Re-Loaded or Revolutions?
Revolutions. They break the cycle by coming to an amicable solution.
It is a good title. I’m just being a little math geeky.
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Captain Marvel (2019)
Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson
dir. Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck
Not being one that avidly follows the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’ve missed many of the films that have been released under the banner, aside from Robert Downey Jr.'s IRON MAN series. I’ve tried to get into some of the series (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY & CAPTAIN AMERICA, for instance) without finding myself developing much of an interest in them, so my working knowledge of much of what goes on in the overarching story that led up to AVENGERS: ENDGAME is fairly lacking.
That didn’t stop me from wanting to take a chance on CAPTAIN MARVEL. Why? I don’t know, but the combination of a fairly accomplished cast (Brie Larson, Jude Law, Samuel L. Jackson, Annette Benning, Djimon Hounsou, Ben Mendelsohn) and an interesting enough premise caught my attention.
Long story short, CAPTAIN MARVEL stands right up there with with the IRON MAN films as a highlight of the MCU. Brie Larson is a breath of fresh air as Carol Danvers (or “Vers” as she’s known through most of the film), adding a levity to this type of film that is so desperately needed these days, which in turn also allows for the dramatic moments, of which there are several, to resonate even more. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Larson would be well suited to take on such a big role (as she seems poised to lead the MCU into its post-ENDGAME era), having turned in an utterly brilliant performance in her Oscar-winning role in ROOM.
CAPTAIN MARVEL doesn’t really do anything groundbreaking. It’s a coming-of-age story of sorts, with Danvers being sent along a journey to find out who she really is after getting caught by Talos (terrifically performed by Ben Mendelsohn), the leader of the Skrulls, the people with whom Danvers’ people (the Kree) are at war with. From there we hit some pretty familiar beats for these types of films (superhero being a fish-out-of-water in a foreign place, changing alliances, and all of that), but the cast, writing, and directing elevate it above the run-of-the-mill type of film that it could have been in less capable hands.
One must also single out Samuel L. Jackson for his performance. He’s a hoot in this film, no question. In particular, his attachment to a cat that the group comes across after the halfway point is hilarious, as is the explanation we get for why he has to wear an eye patch in the other films. Jackson clearly has fun playing this character, and it shows. He and Larson also have terrific chemistry, and it would be almost criminal not to have Fury feature heavily in CAPTAIN MARVEL 2, given how well the two share the screen. In another life, they could have starred in a hilarious buddy-cop film together.
Where the MCU ultimately goes from here, who knows. But one would have to assume that Brie Larson, alongside Natalie Portman, will be leading it into this new, post-ENDGAME era. After seeing CAPTAIN MARVEL and being a longtime fan of Portman’s work, that is an exciting thought.
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The Pink Panther (2006) and The Pink Panther 2 (2009)
I’ve always found The Pink Panther reboot funnier, I think, than most. Steve Martin easily slides into the role of the bumbling Clouseau with some of his idiotic moments rivaling some of Peter Sellers’s best moments. The first time I saw The Pink Panther 2, I thought it was a lame follow-up with less funny jokes that wasted it’s talented cast. However, after watching it immediately after its predecessor, I found myself enjoying it far more than I remember. The jokes continue what was started in the 2006 film and its cast actually has great chemistry in it. It’s a shame there will never be a third film.
Yesterday
Saw this on opening day and forgot to post review. Fun summer movie. It’s a cool premise–struggling songwriter wakes up after worldwide power outage to find he’s the only one who knows the Beatles catalog. Himesh Patel is likable as the lead and Lily James is absolutely adorable as his friend/manager/love interest. Kate McKinnon kills it as a ruthless music manager. I don’t listen to Ed Sheeran but he was enjoyable as “himself” in the movie. But the film never decides what to do with the premise, and settles in on a Groundhog Day love interest motive. There are plenty of Easter eggs for Beatles fans, and one genuinely surprising scene. There’s a funny bit about how to market Beatles album titles in today’s music scene if you’d never heard them before. And the Beatles aren’t the only thing to go “poof” post-blackout. But while it’s fun, it never goes anywhere. It’s like Danny Boyle set the table and then didn’t serve dinner.
There’s no explanation of the supernatural nature of the blackout. No discussion of what made Beatles songs of such import, and if that’d be the same today (Boyle assumes it is, relying basically on their greatest hits.) Would have been interesting to explore some other album tracks (like “Run for Your Life” in the #MeToo movement), or the irony of a musician of color stealing white musicians’ music from an earlier era. That could have elevated this from a popcorn movie to prestigious film status. If there is a theme, it’s if an individual’s happiness is worth depriving the world of the joy of popular music.
Still, the re-recordings are interesting, especially the punkish version of “Help!” However, the film “Across the Universe” did a better job of applying Beatles songs to a modern world.
I was underwhelmed with Danny Boyle and kind of glad he’s not directing Bond 25 after this.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of Quentin Tarantino. I recognize his talents as a film maker with Pulp Fiction, but have refused to watch Inglorious Basterds, turned off Hateful Eight halfway through, didn’t find the payoff in Django Unchained worth the violence sat through to get there worth it, was uncomfortable throughout Death Proof, never saw Reservoir Dogs, and up until this found probably his least liked film, Kill Bill 2, to be my favorite of his. But I really enjoyed this film.
Tarantino often teases you so that you’re uncomfortable watching his films unfold into their inevitable violence, but here he subverted the expectations with subtle techniques of inversion. The first two hours seem random and unconnected, but every detail is important. He sets the table, and then delivers a resounding climax. It’s subversive in that it re-writes history (somewhat like Inglorious Basterds). Tarantino knows what audiences expect of him, and teases us with that but also gives something I haven’t seen from him before. Characters that begin a descent into immorality pull back from the abyss, and it makes you like them more. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Rick Dalton, who starts off like a caricature of his Wolf of Wall Street character, but shows real humanity and growth. Brad Pitt plays Cliff Booth, a character with a questionable past, but also shows signs of development and learning from past mistakes.
One consistent thing with Tarantino is his villains are absolute–slave owners, Nazis, drug pushers, serial killers–which he uses to justify their violent comeuppance at the end. He throws out there Roman Polanski in his script, and two young girls–one actor, and one directionless teen, and you think you know where he’s going, or what he’s gonna say, but it’s a distraction. Instead, each character is pivotal in showing the development of Rick Dalton in the former case, and Cliff Booth in the latter. Tarantino exploits his reputation during a tense, eerie segment at an abandoned film studio, but then backs off. Like Cliff Booth’s dog, he teases us with a meal, but then holds back, “not yet.” The real villains don’t emerge until the final 20 minutes and that’s when he ties everything together.
The cinematography is great. He has recreated 1969 Los Angeles somehow, filling streets with vintage cars, road signs, and radio and TV stations from the era (I grew up there, so recognized many Easter eggs for Angelenos.) He deftly uses CGI to insert his fictional actors into real films they weren’t actually in, as well as actors playing real people in his fiction. The shots and angles he utilizes focus on the iconography of Hollywood and film and blurs the line between what’s real and the power of illusion, much like 1980’s The Stuntman with Peter O’Toole. Tarantino infers his own filmography in the process (Inglorious Basterds and Hateful Eight), as well as by casting Tarantino standbys Kurt Russel, Bruce Dern, and Michael Madsen into small but significant roles. And he’s integrated the soundtrack better than ever in this latest directorial outing.
Before this, I didn’t want Tarantino directing a Bond or a Star Trek, but if he’s paying this much attention to detail and theme, then I’m all for it now. It’s the first one of his films I want to see again.
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Thanks for your review! I’m dying to see OUATIH, but it’s not out in the UK yet. Inglourious Basterds is my favourite QT film. Why did you refuse to watch it? I found the Hateful Eight tedious beyond belief but really like the rest of his films.
Thanks for the feedback! Since you asked, here’s my somewhat long winded explanation of my feelings toward Quentin Tarantino movies.
Back in 2009, I was in a movie theater screening all the best picture nominees. I think I had seen three and the next up was Inglourious Basterds. Despite people’s raves about it, I didn’t want to put myself through that violence for the next two hours.
Tarantino’s level of violence and gore is tough for me to stomach sometimes. His movies are like horror films with social commentary. I developed this opinion while watching True Romance (which he wrote) and was the reason I didn’t watch Natural Born Killers (which I just found out he wrote.) I knew what Oliver Stone was gonna say with it, so didn’t want to sit through that violence. Because I like car chase movies, I had seen Death Proof as part of the Grindhouse double feature (but didn’t see the other half.) It made me extremely uncomfortable, especially the head on collision. Tarantino gets a pass from critics for this (as well as language) as his climactic conclusions are often a satisfying karmic catharsis (if only the U.S. blew up Hitler in a theater!) He’s also using vulgar language and metaphors of violence to comment on the very persons who engage in them, so I recognize his themes.
I’m not saying he’s not a good filmmaker. In fact, I think I had met him when he worked at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California, while renting a James Bond VHS tape. Even my feelings on Bond have evolved over time. Last time I watched TND, I found its machine gun violence rather callous and anti-social. I couldn’t see Connery, Lazenby, or Moore doing that (not that this choice was Brosnan’s fault.) I did like Jackie Brown, but that’s because Tarantino toned down his violence a bit. The thought of him bringing that to Star Trek gives me shudders though.
I recognize not every one feels this way about QT, and I’m not looking to enforce my opinion of him on others, but I can’t help feeling this way after just about every Tarantino movie I see. After OUATIH, I may indeed check out Inglourious Basterds and Reservoir Dogs. But only when my life can handle another two hours of trauma.
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Well…
Jokes aside, I agree.
Brosnan’s Bond movies are very much of their times, particularly in regards to gun violence, something the Dalton movies had avoided, despite the popularity of shirtless men shooting machine guns that dominated the action genre at the time.
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There have been situations when previous Bonds used Sten guns and other related weaponry - but they were few and far between and generally clearer defined as exceptions from the rule. I suppose it’s just a sign of changing times, a changing depiction of violence in art, that is showing here. Bond is now more often shown as soldier rather than as Cold War agent that gets his missions done with a minimum of furore - and bullets - and disappears into the background afterwards.
As for Tarantino, my own impression is he’s doing his films - mostly - as if they were covers of pulp paperbacks or film posters of the 60s and 70s: they are condensed to stylised iterations of their own substance. Sometimes that works for me, other times not so much. The substance loses import and meaning until everything is reduced to ‘cool’ and ‘irony’ and ‘grit’. I would like to see Tarantino make an honest film without resorting to his shtick.
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The Craig era has very much gone back to this depiction of gun usage, I may be wrong, but the whole era sees machine guns used twice by Bond himself, very briefly to end a car chase in QOS and then the escape from the crater in Spectre (CR and Skyfall having none at at all). So whilst Craig does have that soldier like quality of Brosnan, his attitude to fire arms has been far more traditional.
True. But then it’s still noteworthy that the QOS occasion saw Bond’s car equipped with the item in question and how generally this stuff also pops up far more often in the hands of the opposition. Art imitating life…
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Well, guys, you got me there. 
As I was writing that, I did have an image of maybe Moore with a machine gun in TSWLM. I had completely forgotten the Lazenby scene, not to mention the one where he’s sliding on ice toward Piz Gloria while firing a machine gun. I was about to mention Dalton but didn’t because he’s pretty ruthless in his films.
But it wasn’t the scenes featuring Bond with a machine gun that I found objectionable. In OHMSS it’s because he’s just after Blofeld and that’s the weapon available, and in TSWLM and TLD they’re already in military battle settings so it fits. Surprised no one had Roger Moore on the staircase railing in Octopussy with the machine gun, though that one is mostly played for laughs as he shoots off the handle at the bottom before it castrates him.
The scenes that now feel callously inhuman to me were the massacres of the sailors in the water in TND, and the one in AVTAK where Zorin shoots the miners. We get it, those guys are bad, but those scenes seem to stray from the style Bond films had been before that. In 1997 and 1985 those TND and AVTAK scenes didn’t stand out to me like they did in 2013 the last time I watched them.
In Daniel Craig’s case, the gun in QoS during the car chase is the one from the end of CR where he shoots Mr. White in the leg. It was originally a PPK in the script, but Craig suggested that the gun should be bigger to better symbolize Bond’s anger and masculinity after losing Vesper. The fact that he only shoots White in the leg shows that he’s capable of restraint and that recognizes the need to bring him in for questioning rather than satisfying his vengeance.
I think YOLT, TSWLM and MR had the highest body counts, but they were cartoonish and the trend towards realism has been more graphic in Bond from about 1985 on to present day.
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True Romance, not Lies.
Not an improvement…
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Thanks. Fixed the edit. I always get those two titles confused, despite being vastly different movies.
Watched “Wrong is Right” last night, very broad in places but Connery was immense in the role of mock macho non journalist, one of his best performances
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Wow, never heard of this! I found the trailer (at least it calls itself a trailer, but guessing it’s the start of the movie):
It’s like someone found a left over diamonds are forever vfx reel and stuck an outtake from Connery’s opening highlander monologue on it!
Need to figure out how to watch this movie now.
Btw, apparently that highlander monologue has that spooky echo because Connery recorded it in his toilet. Sounds to me like that was a trick he learnt on Wring Is Right 
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Most likely hahaha , it was called “The Man With The Deadly Lens” in the UK , I think… it’s on Amazon Prime also You Tube.
Youl should check it out
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