GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2: Leggo My Ego

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Director: James Gunn
Writer: James Gunn
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Kurt Russell, Elizabeth Debicki, Sylvester Stallone, Sean Gunn, Chris Sullivan
Runtime: 136 mins.
2017

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has lower highs and higher lows than its predecessor. It fixes some of the more obvious problems of Guardians, like painful expository dialogue, a few ugly underlit sequences, and a plot shamelessly centered around feverish MacGuffin-chasing. Vol. 2 is more visually arresting all around, and its villain is tied intimately to our protagonist. On the other hand, Vol. 2 struggles with the law of diminishing returns. It is impossible to replicate the joy of discovering all these bizarre and instantly endearing characters, so writer/director Gunn is tasked with keeping said characters fresh and interesting. Much like Age of Ultron, which similarly has a lot of interesting stuff going on but feels overstuffed and undercooked, Vol. 2 cannot quite capture the woozy highs of the first film.

There is one exception to this. I'm referring to the opening sequence with Baby Groot dancing to ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" while the obligatory opening action sequence happens out of focus in the background. This is Gunnian subversion at its finest, trading off an indulgent CGI-fest for an expression of pure joy. The sequence is well-staged in one long, fluid cut that follows Baby Groot through adorable piecemeal interactions with each of the main characters. The film never recaptures the elation of its opening minutes, but the prevalent sense of fun is what makes Vol. 2 far more watchable than much of its ilk.

POWER RANGERS: The Morph the Merrier

Director: Dean Israelite
Writers: John Gatins, Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Michele Mulroney, Kieran Mulroney
Cast: Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler, Ludi Lin, Becky G., Elizabeth Banks, Bryan Cranston, Bill Hader
Runtime: 124 mins.
2017

One of the first lines of Power Rangers is a joke about masturbating a cow. Power Rangers features three characters who are or have been dead, but never bother to dwell on the ramifications of that fact. The only straight white male on the Power Rangers team is the de facto leader, and he is told outright that his opinion matters more than the others'. In Power Rangers, wise mentor Zordon is an enormous cock, berating the Rangers constantly, acting needlessly petty, and manipulating them towards his own ends. Power Rangers ends the way Toy Story 3 would have ended if the toys actually did fall into the fire pit, and instead of getting burnt up, they inexplicably become one powerful Megatoy that kicks the purple bear's ass.

Power Rangers' version of Rita Repulsa is both sexy and grody, and she drips everywhere she goes. Power Rangers' version of Rita Repulsa goes a lot of places, yet she only seems to saunter casually whenever we see her on the move. Power Rangers' version of Rita Repulsa also straight up murders a bunch of people and eats their gold.

In Power Rangers, a building may explode despite being a jewelry store with no flammables inside. Power Rangers features an autistic character who figures out the location of an important MacGuffin using only maps and the power of his autism. The Power Rangers crew slaps a character so hard she flies into space. The CGI in Power Rangers is so vomitously designed that one can tell that the red ranger's Zord is a T-Rex, but the rest are pretty much a grab bag of prehistoric-seeming Transformers knockoffs. There are about ten scenes in Power Rangers in which the corporate franchise Krispy Kreme is either mentioned or attended.

KONG: SKULL ISLAND - Run Through the Jungle

Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Writers: Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, Derek Connolly, John Gatins
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly, John Goodman, Corey Hawkins, John Ortiz, Tian Jing, Toby Kebbell
Runtime: 118 mins.
2017

Twelve years ago Peter Jackson's King Kong was released. Hot off the monumental success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson tackled another passion project. The result was an overbloated labor of love, its failures symptomatic of Jackson's indulgent impulses, its successes clearly issuing from passion and immense skill. Its legacy endures thanks to the lavish attention Jackson paid to Skull Island. The film was swimming in Jackson's signature talent for all-encompassing dread. That mystique is embodied in Kong himself, as motion captured by the great Andy Serkis. Jackson/Serkis's Kong is a high mark for CGI creations. He is the soul of the film, a brute that exudes empathy, and one of a long line of Serkis motion capture triumphs.

PJ's King Kong exhibited all the strengths and pitfalls of the auteur-driven style of Hollywood filmmaking. Now a dozen years later we have a film that exemplifies the producer-driven model. For Kong: Skull Island is, to nobody's surprise, the impetus for a shared cinematic universe. Kong and Gareth Edwards' Godzilla are slated to tussle in 2020. To establish this universe Warner Bros. has tapped second-time film director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, no doubt a talented creator, and no doubt one who doesn't have the clout or the vision to stand up to the studios. Kong is an exercise in style over substance. It's clear that there are strong ideas at the core of the reboot, but they suffer from a backslide into generic blockbuster territory.

GHOST IN THE SHELL: A Pale Imitation

Director: Rupert Sanders
Writers: Jamie Moss, William Wheeler, Ehren Kruger
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano, Juliette Binoche, Michael Pitt, Peter Ferdinando
Runtime: 107 mins.
2017

Ghost in the Shell is a thin movie, thinner than the white sheet that covers a spectral being. You suspect there is some substance beneath the surface, but once you remove the sheet and look at it directly you discover that there is nothing to be seen. The apparent substance was in truth the echoes of a long distant, watered down source material.

To be more specific about Ghost in the Shell's thinness: it's an adaptation of the then-ahead-of-its-time 1995 anime of the same name. The bare bones of the plot remains the same. Major (Scarlett Johansson) is a cyborg with a human brain. She's the centerpiece of a squad of variously-upgraded soldiers working for the Hanka corporation. They track down this cyber terrorist fellow Kuze (Michael Pitt) in order to assassinate him, but Major finds that he has answers to questions she's been asking about herself. In the original this interplay has a philosophical bent; in the new release, it's all profanely literal-minded.

MONSTER: Dissent of a Woman

March is Women's History Month, so let's continue last year's tradition of highlighting a weekly movie by female filmmakers. With the recent global resurgence of toxic masculinity and fascist norms, it's all the more important to seek gender parity in the director's chair. For the director is as much an embodiment of the soul of a movie as any one person can be, and the souls of men are clearly not good enough.

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Director: Patty Jenkins
Writer: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern
Runtime: 109 mins.
2003

Monster is based on the true story of Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron), a Daytona Beach prostitute who begins killing clients in order to support her runaway girlfriend, Selby (Christina Ricci). At least that's what happened, but it isn't the story.

Typically biopics play up the spectacle of real life events, even when there isn't any spectacle to be found. Certainly Monster had no shortage of spectacle to draw from; the media circus surrounding Aileen's trial dubbed her America's First Female Serial Killer. Yet writer/director Patty Jenkins makes the bold, crucial choice to move away from the spectacle. The first half of the film is more of a romance than anything else. Jenkins ensconces us in the relationship between Aileen and Selby. That is where the true story of Aileen Wuornos lies, and any other approach would lead rapidly to shock schlock and window dressing.

PERSEPOLIS: Personal / Political

March is Women's History Month, so let's continue last year's tradition of highlighting a weekly movie by female filmmakers. With the recent global resurgence of toxic masculinity and fascist norms, it's all the more important to seek gender parity in the director's chair. For the director is as much an embodiment of the soul of a movie as any one person can be, and the souls of men are clearly not good enough.

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Directors: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud
Writers: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud
Cast: Chiara Mastroianni, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Simon Abkarian, Gabrielle Lopes Benites
Runtime: 96 mins.
2007

Years ago I read Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel upon which this was based. It accomplished the monumental task of making me, a privileged white American, care about the politics and people of Iran. An exercise in empathy foremost, history secondarily, Persepolis is a coming of age story that digs deeply into the personal life of its author--and as we know, the personal is political.

I didn't get around to the film at the time because I assumed it would be a competent retread of the book. After all, graphic novels and animation are two mediums with a great deal of overlap: two dimensional frames meant to give the illusion of movement that are more reliant on images than words. How wonderful to discover, then, that Satrapi's foray into directing improves upon its original in every aspect, engaging with what is specifically cinematic about the material rather than letting it stagnate in the act of translation.

The story remains mostly unchanged. We see Marji progress through her idealistic youth, troubled adolescence, and frustrating love life. Each of these life stages is inextricably tied to Iran's progress through dictatorship, revolt, regression, and war. Marjane seeks to honor the memory of her fallen family members, whose fates are tied to the various regime changes. Marjane's identity will always be tied to her roots, which is both a rich premise and a resonant lesson that her character must learn over the course of the film.

DANCE, GIRL, DANCE: The Gaze Pays

March is Women's History Month, so let's continue last year's tradition of highlighting a weekly movie by female filmmakers. With the recent global resurgence of toxic masculinity and fascist norms, it's all the more important to seek gender parity in the director's chair. For the director is as much an embodiment of the soul of a movie as any one person can be, and the souls of men are clearly not good enough.

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Director: Dorothy Arzner
Writers: Tess Slesinger, Frank Davis, Vicki Baum
Cast: Maureen O'Hara, Louis Hayward, Lucille Ball, Virginia Field, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya, Mary Carlisle
Runtime: 90 mins.
1940

Dance, Girl, Dance is a late career film by Dorothy Arzner, a filmmaker with the distinction of being the only female director working in Hollywood during the 1930s. The only one. She got to such a prominent position simply by being such an essential editor that when she threatened to leave Paramount if she wasn't given the director's chair, they relented. In Arzner's words, "I remember making the observation, 'if one was going to be in the movie business, one should be a director because he was the one who told everyone else what to do.' "

Her career is crucial for several reasons beyond her penetration of an uncrackable glass ceiling. For one thing, her desire for more performer mobility in the early days of talkies led her to invent the boom mic by attaching a microphone to a fishing rod.* Beyond that monumental advancement of the craft, she was a public (if closeted) queer icon,** and she consistently made great films that represented an oasis of female agency in a sexist industry.

*Naturally, it was patented a year later by some other dude.

**Although a queer reading of Dance, Girl, Dance is less obvious than some of Arzner's other films, there is something striking about the homosocial way that Judy and Bubbles relate via their mutual romantic target Jimmy.

Indeed, that is as good a description as any of what Dance, Girl, Dance is all about. Our hero is Judy O'Brien (Maureen O'Hara), a dancer with tremendous potential as a ballerina. Despite her talent, she is continually upstaged by the self-aware, attention-seeking sexpot Bubbles (Lucille Ball). After Bubbles makes it big as the headliner of a burlesque act, Judy's mentor Madame Lydia Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya) tries to ensure Judy's path to fame by arranging a meeting with the discerning and influential Steve Adams (Ralph Bellamy). A series of unkind coincidences, including the death of Madame Basilova, keep that plan from panning out; Judy instead ends up as the stooge for Bubbles' act. Her purpose is to dance beautifully while the men in the audience jeer and call for Bubbles' return. On top of all this professional tension, Bubbles makes a point of going after Jimmy Harris (Louis Hayward), a rich playboy with whom Judy has developed a promising connection. All of this culminates in a series of media scandals and public outbursts that bloodthirsty reporters are eager to lap up.

LOGAN: Hurt

Director: James Mangold
Writers: James Mangold, Scott Frank, Michael Green
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E. Grant
137 mins.
2017

Logan exists at a fascinating nexus in the development of the superhero genre, a genre which has reigned supreme in Hollywood for a decade and a half. For one, it could not exist as it is without the meteoric influence of Deadpool. That property--the red-suited stepchild that Fox wanted badly to forget about--forcibly redefined the four quadrant parameters of mainstream superhero movies simply by being likable. Everything about Logan was a far riskier proposition than everything about Deadpool, and was certainly only entertained in the wake of Deadpool's box office blowout.

Logan also only makes sense at this point in the careers of Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. Not counting this film, Jackman has played this character for seventeen years in a total of eight films, approximately four of which were any good.* That ubiquity is, I believe, unprecedented in film history (at least until Robert Downey Jr. surpasses it in half a decade). Thus the death rattles of an ultrapopular screen portrayal happen to dovetail nicely with the first time said character's violent nature can be fully portrayed under the aegis of the MPAA.

*Feel free to check my math: X-Men 3/4 good, X2 1 good, X-Men: The Last Stand 1/4 good, X-Men Origins: Wolverine 0 good, The Wolverine 3/4 good, X-Men: First Class 3/4 good, X-Men: Days of Future Past: 1/2 good, X-Men: Apocalypse 0 good.

Even more perfect is the timing for Logan mastermind James Mangold. In the third decade of a storied career that includes the excellent 3:10 to Yuma, and coming off one of the more respectable X-Men movies in The Wolverine, Mangold was in the perfect position to use his influence to shape the legacy of Wolverine as he saw fit.

In addition to all that, Logan deals heavily with themes of hopelessness and fatalism in the face of bigotry as our country is confronted with just such a plight. Despite being written a couple years back, Mangold's script proves shockingly prescient. The plot revolves around a cabal of technologically enhanced white men pursuing a little Mexican girl they wish to control. Non-normative children seek asylum by crossing the border into Canada. Frat boys swill beer and chant "USA! USA!" at the heavily militarized Mexican border. And the only relief from the pervading cultural sense of ennui and apathy is found in adverts for junk food and energy drinks. The masses are content as long as they get their corn syrup. I don't know how Mangold did it, but with every passing day this 2029 proto-apocalypse feels more astoundingly plausible.

NEAR DARK: The Children of the Night

March is Women's History Month, so let's continue last year's tradition of highlighting a weekly movie by female filmmakers. With the recent global resurgence of toxic masculinity and fascist norms, it's all the more important to seek gender parity in the director's chair. For the director is as much an embodiment of the soul of a movie as any one person can be, and the souls of men are clearly not good enough.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Writers: Kathryn Bigelow, Eric Red
Cast: Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, Tim Thomserson, Joshua John Miller, Marcie Leeds
Runtime: 94 mins.
1987

Kathryn Bigelow holds an interesting place in film culture. She is arguably the most prominent female director, certainly the most mainstream. Although I am not especially familiar with her career, one obvious throughline presents itself: her films traffic in hypermasculinity. In an artistic climate that is actively hostile towards women--especially female directors--it makes sense that a woman's only path to prominence requires wading through the swamp of masculinity. This is wholly anecdotal evidence, but looking at the four movies I reviewed last March, Ida Lupino's The Hitch-Hiker was a highly masculine production, Mary Harron's American Psycho was all about toxic masculinity, and even Speed Racer trafficked in a bunch of masculine themes. The exception is A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which aggressively positioned itself as indie and alienating (and still doled out plenty of gender commentary).

It's far from surprising that women looking to make movies in the public eye are severely limited in their prospects, but we can't argue that Bigelow hasn't been making exactly the movies she's wanted to. Her films have too much verve to be obligatory. They indicate a deep fascination with hypermasculinity, one that oscillates between the straightfaced and the parodic from movie to movie.

Though in this specific instance, it is the case that Bigelow didn't actually get to make quite the movie she wanted to. As the story goes, Bigelow was seeking backing for a neo-Western, but this was the late eighties and Westerns were not en vogue. Vampire movies, on the other hand, were en vogue. Bigelow thus opted to make her project more bankable by scripting a vampire Western. Near Dark was born.

THE GREAT WALL: Of China

Director: Yimou Zhang
Writers: Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, Tony Gilroy, Max Brooks, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz
Cast: Matt Damon, Tian Jing, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe, Andy Lau, Hanyu Zhang
Runtime: 103 mins.
2017

The recent surge of conscientiousness surrounding diversity in Hollywood has done immeasurable good. Any social movement has collateral damage, however; for this issue it comes in the form of an unwillingness to watch a movie on its own terms if there are problematic surface elements. Or worse, the dismissal of films that haven't even been released.

One such dialogue cropped up around the trailer for The Great Wall, in which Matt Damon appeared to be a white dude so good at archery that he saves the entire nation of China from horrible monsters. This was decried as classic Hollywood whitewashing.

Let's put aside the somewhat simpleminded but worthwhile argument that this is a (partially) Chinese film, and director Yimou Zhang can cast the movie any damn way he pleases: maybe he sees Damon as international flavor, or wants the significant box office bump of Damon's reputation, or maybe he just thinks Damon is a good actor. There are related conversations to be had about the global supremacy of American culture, but it seems odd to point fingers at a Chinese director for whitewashing.

Anyhow, putting all that aside, the golden rule of film criticism and discussion is that you must meet a movie on its own terms. If you do so, and find those terms vile, then criticize away. But it does a cultural dialogue harm to pass judgment before seeing the work itself.