anyone either alive or dead are purely coincidental”. The problem with this formula in this movie is that it leaves both the real and fictionalized Marilyn Monroe frustratingly unexplored. There’s no figuring out Norma Jeanne in Blonde. It offers a thesis going in and repeatedly confirms it. Look, I’ll even leave room for my aversion to this movie being that I’m just not into watching 3-hour bad-vibes mood pieces. Regardless, I didn’t like this movie.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Annabelle Comes Home

Premise: Annabelle gets loose in the Warren house.

This is like the Captain America: Civil War of the Conjuring franchise. Here me out. The Conjuring is a cinematic universe that spans in many directions at this point, but the proper Conjuring movies with the Warrens are the centerpiece. That’s what the Avengers movies are to the MCU. Civil War is notable for being an Avengers movie in everything but the name. It’s technically a Captain America movie, but virtually all the Avengers are there. Annabelle Comes Home is a Conjuring movie. The Warrens are in it. Annabelle is in it more. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson are somewhere between supporting and cameo, but the movie is in their house.

 

I think the idea for Annabelle Comes Home is really cool. The original The Conjuring teased me with that room of relics: a treasure trove of horror movie ideas all under one umbrella. Annabelle and the other spinoff films, while underwhelming in execution, have delivered on the promise of those artifacts. Annabelle Comes Home is the Chekov’s Gun of the franchise: What if the stuff in that room got out? Like the rest of these Conjuring spinoffs/sequels, the film itself is underwhelming. These movies keep pulling from the same bag of tricks. The air of realism gives too many characters plot armor. It’s hard to feel any stakes watching this.

 

Still, I like the idea. Mckenna Grace is a top tier child star of the late 2010s. I’m OK with James Wan and the other producers taking repeated swings like this until they hit on something great.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: Don’t Worry Darling

Formula: The Stepford Wives + Serenity

If you don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all.

 

God, wouldn’t it be fun if I just left it at that? Unfortunately, Don’t Worry Darling is the kind of trainwreck that you can’t help but look at. There are failures that just bum me out and bore me. Then there are the failures like Don’t Worry Darling that leave me with so many questions that I can’t put it down.

 

You may recognize Don’t Worry Darling as a curious art exhibit at the Venice Film Festival portraying A-list stars in a disastrous press tour, but it turns out there’s a movie attached to it too. It’s a movie about Florence Pugh as a housewife, Alice, in an idyllic 50s community who starts to think that something isn’t right. She begins to question her husband’s (Harry Styles) mysterious job with something called the Victory Project. She notices how isolated the community is, how they can’t leave, and how strange it is that locations are off limits. This is set off when a neighbor and friend, Margaret (Kiki Layne) starts acting out against the constraints of the town. It gets worse as she starts having strange dreams, keeps inexplicably humming an unfamiliar song, and sees a mysterious plane crash.

 

That the movie has a big twist (more on that in a bit) isn’t a surprise. The film has been advertised as a thrilling mystery box movie. Early on the film plays its hand that a big reveal is coming. I did snuff out where this was going pretty early since I’ve seen enough movies of its ilk. That didn’t immediately turn me off, but it did alert me to the high degree of difficulty.

Before its premiere, I had this film pegged as an Oscar hopeful. Pugh brings that kind of attention. While Olivia Wilde’s first effort as a director, Booksmart, didn’t quite lead to awards, it came with the kind of goodwill that suggested an appropriately ambitious project – and Don’t Worry Darling is ambitious if nothing else – would get a fair shake with the Academy. At its core, Don’t Worry Darling was never going to be clever enough to be an awards movie though. The commentary is far too surface level. What this could’ve been is a really great adult thriller. The kind that is less concerned with staying ahead of the audience and more concerned with its movie star performances.

 

There are many good parts of this movie. Florence Pugh continues to be a star. It’s a shame she couldn’t have been around in the 90s to have an Ashley Judd career. Whatever bad blood there may have been between Pugh and Wilde behind the scenes, it doesn’t show on screen. Chris Pine is astoundingly charismatic in a supporting role as the leader of the Victory Project. The film is packed with smaller performances that punch above their weight. Kiki Layne is the star of her own movie happening in the background of this one. Kate Berlant milks a lot out of reactions and one-liners. Gemma Chan in few scenes gives glimpses of a character with very complicated motivations. Honestly, I didn’t even hate Harry Styles’ performance. He’s given so many limitations thanks to the story structure that I don’t think others would’ve done much better. I keep hearing dream alternate casting coming from people who are also changing the writing of the character in the process. That’s not really fair. As written, no one can make his character a good character.

 

The film looks great. Location, costuming, and photography are all top notch. At the very least, Wilde surrounded herself with a crew who knew how to deliver a striking vision of the movie. A lot of the imagery in the film is haunting yet alluring. I came away from this still interested in her next work as a director. I do now know that she isn’t [yet] good enough to overcome a bad screenplay. Granted, for all I know, the screenplay as written made sense and she butchered it with rewrites and editing choices. I’m sticking with the optimistic and generous take.

 

I’ll remain vague about the twist here, but I will say the film has a fundamental misunderstanding of how to apply that twist. The later a twist comes in the movie, the more a filmmaker believes the film can sustain itself without it. The Sixth Sense is a good movie even if Bruce Willis was actually alive. That twist happens at the end because the movie works without it. That is not the case with Don’t Worry Darling. It tells us early on that something isn’t right. It doesn’t play fair with the clues. Certain early events go unexplained. There’s a dinner scene late in the second act that reveals major character information as a gotcha moment except that’s the first the audience is hearing of any of this. The other thing about twists is that the simpler the twist, the later it can go. That’s not a hard rule, but it covers most scenarios. In The Usual Suspects, the Keyser Soze reveal is clean and simple. It’s just a single character reveal. Willis being dead in The Sixth Sense is clean too. His living situation affects few characters and doesn’t require much explanation. Don’t Worry Darling’s twist, however, is a huge one that fundamentally changes everything. A twist that large needs a lot of time to explain itself. I think of a movie like Fresh from this year. There’s a big twist that Daisy Edgar Jones is drugged and abducted by her new boyfriend. That happens pretty early, because it has to spend a lot of time on the ‘why’ of it all.

 

Most bad movies are easy to forget. I watch them and they are generic in addition to being bad. Like, I remember I hated Need for Speed but I also can’t recall a single thing about it. Don’t Worry Darling is a bad movie that gives glimpses of a better movie. I don’t think it could ever be as smart as it wanted to be. Its message just isn’t as revolutionary as it thinks it is. But there’s a fun, even pulpy, thriller in this if it accepted that it was giving surface level commentary. As is, a lot of great on-screen work is wasted on a film that is more concerned with trying to stay ahead of its audience.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend

 

After the Credits

OK. The twist: it’s all a virtual reality run by incels. I find that twist incredibly tedious. It reminds me of my thoughts after seeing Antebellum and Alice: two films about white people secretly bringing back plantations so they can enslave black people again. Those movies bothered me because it suggested that this is what people thought racism looked like. Look, I’m not suggesting that there are no people who want to bring back slavery, but I’m pretty sure the problematic racism these days is more discrete. You could argue that it is making an extreme point as an entry point for those discrete issues. That doesn’t track though. Slavery isn’t the end goal of modern racists, so all the movies are doing is offering them an out by saying “I don’t see myself in these slave racists”. Less extreme, but Don’t Worry Darling has the same problem. A modern incel isn’t actually dreaming of a return to the 1950s. The idea is much more about being seen as a provider and wanting subservience. Don’t Worry Darling offers too much of an out for its target.

 

Also, the movie just doesn’t explain much at all. It is riddled with plot holes like what happened to the crashed plane and why the earthquakes. Ironically, Don’t Worry Darling assumes the victims (the wives) really did only live for their husbands before going into this virtual reality. Otherwise, wouldn’t real-world friends and family go looking for them? The logic of only men dying in real life when killed in the virtual reality sounds like an ad hoc change they made during filming when someone noticed a plot hole on set. To my earlier point, this is a twist with so many implications that you can’t reveal it so late and expect it to make sense. Maybe there’s a 400-page screenplay that explains this all perfectly. All I know is that some mix of screenplay and editing resulted in a movie that is overwhelmed by inconsistencies, plot holes, and questions.

Delayed Reaction: Hellraiser

Premise: …Good question. A man is killed by a mysterious box then resurrected but he needs to kill people to restore his body and there are these people called the Cenobites who look gnarly.

 

In terms of horror franchises, Hellraiser is probably the biggest one that I hadn’t seen any installments of. I don’t have a specific reason for avoiding it. I had some hesitation because I worried it would be way more on the campy end. You see, horror fans have a higher threshold for crap than any other film fans. For many, if there’s enough gore or a clever enough idea, they’ll eat up even the most amateurish execution. I fall victim to that too for how much found-footage I’ve seen, I admit. In my mind, I conflated Max Headroom fans with Hellraiser fans, I think. Both are very 80s but - it turns out - in very different ways.

 

In short, this movie is pretty cool. It’s much darker than I expected. A lot of the makeup is delightfully grotesque. The Cenobite design is really cool. I don’t really understand their motivation. They have the puzzle box that’s supposed to delivery otherworldly pleasure and instead leads to the Cenobites torturing. Everything about this movie feels like it’s coming in from 30 degrees to the side of the angle other horror films would. It makes perfect sense to me that this would have a ton of sequels. It’s a malleable idea. I’ll probably give some sequels a try, but I could also see these getting tedious after a while.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: The Woman King

Formula: Gladiator * Africa

 

Crowd-pleasers are some of the hardest films to write about. I mean they are movie meant to please the masses. I’m part of the masses. Unless my take is “actually, I didn’t like this”, what is there left to say? The Woman King has received one of only two A+ CinemaScores in 2022. Unlike RottenTomatoes, which is open to either critics or whoever uses the site, CinemaScore is based on letter grades from people who actually saw the movie. Still imperfect, but an A+ score means a lot more. The only other A+ in 2022 was Top Gun: Maverick, which tells you a lot about how absolutely crowd-pleasing a movie must be to earn that. And I’m adding to the chorus. It’s hard to imagine anyone seeing The Woman King without so prior aversion to the genre disliking it.

 

The Woman King is a throwback movie in a lot of ways. It’s a war epic with all the familiar beats. Nawi (Thuso Mbedu) is a headstrong woman living in 1800s West Africa. After rebuking a number of arranged marriages, her father sends her to join a tribe of women warriors called the Agojie. The Agojie are led by general Nanisca (Viola Davis) and serve under the young King Ghezo (John Boyega). Ghezo and his people, the Dahomey, are at an impasse. His kingdom has grown wealthy under the thumb of the Oyo Empire thanks to the slave trade. Advisors like Nanisca would like King Ghezo to get out of that practice. While he would too, he’d be risking the financial stability of his kingdom. Also, he’d like to get out from under the Oyo Empire and is already struggling to find the resources to do that. Despite these political implications, most of The Woman King is a boot camp and war movie. It’s about Nawi trying to become an Agojie, Nanisca battling some demons from her past, and the Dahomey trying to stop the Oyo. This is Gladiator or Braveheart only set in Africa.

 

I really love the setting of this movie. This just isn’t an era and location I see much of. It’s Africa still holding onto its old ways while getting introduced to the modern world. Very much like Japan in The Last Samurai. I love seeing that culture clash on screen. On a comparatively modest budget*, The Woman King looks great and feels huge. The costuming and production design look great. The battle scenes have scale. It didn’t feel like it was made on three sound stages the way that many bigger films still can feel like.

 

*Braveheart was made for $60 million in 1995. The Woman King was made for $50 million now. That’s incredible.

 

There’s a part of me that went into this a bit skeptical about the cast. Would this lean too heavily on “girl power” performances? Could 57-year-old prestige actress Viola Davis pull off what’s essentially an action hero role? Almost immediately, all of my concerns went away. Watching Davis in this reminded me of Meryl Streep in The River Wild. Given her filmography, Meryl doesn’t seem like an obvious action star, but 10-minutes in, I felt silly questioning her. Davis is a little surprising, given her age. Late 50s is an odd time to start in this genre; although much of that delay wasn’t her choice. Otherwise, it’s not that surprising Davis would be excellent here. She’s incredible at authority figures. This is just taking the step of having her physically assault people rather than just verbally doing so. The film overall does well pitching the Agojie as elite warriors. It’s the idea that toughness is being about to take a hit not to hit the hardest. Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, and others are all carry themselves like warriors who know how to handle themselves. And they are just great character types you see in this kind of movie. I can’t stress this enough. The reason why The Woman King is so good is that it realizes that tropes became tropes for a reason. It’s a familiar movie structurally in very satisfying ways.

 

The thorniest part of The Woman King is the slave trade aspect. The movie confronts the topic. Much of the film is directly about that. It doesn’t wallow in the darkest parts of it though. And that’s fine. If you need that, watch 12 Years a Slave. The Woman King reminds me a bit of The Patriot that way. In that film, at one point we find out that all the black people working on Mel Gibson’s property are actually free and choose to work there. Historically, that’s bullshit. The point of The Patriot though is that I’m supposed to root for Mel Gibson, so I let it go because that’s just not what the movie wants to get into. The Woman King has a “slavery is bad” ethos. Many of the characters certainly have more evolved views than they really would’ve. I don’t care.

 

As I’ve said a few times now, The Woman King is just a good movie. Top to bottom, it’s something people will enjoy. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood has made a strong case between this and The Old Guard that she should be trusted with whatever action movie she wants to make. My only worry now is that Viola Davis gets the Liam Nesson bug and dips all the way into this world.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend