Movie Reviews
Titles Covered: The Suicide Squad, Minari, A Quiet Place 2, Bill and Ted Face the Music, Black Widow, Mortal Kombat 2021, Nobody, Luca, The Andromeda Strain, In the Heights
The Suicide Squad (*** and a half)
One of the bigger disappointments of the DCEU was David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad. The trailers were awesome, but the movie ended up being dull and forgettable. Recently, James Gunn (of Guardians of the Galaxy fame) returned to give the concept a second shot with a mostly new cast. I didn’t have much enthusiasm for this movie going in, but it turned out to be pretty good!
While the plot of The Suicide Squad is standard fare that goes on too long, the characters really sell it. I loved the new group of obscure antiheroes, especially since the actors play them with complete sincerity. They deliver the humor, but also present real characters with fears, backstories, and misgivings about their own lives. This includes a confused and oddly winsome monster (King Shark), a tortured mercenary with anger issues (Bloodsport), a jingoistic nut who believes himself to be a hero (Peacemaker), and a mentally ill man who knows how crazy he is and tries to hide it (Polka Dot Man). But the real surprise is Ratcatcher 2, played by newcomer Danielle Melchoir. She’s the most likable and sympathetic of the bunch, and ends up providing the heart and soul of the movie.
Of the returning characters, Joel Kinnaman is much improved as Rick Flag. He was just “generic solider guy” in the 2016 Suicide Squad, but now has much more personality and emotion. Viola Davis returns as shady government agent Amanda Waller, and is even more villainous than before. Davis really makes you hate Waller, which leads to a satisfying payoff that made me jump out of my seat and cheer.
Finally, I’d like to discuss Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, who I mostly disliked in previous movies. She’s better in this movie (i.e. her jokes are funnier), but still not a convincing character. If anything, seeing Harley Quinn against a backdrop of actual good characters illustrates why she doesn’t work: she’s an overly self-aware gag without an actual story behind it. The original animated Harley Quinn was defined by her toxic relationship with the Joker. This story could be translated to live action, but it needs (1) the Joker to actually be around, and (2) a more believable character arc. Something’s wrong when Polka Dot Man is a much more convincing character.
I’m also ambivalent about James Gunn’s direction and tone. The humor is somewhat mixed, and relies too heavily on excess gore and violence. Too many parts of the movie feel downright mean-spirited. Frankly, Gunn worked better with the constraints of a PG-13 rating, which reigned in his personal excesses and forced more creativity.
While there are other flaws to harp on, ultimately The Suicide Squad works. It’s got a great cast of characters, it’s remarkably intense, and it’s easily top 3 of the DCEU (along with Shazam and Wonder Woman).
Minari (***)
Though I’ve been ignoring the Oscars this year, I figured I might as well watch the winner. So I rented Minari, thinking it won Best Picture, and only realized later that it didn’t. I’d just forgotten who won because nobody cared about this year’s “Netflix specials we’re pretending were theatrical releases” awards.
Anyway, Minari is fine. It’s pretty good. It’s a simple, down-to-earth portrayal of an immigrant family trying to start a farm. Dad wants to live in the boonies so that he can buy lots of land and grow Korean vegetables, and Mom wants them to move to a bigger town so they can have more community. Refreshingly, the white characters are very encouraging to the main characters, and the only off-color remarks are made by well-meaning children. So this isn’t a movie buoyed by politics at all.
I will compliment the filming. The movie is gorgeously shot, and really makes you want to go outside and grow a garden. I recently switched my Netflix DVD account to Blu-Rays, and it pays off with a movie like this.
Beyond that, there’s not much to Minari. The emotional stakes of the plot hit a high early on with the parents having a big argument, and then not much really stuck with me after that. The ending might have wrapped everything up nicely… but it comes very abruptly with little sense of resolution, as if the last 10 pages of the script were accidentally lost.
A Quiet Place 2 (*** and a half)
I really love A Quiet Place, a unique horror film with genuine heart and creative ideas behind it. Would lightning strike twice in a sequel?
Well… not quite, but the sequel is still worth seeing on its own terms.
The sequel picks up shortly after the first movie, in which the main characters have defeated a group of hostile aliens, but destroyed their farmhouse in the process. They continue on a journey across the apocalyptic wasteland looking for communities of survivors. The main focus of the plot is a deaf teenager, wanting to be as brave as her father and find hope for her family. For some reason, the other teenager in the family is fairly useless.
What follows is a very tense thriller that maintains most of what was good about the original movie. We see more of the aliens this time, and despite losing an aura of mystery, they remain scary all the way throughout. The second half of the movie is particularly intense, and really makes you feel the weight of a ticking clock. I also liked that the ending offered a sense of hope and triumph. I feared at one point that it would turn into the 3rd act of 28 Days Later, which derailed an otherwise good movie.
Despite all these positive points, A Quiet Place 2 isn’t as fresh as its predecessor, and doesn’t have the same heart and thematic depth. Still, the original A Quiet Place was a brilliant movie that deserved a Best Picture nomination (honestly, it was better than all the actual 2018 Best Picture nominees by a landslide), so a sequel that’s a significant step down is still pretty great.
Bill and Ted Face the Music (***)
Old franchises never die; they just get rebooted. One semi-forgotten franchise is “Bill and Ted,” a fairly good slacker comedy about two highschool dopes who travel through time to pass a history class. It’s a silly but entertaining premise that spawned a very uneven sequel (Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey), and both an animated and a live-action TV show. I liked all of these as a pre-teenager, but do kids nowadays even know who Bill and Ted are?
For better or worse, Bill and Ted return as middle-aged men (though their love-interests have been recast with younger actresses). We learn that their success in the previous movies was short-lived, and they never led the world to the utopian future that was promised. The film then splits into 2 subplots: one about Bill and Ted traveling into the future to get the world-uniting song they were supposed to write, and another about their daughters traveling back in time to assemble a band of the world’s greatest musicians.
The result is an entertaining and sweet film, albeit one with very mixed jokes. I especially enjoyed the journey of the two daughters, and the tactics they use to convince various historical figures to join them (mostly by showing them other famous musicians whom they would inspire in the future). I also liked some of the twists in Bill and Ted’s future journey, such as their future selves turning evil, or using knowledge of their past selves to rewrite history.
Other parts don’t fare as well, particularly a subplot about a sensitive killer android, or bringing back the Grim Reaper from “Bogus Journey.” The film definitely needed some more cutting and polishing.
On the whole, Bill and Ted Face the Music is a solid but uneven follow-up for a dead franchise. And the film finally explains how a song could unite the world in a very surprising way.
Black Widow (** and a half)
The beginning of this movie is by far the best part. The opening features a young Natasha Romanov as a Soviet sleeper agent in a fake family, caring for a fake “sister” who’s young enough to actually believe the charade. The opening action scene and the brutal credits sequence are among the highlights of the recent MCU movies.
As for the rest of the movie… it’s OK. The rest of the movie is a silly spy caper with lots of stunts and action and a plot that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It’s too obvious that the movie is going out of its way to have as many fight scenes as possible. This includes a completely pointless fight between the two sisters, and a prison break with no actual plan, so it just turns into a bunch of punching and shooting. This is all entertaining enough, but hard to take seriously. By the time the film is into its third act, all the interesting parts of the plot and main characters have devolved into punchlines.
Some of the problems with this movie come from the MCU timeline, and not just because Black Widow obviously should have been released before Avengers: Endgame. The plot about Russian spies, deep cover, and fake families should have taken place during the Cold War, perhaps in the early 1980’s. But that timeline wouldn’t make sense given Scarlett Johanson’s youthful age (she was still in her mid-20’s when she debuted as the character in Iron Man 2), so her entire backstory has been awkwardly shoe-horned into some ill-defined organization known as the “Red Room.” The Red Room is probably the film’s least convincing angle. It doesn’t connect well with real-world history or the fictional MCU timeline, and feels like a gigantic retcon. The MCU really didn’t need another secret society of world-conquest villains.
The action, acting, and story flow are slick enough to keep the viewer engaged, but I can’t shake the feeling that this entire premise was treated badly. What we needed was something different: a Marvel movie with higher personal drama, more intrigue, and fewer explosions. We needed a more grounded thriller that would ultimately explain Natasha’s decision in Endgame.
Black Widow has hints of something amazing and emotional, but ends up being just another silly Marvel movie. Having not seen one of these in about 2 years, I was fine with that. But it’s not a must-see by any stretch of the imagination.
Mortal Kombat 2021 (***)
The first videogame movie I saw was Super Mario Bros, which I kind of enjoyed at the time. I was 12 years old, and enjoyed the humor, action, and references to the video game. In fact, I didn’t even mind the fact that the setting and plot were totally different from the game. As a pre-adolescent, the idea of a “gritty reboot” was appealing. And besides, maybe this was just how videogame movies work. We couldn’t expect that the movie would be a literal adaptation, right?
And then Mortal Kombat came along, and showed us how videogame movies should be done. No, it’s not the greatest movie ever, but it holds up in a way that Super Mario Brothers doesn’t. It’s enjoyable, straightforward, and all the actors are at least B-grade. I can still watch it today and have a good time. It re-created the videogame accurately, using fairly good special effects for the time.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the 2021 Mortal Kombat and its 1995 predecessor is the rating. In the 1990’s, an R-rated Mortal Kombat almost certainly would have been a box office bomb. In 2021, everyone who cares about the franchise is at least 30 years old, so the film can go full R-rated and accurately depict the gruesome “fatalities.” Honestly, the tone works perfectly. The film saves its gore to punctuate appropriate scenes, so that the audience doesn’t become numb to it all. Meanwhile, the movie is silly, but also manages to hit a few serious moments without creating unintentional camp.
So is the new Mortal Kombat better than the 1995 original? Objectively, it probably is, though it doesn’t quite have the impact that the original had. Also, the actors are more uneven this time. Kano is a showstealer, and I also really enjoyed Jax and Sonya. However, other characters like Kung Lao and Rayden didn’t click for me. Main character Cole Young makes for a solid protagonist, though I was confused about his connection to the video games. Apparently he’s an original character, but there are other people from the games I didn’t know since they were in more recent entries.
Anyway, Mortal Kombat is a good adaptation. The movie is exciting, the action scenes are pretty good, and the story is just good enough that I cared if certain people lived or died. If you liked the 1995 original, you’ll probably also enjoy this bloodier, more serious, but also more uneven portrayal. Though I have to ask: How did we get two pretty good movies based on a cheesy game like Mortal Kombat, while games with actual interesting stories (Chronotrigger, Bioshock, Myst, etc.) remain untapped?
Nobody (****)
Saul from “Breaking Bad” as an action hero? What?!
Nobody starts off with a suburban dad with a boring job and a monotonous routine. After his home is broken into, he becomes the laughing stock of the neighborhood for not fighting back, and eventually snaps and goes on the rampage. We learn that “Nobody” is actually a retired military operative thirsting for a return to the field.
Nobody is a lot like John Wick (especially one scene with an intelligence agent that comes a little too close to being a ripoff), though I actually liked it better than the John Wick movies. It’s better paced, more emotional, and presents a more vulnerable hero who really takes a beating throughout the movie. And 83-year-old Christopher Lloyd gets to kick some ass too!
Nobody is simple and well-crafted fun. There’s not much to say about it, but I was consistently engaged and entertained, so this is probably my favorite movie from 2021 so far.
Luca (***)
Pixar is lucky to have such brilliant writers, composers, and animators at their disposal. If they didn’t, Luca would probably be terrible.
The plot of Luca is that there’s a sea-person who collects human artifacts and wants to visit the surface (i.e. Little Mermaid), and they discover that they turn human when they dry off (i.e. Splash). There’s also some disapproving parents and a village of superstitious yokels who just don’t understand how “special” the monsters are (i.e. every “junior knows best” animated movie). When I tried to explain the movie to Kat, it went something like this:
“Do you want to watch ‘Luca?’ I guess it’s about boys who are secretly mermaids, or something.”
“Uh… go ahead and start without me.”
So imagine our surprise when it turned out that Luca is actually pretty good! It’s not just a bright and colorful movie, but one that very clearly anchored to a specific time and place. The setting is 1950’s Italy, a time when adults would remember the war, but children would not. The protagonists are all innocent prepubescent children enjoying a summer of play and friendship. The main conflict is not, thankfully, with their disapproving parents, but against a cocky teenage bully. Luca is a very nostalgic movie, a story about older kids wanting to learn about the world.
Indeed, the main character’s primary motivation seems to be a desire to see the world. At first he wants to get a Vespa for transportation, but then finds another goal: attending school. As a sea creature, he was never exposed to education. Living among humans, he has the opportunity to mentally explore topics beyond what he can see.
All of these concepts, along with the well-written child characters, vibrant Italian setting, and period music work well. Of course, it raises the question as to why the characters had to be pseudo-mermaids in the first place. Would a more grounded story in which the boys were orphans, runaways, or vagrants be too hard of a sell?
Regardless, Luca is solid. It’s definitely not great Pixar (Inside Out, Toy Story, WallE), but it’s good Pixar (Brave, Monsters University, Finding Dory). Take that for what it’s worth.
The Andromeda Strain (****)
Wow, Michael Chichton, you’ve really outdone yourself this time! If you thought that the idea of a dinosaur theme park was crazy and absurd, just wait until you see this bit of nonsense! Why is this fantastical film such an unrealistic portrayal of science? Well, let me count the ways (warning, very bitter and sarcastic commentary from a scientist):
-The government is actually competent enough to respond immediately to the virus, contain it, and prevent knowledge of it from causing a mass panic.
-The scientists use a facility that enables them to study the live virus both in vivo and in vitro, rather than rushing to publication with hypothetical mathematical models or studies with so many surrogate variables that the experiment is essentially meaningless.
-The decision-makers are all highly accomplished researchers who still run and work in their own labs!
-When the characters find out that natural evolution will solve the problem, and that their well-intentioned efforts will only make things worse, they actually abort their plans.
Oh yeah, and there’s also an alien crystal-based virus that turns your blood into sand. Anyway, this movie is pretty awesome and makes excellent use of split-screen. However, the climax is very contrived (as it is in the book).
In the Heights (*** and a half)
Is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s star starting to fade? After becoming the biggest name in Broadway, he largely failed to impress in Mary Poppins Returns and produced a box office bomb with the movie version of his first Broadway musical In the Heights. Which is too bad, because this movie is actually pretty good.
For starters, In the Heights gets one simple thing right: the cast can actually sing and dance. After about 20 years of bad casting in movie musicals, this is refreshing. Everyone from the lead players to the ensemble has solid musical theater skills, hitting their notes with gusto and dancing with impeccable form and choreography. The filming is really creative, illustrating the songs and the stories they tell with excellent staging and editing. One early shot shows the main character trapped in his workplace while dancers are shown reflected on his storefront window. Stuff like that is brilliant, and uses both the medium of film and the style of theater to full effect.
But… then there’s the plot. The only particularly good storyline revolves around a girl returning from a disastrous semester at Stanford and trying to live up to everyone’s expectations of her. This story has emotional resonance, and I especially liked Jimmy Smits as her father. The rest of the storylines are a mixed bag, and the main character has a remarkably trite and anticlimactic thread. Can I just spoil it? He likes a girl, but their date goes badly, and he thinks about moving, but doesn’t. That’s it. The story pacing also suffers slightly in the stage-to-film transition. The film is too long, and doesn’t have clear rising tension or much of a climax. The Act I closer is meant to portray the characters as “powerless,” but instead makes it look like they are having fun with fireworks.
On the whole, I enjoyed In the Heights. The bar for movie musicals isn’t terribly high right now (I mean, we’re in the timeline in which garbage like La La Land nearly won Best Picture), so this one succeeds by being good enough in most aspects and excellent in a few.