Monday at the Movies - July 1, 2019

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, and there have been a good number of summer blockbusters since. So, let’s do this one more time.

Shazam! (2019) – DC has had a rocky road to a shared universe, never quite managing to find its crowdpleasing niche until solo outings for, of all people, Wonder Woman and Aquaman. With Shazam! DC is starting to recognize that its characters fare best when handled in standalone adventures that play to the characters’ strengths. Here, it’s Billy Batson (Asher Angel) with a chip on his shoulder, learning that family is where you find it, while his magical-heroic alter ego (Zachary Levi) plays out a superpowered take on Big and fending off attacks from the Seven Deadly Sins. It’s quite fun and a fine double-feature with, ahem, the other Captain Marvel this spring, and director David F. Sandberg does a keen job straddling the line between the boisterous antics of Shazam and the genuinely scary menace of Mark Strong’s Dr. Sivana, striking a notable balance between competing tones in a demi-franchise that has drawn audience derision for seldom transcending the dire. (As for this filmgoer, why can’t we have both?) You know that I think Batman v Superman remains the gold standard for DC’s latest efforts, but Shazam! is roughly the third winner in a row for DC (because the less said about Frankenstein’s Justice League, the better). And for those who haven’t seen it yet, it’s truly remarkable that a third-act development wasn’t spoiled in the marketing – even though the comics-initiated among us anticipated it coming in a sequel or two, it was great fun to see the film play with its family dynamic in a bold and inventive way.

Avengers: Endgame (2019) – How do you review a masterpiece in 250 words? (You’d need, perhaps, 3,000 to do it justice.) Make no mistake, true believers – Endgame is an impossible film that shouldn’t work at all but manages to work perhaps the best of any Marvel movie at what it sets out to do. Here’s a three-hour film with no baggy weight that manages to tie together 21 preceding films while doing something new; its greatest-hits nostalgia tour is baked seamlessly into the narrative, but it advances the Marvel Cinematic Universe by leaps and bounds while setting a daunting precedent for whatever comes next. The movie is chock-full of things that, even if I spoiled them, you wouldn’t believe me, as when the film hard-180s within its first fifteen minutes by breaking a cardinal rule of superhero epics and then manages to deal with that game-changing plot point with enviable aplomb, both having its cake and eating it too. Recency bias is still pretty strong with this one, so I’m not quite ready to say if it’s the best of the 22 MCU movies just yet (Winter Soldier remains a perfect movie). But I think it’s handily the best of the four Avengers movies for its audacious scope, unreasonable challenge, and entirely confident triumph. How a three-hour film leaves you wanting more is beyond me, so hats off to Anthony and Joe Russo for turning in what very well might be Marvel’s finest hour(s). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and if you’re anything like the two audiences with whom I saw this one, you’ll be outright sobbing in equal parts sorrow and jubilation. “Part of the journey is the end,” indeed, though I’ll expect you haven’t heard the last from me on Endgame.

Dark Phoenix (2019) – I said it with Venom, and I’ll say it with Dark Phoenix – this movie is fine. It’s a perfectly serviceable X-Men film, and since it’s ostensibly the last one for a while, some of its more compulsory plot beats can be forgiven. In the title role, Sophie Turner slays it as Jean Grey, and Hans Zimmer turns in a great score that sounds like Dark Knight had a baby with Interstellar. It’s probably not as epic as the source material (which, nerd confession time, I’m only just getting around to reading), and the villains led by Jessica Chastain are the very definition of undercooked. More noticeable, Magneto is really only there because it’s the last X-movie from Fox (though his best line, from the trailer, is sadly omitted – “You didn’t come here looking for answers. You came here looking for permission”). But there’s something to be said about the way this movie shows the X-Men at their peak, emphasizing their family dynamics. The film’s action, too, is pretty cool, especially that climactic train sequence. Most importantly, it’s light-years better than The Last Stand. So maybe the X-Men didn’t go out on their highest note (which is, I believe, still X2: X-Men United?), but it’s a perfectly fine capper to twenty years of X-movies, and it seals off this iteration just in time for the MCU to adopt the mutants into their new home. In short, it does just about what you’d expect an X-Men movie to do, and it does it better than some of its predecessors without feeling too much like a retread of familiar ground.

Men in Black: International (2019) – Mark Kermode took the word right out of my mouth when he said that the latest Men in Black film is “perfunctory.” The premise of an MiB reboot with Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson (late of Thor: Ragnarok), with Emma Thompson and Liam Neeson on either side of the pond, practically sells itself, and indeed it seems the film was sold primarily on the chemistry between its two leads. What the movie is lacking, however, is precisely character because its protagonists are sadly underwritten, its villains are maddeningly vague, and its structure is bizarrely shambolic as it careens from setpiece to setpiece. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t need a Men in Black film to be Shakespearean in its plotting, but I do prefer that it make a modicum of sense without leaning on attitude as a special effect. (Though if it does, the ever-watchable Tessa Thompson is ILM-levels of sassy.) It feels as though the studio is rolling the franchise out on a lunch tray, as if to say, “Want some more of this?” And in that respect the possibility is about as tantalizing as mystery meat casserole – perfectly edible, but hardly anyone’s first choice. Several times throughout the film, I found myself wishing I were watching the original Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones vehicle. International gestures at an intriguing sideways take on the central conceit, but man oh Manischewitz did the script need another pass to make it anything but generic and forgettable.

Toy Story 4 (2019) – “Did we need a fourth one of these?” I asked myself when Toy Story 4 was announced. Hadn’t Toy Story 3 been a perfect capper to a perfect trilogy? (This has to be the last one, though, right?) And yet, as they usually do, Pixar found a way to surprise me, with 4 tying up 3’s loose end with the absence of Bo Peep (Annie Potts). Bo ends up being only one of the core ideas in 4, including also Woody (Tom Hanks) and his struggle to fit in with new kid Bonnie, while the playroom crowd grapples with the creation of Forky (Tony Hale), Bonnie’s new toy molded from garbage. I think your mileage on this film will depend very much on how much you indulge the movie’s central premise that there’s another story to be wrung from this universe; I myself was sold fairly quickly, particularly with the way Forky – omnipresent in marketing and toy aisles – allows the film to do something quite unique while giving us a fascinating angle into Woody’s psyche. And yes, 4 is well and truly Woody’s show, even more than Toy Story 2 was. It’s a bit of a shame, because we love all the other toys so very much, but it’s very challenging to imagine, for example, what more Rex or Mister Pricklepants could have done in the movie. It’s a thoughtful and engaging romp through the standard Toy Story plot – toys get separated and find their way back together after meeting shady toys and new friends like Duke Caboom (Keanu “Yes He Canada” Reeves) – but it’s as emotional and essential as the preceding installments. 

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” This was fun; we should do this again some time...

Monday at the Movies - February 4, 2019

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a two-parter, and long-time readers of the blog will know that I always think this sort of thing shouldn’t happen. For the record, this ought to be one movie, but if it’s going to be two, it’s probably best not to space them out too far; an hour’s intermission did the trick for me.

The Death of Superman (2018) – Famously killed off because the writers wanted to delay his wedding to Lois Lane, Superman perished in the comics in 1992, and The Death of Superman has persisted with surprising vigor for a story that goosed sales and was ultimately reversed within a year. DC’s animated stable trotted out this story in 2007 with mixed success, but this time the animators give scripting duties to noted comics scribe Peter J. Tomasi, who does a much better job adapting the comics slugfest into a narrative with real heart as Superman (Jerry O’Connell) wrestles with divulging his identity to Lois Lane (Rebecca Romijn), even as the beast called Doomsday begins to tear its way toward Metropolis for their fateful showdown. The film’s highlight is obviously the brawl promised by its title, and the action choreography is quite successful. The first half of the film is a little talky, though it hits all the right character beats and sows interesting seeds for the sequel. In a sense, The Death of Superman succeeds where The Killing Joke failed by devising an opening act that feeds into the emotional heart of the story rather than wasting time and defaming its characters. Here the emotional center is relocated onto Lois and Clark’s relationship, which gets added weight as the inevitable, eponymous death approaches. It’s hard to imagine this film working as well for someone who isn’t already a big fan of Superman, but Tomasi does a very good job at capturing the spirit and the scope of those early 1990s Superman comics, with a deep bench of supporting characters (remember Bibbo?) and a very of-its-moment approach to the Lois and Clark dynamic. But it’s sweet (with an adorable reference to the “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?” from Superman) and touching, even if it feels a bit overlong at times.

Reign of the Supermen (2019) – As the second half of the story, Reign of the Supermen is a lot more frenetic, with a good deal more plotting and easily half a dozen characters to explore. Where Death kept the focus tight, feeling protracted when it wouldn’t expand, Reign feels overfull, with barely any downtime. I knew the film was off to breakneck speed when its earliest scenes swiftly bring together the four Supermen in a clash of wills and fists, something the comics eased into over the course of about six months of storytelling. Surprisingly, though, Reign adheres to the comics story with remarkable allegiance; granted, major changes are made (Mongul doesn’t appear, but you can probably guess which hulking alien dictator replaces him), but screenwriters Tim Sheridan and Jim Krieg follow the broad strokes with the devotion of someone who’s read the book a hundred times. They also draw in a wide net from comics continuity at large, bringing in the 2003 retcon that Superboy has a helping of Lex Luthor’s DNA holding his clone body together. In Superman’s absence, the voice cast steps up their game; Rainn Wilson acquits himself better here as Lex Luthor than he did in Death, where he sounded too much like Dwight Schrute. Among the four Supermen, Cameron Monaghan is the standout as the brash Superboy, but Cress Williams is a fine Steel, and Patrick Fabian channels all his Better Call Saul superiority as the Cyborg Superman. Reign also does well to draw on the internal continuity of these DC animated films, linking its storyline as far back as Justice League: War and setting up a few future developments in a tantalizing post-credits sequence (Death had four, but Reign makes its singular stinger count). As much as DC’s live-action films have buckled under the weight of studio interference, it’s refreshing to see a Justice League film that isn’t pulled in a dozen different directions; indeed, you’ll be surprised how large the League looms in Reign, but it’s all in service of a pretty strong Superman story.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” See you next week!

Monday at the Movies - January 28, 2019

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, two films wildly different in tone and yet unmistakably British in their sensibilities.

The Death of Stalin (2018) – Few people can make me laugh as hard as Armando Iannucci, he whose British series The Thick of It can’t be enjoyed on a single viewing because you’ll miss half the jokes while splitting your sides at its creative profanity and monumentally madcap antics. After Iannucci ravaged the mundanely moronic ("All roads lead to Munich") in the lead-up to the Iraq War in Thick of It’s spinoff film In the Loop, he turns his satirical eye to the Soviet Union in the wake of Josef Stalin’s death and finds the Communist Party in chaos, beginning with the puddle of urine in which the party leader’s corpse is found. The cast is as unpredictable as the punchlines – we now live, folks, in a world where Steve Buscemi plays Nikita Khrushchev (and yes, Virginia, there is a “bury you” joke). Meanwhile we’ve got Jeffrey Tambor as the melancholy Georgy Malenkov, ill-suited to the leadership role he inherits; noted Shakespearean Simon Russell Beale as the oily Lavrentiy Beria of the secret police; and Jason Isaacs as Georgy Zhukov, all too eager to lead his army into open revolt. It’s a cast of all-stars (including Rupert Friend and Andrea Riseborough as Stalin’s children), but the biggest draw is the film’s pitch-black humor, depicting Stalin’s worst atrocities as something akin to a Karl Marx Brothers film. There are moments when one is not quite sure whether to laugh or recoil in horror, as when an executioner just gives up halfway down his line of victims, but Iannucci is quite successful at capturing the ambient paranoia that comes from not knowing who to trust in a totalitarian regime – and the absurdity when a brood of vipers is forced to try to trust one another.

Paddington 2 (2017) – With the benefit of hindsight, Paddington 2 might well be one of the best films of 2017. A film like this has no right to be as charming, intricately constructed, or genuinely emotional as Paddington 2 manages to be. Now that the well-mannered Paddington (Ben Whishaw) has taken up residence in London, he goes in search of a birthday present for his Aunt Lucy, only to find the perfect pop-up book out of his price range. After a series of odd jobs, Paddington is framed for the theft of the book, landing unceremoniously in a Victorian-era prison where he befriends the entire population – including prison cook Knuckles McGinty (Brendan Gleeson) – through the powers of civility and marmalade. Paddington 2 is even better than its predecessor, somehow more earnest now that it’s dispensed with the need to explain how and why an affable bear is living with ordinary people. Instead the filmscape is opened up to boundless adventures where Paddington’s relentless cheeriness persists, undaunted by his circumstances. Whether he’s shoved into the role of accidental barber or whether he finds himself teaching a prison how to make orange jam, Paddington is so endearing that it’s almost a personal offense when something unfortunate befalls him; “how dare they,” I said aloud at one point, “how dare the filmmakers do this to such a nice bear!” For all the antics and charm that the film possesses – really, I cannot overstate just how charming this movie is – it has an astonishing emotional depth rooted in Paddington’s love for his Aunt Lucy, and the film’s final moments are guaranteed to get you teary-eyed in a way that I thought only Pixar had been able to capture with computer-generated characters.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” Stay tuned for Wednesday’s final Batman animated review!

Monday at the Movies - November 5, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, two magnetic idiosyncratic performances.

My Dinner with Hervé (2018) – This HBO biopic has been something of a passion project for Peter Dinklage, so I’m glad to see him cash in that Game of Thrones check and do something that fascinates him. Dinklage is indisputably commanding as Hervé Villechaize, best known for his work in The Man with the Golden Gun and Fantasy Island. Jamie Dornan co-stars as journalist Danny Tate, assigned to a puff piece on Hervé before it turns into an all-night confessional bender. The cast is rounded out by some heavy hitters: Andy Garcia as a pretty unflattering Ricardo Montalbán, David Straithairn as Hervé’s long suffering agent, and Oona Chaplin as Tate’s ex, lost to him before his days of sobriety. As biopics go, this one is fairly by-the-numbers, leavened with the added pathos of Villechaize’s increasingly debilitating dwarfism. The central attraction for My Dinner is Dinklage’s masterful performance; though he does not quite physically resemble the distinctive Hervé Villechaize, he has his voice down pat, capturing the curious nasal way that Villechaize’s French accent crept into his performances. Moreover, Dinklage has an earnest sympathy for Villechaize, which overrides the issue of physical resemblance and gives his performance something of the weight of Tyrion Lannister’s confession speech from Game of Thrones. It is enough as an acting showcase and should earn Dinklage his fair share of awards on his gift of impersonation alone, but it is not, I think, a gamechanger in the genre nor a film that needs much revisiting unless one, suffering aphasia, forgets what a talent Dinklage is.

Phantom Thread (2017) – Here, on the other hand, is a film that I know I need to see again. The latest collaboration between director Paul Thomas Anderson and star Daniel Day-Lewis follows the life of cranky fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis), caught in a bizarre triangle between his unwed sister Cyril (Lesley Manville, simmering), guardian of the fashion house, and muse Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps), who begins to upset the established order in the House of Woodcock. That’s all I’ll say by way of summary, because the marketing only prepared me for a film about an uptight fashion designer whose life changes when he falls in love, and I can safely say that that description barely scratches the icebergian surface of what Anderson is up to in this film. In the way that There Will Be Blood was “about” an oil man but only barely, and The Master was “about” Scientology and huffing Lysol, Phantom Thread is more about the idiosyncrasies that power Woodcock and his petulant reactions as those habits are challenged. But it’s also about Alma, and Cyril, in ways I did not expect. I suppose I had anticipated a more demure outing from Anderson and Day-Lewis, in his ostensible swan song, but that was a fool’s bargain; both are in rare form, collaborating on a puzzle of a script and setting loose its peculiar questions on an unsuspecting audience. As ever, Anderson is invested in process, lovingly photographing the intricacies of sewing and the careful preparation of mushrooms, suggesting that perhaps he too is as demanding of his art as Woodcock is of his own life. I think the best of Anderson’s work takes so many turns that demand a second viewing just to sort it all out, but I’m equally looking forward to reveling in the quiet menace of a Day-Lewis stare, the withering retorts clipped by Manville, and the quiet ferocity of Krieps in the kitchen.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” If it sounds like Phantom Thread might be a candidate for a “Take Two Tuesday,” you may not be far off the mark. Indeed, “Take Two” returns tomorrow, but for a 2015 film. We’ll see you then!

Monday at the Movies - September 24, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a film which gives lie to the old expression about how the sausage is made.

All the Money in the World (2017)– A year or so from its release, it is a shame that the most interesting – and distracting – thing about All the Money in the World remains the ballyhoo surrounding the replacement of Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer in the role of billionaire J. Paul Getty. It’s unfortunate because the film is otherwise quite fine, neither a triumphant masterpiece nor a mordant trainwreck, but in every scene with Plummer there’s a macabre curiosity about what Spacey, beneath mountains of Gumby makeup, had done with the part, whether we’ll ever see any of the footage that necessitated the speedy and expensive reshoots. Plummer is doing masterful work, as he always does, and I have no doubt that he gave a more engaging performance than Spacey, who was exceedingly distracting in the prosthetics-laden trailers. Michelle Williams, as the mother of the abducted Getty grandson, is equally compelling, heartbreaking in the frustration we share with her at the immovable object of Plummer’s Getty. Mark Wahlberg, however, is disruptively miscast as the CIA operative turned Getty advisor Fletcher Chace; Wahlberg plays Chace like a scrappy everyman, albeit without the sobered gravitas needed to believe that this man is dangerous and capable of anything. (One almost expects him to tell an OPEC sheik, apropos of Andy Samberg, “Say hi to your mother for me.”) But the suspense of the film, a true story, falls somewhat tepid with knowledge of how the facts turned out, and the continual reminder of the film’s tumultuous gestation gets in the way of two very solid performances. Then again, I would much rather director Ridley Scott make films like this instead of persist in reinscribing the Alien mythos to the point of murky exposition (after Prometheus, I’ve still not hauled myself in front of Alien: Covenant, and I consider the prospect leavened with dread.)

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - August 20, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a murder/suicide.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) – Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel isn’t quite a remake of the 1974 Sidney Lumet version, starring Albert Finney, but it doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from its predecessor; it doesn’t misstep, to be sure, but one comes away feeling very much underwhelmed by the sense of having seen all of this already. Branagh all but drowns in a veritable river of ham as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, perfectly suited to the detective’s (well-earned) ego but overly distracting with an exaggerated accent (compare, for one, to Judi Dench’s subtle accent as the Princess Dragomiroff). It doesn’t help that I can’t get past the mustache, which suggests that Kurt Russell is owed a royalty check. Because the film makes only cosmetic changes to the plot, it all feels rather inevitable, losing a great deal of suspense in the build-up toward solving the murder, and comes off like two hours of “Kenneth Branagh and Friends” – which, don’t get me wrong, is a roundtable I’d certainly watch week after week. Johnny Depp is suitably smarmy as murder victim Edward Ratchett, while Daisy Ridley proves she’s got a long and fruitful career ahead of her once she’s done with Star Wars. The aforementioned Judi Dench is resplendent as an imperious royal, while Branagh’s affection for Derek Jacobi is more than apparent in a warm interview sequence. If you’re a fan of anyone in the cast of all-stars – which includes also Willem Dafoe, Josh Gad, Penélope Cruz, and Michelle Pfeiffer – it’s worth a look, but there is little about this Murder that is particularly imperative. 

Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018) – Perhaps it is just the circumstances of how I watched it, but Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay really feels like a Saturday morning cartoon for grown-ups (I watched on a Sunday, though). I say grown-ups, because Hell to Pay is unflinchingly adult in its objectionable content, almost to the point of being unnecessarily graphic. Don’t get me wrong, a Suicide Squad movie ought to be violent – maybe I’m just getting too old for this sort of thing – but there’s more blood here than anticipated, even from its R-rating. What I did appreciate, however, was the film’s strong connection to one of Gail Simone’s better Secret Six storylines, here appropriated so that Amanda Waller (Vanessa Williams) sends Deadshot (Christian Slater), Harley Quinn (Tara Strong), and the rest of the Suicide Squad in search of a magical, literal “Get Out of Hell Free” card. Part of the fun of a movie like this is that you never know quite who’s going to show up, as the filmmakers dig deep into DC’s stable of characters; Professor Zoom and Doctor Fate show up, though not in the ways you’re expecting, while Professor Pyg and Scandal Savage appear exactly as you’d imagine. All of this is inside baseball for those of us who live in the superhero dugout, particularly the film’s late-second-act surprise tie to another animated film (spoilers?), and I don’t imagine Hell to Pay will hold much appeal for anyone not already invested in the premise or its characters, but the curiosity of a big star like Christian Slater doing a voice might be incentive enough to check out this strange and gruesome flick.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - August 13, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a pair of movies that are – shall we say – exceedingly British.

Paddington (2014) – Despite my reservations that the titular bear was neither as cute as the Peggy Fortnum illustrations nor voiced by Colin Firth, I found myself captivated by the shameless whimsy and defiant British-ness of Paddington. In the case of the former, the bear looks much better in motion than he does in still photos, charmingly expressive; on the matter of the latter, Ben Whishaw is a fine Paddington, imbuing this unique bear with a roguish innocence that never misses a giggle when he pulls a marmalade sandwich from under his hat. There is something striking about the way writer/director Paul King (no relation; himself helming his first movie, a remarkable moment) manages to capture the madcap logic of a children’s story, in which a renegade shower massage can flood a bathroom while a sinister taxidermist (Nicole Kidman, between proud mouthfuls of scenery) plots to stuff and mount a living creature for a surprisingly well-developed and narratively integrated reason. I was also impressed at how artfully developed many of the film’s gags proved to be; for instance, a mishap with a handheld vacuum cleaner establishes the strength of the device for a pivotal and deft setpiece late in the film. For a character as prominent and marketable as Paddington Bear, it would have been exceptionally easy to make a lazy film that cashes in on the character’s adorable reputation, but it was quite apparent that everyone involved on Paddington cared deeply about the character and his legacy, and it strikes me that they have done right by him.

Victoria and Abdul (2017) – Here’s a film that offers Judi Dench the chance to be alternatingly heartwarming and cantankerous for two hours while breathing life into one of Britain’s most prominent figures (returning to a role, incidentally, for which she was nominated for an Oscar in Mrs. Brown). If that’s not a recipe for a good time at a film, I haven’t found one, because Judi Dench is riveting in this “mostly” true story about Queen Victoria’s friendship with an Indian subject, Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), who becomes a teacher (“munshi”) and a confidante in the regent’s final years. Victoria and Abdul is funnier but no less delightful than I anticipated, taking a wry postcolonial approach to the British Empire, acknowledging its dehumanizing aspects in a sobering scene with Abdul’s friend Mohammed (Adeel Akhtar) but also highlighting Victoria’s efforts to learn more about her subjects, even if her naiveté is somewhat charming (“This mango is off,” she repeats in one notable scene). The cast is rounded out by Tim Pigott-Smith, Michael Gambon, Paul Higgins, and Eddie Izzard, all of whom play their xenophobia rather broadly in a quintessentially British tongue-in-cheek interrogation of prejudice; it’s all Izzard can do not to twirl his mustache as Victoria’s eldest son, horrified that a lowborn subject has his mother’s ear in a way he never has. The film is irrevocably and undeniably Dench’s, though, equally enthralling while asleep at tea or while insisting that her faculties have never been sharper, in a single-take monologue that lays bare in equal measure her insecurities and accomplishments. It’s a powerhouse moment in a potent performance, a real shame that she was snubbed at last year’s Oscars.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - July 30, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a mismatched pair with clowns in common.

Batman Ninja (2018) – Of late, DC have been killing it on their animated offerings, and Batman Ninja is perhaps the weirdest of their successes. The premise is precariously unstable, relocating Batman and his greatest foes to feudal Japan, and yet the film’s creators stick the landing by embracing that manic wildness and careening between set pieces that alternate mad action with eccentric animation choices. I can’t overstate how bonkers Batman Ninja is, with concepts like Gorilla Grodd’s time machine, Robin’s unacknowledged adoption of a monkey sidekick, and a clan of ninja dedicated to the prophecy of the Bat; that’s even before Bane shows up as a sumo wrestler while the other villains build castles that turn into mechanized warriors. In the middle of all this madness is Batman (Roger Craig Smith), who delivers with an impossibly straight face lines like, “Our weapons will be everything that exists.” His level deadpan is matched by Tony Hale’s madcap Joker, who outdoes Buster Bluth’s mood swings by a mile. Watching Batman Ninja, I could not help but think of Mad Max: Fury Road, which I took to task for a similar meandering plotlessness and overemphasis on action sequences dialed up to eleven. Was the difference, then, only that Batman Ninja wore a Batsuit to appease my biases as a comic book shill? Perhaps, but a key distinction is that no two scenes in Batman Ninja are alike; compare Batman’s duel with Joker to the meditative storybook quality of the sequence in which Jason Todd finds an apparently reformed Joker and Harley Quinn (Tara Strong). Fury Road was a two-hour car chase; Batman Ninja is eighty-five unpredictable minutes in which a change in tone, pace, and energy is usually only a few minutes away.

It (2017) – Stephen King adaptations have a hit-or-miss reputation, usually skewing more successfully toward his less supernatural stories (cf. The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile). I read It at an impressionable age, perhaps around fourteen or so, and vividly recall it as one of the most terrifying novels I’ve ever read. (Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon is up there, too.) I’ve not seen the original miniseries, starring Tim Curry, but I found director Andy Muschetti’s adaptation wholly successful, unsettling in all the right places and bloody terrifying in the rest. Muschetti has the unenviable task of directing a cast of children, which includes Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis, and Finn Wolfhard. Unlike many child performers, however, the cast of It are remarkably gifted, lacking that trying-too-hard aura that might have plagued another production. The kids all have striking eccentricities that give their performers something to embrace; Lieberher, for one, is adept at giving his Bill Denbrough a stutter, while Jack Dylan Grazer balances comic relief with crippling panic as the hypochondriac Eddie Kaspbrak. Of course, no one comes to It without wanting to talk about Pennywise the Clown, and on this count Bill Skarsgård is really frightening. Jump scares aside, Skarsgård’s Pennywise is this perpetually hungry, partly childlike specter of menace whose savage teeth and yellow eyes belie a physicality that could snap at any moment. From clips, I sense that Tim Curry’s original Pennywise casts something of a long shadow, and Skarsgård has mostly stepped out of that shadow; though the voice feels similar in places, Skarsgård substitutes Curry’s guttural rasp for pitch variances that recall Heath Ledger’s Joker. I admit that I am always skeptical when a novel is broken into parts for multiple films, but It strikes a good chord by consolidating the novel’s “past” segments into one story that doesn’t require you to come back for more. I am, however, more intrigued by It: Chapter Two having seen what a knockout horror film It ended up being.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - July 2, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a forgotten film with comic book ties – it’s the pulpy adaptation of The Shadow.

The Shadow (1994) – In my ongoing effort to see and review any superhero movie I can get my hands on, it’s worth enrolling The Shadow in that tradition. Based on the hero of pulp novels and radio programs, from whom we can trace a direct line to Batman, The Shadow introduces Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston, a man who “knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men” because he’s intimately acquainted with the darkness in his own heart. After a Tibetan prologue that feels presciently similar to the first act of Doctor Strange, Baldwin dons a black hat and red scarf to fight crime in New York City, where a descendant of Genghis Khan (John Lone) has come to finish his ancestor’s work of conquest. As a devout fan of The Rocketeer, I had hoped that The Shadow would live up to that brand of retro-heroism; it doesn’t, though it does feel a lot like Rocketeer by way of Sam Raimi’s Darkman. The Shadow does an excellent job inhabiting a noir-esque version of New York between world wars, effortlessly classy and yet sufficiently dangerous. It also boasts a frankly astonishing cast of talented players in minor roles – Tim Curry as a sycophantic assistant, Peter Boyle as a cabbie, Jonathan Winters as a police commissioner, and Ian McKellen as an atomic scientist – all gifted character actors whose ilk we just don’t seem to have anymore, charming and magnetic screen presences no matter what they’re doing. As Margo Lane, Penelope Ann Miller more than keeps up with Baldwin, though the film never quite seems to know what to do with her. Nor does the film’s plot quite hang together as tightly as it pretends; many of the scenes feel fairly perfunctory, without sufficient character development to justify subplots of romance or archrivalry. The Shadow instead feels like a movie that paints by the numbers without obscuring those same numbers, including one moment when a title card explains a multiyear gap between scenes. The Shadow is ultimately somewhat charming, unmistakably of its time, and a property direly in need of being revisited now that Hollywood has a better sense of how to mine such rich source material. The Shadow is perhaps forgotten by virtue of not excelling, but its quaint approach to the process of adaptation merits it a place – if a curious one – alongside bygone efforts like Rocketeer, Dick Tracy, and The Phantom.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - June 4, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, more pudding than I was expecting.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002) – Voluntarily watching an Adam Sandler movie is quite low on my list of priorities, and yet Punch-Drunk Love is just a film that happens to have Adam Sandler in it. Guided by the masterful script and direction of Paul Thomas Anderson, a true Cinema King favorite ever since There Will Be Blood, Sandler proves himself quite competent when he puts forth the effort. Sandler stars as Barry Egan, a plunger salesman with seven sisters, an anxiety problem, and a temper to match; contemporaneous with meeting the besotted Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), Barry’s life falls headlong into a number of implausible schemes, ranging from identity theft to exchanging pudding cups for airline miles. It’s the sort of oddball plot that might fit in a Coen Brothers movie (think Burn After Reading), only Anderson is more deadly serious than I suspect the Coens would ever attempt, aided by a tense and clattering score from Jon Brion that seems to anticipate Anderson’s later work with Jonny Greenwood. That Anderson gets as good a performance from Sandler as he does a score from Brion is one of the film’s greatest pleasures, as Sandler funnels his nervous energy into a compelling character who bears none of the lame humor pervasive in the rest of his career. Among the surprises of the film, aside from the pudding, is a captivating appearance by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman as a shouty mattress salesman slash phone sex pimp; Hoffman is as commanding as he ever was, an apt reminder of his unsettled performance as Anderson’s eponymous Master. Punch-Drunk Love is a brisk forerunner of Anderson’s longer epics, but it displays his consistent manipulation of tension, even in the screwiest of circumstances.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - May 14, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a trilogy concludes.

The Trip to Spain (2017)– After trips through Northern England and Italy, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are at it again in Michael Winterbottom’s third in the Trip trilogy, ostensibly reviewing restaurants but actually drinking in local culture and antagonizing each other in games of impressions and good-natured joshing. Three films in, The Trip to Spain shows some signs of wear, like a sauce that’s been on the pot a bit too long and is simmering a little thin. Where The Trip to Italy had a good laugh at the idea of just redoing the first film on the Italian peninsula, Spain feels more compulsory, intruded upon as it is by more constructed narratives (a subplot about Steve’s son) and a real head-scratcher of a conclusion that veers into weird satirical endlessness. The trip, though, has always been more the point of these movies than their destinations, and Spain does introduce a number of great bits, including a pit-stop amid a poor man’s Jurassic Park and an exceptionally apt James Bond reference apropos of Brydon’s preposterous choice of hat. The real stars of the film end up being, to the surprise of few, the impressions, chief among them Marlon Brando as the Spanish Inquisition by way of Python, a clapping Mick Jagger (who attempts his own Michael Caine impression), and Roger Moore, who on various occasions serves shellfish and narrates the history of the Spanish Moors as though they were his own family. A sort of “oh, this again” appearance by Yolanda the photographer does visualize the genius metaphor of Coogan as Don Quixote, with Brydon as his Sancho Panza, a gag that could have carried the film like Italy’s reference to The Godfather, Part II, but Spain doesn’t go there. Instead, it ends up somewhat less than the sum of its parts. I don’t anticipate (but would welcome) a fourth film to extend some of the matter of this film, but I do think that Coogan and Brydon are some of the most consistently funny comedians on film, even if this Trip seems less hysterical than the preceding two.

Sidebar: is this film the only time that the word “apotheosis” has been used as an insult? (Steve jeers that Rob’s “small man in a box” represents “the apotheosis of your career.”) A remarkable achievement in and of itself.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - April 16, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a movie described by the Hollywood Reporter as “the Godfather 2 of road movies.” 

The Trip to Italy (2014)– The Trip was a miniseries turned film about Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, a pair of comedians playing fictionalized versions of themselves, touring the English countryside, reviewing restaurants, and antagonizing each other. Its sequel is the best kind of sequel – more of the same, self-aware of the absurdity of just doing it again, and just as riotously funny as the first. Coogan and Brydon continue to one-up each other on every topic from careers to impressions (on the latter, they’re in Italy, so you can imagine the Godfather allusions that proliferate, including one direct reenactment), from philosophical observations to precise trivia about seminal English poets. The pair have an undeniable combative chemistry, which really manifests in the deleted scenes, where they occasionally break “character” and laugh at the absurd rhetorical circles into which they chase each other. Where Coogan was more the straight man in the first Trip, exasperated by the ease with which Brydon can trigger a laugh, here he’s more laidback, more ready to get in on the fun, as when a conversation about Batman delves first into dueling Michael Caine impersonations before musing on the fact that Tom Hardy is “in a contest to see who can be the least understandable.” A subplot about infidelity is surprisingly sobering in The Trip to Italy, wallpapered over though it is by a stammering Hugh Grant impression, and one wonders if director Michael Winterbottom is musing about boorish vacuity or if he’s likening the fictional avatars to the storied biographies of the poets they’re chasing. There is a third film, The Trip to Spain, and the laughs-per-minute quotient here guarantees that the third will be well worth seeing.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - April 2, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, I double the number of John Wayne movies I’ve seen in my life.

The Searchers (1956)– How do you review a film that was in the inaugural class of the National Film Registry? It’s hard to believe that this is only the second John Wayne movie I’ve seen in my life, or that it’s roundly considered a classic and I’ve only just gotten to it with more decades of birthdays under my belt than I’d care to admit. But maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve only just seen The Searchers, because so much of what I enjoyed about the film was the level of deliberate craft on display, which has to be appreciated before it can be enjoyed. Take the starring performance of John Wayne, deliberately self-conscious in a world that doesn’t quite have room for him – reflected in the way other characters treat him, but also in the number of doorways he has to stoop to enter. As Ethan Edwards, Wayne is notable as a character whose moral center the film clearly endorses – he is, after all, the hero – but his narrative arc isn’t contingent on the other characters in the film coming around to his way of seeing things. Director John Ford is not interested in that kind of metaphorical harmony; he is instead interested in surprisingly long takes, harsh and unforgiving landscapes, and all the ways that Ethan bristles against the world he inhabits. The Searchers is the kind of film that I am sure I will need to see more than once to fully comprehend it, now that I know the basic shape of it, but on first viewing it looks pretty good to my eyes.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - March 26, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Today we look at a forgotten entry in the history of comics at the movies.

Dick Tracy (1945) – There’s a video of me from an age younger than five, reading (or reciting) the names of characters from Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy adaptation. Imagine my surprise to learn that there were not one, but four, preceding adaptations of the iconic Chester Gould comic strip from the RKO studio. It seems that these films have been largely forgotten because of their B-picture quality, filmed quite transparently on a tight budget with a dearth of recognizable players (though Boris Karloff would ultimately appear in Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome [1947]). Morgan Conway stars as Dick Tracy; though he lacks the chiseled profile and yellow coat that Beatty brought to the role, he plays the detective like a lean noir Fred MacMurray, avuncular but never resting in his pursuit of justice. In fact, I was surprised at how lean and noir the whole film is – at a tight 61 minutes, the film does all the beats of a police procedural, and it does so with an atmosphere of surprisingly effective dread and a soundtrack that recalls The Maltese Falcon on more than one occasion. I was also struck by how effectively the film apes the Gould comic, with narrative pauses to explain forensic clues (like footprints from a puddle of oil or tire tracks leading off into a garage); moreover, the moments when Tracy interrogates a suspect are framed like comic strip panels, over which one can almost imagine a nervous speech bubble or Gould’s caricatured linework. The film is not ultimately a slamdunk, though it is about the best B-movie treatment of Dick Tracy one could imagine; its villain, Splitface, is rather underwhelming, especially given the more famous foes who appear penciled over the opening credits, and Conway feels somewhat undercooked as Tracy. But what is surprising is how quickly and how effectively the film captures the ethos of the Gould comic strip, a noteworthy if forgotten installment in the exciting history of comics on film.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - March 12, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Today’s installment is one of those “how’d he miss that?” reviews.

Sicario (2015) – If Denis Villeneuve isn’t already one of my favorite working directors, Sicario ought to cement that reputation. I’ve loved Prisoners and Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, so Sicario fills in a gap with a movie that combines the seat-edge tension of Prisoners with, well, Blade Runner 2049’s fascination with dust. Emily Blunt plays an FBI agent whose safehouse raid goes wrong, leading her to take a new role in the war on drugs alongside two Department of Justice operatives (Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro) who redefine playing their cards close to the chest by keeping her in the dark about their ambiguous, ultra-violent mission. From the film’s opening scene, which takes several brutally unexpected turns, Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (he of Hell or High Water) keep the audience guessing as Blunt’s Kate Macer tries to find her own footing in a plot that is never quite transparent about its goals. Indeed, for a film that doles out its cards so slowly, it’s almost alchemical how Villeneuve keeps the audience on his side for the duration of the film; he’s helped ably, one should note, by cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has been the cinematographer for many of the most gorgeous films of the last twenty years (favorites: Skyfall and No Country for Old Men, whose visual influence is acute here). Points also to Benicio del Toro, who gives a riveting, largely silent performance as Alejandro, the man who “If he says to do somethin’, just do it” – and you buy it from del Toro’s quiet intensity. Hours after watching Sicario, I was elated to learn that there’s a sequel, Soldado, due in June of this year. And as a moviegoer, I don’t know if there’s a better feeling than discovering a delight you’d missed along your way, only to be told that there’s more coming just around the corner.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - March 5, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” And since it’s Monday, it must be time to review something from the animated realm.

Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2018) – This film ended up being, to quote a popular Star Wars meme, “a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.” The Scooby Gang, alias Mystery Incorporated, comes to Gotham City, where they find themselves invited by Batman (Diedrich Bader) to join the Mystery Analysts of Gotham, a clubhouse of super sleuths (including Black Canary, Detective Chimp, Martian Manhunter, Plastic Man, The Question, and the aspirant Aquaman) who find themselves wrapped up in one of Batman’s earliest – and only unsolved – cases, which just so happens to involve a ghost. I was a big fan of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, a first-rate animated series that embraced everything in Batman’s long history, from the nutty and the zany to the grim and the gritty; I’ve also been a monthly reader of Scooby-Doo Team-Up!, the comic that pairs the Scooby Gang with guest stars from the DC publishing wheelhouse. This film, then, seemed like a natural extension of two things I already like, and so I’m pleased to report it’s great fun. It strikes a balance between the pseudo-supernatural sleuthing of the Scooby-Doo universe and the high concept superheroics that put Batman next to a talking chimp to solve crimes, managing quite well to strike a balance between two distinct brands. This is a crossover done right, with plenty of fan service and a decent story in its own right. Moreover, the film actually includes a well-crafted mystery (with at least one “red” herring), with sufficient clues for the audience to piece together. I’d happily watch more installments of the Mystery Analysts, particularly if they give us an opportunity to revisit Diedrich Bader’s Batman, a collegial and dead(pan) serious Bat who captures that surrogate father quality of Batman comics from the 1950s and who can render immortal a line like “The hammer of justice is unisex.” (Points also to Jeffrey Combs, who returns as the definitive Question, and John DiMaggio, whose Aquaman is as delightfully ‘outrageous!’ as ever.)

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - January 22, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Remember when I thought Catwoman was the last superhero film I hadn’t seen? This week, it turns out there was another.

Steel (1997) – I’ll say this for Steel: while I don’t remember Catwoman inspiring any emotions beyond boredom and disgust, at least I had a smile on my face during Steel. Don’t get me wrong, this is an absolutely terrible film, but it crosses that threshold into watchable garbage that at least made me grin at how dumb it is. The film is nominally based on the DC Comics character Steel, who dons a metal suit after being inspired by Superman, but this iteration of Steel is more like if Iron Man were a discount Robocop with a hammer (don’t worry, Shaq doesn’t miss the opportunity to say “It’s hammer time”). Shaquille O’Neal is ludicrously cast as John Henry Irons, a military weapons genius who builds his own arsenal to protect the streets when a former soldier (Judd Nelson) goes rogue with John Henry’s designs. Shaq was clearly cast because of his great height, but neither his athletic nor acting prowesses are on display here. No fewer than four times, the film trots out a tired gag in which Shaq is supposed to be bad at free throws; perhaps worse, Shaq demonstrates tremendous difficulty with words longer than four syllables (it’s all over when he tries to say the word “capacitor”). Annabeth Gish appears in a surprisingly progressive supporting role as Sparks, a paralyzed Army vet who becomes Steel’s tech support, but then the film puts rocket launchers on her wheelchair. The action sequences are rubbish, largely because the crew couldn’t find a stuntman tall enough to stand in for Shaq, and the performances are comparably lackluster (Richard Roundtree shows up, and yes, there’s a “shaft” joke). Every once in a while, Steel is heroically stupid, which makes for an entertaining bit of relief in an otherwise mercilessly poor film.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - January 15, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” The Cinema King had noted that Get Out was up for “Best Picture – Musical or Comedy” at the Golden Globes, and this week, he finds it to belong to neither genre.

Get Out (2017) – Jordan Peele’s directorial film debut has a much-hyped 99% on Rotten Tomatoes (you guessed it, Armond White is one of the naysayers), and while I have my own problems with that site’s aggregate approach to film ranking, in this instance I can only say, “I’m with them.” Daniel Kaluuya stars as Chris, a man visiting his girlfriend Rose (Alison Williams) and her parents (Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener), when he discovers that the family’s black servants are acting strangely. Peele’s script manages to generate empathy for Chris and his mindset, and Kaluuya gives a first-rate performance in communicating all the unease, fear, and hesitation that Chris feels in this strange place. It’s not a musical or a comedy, though it is thickly satirical; without spoiling anything, the film leans into some strange plot elements that regardless manage to align with the story’s thematic concerns. I’m impressed that Peele has created a film that is very much of its moment but is also a highly successful genre outing in its own respect. My cynical hackles had been raised purely by the overwhelming number of people who said Get Out was one of the best movies of the year (last time I heard that claim, it was Mad Max: Fury Road, and we all remember how that turned out). But I found myself hypnotized by the film, unnerved in all the right places, and surprised that – in a world where we’re told that cultural divides are too deep and unbridgeable – a first-time writer/director effortlessly took me into Chris’s head and told a parable about how painful, violent, and condescending even the best intentions can be. Peele has said he’s mulling a sequel, and I have no idea how that’d play out, but I’ll be right there for it; I can only hope, however, that Lil Rel Howery’s TSA agent Rod can somehow team up with Michael Peña’s Luis from Ant-Man in a race to see who can be the more charming and helpful.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - January 8, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, we inaugurate 2018 with its first movie reviews as we charge headlong into the seventh year of “Monday at the Movies.”

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) – I had real reservations about this film, the first of five in a prequel series to the beloved but occasionally laborious Harry Potter franchise. My misgivings ultimately proved unfounded, though it took me a year to surmount them; I found the film to be a self-contained narrative with a conclusion, and I found it to be immensely cheering. Returning to writerly duties, J.K. Rowling remembers to keep the whimsy in the wizard’s world with a clever and fun film to which a disservice is done when we brush it off as merely a prequel to Harry Potter. Eddie Redmayne stars as the wide-eyed Newt Scamander, whose bigger-on-the-inside briefcase full of magical creatures pops open in 1920s New York, drawing the attention of former Auror Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) and biting a No-Maj (no-magic, played by Dan Fogler) on the neck. The film takes its time building a world – at once recognizable but simultaneously quite fresh in its exploration of wizards in America – and it’s to Rowling’s credit that I went from Hogwarts fatigue to genuine enthusiasm anew for the mythology. (I plied my moviegoing companion and tested her saintly patience for nearly forty minutes of exhausting detail about nifflers, no-majs, and school houses.) Moreover, the film contains at least one genuinely surprising turn, about which I am probably the last man in America not to have been spoiled. David Yates shows no signs that this is his fifth directorial outing in the Potterverse, bringing a renewed energy to the project and restoring that Spielbergian sense of awe. As someone who had previously regarded the prospect of Fantastic Beasts with cynical dread, I now say, roll on the sequel (The Crimes of Grindelwald, due in November).

Would You Rather (2012) – If the Marquis de Sade hosted a dinner party and invited the cast of Saw, it’d be something like this joyless film. Brittany Snow stars as a woman down on her luck and caring for her ailing brother; she accepts an offer to play a mysterious game on the promise of untold riches if she wins. Naturally, the invitation conceals the horrific nature of the game, a sadistic version of “would you rather.” I’ve seen this film lauded for its “restraint” within the torture porn genre, and it’s true that the film is surprisingly not gory for the number of violent acts that transpire, but it would seem that the restraint applied to Steffen Schlachtenhaufen’s script, which is the very definition of thin; everything in the film is designed solely to get bodies to the dinner table so that they can slice, electrocute, whip, and drown each other. The script sacrifices character and plot for easy scares and drops all its Chekhov’s guns for a tawdry Twilight Zone ending. If there’s any glee to be had in the film, it’s from Jeffrey Combs, who turns each line of dialogue into a fine slice of honey-baked ham as Shepard Lambrick, the game’s host, he of indeterminate wealth and profound amorality. As Lambrick’s son, Robin Lord Taylor turns up with a performance that anticipates his sociopathic Penguin on Gotham, but the film seems less interested in him as the runtime progresses. Only Combs seems to understand that he’s in a C-list horror film and elects to have the most fun possible, bathing (as Kenneth Branagh would put it) in a river of ham. By no means is this a good performance by technical standards, but it is a delight to watch in a film that is utter, utter dreck.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - December 11, 2017

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, I’m a year late to the Split party, but imagine how the rest of the audience felt when they wound up sixteen years late to the party. Caution: spoilers for Split do follow.

Split (2016) – M. Night Shyamalan is a figure of some controversy, the bulk of whose oeuvre Wikipedia aptly describes as “poorly received but sometimes financially successful.” Split was reviewed by many as the debut of late Shyamalan, a slight return to form and a turn toward a more prosperous cinematic career. Split is, to be fair, leaps and bounds better than much of Shyamalan’s recent work, but – in the words of Mark Kermode – “so is, y’know, slamming your hand in a car door.” Split features a rightly well-regarded performance by James McAvoy as Kevin, possessed as he is by 24 personalities, some of which drive him to abduct a trio of vulnerable teenage girls (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula) for sinister, mysterious purposes. The film is largely competent and even occasionally terrifying as the girls are menaced by McAvoy’s multiple personalities; McAvoy does a remarkable job creating personas recognizable by different distortions of the same face even before he speaks in a variety of intonations, and Shyamalan has found three actresses very effective at bearing the burden of the film’s horror. The film’s climax, though, felt a bit of a letdown as the plot quite literally runs away after making what might be a condescending interpretation of self-harm before pulling a Prometheus and deferring the story’s end for a future installment; the truth about Kevin is apparently revealed (though not much else is resolved, and even that’s up for a spot of interpretation).  But Shyamalan makes a bizarre decision when his final scene casts the entire film as a sequel to Unbreakable (2000). It’s a peculiar way to build a franchise, and indeed a third film – Glass – is evidently due in 2019 to unite the two disparate films, but it does feel that Shyamalan has traded an ending for a reminder of what might have been his last great film. Come for McAvoy’s compelling performance, but leave with a peculiar taste in your mouth as the film ends with a few bewildering creative calls. Having said that, though, I’m always up for more Unbreakable.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!