Captain Marvel doesn’t need your approval

You think our nation is divided politically? Spend some time in the fan community! The arguments (and firmly clenched opinions) that erupt can create fissures across fandom that boggle the mind, and often seem to fly in the face of reason or analysis - but they're not hurting for emotion or vitriol. Curiously, many of the superhero films that endure the most wrath and ire are the ones that position women or people of color in prominent roles. Take what happened with The Last Jedi. The mobilization of thin-skinned bot-wielding reviewers out to undermine pictures they feel threatened by has been sad and embarrassing to behold. It's the same tactic that used James Gunn's past against him, actually getting him fired from one of the most successful corners of the Marvel Cinematic Universe - a debacle that only this week saw the light of sanity, when Disney reversed course and reinstated Gunn (THANK YOU!), perhaps finally realizing they had been manipulated by arch-conservative and intolerant enemies that stand in direct opposition of the company's own values - but I digress. Suffice to say a small mountain of exponentially negative Captain Marvel user reviews began multiplying, to the degree that Rotten Tomatoes decided to suspend user reviews entirely. This is the world we live in - and Captain Marvel doesn't give a crap. If you try and get in her way, she's just going to shut you down.

Written and directed by the collaborative team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson, Sugar), Captain Marvel is an unusual and highly entertaining chapter of the Marvel Universe. The film's one of the more non-linear origin stories within the MCU, with things kicking off in the middle of the action, as a cadre of interstellar combatants are waging war against a deep space enemy known as The Skrull. Newcomers would do well to revisit Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy for a refresher, as these soldiers are the Kree, warrior-heroes who've gotten maybe a bit too used to war for their own good.

Captain Marvel is full of potential spoilers, all of which I'm going to try to avoid here. Elite Starforce warrior Vers (Brie Larson) is a fighter still under the wing of her Commander (Jude Law), who frequently mansplains that her emotions are holding her back, keeping her from achieving her potential. Vers has echoes of a forgotten backstory she's not entirely sure are real. Are they memories, or something else? Audiences may be a little confused at first, but Boden and Fleck don't linger, and Vers soon finds herself marooned on a far-flung planet called Earth, that feels like it might be somehow familiar.

It's 1995, and the filmmakers have a blast peppering the film with hilarious mid-nineties tech and pop culture references, none better than the one used for Stan Lee's always reliable cameo, in a shout-out to one of the more positive inhabitants of fandom - and of Hollywood.

Marvel Studios, you sure got me with your reimagined opening theme, where every hero we're used to seeing in those familiar graphics has been lovingly replaced with Stan the Man. Hat doffed and tears wiped.

Vers quickly meets a young SHIELD agent name Nick Fury (a phenomenally CG'd Samuel L. Jackson), and the film takes off like a rocket thanks to the phenomenal charisma these two share. Jackson is just amazing, absolutely convincing as a looser, less-hardened version of the Fury we know so well. Who knew Nick Fury was such a cat lover?

Plot-wise, I'll stop there, but Vers has both the shape-shifting Skrulls to contend with, as well as the proximity of her own past. Annette Bening and Ben Mendelsohn are both superb, cleverly cast in their respective roles. It's giving nothing away to note that just as Black Panther served as prelude to Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Marvel opens the door to next month's Avengers: Endgame. Suffice to say if you don't see Captain Marvel first, you're likely to feel hopelessly lost when Endgame unfurls. It's also important to point out that like DC's Wonder Woman, Vers/Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel is a force to be reckoned with - and tough as hell. If she's been fighting with one hand tied behind her back, she positively soars when she breaks free. She's not here to smile for you, or make you happy. She's not looking for your approval or permission. I guess that just threatens the hell out of some people. But she is here to do what she can to put a stop to war, and to set things right, and if you've got a problem with that, you'd best get out of her way. 

Iron Maiden - Alita: Battle Angel

It’s been a long time coming, but without hesitation I'm thrilled to exclaim that I loved Alita: Battle Angel. James Cameron has been simmering his Alita screenplay for decades. Based on Yukito Kishiro’s 9-volume manga series (which debuted in 1990), it was followed by a 2-episode video animation series and became powerfully influential. After directing Titanic, Cameron was intent on directing Alita, but then Avatar took development pole position and eclipsed everything else.

So with Godfatherly generosity, Cameron asked Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Planet Terror) to take a crack at bringing Alita to life, working off Cameron's script, co-written by Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island, Terminator Genisys, Altered Carbon).

It's the apocalyptic 25th Century, and the denizens of industrialized Iron City toil in a society where cyborgs and robotic replacement limbs are ubiquitous. Above them hovers the mysterious utopia of Zalem, which everyone dreams of reaching, but few actually do. Cyberneticist Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz) hunts for spare parts in massive derelict junkyards, when he discovers the intact remnants of an impossibly advanced cyborg. He takes her back to his lab, and painstakingly crafts a body for her.

When "Alita" (Rosa Salazar) awakes, she has no memory of who she was, what she did, or where she came from. She's a wide-eyed newcomer who marvels at everything, yet her reflexes and instincts are intensely attuned, and seem to naturally gravitate towards violence. Shades of The Long Kiss Goodnight. 

Alita: Battle Angel has a strong late-eighties, early-nineties Paul Verhoeven vibe, like it could have come out right after Robocop or Total Recall - except the digital effects are (for the most part) state of the art. An insane amount of Alita is computer-generated, including Alita herself, who Cameron and Rodriguez chose to give unnaturally large manga eyes to. It's initially a little jarring, but the effects are so great, and you quickly accept it (Alita's hair isn't always quite as successfully animated).

As Alita learns more about the world she now inhabits, she quickly learns there are crime lords and cyborg henchmen everywhere, none more menacing than Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley), a delirious behemoth who reminded me of the Cain cyborg from Robocop 2. In fact Alita is full of visual touchstones to those 80s/90s sci-fi thrillers, with callbacks that evoke everything from Demolition Man to Star Trek: First Contact. Cinematographer Bill Pope (The Matrix, Baby Driver) gives the picture a subtle nostalgic hue that feels like a grindhouse B-picture, only stuffed with Baroque robotic effects of incredible detail. As the plot moves forward, the more Alita remembers. It's a fun cyberpunk mythos, peppered with "Hunter-Warriors," Panzer-Kunst martial arts and Berserkers.

Newly minted Oscar winner Mahershala Ali seems to be doing an evil Wesley Snipes impression, as the predatory mogul behind the sport of Motorball, a cyborg carnage bread and circuses that captivates everyone in Iron City. It's a wild, pulpy universe - much of which we've seen previously in countless other films, but Alita is the story that helped sire them all, plus the energy on display is fast and captivating. Rodriguez does a masterful job with the action. A scene that begins with an awkward Inspirational Speech quickly descends into an off the rails bar brawl with cyborg bounty hunters including Zapan (Ed Skrein) and an awesome dog-loving old fella (Jeff Fahey) I'd love to see a whole movie about.

Supporting characters fare less well. As Alita's love interest Hugo, Keean Johnson is from the buff Taylor Lautner school of acting, and comes off a little bland. Jennifer Connelly is icy cool, in an awkward role that never quite takes off. Big props to Salazar, as you're always waiting for Alita to come back and lock horns with Zapan and Grewishka. It's crazy and derivative, weak on dialogue, and let's be frank - is guilty of unabashed whitewashing - but Rodriguez knows how to find the fifth-gear in action sequences, and Alita herself is an appealing and ferociously fun character to root for. 

So if you're fond of that pre-digital heyday when kinetic mayhem ruled the movies, you definitely want to see Alita on the big screen. It's apocalyptic action and cyborg steel in a collision of crazy I suspect you'll really enjoy the hell out of. 

The Favourite's Cruel Intentions

Call it the curse of high expectations. The Favourite came barreling into awards season with an incredible rep amidst a sea of raves. I'm always a sucker for a great 18th century costume pic, so I was excited and raring to go. And while The Favourite exhibits some tremendous filmmaking, I can't say I really enjoyed the experience.

The script by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara depicts real historical characters - Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), who reigned from 1702-1707, rules England largely from her sickbed. Plagued by gout and poor health, and tormented by a wake of childbirth tragedies, she depends greatly on her friend Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) - the Duchess of Marlborough - her closest and most brutally honest confidant, who also wields the most influence over Her Majesty. A two-party Parliamentary system - the Tories and the Whigs - is wrangling for power as the war with the French lurches on.

When circumstances force Sarah's destitute cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) to seek desperate employment as a servant in the Royal household, the Queen quickly becomes fond of Abigail's softer, more flattering persona, which contrasts winningly against Sarah's sharp candor. Jealousies and manipulations ensue.

The cast is superb, with Colman and Weisz turning in hypnotic, authentic-feeling performances. Stone is sensational, too - though her English accent is less than consistent (or convincing) at times. You just can't fault these three, their work is simply fantastic. There's also terrific supporting work from Mark Gatiss and Nicholas Hoult.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos, however, (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) is not at all what I expected. You may have heard that The Favourite is something of a comedy, and it is curiously, morbidly funny at times. But it's definitely a black comedy - as if Merchant Ivory had been possessed by David Lynch. Along with cinematographer Robbie Ryan, Lanthimos uses an assortment of distended fisheye lenses, fluid, roving cameras and natural light to depict life at court as a surreal experience, sucking much of the formality of the regal trappings away, leaving them naked in their antique oddness. The costumes and hairstyles are bold and outrageous. Lanthimos also has no qualms about inserting anachronistic language or behavior and is intent on defying convention. He's definitely a man with a vision, make no mistake.

While I haven't seen The Lobster, after getting through The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Lanthimos is kind of hard to take for me. Suffering seems to be a recurring theme in his work, if not outright cruelty. Characters often seem robbed of their dignity and are forced to endure some kind of humiliating betrayal of their own bodies' independence. It's an uncomfortable pervading motif. I wonder what the point might be, beyond making the audience cringe, especially when it's hard to find a likable character to root for.

But it's an interesting film, and one guaranteed to provoke lots of lively discussion afterward. Just don't expect to feel good when it's all over, in any kind of A Room with a View way. Maybe more of a Dangerous Liaisons with antipsychotics kind of way. 

Oscar Predictions 2019

It’s almost time for launch! As usual, not necessarily what I think should win, but these are my predictions for what I think will win on Sunday night. Only one real long shot. My track record’s pretty solid, but place your bets as you see fit:

Best Picture

Black Panther

BlacKkKlansman (also nominated for Best Director)

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite (also nominated for Best Director)

Green Book

Roma (also nominated for Best Director) The only way this doesn’t win is if enough voices in the academy are united enough to want to send a message to Netflix. But I just don’t see that happening.

A Star is Born

Vice (also nominated for Best Director)

Best Actress

Yalitza Aparicio, Roma

Glenn Close, The Wife     The clear favorite. Personally I’m rooting for Gaga, but Close is a shoe-in.

Olivia Colman, The Favourite

Lady Gaga, A Star is Born

Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Amy Adams, Vice

Marina de Tavira, Roma

Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk     Again, a complete lock. 

Emma Stone, The Favourite

Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

Best Actor

Christian Bale, Vice

Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born

Willem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate

Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody     The Globes have spoken. Only Bale is a possibility. Though Bradley Cooper, I’d so love to see you nab this. 

Viggo Mortensen, Green Book

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Mahershala Ali, Green Book

Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman

Sam Elliott, A Star is Born     My one long shot. Ali is the likely winner, but I’m gambling that Sam is as well liked by others as he is by me. I’d so love to see him recognized, especially for this role. 

Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Sam Rockwell, Vice

Best Director

Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman

Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War (the only Director not also nominated for Best Picture – it’s nominated for Best Foreign-Language Film)

Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite

Alfonso Cuarón, Roma     It could be Spike, which I’d love, but I think Alfonso’s just too golden. 

Adam McKay, Vice

Best Original Screenplay

The Favourite (Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara)     In the bag. It has to win something.

First Reformed (Paul Schrader)

Green Book (Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly)

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)

Vice (Adam McKay)

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)

BlacKkKlansman (Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee)     Spike’s Oscar. The acceptance speech I’m most looking forward to.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty)

If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)

A Star Is Born (Eric Roth and Bradley Cooper & Will Fetters)

Rhapsodic Bohemian Rhapsody

Many a great film has emerged from challenging production circumstances, though it’s doubtful if that end result makes those who suffered through them feel any better. Director Bryan Singer’s (X-Men, The Usual Suspects) troubling reputation – both on and off set – has already been well documented, to the point that 20^th Century Fox fired him before filming of Bohemian Rhapsody completed. 

But filmmaking is a collaborative medium, and if there is enough vision in the genesis, and enough passion in the combined effort, good work can still win out – which is very much the case here, thanks to a deft screenplay from Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour) and Peter Morgan (The Crown), and a simply transformational performance by Rami Malek as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. 

Bohemian Rhapsody is terrific, crowd-pleasing biopic material. A UK immigrant from Zanzibar yearning to transcend his familial and cultural limitations, young Farrokh Bulsara had a four-octave vocal range, matched only by the dreams of what his voice could make possible – his entire being intent on performing. In 1970, he formed Queen with guitar player Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, and the rest is history.

Lucy Boynton is good as Freddie's supportive girlfriend and later wife; Gwilym Lee is particularly good as Brian May, with Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones) and Allen  Leech (Downton Abbey) both shining in supporting roles. There's also a very strange secondary role I'll let you find on your own. If the film seems to have particularly tight cohesion between its music and editing, it may be due to John Ottman, who distinctively fills both roles as composer and editor. His work with cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (Drive, Three Kings) immerses the film in a rich seventies glow and explodes during the film's spectacular Live Aid concert sequence.

Malek is utterly phenomenal, navigating Mercury's accent and personality with incredible skill. It's a nuanced performance, with shy, intimate moments giving way to the indulgence and perils of fame and isolation. It may be a familiar show business bio arc, but Malek's craft and subtlety makes it fresh and hypnotic - and when he's on stage performing, you simply can't stop watching. As the film moves through time, it's awe-inspiring when you realize the incredible variety of innovative hits Queen generated, and the massive cultural influence they made in all too short a time. 

Bohemian Rhapsody has connected with audiences in a major way, with a jaw-dropping global box office of over $800 million, it’s the highest grossing musical biopic of all time, and the fifth top release in Fox history, behind Avatar and the Star Wars franchise. After the huge success of A Star is Born, to have another musical biopic also triumph shows there's certainly audience appetite, and we should expect to see more. Remi Malek has an excellent chance of walking away with Oscar gold on Sunday night - it's an amazing performance in a film that is clearly a labor of love for all those involved. 

Gathering Laurels with The Wife

It's Oscar season, with the big night less than three weeks away - so a lot of us are doing our homework. Ever since she won the Golden Globe, Glenn Close has emerged as the odds-on favorite to repeat and take home Best Actress for her work in The Wife, directed by Björn Runge.

Close plays Joan, the dutiful (aka long-suffering) spouse of acclaimed novelist Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), an academic with a long list of critical successes, matched only by his equally long inventory of dalliances and affairs. Only at this moment, another temptress is about to wrap Joe in her irresistible embrace - the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The story of the Castlemans' evolving marriage is told over flashbacks - with Close's own daughter (actress Annie Stark) playing the younger version of Joan. We toggle back and forth between those glimpses into their past, and the couple's arrival in Stockholm so Joe can receive the Nobel - their brooding son in tow (Max Irons, son of Jeremy), frustrated over his father's lack of interest in his own literary ambitions.

As an ambitions biographer eagerly pestering Castleman for exclusivity, Christian Slater plays a character who might as well be called Nathaniel Exposition. 

The Wife is never boring, and Close and Pryce are both simply wonderful. The glimpse into the festivities and preparations surrounding the Nobel ceremonies is fascinating. Glenn Close is a marvel and always phenomenal to watch. Maybe it's the hype, and certainly no fault of her performance, but I don't think this is the most fascinating, Oscar-worthy character Close has portrayed. For me, her work in Jagged Edge, Dangerous Liaisons and Reversal of Fortune were much more compelling and complex. It does feel a bit like with this seventh nomination, the Academy is hastening to correct the slight they've made at never having acknowledged an actor who's the peer of Meryl Streep.

The Wife is solid entertainment, if a little subdued, but Close and Pryce will keep you watching, and perhaps you'll be a little more grateful for the calm stability of your own marriage! 

Halloween Finally Comes Home

I missed the Halloween sequel/reboot in theaters, and ever since it debuted to enthusiastic reviews, I've been eager to take this long-awaited trip back to Haddonfield. Thank you, home video!

It's been 40 years since a young upstart named John Carpenter threw down a directorial Ace of Spades that changed the face of modern horror. Carpenter would go on to become a genre voice on a par with Stephen King. I'm weather-beaten enough to have seen the original Halloween on opening weekend, and in those halcyon pre-internet days, all there was to guide you were trailers and word of mouth. Halloween blew the doors off, like Jaws, using music (also scored by Carpenter) to create a relentless sense of dread. I vividly remember people literally running up the aisles to flee from the theater. Faceless killer Michael Myers predated Jason, Freddie - he paved the way for them all, begetting decades of lesser "slasher" films that helped give the horror genre a bad name. But that original! Featuring the debut of Jamie Lee Curtis and an unstoppable killing machine that would foreshadow The Terminator, Halloween was a tightly wound B-movie on steroids that never let up - and audiences went crazy for it.

The sequels, not so much. There were myriad attempts at Halloween sequels, including 1998's Halloween H20 - also featuring Curtis - but none of them caught on. This (2018) Halloween wisely dismisses all those lesser chapters as though they never existed, giving us the first genuine-feeling bookend to the original - and it works beautifully.

Produced by Carpenter (with Blumhouse Productions) and directed by David Gordon Green, (Joe, Our Brand Is Crisis), the film wisely puts the focus on the lingering aftermath of the original story. Michael Myers is still institutionalized - a hulking shape who never speaks, not even to his psychiatrist, Turkish actor Haluk Bilginer filling the Donald Pleasence role. Michael just waits, like a missile waiting for the right button to be pushed. A pair of journalist podcasters unwittingly twitch something in him, and events are set in motion.

The survivor of Michael's rampage, Laurie Strode (Curtis) is now a grandmother - but she's a grandmother you don't want to mess with. Halloween is all about the staying power of trauma, and Laurie Strode has never gotten over the trauma of That Night, 40 years ago. She's had a family, a granddaughter - but the entire time, her real soul mate has been Michael. Like Terminator 2: Judgement Day's Sarah Connor or Aliens' Ripley, she knows that one day, a reckoning's gonna come - and she's spent the decades behind fortified walls, training, shooting, stockpiling, instilling fear in her daughter, that The Boogeyman is out there, and you can't ever let your guard down.

Curtis is absolutely amazing here, really digging into the role and bringing pathos and genuine empathy for victims of trauma to her role. At times both fierce and vulnerable, she makes what could have been a stock action trope and turns her into a compelling heroine. Even meeting for a casual dinner gives her anxiety, Curtis abruptly downing someone else's glass of wine to somehow just get through it.

Like two trains in a nightmare math problem, eventually these twin forces are going to collide. Nice to see Will Patton, somewhat subdued as local law enforcement. Andi Matichak and Judy Greer are Laurie's daughter and granddaughter, both of whom are dealing with the chaos Laurie leaves in her wake. Virginia Gardner and Jibrail Nantambu are both terrifically memorable as another babysitter and her wily charge. But this is Curtis's picture and she owns every scene.

Green made Halloween for a stunningly low $10 million, and it went on to earn nearly $254 million worldwide. So will we get a sequel? With those numbers, someone's bound to be tempted to get creative. But one of the strengths of this worthy sequel is that it stands alone so well, and doesn't cheat the audience in the 3rd act. It's also such a strong, potent premise - that alone will be hard to top.

It sounds like James Cameron's upcoming Terminator sequel is taking a page from Carpenter's book, shrewdly ignoring the many lame sequels and only acknowledging films 1 and 2 - and bringing back Linda Hamilton as an equally steely silver shotgun-wielder is also a very smart move.

Maybe a sequel with Laurie Strode and Sarah Connor kicking ass together?
I'd buy that for a dollar.