1917

The movie 1917 is likely to be one of the best movies I will see this year.  It follows a pair of World War I soldiers on a time-critical mission to get a message to another unit so as to avoid an attack that will end in disaster.  This is based on a real story told to writer and director Sam Mendes by his grandfather.

The movie is filmed in such a way that it appears to be one continuous shot, except for a couple of obvious breaks.  There are continuous shots that last at least 40 minutes.  The camera follows the soldiers through long trenches, across fields, into farmhouses, rivers, underground bunkers, and troop transports.  This is like another character because I spent the whole movie wondering how on earth did they film this?  It is technically very difficult to have everything properly lit while the camera follows the actors through miles of territory. 

The movie creates a suspense that is perfect.  There is not much direct combat, but the horrible aftermath of combat is everywhere in this movie.  On the journey, the soldiers are constantly passing dead bodies and destruction.  The way the movie is filmed gives it an extra sense of realism.

The movie is rated R for war violence and a few swear words.

Rating: A+.

Why 1917 had to be one shot?

1917 has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Contagion

I rewatched "Contagion" after seeing it in the theater when it came out in 2011.

I have never seen a more prophetic movie in my entire life.  At least 80% of the film seems applicable to the current COVID-19 pandemic.  The biggest difference is the deadliness of the disease, which instead of being about 2% for known cases is around 25%.  But detail after detail comes up that I only recently learned about during the COVID crisis.

The movie has an 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, although not all the critics were equally enthusiastic.  The audience score is only 63%, so I suspect that the subject matter might have turned off some people.  Rotten Tomatoes describes it as, "Tense, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a stellar cast.  Contagion is an exceptionally smart -- and scary -- disaster movie."   I agree.  It tells a fantastic story.  My favorite movie critic, Richard Roeper, gives it 5 out of 5 stating, "Contagion" is a brilliantly executed disease outbreak movie."

The film puts much emphasis on how easily disease can spread and this adds to the tension.

The ending is great, giving a nice emotional catharsis followed by a revelation about how the pandemic started.

Rating: A+.

The Wild Robot

If you have seen the trailer for The Wild Robot, you might ask yourself, "Haven't I seen this movie before?"  The Iron Giant gave us a robot that fell from the sky but didn't know its origin or purpose and eventually rebelled against its creators. Over the Hedge gave us animals that talk and must cooperate to survive, along with a bear that is a bad guy.  Zootopia gave us an unscrupulous fox who helps the main character.  Logan's Run gave us humans living in a dome.  Silent Running gave us plants being grown in a dome.  Wall-E gave us robots with compassion while on a voyage of self-discovery, along with an evil robot trying to do them harm.  Bicentennial Man gave us a robot that rewrote his own programming to become more than he originally was, and so therefore the robot is wanted by his creators to find out what those changes are.  

Many of the elements we have seen before, but the movie is so well-written and well-executed that it is one of the best films I have seen in a while.  I was impressed.

Rating:  A-.

The following section contains spoilers:

I have one big complaint about a plot point that doesn't make sense and is likely there to push an agenda.  The robot is on an island with animals that normally compete with and kill each other.  While the animals are hibernating for the winter, a massive snowstorm threatens life on the island.  The robot takes it upon itself to bring some of the hibernating animals to a large shelter that it has built.  While in the shelter the animals agree to overcome their natural instincts and cooperate for their mutual survival.  

Logically this makes no sense.  If the animals are adapted to hibernate on the island, then they have already found shelter to survive the weather.  The robot, which has overcome its own programming, gets the animals to do the same and make a permanent truce.  So if the animals aren't going to hunt each other, how do they survive going forward?  The message is that competition is bad, and cooperation is good, which reminds me of Our Daily Bread, a Great Depression-era movie with a socialist message.  Both movies have a climactic scene about diverting water.

Rouge One: A Star Wars Story

Every Star Wars film that I have ever seen has been so good that it compelled me to see it a second time within a week or less.  I probably would have done the same with Rogue One, except that I had a nasty virus for a couple of weeks.  I also felt like the movie didn't have the same rewatchabiltiy as previous Star Wars movies, so there was no need to hurry back to the theater and see it a second time.  I waited five weeks, and even then, going into it I felt like the movie might not be that compelling the second time around.

I was wrong.  What drives Rogue One is very strong plot and intense action.  In my original review, I wrote that the movie was not strong on characters except for the main character of Jyn Erso.  This isn't quite correct either.  Rogue One has a ton of interesting characters, but because there are so many of them, most of them don't get that much screen time.

Rogue One is a Star Wars movie with a strong slant toward traditional war movies.  This makes it different from the previous films, but every Star Wars film has had its own unique flavor.  This means that every new film has taken the fans by surprise, with a few of them inevitably being disappointed because the movie was not what they expected.  However, this speaks to the strength of the Star Wars movies that they have provided us with so many unique films.

I always feel better about these movies the second time around, because any flaws are easier to ignore on the second watching.  The previous film, The Force Awakens, had the most flaws of any Star Wars movie, but there is also a great deal of good stuff in the film, so it seemed to get better every time I watched it.

Rogue One is surprisingly beautiful.  We see shots of planets that are stunning in their detail and beauty, plus everything else in the movie looks gorgeous.  Movies like this are an incredible technical achievement.  A generation ago, a movie that looked this amazing would have blown audiences away, even if the story was terrible, which fortunately, it isn't.

I am revising my rating of the film from "B+" to "A-". 

Oppenheimer

 

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer has been touted as not only the movie of the year but possibly the most important movie of the century.  Some critics have called it a perfect film, and I wish that I could report that it is a perfect movie, but it has a few flaws.

The film is a technical achievement, having been filmed in iMax at the record length of three hours.  This is difficult to do with iMax and the movie has even broken some iMax projectors.  I did not see it in iMax but got a pretty good view from the front row of my local theater.

Because of COVID, it has been 3.5 years since I last visited a movie theater.

On the plus side, the film is so well made that it mostly kept my attention for the entire three hours.  About halfway through the last hour, I began to feel like it was dragging on too much and wondered how long it had to go until the end.

Cillian Murphy carries the movie with a fantastic performance as Oppenheimer.

As for the flaws:

1.  The film is mostly a soap opera about Oppenheimer's personal struggles, sex life, and political difficulties after the Manhattan Project where he was denied a security clearance for his communist party associations.  The main antagonist is Lewis Strauss, played in an oscar worthy performance by Robert Downy Jr, who comes to despise Oppenheimer for his political leanings.

This is a missed opportunity to explore the history around World War II, the Manhattan Project, and other scientists involved.  I have seen documentaries, a series, and one other movie go into way more detail about these events.  In this film, we see many famous actors play historical characters who get very little screen time.  By cramming too much into the film, we get too little about these characters.  For example, Matt Damon does a fantastic job of playing General Groves, but his character isn't explored very much.

Compare this to the movie Fat Man and Little Boy which serves as a better history lesson, but is more flawed in its presentation.  General Groves is almost the main character, and Paul Newman played him more like George C. Scott played Patton.  In the film, comic actor Dwight Shultz is barely passable as Oppenheimer, and the dialog is mostly annoying exposition to explain to the audience what is going on.

2. The movie has a few surrealistic scenes that are more confusing than entertaining.

3.  Cillian Murphy has a couple of nude scenes that are completely gratuitous.  They just don't work in this film.  I don't mind nude scenes in general, but here they come across as jarring.  One of these is an imaginary lovemaking scene in the hearing room of a political committee.  It feels totally out of place.

4.  Christopher Nolan made a big deal about how they only used practical effects and not computer effects for shots like the nuclear explosion.  This works dramatically, but it doesn't look like a real nuclear explosion.  It just looks like a big Hollywood explosion, so the movie uses close-ups to hide that it is not a real nuclear explosion.  In this case, computer effects, or real footage, might have been better.

5.  The film presents Oppenheimer as conflicted, but also as a bit of an enigma.  This last part feels a bit lazy and I find myself wondering if the Oppenheimer presented on screen is historically accurate.  I get the sense that I don't understand the real Oppenheimer having watched the movie.

The final scene of the film is thought-provoking.  It shows that Oppenheimer believed that humans could still destroy themselves with nuclear weapons.

As for Oppenheimer's concern over nuclear weapons and self-blame, he failed to understand that there was no way to stop scientific progress in this area.  Even Japan was working on nuclear weapons development.  If we didn't invent nuclear weapons, then our enemies would.  Where this ultimately leads I don't know, but there was no keeping the genie in the bottle.

Rating:  B+.  Although the movie is a technical achievement with great performances, it feels like a lost opportunity to explore more of the history and Oppenheimer himself.

Some critics said that they planned on watching the movie multiple times, but I don't see why I would want to.

Why Oppenheimer is a MASTERPIECE

My Review of 'Oppenheimer'

The Vast of the Night

The Vast of the Night was released to drive-in theaters and on Amazon Prime in May of 2020.

When I was reviewing the movie "The Signal", I said that the trouble with low budget science fiction movies is that these types of films might have one good idea, whereas a big-budget movie like "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" is loaded with many good ideas. The Signal kept you in suspense for the whole film, making you think that this story was leading up to something wonderful. There was a payoff in the end, but that payoff was so short that if you had closed your eyes for just a couple of seconds then you would have missed it. Literally. Everything I said about "The Signal" is also true for "The Vast of the Night", except the ending is a little longer. However, both movies are an exercise in prolonged tension to arrive at similar endings. The Vast of the Night feels like a master class in low budget filmmaking. It does a great job with its long camera shots and its unknown actors who give stellar performances. The movie starts by showing an old fashioned television screen like it is playing an episode of the old Twilight Zone. The camera zooms into the screen and now we are following characters in a 1950's small New Mexico town on the night of a high school basketball game. It spends a long 20 minutes introducing its settings and characters, after which the local switchboard operator starts noticing weird things happening. She teams up with her friend, a disk jockey at a one-man radio station to investigate what is going on. Many of the scenes drag on a bit, mostly with conversation. But there is a frantic tension that builds toward the conclusion. Fortunately, the actors really sell this story. We get a sense that these are ordinary people caught up in something big that they don't understand. The minimalist style of this film could be called experimental, but for 85 minutes it works really well. Rating: B+. A reviewer on youtube gave the film an A-. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HEcnacyI_8

Thor Love and Thunder

 

Marvel Studios Thor: Love and Thunder is a very fun watch just so long as you don't take it too seriously.  If you took out all the comical parts then the movie would be about half as long.  The film is a comedy and it is pretty clear that Chris Hemsworth loves hamming it up in a big way.  His character Thor was always a bit comical, which offends some people because they look at Thor as a classical hero.  However, the other half of the movie makes for a pretty good Marvel adventure, and the combination of comedy and adventure is great just so long as you are not put off by that kind of thing.

Christian Bale deserves much credit for his portrayal of the villain Gorr, who is on a personal mission to destroy the "gods".  You need a good villain to make a good superhero movie.  Although Gorr is not as deep of a character as Thanos, and at times might seem a bit superficial, Christian Bale pours his heart into the role.  He gets the job done.

Thor: Love and Thunder streams on Disney+.

Rating:  A-.

Lightyear

 

My head is "buzzing" after just finishing the Disney Pixar film Lightyear.  A great deal works in this movie, along with scenes that feel weirdly off, plot holes, very questionable physics, time travel shenanigans, and alternate reality.  It is a little too convoluted for a Disney kid's film and I'm pretty sure that I didn't understand all of it.

The first half of the film made me feel like I was watching a B-movie science fiction in an animated kid's film that wasn't funny, which seemed like a half-hearted effort by Pixar.  However, the real meat takes place in the second half, which has enough action to make a Transformers movie proud.  The net result is a somewhat entertaining movie that is messy.

There is no doubt that the movie looks gorgeous.  The level of animation is almost too detailed for objects that are on screen for like 2 seconds, making me want to see more of the things that just fly by.

The movie has one big Twilight-Zone-like twist that doesn't quite make sense.  

The story starts out fairly routine before it eventually ventures into Twilight Zone territory.  Buzz Lightyear is a Space Ranger who accidentally gets his shipmates stranded on a hostile world.  However, the crewmates make the best of their situation, build a habitat that turns into a community, defend themselves from the indigenous life forms, and build an experimental ship in an effort to get off the planet.  Since Lightyear feels bad about that accident that stranded them, he makes multiple failed attempts to break the light barrier in the experimental ship.  Each attempt sends him about four years into the future, which as portrayed in the movie makes no sense.  He watches his shipmates grow old and die as he keeps trying.  When he finally does succeed, he finds himself further into the future than expected, and the community under attack from extraterrestrial robots.  He must band together with the descendants of his former shipmates against this new threat.

Initially, Lightyear does not trust new recruits, trusting only himself, but later feels bad over his own failures.  Circumstances force him to work with a team of pretty inexperienced rookies, which he does not want to do, but he eventually realizes that he cannot do everything on his own.

Rating:  B.

Lightyear is available for streaming on Disney Plus.

The initial reviews for Lightyear said that it was not only a good Pixar film but also a very good science fiction movie.  However, I think that both assertions are debatable.  Nevertheless, with such good reviews, I wanted to see the movie, but I was not quite ready to return to theaters because of COVID.  

The movie did poorly at the Box Office, quickly going to Disney Plus streaming, but not because of COVID.  Many conservative voices tried very hard to organize a boycott against the film, and this effort had some success.  The problem was a "lesbian kiss" in what is presumably a kid's film, even though this scene takes about 1 second of screen time and is handled delicately with a married same-sex couple.  I fail to see why this would be an issue in the year 2022 because it represents the world that we live in now.  Most kids are fully aware of these issues.  Nevertheless, prominent conservative voices were vowing to not let their kids see the movie, which is perhaps their loss.

When it comes to controversial issues, science fiction has often been the first to break new ground.  All the way back in 1995, Star Trek Deep Space Nine had a passionate female-on-female kiss, but this made sense within the science fiction story.  Certain shows, like Deep Space Nine, Star Trek The Next Generation, The Orville, and the animated series Final Space, had alien species with either just one gender or alien species that could change gender.

Eye in the Sky

Eye in the Sky is a 2015 war thriller starring Helen Miran, Alan Rickman, and Aaron Paul.  This was Alan Rickman's last movie before succumbing to pancreatic cancer.

 A military operation uses a Predator UAV to track a group of highly wanted terrorists to a house in Kenya where a couple of suicide bombings are being prepared.  Since the Predator is equipped with a couple of Hellfire missiles, and there is an imminent threat, the logical thing to do is to blow up the house from the air.  

However, there is a problem.  A little girl from the same neighborhood starts selling loaves of bread baked by her mother just outside the house with the terrorists inside.  The conflict of the film is what to do about the little girl?   This is a decision that goes up and down the command chain and gets debated hotly as a moral conundrum.

The movie also uses a couple of micro-drones disguised as animals that may not really exist.  We don't know for sure what secret technology the military may have.

Is this an anti-war film?  Maybe.  But it also debates the morality of fighting a war with drones from thousands of miles away where the participants are safe from the consequences.

The tension in this movie is fantastic.  It also shows how competing political interests might fight over life and death decisions.  Although this is a work of fiction, it is easy to imagine that scenarios like this have played out for real.

Rating:  A.

HBO's Chernobyl

As a riveting drama, it is hard to beat HBO's Chernobyl. The 4 episode miniseries deals with the worst nuclear accident in history, and all the consequences thereof. Thousands of people, such as nuclear workers, firefighters, military, miners, and scientists are in a race against time to contain the nuclear fallout that could affect a large area and contaminate millions of people.  Some of these people lost their lives in the process.

As fantastic as Chernobyl is as a drama, it gets so many facts wrong both historically and scientifically that it has been the subject of much criticism. It repeatedly exaggerates the threat that the nuclear accident poses, going as far as to describe the plant as a nuclear bomb, claiming that it could lead to a 30 megaton explosion, and claiming that it could make half of Europe uninhabitable. According to people in the know, all of this is complete nonsense. The show further states that a large group of spectators on a bridge miles from the accident died from radiation poisoning, calling it the "death bridge." However, according to many sources, this is an urban legend.

Normally I would find these kinds of mistakes unforgivable, but Chernobyl also gets a great many facts right, not the least of which is the human suffering of a terrible nuclear accident. Some scenes might be too graphic for people. Chernobyl does not shy away from the more unpleasant aspects of this disaster.

Soviet politics are a major factor since the government seemed to be in denial. They were slow to realize that the accident is a serious problem.

Early on in the miniseries, many of the nuclear workers and scientists can't fathom how such an accident could happen. The show keeps us in suspense by saving the explanation for last. It was a combination of bad design and poor training leading to incompetent nuclear workers.

Alien Earth Season 1

I finished the 8th episode of Alien Earth Season 1. Stories like this need conflict to remain interesting, and I questioned whether the conflict could or should have played out the way it did, but without the conflict there wouldn't have been much of a story. It seems to me that most science fiction shows are soap operas anyway. The good news is that I found the story suspenseful and that it kept me on the edge of my seat. There are some gross special effects, but not too terrible.

I know that some YouTubers were unhappy with the series, but YouTubers in particular can be hard to please. The series brings up interesting ideas about AI, which is as much the central focus of the story as the alien monsters. This goes back to the question of whether you would choose to continue your life in a robotic body?

Superman The Movie and Superman II

Superman The Movie came out on December 15th, 1978. It was fairly impressive for its time. This was just a year and a half after the original Star Wars, and the special effects were groundbreaking. It was one thing to have ships flying through space, it is another to have a person fly through the air and look believable. At the Oscars, the film solely won the Special Achievement Award for Visual Effects.

What I didn't remember about this film is that it is half comedy, showing its comic book roots. It doesn't take itself seriously, unlike the more recent Superman Returns and Man of Steel. The film's goofiness is distracting, but this seemed normal in 1978.  We were used to campy superheroes, having watched Batman on television in the 1960s.

Some Superman fanatics didn't like Man of Steel because that movie ditched the red tights. I think that the red tights look goofy, and in the modern era, I prefer more serious superheroes.



Christopher Reeve was a great actor and he feels like he was born to play Superman. He is completely believable in the role, and he does a great job as his alter ego mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent.

Whatever problems Margo Kidder had later in life, she made a great Louis Lane.

Marlon Brando is great as Superman's father and gives the movie gravitas.

There are only two memorable pieces of music but they are fantastic.  The score by John Williams practically makes the film. Even Christopher Reeve acknowledged this and said that Superman would not be able to fly without John Williams's music.  The Superman Theme is rousing and is used constantly.  The love song "Can You Read My Mind" is Oscar-worthy, and notes from this song are snuck into almost every scene with Louis Lane.

Superman The Movie defined the superhero movie for a generation.  It is extremely well-made but feels dated.  

Rating: A-.

Much credit has to be given to Richard Donner who gave us a great film. 

Superman II was filmed at the same time as Superman.  Richard Donner directed both films but didn't finish the second one.   The filming on Superman II was suspended so that Donner could focus on finishing the first film.  After Superman was released, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind decided to cut Marlon Brando's scenes from Superman II to avoid paying him a percentage of the film's box office.  Donner refused to make the film without Brando's scenes.

Superman II fails in every regard.  The story is weak.  The villains are goofy.  The special effects look bad compared to the first film.  The Kryptonians have powers we have never seen before, like telekinesis.  

Rating: C-.

In 2008 Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was released on DVD.  This version of the film is barely passable.  I liked it better because it is not as goofy, but I am not sure that I can recommend it.

Superman

After the opening weekend of Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes, I heard a local radio personality say, “This weekend I went to see a movie. There were apes in it. That’s good enough for me.” I felt the same way. I went to the theater. I was entertained. That was good enough for me.

But nobody really remembers this version of Planet of the Apes. It has largely been forgotten. Why? Because the movie had no depth. Despite some entertaining action sequences, it felt rather shallow. The characters weren’t particularly interesting or complex, so we had no reason to root for them—or to want to see them in a sequel. It paled in comparison to both the original and the reboot that would follow in 2011.

The 2025 version of Superman is about as emotionally satisfying as a bag of popcorn. The story can be summarized like this: Superman gets beat up a few times by powerful enemies, finds a way to win, saves a few people along the way, and patches up his relationship with Lois Lane. That’s it.

The movie introduces many characters but doesn’t give them enough screen time for us to get to know them.

Superman’s parents are portrayed as loving country folk, but the film doesn’t give us much reason to care about them.

Nicholas Hoult starts out strong as Lex Luthor, but toward the end, his character also feels shallow.

David Corenswet makes a decent Superman. He shows the most emotional depth of any character in the film, but he doesn’t feel as authentic as Christopher Reeve or Henry Cavill, both of whom embodied the character more convincingly, both physically and emotionally.

This movie is all about action, not characters—and that’s a major shortcoming. It tries to do too much, throwing so much at the audience that we’re not supposed to notice the lack of emotional connection.  Despite the problems, the movie is somewhat entertaining.

The ending fails to stick the landing. It wraps up with a series of news clips meant to tie everything together, but it feels way too rushed.  

I have no desire to see this movie a second time.

Rating: B-

I much prefer Man of Steel, which feels more like a genuine science fiction film than most Superman movies. I even prefer Superman Returns for its character development.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Disney has released a new version of S​now White and the Seven Dwarfs. The early reviews are not good.

Three days ago I watched the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the third time in my life. The animation is fantastic, and two of the songs are particularly good. The dwarfs are wonderful. A couple of decades ago, this movie truly captured my heart. It’s easy to love the dwarfs and feel the emotion as they mourn Snow White’s apparent death.

However, the story is quite lightweight, and much of the film feels like filler. Nearly half of it consists of slapstick comedy. Too much time is spent on exposition, and not all of the music is engaging.

Had I seen this movie in 1937, I would have regarded it as the greatest animated film made up to that point—which it was. It was truly groundbreaking. However, it would be surpassed just three years later by Pinocchio.

Rating: B+.

Superman Returns * * * 1/2

People attending The Dark Knight Rises today will be treated to the first trailer for Man of Steel, which is due out next summer.  This is the latest attempt to reboot the Superman series, just coming seven years after the last attempt, which was Superman Returns.  Superman Returns is not so much of a reboot as it is a sequel that is also highly reminiscent of the 1978 Superman movie.  A few parts of it feel like echoes of the previous film with new twists.  Whether or not you will like Superman Returns depends upon your taste, but it is highly reminiscent of the 1978 Superman movie, which I loved, while exploring new territory that is interesting.

Superman Returns explores the Superman story in a post 9-11 world.  After a trip to find his home planet, Superman returns to earth to find that Lois Lane is married and has a child.  It is a world that has mostly forgotten about superheroes.  

I assume that those still interested in Superman are looking forward to Man of Steel.  By now, Superman Returns has largely been forgotten.  Still, the movie received 76% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and I think that it is underrated.  If you fell in love with the first Superman movie,  as I did, then this film has everything you could want.  Watching this movie felt nostalgic, because it does echo some key points from the first movie, but there is enough new material to make it into a good film.  Casting Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor was an act of genius.  He is is brilliant in this movie.

If there are negatives to the movie, it is that it is a little more brooding and that Brandon Routh  doesn't quite look the part.  The 1978 Superman movie states that Superman weighs 220 pounds.  Christopher Reeve bulked up for the movie and really did weigh 220 pounds.  Superman Returns states that Superman weighs only 120 pounds, and the contradiction bothered me. Although Brandon Routh does look somewhat like Christopher Reeve, he also looks too thin for the part.  People expect their superheroes to have some mass on them. 

The Creator

 

After an atomic bombing of Los Angeles by AI, the United States is in a war with Japan to destroy all the intelligent robots.  Whereas the Japanese live harmoniously with the robots, the United States is hellbent on their destruction.

Some of the robots aren't that different from human beings. They feel and possibly suffer, and mourn each other when they die.  

Sergeant Joshua Taylor is sent on a mission to capture a new AI weapon, and this weapon turns out to be in the form of a little girl.  Taylor begins to bond with it and he is also on a side quest to find his wife behind enemy lines and uses the "girl" to help find her.  This creates a conflict with his commanding officer who is a little too gung-ho about killing robots.  She is trying to hunt down both Taylor and the girl.

This movie has shades of Blade Runner and the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence.  Both movies make you question what it means to be human and if a machine can have human qualities.  The ending is reminiscent of Elysium.

The film shows the suffering, destruction, and utter pointlessness of war, which is emotionally powerful for the audience.

The Creator received positive but mixed reviews.  Some criticized the overall tone and the complexity of the story.  However, the movie was made on a shoestring 80 million dollar budget, and it deserves credit for looking gorgeous, like a much bigger budget production.  It is visually impressive and unique.

This is an epic story that I think will age very well.  It could be remembered alongside Blade Runner.  However, the movie's ideas are better than their execution, and the complicated story feels a bit messy.

Rating B+.

The Creator is available for streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.

Man of Steel

 I wrote of review of Man of Steel right after it came out.  I simply noted that I liked it much better than the average review on Rotten Tomatoes.  I am a sucker for Superman stories.  I very much liked the slightly mundane Superman Returns, and I was a big fan of the television show Smallville until it overstayed its welcome by stretching out to ten seasons.

Man of Steel is a near-perfect Superman movie despite a few minor flaws that turned off a few people and critics.  

Just to get this out of the way, the second half of the movie is dominated by over-the-top battle scenes between Superman and other Krytonians, like General Zod.  These superbeings hit each other with such force that they send their opponent flying through multiple buildings doing enormous damage.  Yet, the Kryptonians don't take much damage personally despite the force they inflict on each other.  Superheroes in movies often do physically impossible things, which takes away from the believability, but if such powerful and nearly indestructible beings actually did fight each other on planet Earth, this is what it would look like.

What I like about Man of Steel is that this is the first Superman story to put extra emphasis on him being an alien from another world.  We see Krytopn, and we see their technology and how it is more advanced than ours.  On Earth, the people's initial reaction to Superman is to be fearful, and rightfully so.

Henry Cavill makes a good Superman.  He portrays stoicism and morality in the face of lifelong adversity.  He does a good job of displaying angst over trying to fit into a world that he wasn't meant for.  

But a good hero needs a good villain and we get it in General Zod, who is Superman's apparent equal and played menacingly by Michael Shannon.  Zod isn't just a cartoon character.  He is pursuing the logical goal of preserving the Kryptonian race, even if he has to wipe out humanity to do it

Amy Adams is perfect as Louis Lane.  Kevin Costner and Dianne Lane do superb jobs as Jonathan and Martha Kent.  Many of the other cast members have small but memorable performances, like Laurance Fishburne as Perry White, and Christopher Meloni as a military officer who puts his life on the line.  

However, I feel that Harry Lennix is typecast in most of his roles, always playing similar predictable characters, but he is memorable nevertheless.

I noticed television actors popping up in a bunch of different roles.  I recognized Alessandro Juliani from Battlestar Galactica.

I cringed in just a few places where the dialog seemed simplistic or just unnecessary.  Movies have a compulsion to explain what is going on in the simplest possible terms just to make sure that we get it.

Rating: A-.

P.S. The CW series Superman & Lois feels very derivative of Man of Steel.  The show uses a similar storyline, and similar props and effects.  Since the show is 80% soap opera, I don't care for it.  The 20% that is not a soap opera makes for a good Superman story, but it is not that different from what we have seen before.

Reagan

I did not think Dennis Quaid would be the right person to play Ronald Reagan.  This is the same actor who played Gordon Cooper 40 years ago in The Right Stuff, one of my favorite movies.  In that film, Quaid displayed his wide boyish grin, which is on display here as well, and gives away that under all that makeup we are watching Quaid and not Reagan.  However, Quaid gives an Oscar-worthy performance as Reagan, capturing perfectly not only the voice but also the essence of who Reagan was.

The problem with any two-hour biography is that it is going to be rushed.   Ronald Reagan's entire life was much more complicated than what can be shown in two hours.  A single event in his life might take two hours to tell perfectly.  The movie is more of a collection of brief highlights of Reagan's life.  There are so many details left out that I feel shortchanged.  For example, we see David Stockman for only about 5 seconds, and the film barely covers the Iran-Contra scandal.  However, the movie succeeds brilliantly at capturing the emotional feel of Reagan.

Had this been a three-hour movie like Oppenheimer, it could have captured more detail about Reagan's life, but Oppenheimer didn't do this very well and was more of a soap opera.  However, a longer run time wouldn't have made the film any more entertaining.  You can tell that the movie had a limited budget and they did the best they could with the budget they had.

I'm impressed by the performances of a great many supporting actors.

The negative reviews have much to do with how people feel about Ronald Reagan.  If you lived through the 1970s and 1980s then you are going to have a different perspective than people who didn't.  The 1970s was likely the worst decade for the nation in my lifetime.  There was the Watergate scandal, the oil crisis, and then during the Jimmy Carter presidency, we had monstrous inflation,  high interest rates, unemployment, a deep recession, and the Iranian hostage crisis.  Ronald Reagan came along and said that we as a nation are better than this, and we have only forgotten what a great nation we are.  Things did improve significantly under his presidency.

The rushed presentation reminds me of "The Iron Lady", but the difference is that "The Iron Lady" is highly critical of Margaret Thatcher, and this film adores Ronald Reagan.  For older Americans who also adore Reagan, it is preaching to the choir.

The story is told from the perspective of a fictional KGB political analyst whose job was to monitor Reagan as a potential threat to the Soviet Union.  I have no doubt that such people existed, but here it comes off as a gimmick, but it also works by putting Reagan into the context of the Cold War.  Reagan was such a strong anti-communist that the movie made that the main focus of his life.

Since the movie was released during an election year some people might view it as political propaganda.  However, the plan was to release three years ago but the film was delayed by COVID and the writer's strike.

I was so impressed that I wanted to applaud at the end.  I didn't at first because I thought that it might look silly to applaud a motion picture, but when the rest of the audience applauded, I joined in.

Rating:  A-.  Although far from a complete biography, the movie does an excellent job of capturing who Ronald Reagan was.

Batman Vs. Superman

 

I can see why Batman vs. Superman got mostly negative reviews. The movie is overloaded with action sequences and drags out too long. But the film is underrated. Between all those action sequences are bits of dialog, so brief that you have to pay attention to keep up, that are gold. Jesse Eisenberg steals the show as Lex Luther. He is a welcome surprise, playing a really manic Luther with some cool dialog.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/batman_v_superman_dawn_of_justice

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

 

Time has an interesting way of shocking us with its passage.  When Raiders of the Lost Ark came out on June 12th, 1981, Harrison Ford was 40 years old and his young love interest co-star Karren Allen was 29.  The movie was filmed the year before when the actors were 39 and 28 respectively.  In the latest Indiana Jones film, the Dial of Destiny, Karen Allen briefly reprises her role as Marion, but she is now 72 and Harrison Ford is 83.  The movie was filmed two years ago, but seeing an old-looking Karen Allen is the most shocking scene in the movie.  It reminds us of how old we are.

What can we expect when an 81-year-old actor reprises his role as an action star?  We get a B-grade film that relies on nostalgia to keep us interested.  The movie has everything we could want in an Indiana Jones film, but the execution is not perfect.  The payoff at the end could have been spectacular and should have been spectacular, but it looks computer-generated and cheap.

Reportedly, Steven Spielberg dropped out of the project for a lack of interest.  Had he directed the movie, I think that it would have been better.

The movie doesn't shy away from showing us Harrison Ford's age.  That is the point.  He is a hero who is a bit slow but still capable and brave.  In a way, he is a perfect action hero for an aging boomer generation that grew up and grew old watching action movies.

The best part of the film is the first 21 minutes where they "de-age" Harrison Ford for a World War II Nazi action sequence that is very reminiscent of the first movie.  It looks terrific and is fun to watch.  This sequence by itself is for me worth the price of admission.

The story revolves around a device, The Dial of Destiny, invented by Archimedes that could be used to travel through time.  Although Archimedes was a pretty famous ancient Greek mathematician, this is a pretty hokey story.  However, every Indiana Jones movie has some element that requires suspension of disbelief.  Alfred Hitchcock invented the term, "MacGuffin", to describe some item that drives the story forward, even if that element is not particularly interesting.  Every Indiana Jones movie has a MacGuffin that the bad guys want and that the good guys are trying to keep the bad guys from getting.

Much has been written about the character Helen Shaw played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.  She plays Indy's goddaughter who accompanies him on his grand adventure.  The Internet took a dislike to her, mostly out of a fear that she was upstaging the Indiana Jones character, which she sometimes does.  However, it is hard to imagine an old man going on a great journey spanning many countries without some sidekick to assist him.  Her role in the film is necessary, although many people complained about her inclusion being due to wokeness.  Some people also worried that her character was there to replace Indiana Jones, say in the next picture, but this really isn't the case.  This is the last Indiana Jones movie, and Harrison Ford has said that his role will not be recast.

Half the movie consists of chase scenes.  We get at least one too many.

Despite all the flaws, I had a good time watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  The film is so rich in detail, and nostalgia, that it is a pleasure to watch.

Rating:  B.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is available to stream on Disney+.

The Imitation Game

 

I wish that I could say that "The Imitation Game" is objectively a bad movie.  The problem is that it is very entertaining, but it is one of the most historically inaccurate films I have seen in recent memory.  I was already familiar with the history of breaking the Nazi Enigma code, so on my first viewing, I noticed a problem with the scene where the code breakers decide to not stop a German attack for fear of alerting the Nazis that they had broken the code.  In reality, these decisions were made at the highest level of the government of Great Britain.

However, on my second viewing, I noticed how the movie is loaded with melodramatic scenes, and I guessed that every one of these scenes is either a complete fiction or a big distortion of actual events.  It turns out that I was right.  The film also leaves out a great deal of actual history giving the viewer the false impression that Turring was solely responsible for breaking the code.

I have a low tolerance for movies that distort history, and it is a problem we see in many films.  Why should I care so much?  Because it miseducates the public about real events.

https://screenrant.com/imitation-game-true-story-every-change/

The Remains of the Day

The movie "The Remains of the Day" came out 31 years ago.  I am often surprised by the passage of time.  Anthony Hopkins was 55 years old when it came out, and this was two years after he did "The Silence of the Lambs."

 
The movie was highly praised for its performances and for its message. Anthony Hopkins was nominated for Best Actor.  The main character is effectively in a prison partially of his own making by being stuck in English tradition and roles.

I remember thinking that the movie was a bit of a bore and a waste of Emma Thompson.  It was delightful to see Christopher Reeve in a small role at the end.

What's there to love about Andor?

Nope

 Nope is a science fiction horror film.  It is available on Amazon Prime.

A brother and sister struggle to run a Hollywood horse-training farm after the death of their father (Keith David from Cloud Atlas.)  Meanwhile, their neighbor (Steven Yeun from The Walking Dead) is running a nearby Western and UFO themed mini amusement park tourist trap.  They all begin to suspect that something alien and dangerous is moving around in the clouds.  The story plays out like a science fiction version of Jaws.

The film makes good use of sound.  We hear faint sounds in the distance that might be screaming.

The movie has a huge plot hole because the characters suspect that something in the clouds is killing people, but they don't try to contact the authorities.  Instead, they want to film this danger so that they can make money and become famous.  Had they contacted the police and successfully made their case, the issue would have escalated up the hierarchy until it eventually provoked a military response.

The movie starts with a truly bizarre scene where a young version of the Steven Yeun character is playing in a '90s sitcom.  A trained chimpanzee on the show goes berserk and kills most of the people on the set.  This is not far-fetched, since chimpanzees are extremely aggressive and violent.  At first, it is hard to understand why this scene is in the movie, but the film later tries to make the point that trained wild animals can still be dangerous, and this just might have something to do with whatever it is in the clouds.

I have often said that cheap science fiction typically will have only one good idea, and those movies stretch their one good idea out for 90 minutes, or in the case of this film, 2 hours.  The story is rather clever, but the pace of the film is a bit too slow.  Fortunately, unlike most films of this genre, they don't wait till the end of the movie for the big reveal.  We get the big reveal halfway through, and the remainder of the film is about the characters responding to it.  As such, the film is more exciting than films like The Vast of the Night, The Signal, Monsters, and Annihilation.  Even though these movies were entertaining, nobody cares about them anymore because their lack of substance made them forgettable.

Despite the rather slow pace, especially in the first half which spends much time building up the story, Nope made me care about these characters enough to keep me involved.  

Rating:  B-.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3

 Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, available for streaming on Disney+, is the best of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.  Unfortunately, it is the last since James Gunn has given an emphatic "No!" to any more sequels.  These movies are entertaining enough that I don't see why they can't continue indefinitely, and I really want to see more of these characters.  (Never say never again.)

The film is a bit limited by being a live-action comic book dominated by action scenes, but it has the most character development, centering around the life and backstory of Rocket Racoon.  We get his origin story, along with the villainous character who created him.  Some movies are only as good as their villain, which isn't entirely true here.  Rocket was created by "The Great Geneticist", who has a god complex and considers Rocket to be his property.  As far as villains go, "The Great Geneticist" feels rather routine.

Near the end of the movie, all the characters having gone through an ordeal, embrace each other.  It would have been poignant and brilliant if the movie had ended at this moment.  Some fans might have felt shortchanged and complained.  Instead, the film gives us several more minutes designed to make us feel happy, but the actual ending is pretty fluffy and insubstantial.

There are a couple of scenes in the credits which promise the return of "Star-Lord", which means the Chris Pratt character will turn up someday in a different Marvel movie.

This film is a fun ride, so I only hope that eventually, we will get a sequel.  

Rating: A-.

Star Wars in a historical context

To put Star Wars in context, in 1977 I was 17 years old.  We were living during the Cold War, where the Soviet Union could be viewed as the Evil Empire, while the fight against the Nazis during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War didn't seem like ancient history, but were still relevant in our minds.  The thought of nuclear annihilation also felt like a very real possibility.

We were going through the worst economic decade of my lifetime.  Some people might look at the events that followed 2008 as being the worst, but the American economy was much more robust in 2008 and able to eventually rebound.  However, the 1970s were just one piece of bad news after another.  The country felt like it was in a giant malaise.

Then came Star Wars in 1977, which to my 17-year-old mind felt like a godsend.  It was a metaphor for a hopeful battle against all the evils that plagued us.

Star Wars became an important part of my life, and it influenced my career toward computers and video game development.  To this day, Star Wars feels like a part of my personality.

At my more advanced age of 63, I notice how violent Star Wars is.  This didn't seem like much of an issue in 1977 when the characters were fighting Space Nazis, because the 1970s felt like an existential struggle against the forces of evil.  For example, Star Wars calls light sabers an elegant weapon, but how elegant is cutting people in half or cutting their heads off?  It would be like calling a battle axe an elegant weapon.

All this makes me wonder how relevant Star Wars is to our current time?  The 20th century was by far the most violent in history, which made mechanized murder on a mass scale feel more normal.  I think that there was less regard for the individual, which is something we take to extreme levels today.

I feel far less threatened by outside forces today than I did after 9-11, or in the 60s, the 70s, and the 80s.

We can still fantasize about a struggle for survival between good and evil, but good and evil in the modern world are less distinct from one another.

This makes me think that Star Wars has to change to remain relevant.  The original movie gave us 1970s characters in a futuristic setting.  The recent series Andor did a great job of giving us modern characters in the same setting and feels more relevant to the time we live in.

--
Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

The Empire Strikes Back

It is, and will likely remain, my favorite movie.  

At the time of release, a Louisville news program asked a Louisville newspaper movie critic to rank the film on a scale of 1 to 10.  He gave it an 11.  I think he called it one of the greatest movies ever made.

I had heard that Lucas was angry with either the director or the producer for making the film too good, believing they could make more money by keeping it under budget.   I am disappointed in Lucas because the final product is a great film.

Alan Ladd was willing to help Lucas with a loan but was later pushed out by Fox for making a bad deal and not getting more money especially after the movie was a huge hit.

You would think that George Lucas would have had all the money in the world at his disposal, but in Return of the Jedi the reason we got a planet of Ewoks instead of Wookies, like Lucas wanted, was because he lacked the funding.   I think that the Wookies would have made a better movie, and later we saw a planet of Wookies in Episode III Revenge of the Sith.  

"Return of the Jedi" was going to called "Revenge of the Jedi", but this was thought to sound too much like "Revenge of Khan", so both movies renamed their titles to avoid any confusion.  It was also thought that "Revenge" was inappropriate for "Jedi".  Recently, the animated Clone Wars series stated, "Revenge is not the Jedi way."  I think that this was a deliberate reference to the movie.

On Fri, Sep 1, 2023 at 8:55 AM Larry wrote:

All of the OT's successes originated from George Lucas. Did you know that the first cut of 'The Empire Strikes Back' was a disaster? Here's what a now deleted article from ScreenRant says, titled '15 Things You Never Knew About The Empire Strikes Back'. Fact #7 was that, you guessed it, "The First Cut Was A Disaster, Requiring Heavy Reshoots". The article then goes on to say "With shooting way behind schedule and costs running out of control on The Empire Strikes Back , George Lucas started to panic. With his entire personal fortune invested in production on Empire , the failure of the movie would mean persona and professional ruin. Shooting wrapped, and Lucas breathed a sigh of relief". That's good, you might say. However, the article continues with: "Then came the disastrous rough cut, which left Marcia Lucas in tears. Lucas exploded, furious with Gary Kurtz and Irvin Kershner at having spent his personal fortune to make a bad movie. Lucas tried reediting the movie himself to no avail. He then decided to film extensive reshoots, reworking the Han/Leia love subplot. That raised the cost of the picture even more, as Lucas had to divert funds from construction of Skywalker Ranch to keep the movie shooting. He also had to approach Fox for a loan, which production executive Alan Ladd, Jr. helped him secure. Ladd would later quit Fox over the loan, when Empire became a runaway hit