A Fistful of Dollars (1964, Sergio Leone)

A Fistful of Dollars opens with a long, primarily dialogue-free sequence introducing the star—Clint Eastwood—and the setting, the desolate near-border Mexican town of San Miguel. The sequence introduces the town to Eastwood and Eastwood to the viewer. He quietly watches the goings on, principally Marianne Koch’s family troubles. She’s living in a little house under guard; directly across the road is another house where her suffering son and husband live.

It’s an efficient setup and an informative prologue. The film proper starts as Eastwood enters the town and immediately gets in an argument with some local toughs. Somewhat bruised following the altercation, Eastwood finds his way into the only bar in town, run by adorable old man, José Calvo. He lives next door to the coffin maker—another adorable old man, Joseph Egger—the only person in the town making an honest living.

See, there are two bosses in this one town. On one side, there’s Wolfgang Lukschy and Margarita Lozano’s gang of liquor smugglers. Lukschy’s also the sheriff, which doesn’t matter, and Lozano’s the brains of the outfit, which does.

On the other side are the three Rojas Brothers, played by Antonio Prieto, Sieghardt Rupp, and Gian Maria Volontè. Prieto’s the eldest and most business-minded, Rupp’s hot-headed but incompetent, and Volontè savage but calculating. Volonté kidnapped Koch, something we find out even before we meet Volonté. He’s got a fantastic introduction when he finally arrives.

Eastwood spends the movie playing the two sides off one another, gravitating towards the brothers because… Well, Eastwood never explains his plan or when or if it changes. But he goes back and forth between the two outfits, sometimes to double his money, other times to start trouble. There are direct consequences to some of those troubles, so it’s possible Eastwood’s intentional in his meddling. Since he never says anything, it’s impossible to know.

He could just be a bull knocking over the exact right pieces for the film to add up.

Despite having nothing in the way of backstory, Eastwood’s got an entirely different relationship with everyone in the film, whether it’s the brothers, pals Calvo and Egger, matriarch Lozano, or hostage Koch. Since Eastwood’s an exceptional gunslinger, no one ever threatens him, and unless they’ve got him disarmed, he’s never in any danger exactly. His stakes are ostensibly a payday, but—again—it’s unclear a pay-off is what he’s really after.

After Volontè shows up, Dollars sets about putting him and Eastwood on a collision course, even though they’re usually on the same side. Eastwood’s schemes don’t involve him doing any shooting but rather putting the rival gangs in the position to take shots as desired. Calvo usually tags along, bickering, complaining and bringing a bunch of personality to the film. Eastwood’s glares, occasional smiles, and charm go a long way for his character, but the supporting cast—good guys and bad—provide Fistful’s grounding.

It’s even more impressive when you realize the original actors aren’t dubbing their own performances. Calvo and Volontè are the two best syncs, but everyone’s pretty good. Not in terms of lip matching, of course, though director Leone sometimes will keep an actor (or their mouth) out of frame for their deliveries. Rather the vocal performance and the physical one so perfectly matching; Volontè’s bombastic performance, full of swagger and bravado, would play in a silent film. Calvo’s might too. Then the dubbing actors come in and add a whole new layer to the performance, particularly with how they interact with Eastwood.

Even though they all would’ve recorded their audio separately, it works out.

The film’s a technical marvel. Leone shows off with protracted, complicated action sequences, often shooting day for night. It’s okay day for night, but it distracts from how Leone and editors Roberto Cinquini and Alfonso Santacana cut the visuals to match Ennio Morricone’s spectacular score. Leone shows off the most in the third act, while the rest of the film has been spotlighting Morricone and Eastwood. From the first scene. There’s always the music; there’s always Eastwood.

Fistful stumbles a bit in the third act, with Calvo being offscreen for way too long. It truncates his arc, leaving it in an unsatisfactory state.

But it’s a damn fine Western. Leone, Eastwood, Morricone, and Volontè are all doing tremendous, genre-defining work.

This post is part of the “Take Two!” Blogathon hosted by Dr. Annette Bochenek of Hometowns to Hollywood.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022, Taika Waititi)

Thor: Love and Thunder ends like all Thor movies, promising the next one will—finally—deliver on the promise. The first movie follow-up fumbled when co-star Natalie Portman didn’t rate an Avengers 1 gig, the second movie when Portman didn’t rate an Avengers 2 gig, the third movie had Avengers 3 entirely upend it (with Portman not bothering coming back). Well, she’s back for Love and Thunder and given how she’s got such a lousy arc, it won’t be a surprise if she’s gone for good this time.

Of course, they didn’t stop messing with Chris Hemsworth’s character arc—which now apparently wraps back around to the first movie, only not really—with the latest Avengers. The most recent one sent Hemsworth off with The Guardians of the Galaxy, who barely show up in Love and Thunder. Chris Pratt gets the most lines, but the others seem like they showed up for a couple hours, plus and minus the makeup chair. They’re just around long enough for Hemsworth to head back to Earth, having found himself between Avengers 4 and this one.

Only not really, because when he gets back to Earth, he discovers Portman has the power of Thor. She’s been superheroing it up on Earth; only we don’t see any of it. Once Hemsworth’s back in the movie, Portman’s downgraded to a girlfriend part. Worse, she’s demoted to an ex-girlfriend whose emotional experience isn’t part of the story. And their reuniting arc is all about them getting back together.

Shame she’s only Thor because Hemsworth made his old hammer promise to look after her, which includes after it got broken in Thor 3 and Portman ingloriously got cancer at the beginning of this movie. It’s got to be really hard on the character, whose single bit of character development—besides Kat Dennings coming back for a cameo—is flashbacks to the character’s mom dying of cancer. It doesn’t even rise to middling soap opera; Love and Thunder could give a shit about Portman.

To be entirely fair, it’s unclear what Love and Thunder does give a shit about. Special guest star villain Christian Bale, who starts the movie in an apparent homage to the beginning of Star Trek V, which is a flex, is potentially compelling, but once the film spends any time with him, it’s clear he’s… just as dangerous as Josh Brolin in the Avengers movies. So, why doesn’t Bale get a fourteen-movie arc or whatever.

The film’s very wishy-washy on the Marvel movies’ gods—with Russell Crowe showing up for a Zeus cameo (leading to the film’s most successful moment, as long as you stick around long enough)—but they don’t do jack shit for their worshippers. They like it that way just fine, thank you very much. Bale’s mad his daughter died in a desert while his god had an oasis nearby and didn’t intercede.

Conveniently, Bale then finds the power to kill all the gods in the universe, pretty quickly going after Tessa Thompson and the Asgardians living on Earth. Specifically their children. He kidnaps their children and puts them in a spider cage on an asteroid in a black and white universe.

Kieron L. Dyer plays the lead kid, son of now-dead Idris Elba, who can communicate across the universe with Hemsworth. Given where Love and Thunder ends up, there ought to be an arc for Dyer and Hemsworth. There’s not. There’s barely an arc for Hemsworth and Portman.

Actually, given the end of the movie, it seems like Dyer could’ve been the film’s protagonist or at least jockeying for the spot. He doesn’t. Despite Love and Thunder having a Guns N’ Roses-heavy soundtrack and Dyer being a new, enthusiastic Guns N’ Roses fan, the two things are unconnected.

Director Waititi narrates the film in his role as Hemsworth’s CGI sidekick. The film’s more successful in summary than in scene, which isn’t great.

There are some iffy effects throughout—Waititi’s got these vaguely boring intergalactic settings (not sure who thought black and white universe was the way to go with an outer space fight)—but the finale’s got some fantastic visualizing of a tough Marvel Comics character to visualize realistically.

They get away with it, on Portman and Bale’s professional competency and Hemsworth’s easy charm. And the setup for next time is beyond cloying and trendy; they’ll finally do a great one. Promise.

Prey (2022, Dan Trachtenberg)

Prey is roughly thirty years late. It’s a Predator prequel with ties to the existing franchise (mainly the second one), but it’s a conceptual no-brainer and one they’ve been doing in the Predator licensed comics for decades. The movies established the Predators had been to Earth before, so why not show one of their earlier encounters? Of course, obviously, anthology series never work; studio reticence makes sense. It’s still a no-brainer.

The film takes place in the eighteenth century on the Northern Great Plains. A Comanche tribe happens across a visiting Predator and, thanks to the ingenuity of a (shouldn’t have been) unexpected hero, survives to tell the tale. And tie into the future continuity.

Amber Midthunder is the unexpected hero, though she’s only the unexpected hero to the tribe. Especially once big brother Dakota Beavers rather shittily reveals he’s been cribbing off Midthunder’s notes their whole lives and taking credit for the synthesis. Her brains, his brawn; well, specifically his male brawn. Midthunder’s a capable hunter, but she’s still a girl. Can’t give the girls too much to do; who else will get up early and go gather.

Beavers leads the tribe’s war party; about a half dozen other red shirts who don’t even care Midthunder knows how to track or treat wounds. Girls, icky bad. Beavers appreciates her contributions, occasionally letting his confidence buck cultural constraints, but he still treats her like competition, not a comrade. Prey could’ve used another six or seven minutes on their relationship, especially how their presumably deceased father figures in. Michelle Thrush plays their mom, but they don’t have any family scenes together, just Thrush and Midthunder, then Midthunder and Beavers, then Thrush observing Beavers’s successes as a hunter from a distance. There’d have been time for it (and not just because the end credits are a shocking eight and a half minutes, Prey desperate to get away from the ninety-minute mark like it’s a nineties action movie).

Even underdeveloped, Midthunder’s a strong enough lead—and Beavers is fine enough support—to keep Prey going through its first and second acts. The third act, when the film becomes the inevitable, rushed series of original Predator homages, is pretty good but never adds up for Midthunder. The problem with doing character development in a Predator movie is the formula doesn’t actually need any, and director Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison stick very much to the formula.

They just put another movie at the beginning of it.

Trachtenberg’s direction is always okay and sometimes inspired. Unfortunately, none of those inspired moments come in the third act. Despite four (or six, depending on how you count) precursor Predator movies, Trachtenberg’s got no fresh ideas for his homage sequence. It’s almost like they shouldn’t have done it. But still, always okay, sometimes inspired, never bad.

Lovely cinematography from Jeff Cutter, good music by Sarah Schachner, solid editing from Claudia Castello and Angela M. Catanzaro. Prey has a bunch of pastoral sequences, establishing Midthunder and her faithful dog (alternately the star and not the star of the show), but Trachtenberg hurries through them. At the film’s beginning, I was expecting Prey to go long with its Malick moments. But it doesn’t go anywhere near long enough with them.

Quibbles aside, Prey’s done more for the franchise than anything in decades. Hopefully, Disney’s better making movies about invisible alien monsters killing (mostly deserving) humans than Fox. They sure seem up to the task after this one.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022, Colin Trevorrow)

It’s not hard to pinpoint what’s wrong with Jurassic World Dominion, the inglorious (hopefully) end of a twenty-nine-year-old franchise. Director Trevorrow does a bad job directing, he and co-writer Emily Carmichael do a bottom-of-the-barrel job with the script, the actors all seem contractually bound and miserable (even the new additions, with one exception), and Michael Giacchino’s musical score is so terrible they should’ve stopped payment on the check. Otherwise, Dominion would be fine. Just needs a better director, an entirely different story and script, and—I don’t know—the music from the original Jurassic Park SEGA Genesis game instead of Giacchino.

The film opens with a news break, which Trevorrow and Carmichael are incapable of writing. Dominion’s what happens when blockbusters don’t even need to hire script doctors so they don’t embarrass themselves. Trevorrow’s only positive quality is his dogged determination in not letting each horrifyingly embarrassing moment of film slow him from reaching the next. Dominion’s third act is nowhere near as bad as it could be, but the first and second acts—all two endless hours of them—are crashing behind it and the debris distracts from the film at least not getting any worse. Except for Giacchino’s music. Giacchino’s music always gets worse, right into the credits.

Jasmine Chiu plays the newscaster. She wouldn’t be believable as a TikToker on “CSI: Sheboygan,” so introducing twenty-nine years of cloned dinosaur backstory is out of the question. Especially since her news report also sets up this movie’s villain—and the only person who seems like he’s having a good time—Campbell Scott. Scott’s playing a character from the first Jurassic Park, but the part’s recast (for good reasons). Now, Scott’s got a lousy part. He’s playing the not-so-smart head of a genetics company; they’re using prehistoric DNA to cure diseases and create monster bugs. The monster bugs are important. If Trevorrow were any good, there’d be a great Godzilla 1985 reference. But he’s not any good. Instead of an on-point Godzilla bug reference, there are desperate Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Jaws references like Trevorrow’s still sucking up to executive producer Steven Spielberg.

But Trevorrow directs Scott like he’s doing an incompetent, megalomaniac hipster Steve Jobs. It’s a string of terrible decisions and Scott’s willingness to commit to the bit and somehow get through. He’s never good; it’s impossible, with Carmichael and Trevorrow’s lousy script, for anyone to actually be good, but he’s never boring, bored, or defeated.

Everyone else goes through those emotions, though no one more despondently than Chris Pratt. He’s fifth fiddle in his own franchise, but he doesn’t even care. He’s got one good scene, and it’s from Congo. The rest of the time, he looks like he’s trying to disappear, similar to Bryce Dallas Howard.

Laura Dern and Sam Neill work pretty hard to make their parts work. Either Trevorrow didn’t direct them, or he told them to play their characters exactly the same as they did thirty years ago, only Neill doesn’t have the same American accent anymore. It’s a better accent, but it’s a different one. They get some genuinely terrible dialogue but get through all right.

Also back is Jeff Goldblum, who doesn’t get very much to do, even when he’s around. The second half of the movie is about putting the Jurassic World characters together with the Jurassic Park characters to they can fight the Thanosaurus at the end. Goldblum’s around, but it’s like Trevorrow and Carmichael are scared to write him. Goldblum seems ready to work but never gets asked to do any.

Isabella Sermon plays a cloned human who’s supposedly important to the monster bug plot. It’s all nonsense. Sermon’s fine, but fine in the way you’re being nice about a middling child actor. She was in the last movie.

Then BD Wong’s back, of course. He’s shockingly good in a silly role.

New characters this movie—besides Campbell (sort of)—are pilot DeWanda Wise and lackey Mamoudou Athie. The film would be an excellent showcase for both actors if Trevorrow weren’t terrible. But, instead, he flops with both. More with Wise because she’s got more to do—she and Pratt are chemistry-free action buddies. Athie’s just around for various exposition dumps and plot contrivances, but he’s not bad doing them.

Technically, Dominion’s fine. Good CGI. Good photography from John Schwartzman. Not good editing from Mark Sanger, but he’s working from Trevorrow’s footage, set to Giacchino’s music. There’s no way to edit Dominion into a good movie with those quality sinkholes.

Despite teaming up two generations of Jurassic adventurers, Dominion’s a bad, boring, anti-trip down memory lane. Even when Trevorrow’s aping old Park moments, they’re just so desperate they don’t get the nostalgia going; instead, they just further embarrass this entry.

All set to Giacchino’s godawful music, of course.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022, Sam Raimi)

Doctor Strange and the Maddening Mouthfuls of Multiverses is barely a sequel to the original Doctor Strange outing, which is fine; the original was six years ago, and star Benedict Cumberbatch has gotten more mileage out of his non-solo appearances. However, given it’s a sequel to the Disney Plus show, “WandaVision,” which was a deliberate, thoughtful examination of the trauma Elizabeth Olsen (second-billed in Multiverse) experienced as an MCU character… it’s not great they (they being screenwriter Michael Waldron, who did not write “WandaVision” because it was well-written) turn Olsen into a one-to-two note supervillain here. She’s a Disney villain, right down to how calling herself a “witch” means she’s bad now.

Olsen’s performance is, you know, excellent. No notes. She’s terrific. It’s a bad part, but it’s good acting.

Cumberbatch starts the movie dreaming about a ponytailed version of himself fighting a monster alongside teenager Xochitl Gomez. Then he goes to ex-girlfriend Rachel McAdams’s wedding to someone else, who the movie never actually introduces because it’d require too much writing. Instead, a giant one-eyed octopus monster invades New York City, and Cumberbatch has to save the day. In doing so, he discovers the monster’s after Gomez, who isn’t a figment of his unconscious, but rather a real teenage girl who’s spent her life accidentally jumping from universe to universe. And someone’s after her.

Benedict Wong, who’s taken over Cumberbatch’s job as Earth’s sorcerer supreme since the Avengers movies, also shows up to fight the monster. So pretty soon, they’re all sitting around to talk multiverses. Wong and Cumberbatch are funny together, and they decide they’re going to help Gomez with the demons pursuing her.

Cumberbatch has the great idea to ask Olsen for help, only to discover she’s actually the evil stepmother. Sorry, supervillain.

There are some big action set pieces, but then it’s off to the multiverse for Gomez and Cumberbatch while Wong’s trying to stop Olsen on Earth. Regular MCU Earth. Doesn’t go great for Wong.

Olsen’s trying to steal Gomez’s multiverse jumping power so she can find a universe where her sons are real (she made them out of magic on “WandaVision”). Also, dreams are views into other universes, which seems like it should be important but isn’t.

There are some big and not-so-big cameos along the way, but most of the movie is pragmatically setting up the finale to be as contained as possible. See, it turns out Gomez jumps to the universe most likely to quickly hurry plots along, so if you need to get to a universe populated by Marvel heroes from alternate realities (or franchises), Gomez’s on it. She and Cumberbatch also pick up a variation of McAdams along the way, so while McAdams has a lot to do in the movie, it’s all busy work and emotional labor for Cumberbatch (who she doesn’t even know, not really).

Of the action set pieces, only a few are inventive. Well, one, actually. There are some other okay ones, but only one is anything special. The rest are a combination of good CGI and decent humor. Primarily because of Gomez, Wong, and McAdams. Cumberbatch plays well off the actors who can do the humor better. Olsen doesn’t get any humor; she just gets to turn the internal turmoil and suffering to eleven with no payoff.

Despite all the cameos, Multiverse avoids bringing back anyone to give Olsen an arc. And since all the cameos are otherworldly—other-universey—they don’t carry any emotional heft, though there’s an excellent joke for one of the cameos. And the acting on them’s not bad, especially the most fantastic of them.

Raimi’s direction is fine. He’ll occasionally show more enthusiasm than the baseline, which is pretty rote. Of course, it doesn’t help he’s apparently disinterested in all the world-building in the second act, but considering it’s all fluff… he’s not wrong.

The movie doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is good, even if it means the finale just reveals they didn’t actually do an arc for Gomez (instead treating her as an accessory for Cumberbatch). Multiverse takes an incomplete on character development overall, promising next time maybe Cumberbatch will grow a little.

Okay music from Danny Elfman, decent photography from John Mathieson (except in the cameo-heavy part of act two, where some setting appears to be off with the cameras), and excellent production design from Charles Wood. Even when the setting’s incredibly obvious, Wood makes it unique.

Multiverse only runs a couple hours, but because it’s truncated. With an actual first act, it’d add on at least another twenty minutes. It’s almost like they should’ve just done it as a TV series, though more Waldron writing wouldn’t do anyone any favors.

It’s mostly middling, with some good performances and solid filmmaking. Given how much the film disses Olsen’s efforts for the overall franchise, hopefully, she can escape any sequels, prequels, sidequels, or spin-offs.

The Batman (2022, Matt Reeves)

The first rule of the The Batman is the most interesting thing about Batman is Batman, so new Batman Robert Pattinson spends his time in the costume, with only a handful of scenes moping around as Bruce Wayne. The second rule of The Batman is “show, don’t tell,” which is strange since the third is “tell, don’t show.” But it works out; because Pattinson’s spellbinding in the costume. Pattinson’s biggest scene opposite supervillain Paul Dano—who’s also great, though not in his costume, a DIY number made out of green garbage bags apparently—is just eyes.

Heck, Pattinson doesn’t even do the Batman lip work. Back in the Forever days, some interviewer asked Nicole Kidman about Michael Keaton (who she wasn’t in a Batman with) and Val Kilmer (who she was in a Batman with), and she said the important thing is the lips.

Pattison and Reeves don’t worry about the lips. Pattinson does more with his jaw than the lips. Whatever else, The Batman’s an exemplar of person-in-mask acting.

For the story and tone, director Reeves and co-screenwriter Peter Craig pick and choose from the decades of comics, movies, video games, and seemingly Darren Aronofsky’s old Batman: Year One proposal. The ground situation is where the show, don’t tell, comes in; Pattinson’s been masked vigilanting for a couple years, long enough to become best friends with police lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). Wright brings Pattinson, in costume, to official crime scenes where a bunch of dude cops make fun of Pattinson, and then Pattinson finds some clue they’d all missed.

The Batman’s got a boy problem. None of the cops are women, and they’re all at least jerks, though we’ll find out a vast majority of them are murderously corrupt (Reeves and Craig rush through that story arc). But Pattinson’s Batman is another “this is my father’s house” Batman. Not only doesn’t he care about Martha, but she’s also a de facto Eve, whose personal failings led Papa Wayne to dishonor. Despite being a subplot, the parents aren’t significant, especially not after fellow orphan Dano’s soapboxing about what it must be like to be a billionaire orphan.

The movie’s A-plot is Riddler Dano, a TikTok serial killer terrorizing Gotham’s elite. Batman’s been on the job a couple of years and hasn’t done anything about them eating Gotham’s wealth and spirit, so Dano will have to do it. Reeves and Craig make some excellent observations about Batman and his resulting rogues, leaning in on the idea of anonymous power. They don’t end up amounting to anything because The Batman needs a disaster movie finale, but the groundwork’s solid, and Dano’s monologuing is fantastic.

There’s lots of great acting in The Batman. Dano and Wright without masks, Pattinson with, and then the unrecognizable Colin Farrell in prosthetics, showing off the potential for actors acting as someone else. The rest of the acting’s at least good. John Turturro as a mob boss, Andy Serkis as an utterly pointless Alfred, and, of course, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman.

Kravitz figures into the A-plot through Farrell and Turturro; Farrell owns a club where the mob and the corrupt politicians play, Kravitz works there. When Pattinson goes to interrogate Farrell, he sees Kravitz and follows her for investigatory purposes. Pretty soon, they’re fighting bad guys together and getting horizontal under the proverbial mistletoe. They gaze at each other with common sympathy and bridled lust, which always comes with composer Michael Giacchino’s gentle but passionate love theme. Even with their finale sequence’s oddly bland visuals and Kravitz disappearing too long so Pattinson and Dano can play, The Batman does an excellent job with the romance.

When Kravitz isn’t runaway strutting past gross white guys at Farrell’s club, she’s mooning at Pattinson for one reason or another. She doesn’t get much of a story to herself. She’s got a missing friend, but it soon becomes part of Pattinson’s investigation, and her relationship with the mob bosses also ends up being for the big arcs. It’s okay; no one else gets much to themselves either. Mask-off, Pattinson’s a teensy-weensy arc about being ungrateful to Serkis. It won’t matter because Serkis is either shoehorned in or edited out. Not like a three-hour Batman needed more.

But the film also doesn’t explain Pattinson and Wright’s relationship; for the most part, Wright’s a true blue copper, only he knows most of his fellow officers are on the take, so he can only trust Batman. Does it matter? Yes and no. Or, yes, but Reeves, Pattinson, and Wright make you forget about it.

The big mystery’s okay. Dano leaves riddles at each scene, which Pattison usually figures out immediately until suddenly, he doesn’t, so there can be the disaster movie finish. It’s about the performances, the interactions, the mood. Pattison, Reeves, composer Giacchino, cinematographer Greig Fraser, and production designer James Chinlund create a mesmerizing film. Reeves cracks how to do a grim and gritty Batman in broad daylight, in crowds, and so on. The filmmaking’s never remarkable, but it’s never not consistent, confident, compelling. However, William Hoy and Tyler Nelson’s editing is closer to exceptional than not. Chinlund’s Gotham City is modern, Gothic, and humid, a dream turned nightmare.

If only Reeves and Craig hadn’t strung together two movies’ worth of A-plot (cutting the character development for time) to get it done.

But The Batman—thanks to Reeves and Pattinson (with help from Kravitz, Wright, Dano, Farrell, and the crew)—is the most special and successful this franchise has felt in numerous decades.

Shazam! (2019, David F. Sandberg)

At its very best, for a few minutes Shazam! seems like a Wes Anderson-esque superhero movie gone wrong. Like they lost the music they wanted at the last minute but had still cut the sequence together. Specifically, it’s Zachary Levi’s superhero training YouTubes, set to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now. The song has no meaning to Levi or the sequence. It’s just familiar in the right way. It’s desperate but competent, which describes most of the movie.

The sequence is long enough to grok how they could’ve done the picture as an Anderson riff, specifically Rushmore, but then it’s more like they saw the MTV Music Awards Rushmore bits and didn’t realize there was a context. It’s a weird fail because it’s not exactly disappointing. Until the superhero finale, it’s the most effort director Sandberg puts into anything in the movie, and it shows. There’s thoughtfulness, just not successful thoughtfulness.

Anyway.

Shazam! is an inoffensively lackluster superhero origin story. The first act gets its personality from a John Glover cameo (hey, it’s better than his last DC movie) and then the unsuccessful but not bad Djimon Hounsou cameo. The film’s problem is little the actors actually interact with one another except to move the plot forward; deliver your lines, and get out. Sandberg doesn’t spend any time on the actors responding or reacting. It hurts the cameos just because there’s no weight when the actors return later on. No one’s got any chemistry; they’re just doing schtick.

So it’s never a surprise when Sandberg doesn’t make it happen. When he does, however, it stands out. Like a Big reference in a toy store, but it comes after there’s no acknowledgment of the rest of the scene, which is superhero Levi basically throwing random children in front of supervillain Mark Strong. The most impressive thing about Shazam! is how many subplots they can avoid. There are at least three, probably more, with one presumably left over for the sequel. The others, however, just get dropped once they get to the third act.

And Shazam! does have a good third act. Not the story, but the superhero action. It’s got an excellent superhero action finish, with plenty of cute Superman II nods. It’s shocking how well Sandberg can direct the sequences after the previous, bland hundred minutes. There are also some good, not specific to Levi’s superhero observations about the genre, like supervillains talking from far away and everyone recording on smartphones. Shazam!’s sadly more thoughtful in its background than its foreground, which is trite. Much like Sandberg’s direction, Henry Gayden’s script is perfunctory. There’s no such thing as character development in the script, with the film instead relying on the actors. Unfortunately, Sandberg’s got no time for the actors’ performances, so it’s just a bunch of rote deliveries of rote lines.

So it’s impressive when actors stand out, like Faithe Herman and Grace Fulton. Okay, a quick explanation of the plot. Levi is the adult superhero version of teenager Asher Angel, who has just moved into a new foster home. Herman, Fulton, Jack Dylan Grazer, Ian Chen, and Jovan Armand play his foster siblings. Herman’s the adorable one, Chen’s the gamer, Armand’s the silent one, Grazer’s the superhero fanboy, and Angel’s pal. Grazer ought to have much better material, as he’s Levi’s sidekick in addition to Angel’s. But no. The only one to get a subplot is Fulton, who’s the oldest and going to college soon. Of course, the going-to-college thing is her subplot, but it’s something. There’s zip for the rest of the kids. Angel’s subplot is searching for his mom, Caroline Palmer, who lost him in the prologue.

Angel and Levi don’t resemble much physically—white guys with brown hair, I guess—which would be fine if there was any effort in syncing their performances. There’s not. Levi’s playing a totally different teenager turned superhero adult. All they needed to do was establish a link between the performances, and it’d be fine. Instead, it’s where you can just give up on Shazam!. If the movie’s not going to take its central conceit seriously, why bother with any of it.

Also, they talk about family so much they should’ve gotten a Vin Diesel cameo. Or at least had them watching Fast and the Furious. The villains are the Seven Deadly Sins, which makes very little sense because—even though the foster family says grace—it’s an ambiguous higher power grace. But if they’d had a bit about the kids watching Se7en….

Shazam! just needed a competent rewrite.

Levi’s amusing without being particularly likable. He’s a little desperate for approval, which should work better for the movie. Maybe if they’d have gotten the one cameo they really needed at the end. None of it ties to Angel or his performance; Angel’s never better than mediocre, but he never got the chance to be anything but mediocre.

Strong’s terrible, but in a killjoy, unambitious sort of way. The film aims to keep him as unremarkable (literally) as possible. He’s dressed like a nineties Eurotrash villain, and the special effects on his supervillain sequences are good. It actually just plays into the Superman II riffs.

The film’s technically proficient, just without any distinction. Thanks to the third act, I suppose Maxime Alexandre’s photography is the best technical.

Shazam!’s tedious without being boring. It could be worse and seems to be the peak of the production’s capabilities. But it’s desperate, neglectful, and indecisive. So I suppose with all those caveats, it’s better than expected. And then, obviously, that third act’s great.

Eternals (2021, Chloé Zhao)

The nice thing about Eternals is the film’s most damaging element is obvious. Richard Madden is terrible. He’s not the lead—when Eternals has a lead, it’s Gemma Chan—but he’s top gun, so he gets a lot of screen time. And he’s terrible. What’s even funnier about Madden being terrible is the film leans into him being a “Game of Thrones” star. He’s got a love triangle with fellow “Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington, who’s ostensibly in the movie but really just for a handful of cameos.

Harington is Chan’s adorable British boyfriend. Madden is her Scottish-accented alien super-being ex-husband. It’s a big flex when Harington and Madden face-off, and it’s clear not just Harington’s much better as a movie star than Madden, but Madden sucks the life out of scenes. He might be playing a Superman riff, but it’s an energy vampire Superman. He makes scenes worse. On the one hand, director Zhao can’t do anything with the performance, which has all the screen charisma of molded bread; on the other, she never compensates for it either.

Eternals rises and falls with Madden.

There are other big problems with the movie. It’s really boring for the first hour and a half. Eternals is solidly into the second act when it finally starts engaging. The film’s got a lot of expository information to dump, and every dump is a bad one. However, it manages to plod even more when it’s doing flashbacks.

The film opens with a “Star Wars but serious” title crawl explaining the Eternals are alien super-beings who live on Earth to protect the people from the “Deviants.” There are giant space entities out there who make galaxies and blah blah blah. Doesn’t matter. The movie figures out how to integrate these beyond enormous entities once in the entire film, and it’s a gimmick shot done well. So, the giant entities don’t matter. The human-shaped super-beings matter.

They show up on Earth in 5000 BCE. Madden immediately thinks Chan is cute; Chan immediately thinks Earth is charming. Salma Hayek is their leader, but she doesn’t really matter because she doesn’t have good fight scene powers. She’s a healer. Angelina Jolie’s the warrior one. Jolie gives the most amusing performance because she seems to get it more than anyone else. She’s stifling a smirk but still sincere when it counts.

Like when she’s hanging out with best bro Ma Dong-seok. He’s another warrior, the one with the big heart. Ma’s good. He doesn’t have good comic timing—in English, he’s always had it in Korean–but neither does Zhao, so it doesn’t matter.

The other Eternals are Kumail Nanjiani (laser fingers), Lia McHugh (illusion), Brian Tyree Henry (wills technology into existence), Lauren Ridloff (the speedster), and Barry Keoghan (the telepath). We meet them in the past, and then the film reintroduces them in the present when they’ve adjusted to regular human life. Albeit immortal regular human life.

Nanjiani gets the biggest story; he’s a Bollywood star with an amusing videographer sidekick, Harish Patel. McHugh is forever an awkward tween girl with an impossible crush. Yawn. Henry is a family man trying to put immortal meddling behind him. He’s gay, an MCU first, and it’s okay, but he’s most charming with the family, and they rush through having the family around. Ridloff and Keoghan just kind of come into the narrative as needed, even though they’ve got more charm than anyone else. It’s particularly impressive because Keoghan’s character is a twerp.

Bill Skarsgård plays the villain, an evolving man-beast. “Plays” meaning does the voice performance presumably some of the CGI modeling. The character eventually looks something like the monster from The Keep, which doesn’t seem intentional. Why recall one disaster in another.

There are some nearly neat 2001 references but then not really.

It’s unclear if fixing Eternals’s obvious problems would do any significant good. Besides Madden’s entire casting, there’s Chan’s lack of a protagonist arc, the momentum-killing flashbacks, Ramin Djawadi’s weak sauce epic movie score (just give up and hire Hans Zimmer for a Hans Zimmer score), and the awkward superhero references. Not just to the Marvel movies before it, but also to DC superheroes. Because world-building?

It also doesn’t help one of the credits snippets promise a far more amusing sequel, which has a cameo with great promise.

Zhao’s direction is fine. It’s often good. It’s never not fine. Ben Davis’s photography’s solid. There are a handful of composite shots where the foreground doesn’t match the CGI background, but it could be worse. Dylan Tichenor and Craig Wood’s editing’s good. Sammy Sheldon’s costumes. They’re all right.

Eternals could be worse. Madden could be in it a second longer. And it might never be good, but it also could’ve been better. Score alone. Get someone who could do Madden’s acting for him with the music. Whatever. And it could also be a second shorter overall. Any shorter would help.

Eternals is never really disappointing or even frustrating, just inconceivably tedious.

But, if they deliver on the mid-credits promise, the next one should be a blast.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021, Lana Wachowski)

The Matrix Resurrections opens with a "cover" of the opening of the original Matrix movie. It takes a while before it makes sense in the narrative, but basically, new cast members Jessica Henwick and Toby Onwumere are watching the scene where Carrie-Anne Moss escapes from Hugo Weaving. Only it's not Carrie-Anne Moss or Hugo Weaving; it's some kind of modeling software. Someone's trying to train a program, and that program, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, is becoming aware of it, leading to him and Henwick teaming up even though she's a human living outside the Matrix, and he's a program living inside it.

It gets really confusing for a while—especially when they end up in Keanu Reeves's apartment from the first movie—before the film's done with it and just cuts to Reeves in the modern-day. He's a world-famous video game developer—didn't you play his award-winning series, The Matrix Trilogy—and he's kind of a sad old man. His business partner, Jonathan Groff, knows how to motivate Reeves to good result, but they're not really friends. The only friend Reeves has got is a young incel-y sycophant, Andrew Lewis Caldwell, and most of Reeves's personal time is spent mooning over the cute lady in his coffee shop. She just happens to remind him of Carrie-Anne Moss from The Matrix (because it's Carrie-Anne Moss). Oh, and going to his therapy sessions with shrink Neil Patrick Harris. See, once upon a time, Reeves had a nervous breakdown, thinking he was living in a simulation and had to break free of it. Good thing he channeled that energy into making the game series.

Resurrections has a very long first act, leading to a very long second act. Once the action gets underway towards the end, it's a race to see if the good guys can succeed and whether or not director and co-writer Wachowski can make the sequel work. Whenever the film has a chance to comment on the previous movies or lean into sentimentality, it's going to do it. Resurrections isn't quite an apology tour for Matrix 2 and 3, but it learns from all the mistakes and seems to promise it's not going to make them again. Wachowski even goes back to fix some of the misses in the first film, drawing attention to what they'd overlooked and how she can fix it. Resurrections is a supremely confident sequel; it's hard to believe no one had it in mind at the time.

Though I guess the only way to really guess at one of the callbacks would be to racially profile, so probably better there aren't more breadcrumbs.

The film's got three inciting incidents, starting with Henwick and Abdul-Mateen becoming pals, then Caldwell embarrassing Reeves in front of Moss. Finally, Groff announcing their shitty parent company, Warner Bros., is making a Matrix 4 game whether Reeves wants to make one or not. The last one's a bit of a MacGuffin, just something to allow for some jokes, exposition, and hints at character development for Reeves. Resurrections will eventually put on its blockbuster hat, and Wachowski will embrace the sequel-ness; that sequence with Reeves muddling through his mundane, disappointing reality is probably Wachowski's best work in the film. She finds this sadness in Reeves's impotence. Therapist-prescribed impotence in the form of a blue pill.

He'll eventually get his mojo back and find himself in a very unexpected world, one with a much different story than anyone expected. He'll make new friends and find old friends—sometimes literally making new friends out of old friends—and try to figure out what he can do in the world with his eyes open.

And whether or not he wants to do it by himself or try—against all odds—to convince Moss there's something more to them than coffee shop missed connection chemistry.

Reeves is pretty good in the lead. He doesn't ever get any heavy lifting, with Wachowski relying on imagery from the previous movies for some salient character development moments. The movie footage is apparently footage from his video games in Resurrections, making the film's least believable detail a world where a live-action cutscene video game was mega-popular and aged well. To the point soccer mom Moss can sit around and casually play them, seeing herself in films and having the dudes around her laugh at her for thinking she was ever so badass. In the first half, before the sci-fi action kicks off, there's a particularly great scene where Reeves and Moss hash out the lives dealt them. Again, the non-sci-fi action parts of the film are Wachowski's best. She can't keep it going forever, but it sometimes seems like she can, and Resurrections will really just be sad Reeves working at a software company.

But it's not. It's going to get into the mythology of the originals, bringing back Jada Pinkett Smith (who's much better in a combination of old-age makeup and CGI than she ever was in the original trilogy) to bridge Henwick and Reeves's worlds. Henwick's great. She doesn't get much to do in the third act because the focus's changed, but she's great.

Also back in a sort of cameo is Lambert Wilson, who'd make the movie if it weren't so good, as he manages to deconstruct the problems with the original trilogy as well as modern media. He mumbles a lot, and it's interspersed with French because he's still a poseur; I don't think he says anything about movies shouldn't be watched on smartphones, but you know he thinks it. There are a handful of purely joyous moments in Matrix Resurrections and Wilson's one of them. The movie's not sure how serious it wants to be—it acknowledges it raises many questions, but they're usually deftly introduced, and there's this tacit agreement—too many answered questions just lead to the last Matrix sequels, and no one wants those happening again.

Groff's fantastic, an agent of exuberant chaos. He's one of the Matrix 2 and 3 mea culpas.

Moss is good. She's got to do a lot in a limited amount of screen time. She manages, though losing her time to Harris (who really, really likes getting into Reeves's business) in the second half… unfortunately mirroring the original film and how it is lost track of her. It's different this time, which is what Wachowski's saying over and over. She's figured out how to make a Matrix sequel and make it well. Just took two bad sequels and almost twenty years.

Though the maturity helps Reeves.

Harris is fine. In a film of exuberance, he's muted.

Oh, and Abdul-Mateen's a combination red herring and gimmick. He's got presence, he's got purpose, but he's got no story. Not like literally everyone else. Including Thelma Hopkins in what might be the most fabulous cameo of all time.

Technically, it's good. Wachowski's direction is mostly excellent; again, the first half is better than the second, partially because the second seems to be done at a higher frame rate (for IMAX?), making the action rote. Along with Daniele Massaccesi and John Toll's kind of rote photography. Resurrections never wows, which is another joke—the idea a Matrix movie needs to be Matrix 2: Bullet-Timeyer. Whenever there are effects sequences, which look great, it's always from the characters' perspectives. It's about the people, not the bang-bang.

Good editing from Joseph Jett Sally. Wanting music from Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer. I kept waiting for the music to go off, and it never does. Outstanding production design by Hugh Bateup and Peter Walpole. And then Lindsay Pugh's costume design is fantastic. Another place where the film learned from its less artistically successful predecessors.

Matrix Resurrections is an intentionally, earnestly rousing success. Who knew you should wait until you want to see a Matrix sequel to make a Matrix sequel. What a concept. And very lucky it was such a good Matrix movie Wachowski wanted to see.

The Matrix Revolutions (2003, The Wachowskis)

I understand there are reasons for The Matrix Revolutions. If that one rumor is true, it’s basically Keanu Reeves didn’t want to do sequels forever, and the Wachowskis wanted to do a long-running franchise. Old Internet gossip (oddly more reliably than some later Internet gossip, but still… Internet gossip). And then the costume changes… the Columbine shooting didn’t help with trench coats as a fashion statement. Oh, and then instead of the movies being all about freeing people trapped in their Matrix lives—so if you’re a cop, you’re working for the machine, and the good guys will have to take you out—that action kills a real person. Who, if they were a good person who took the red pill, wouldn’t be a cop. But it’s a person. It’s after 9/11. Cheering killing mindless human-faced zombies… not so easy.

So you make them all programs like TRON. Only they’re sometimes super horny and sweaty.

I get it.

Also, Gloria Foster dying and having to be replaced between the last movie and this movie, even though Revolutions takes place immediately following the last one, Reloaded. I grok it.

It’s also still godawful movie-making.

What happens to Larry Fishburne in the franchise where he was a very big deal in the first movie? He’s barely in it. Demoted to hanging out with the cast introduced in the last movie and having nothing to do with the main plotline he’s around. Though it’s not much better for “lead” Reeves and romantic interest but also action sidekick Carrie-Anne Moss. They’re nowhere near the film’s biggest action set piece. Fishburne doesn’t get to participate in the action (because he’s not a CGI flying, techno-Lovecraftian flying thing, or a machine-gunning version of the Aliens power loader) in the big set-piece. Still, he’s at least ostensibly vital to it.

He’s not because the script instead wants to be about how Harry Lennix is a joyless hard-ass who doesn’t think Reeves will turn out to be Matrix Jesus and save the day. Fishburne’s most significant scene in the movie is his debriefing. The human survivor council has some questions. This time there’s a Black lady (Francine Bell) who gets not just a close-up but also to talk. There are also the pointless old white people—bad seventies sci-fi guy Anthony Zerbe and “why didn’t you stunt cast this part” Robyn Nevin—plus Black man Cornel West doing a cameo. The movie’s just Fishburne getting less and less to do.

Well, except maybe Moss. Moss, who started the franchise with less screen time than the boys but still just as important (and then more important for some other reasons), basically gets put into a freezer. She’s the damsel in distress. Even though she’s the one who hijacks the initial plot.

The movie opens with Reeves still in a coma since Reloaded ended three minutes before and a new captain (David Leonard) leading the B plot. Leonard should have been in Reloaded and may have been in Reloaded, but I’m not checking. I don’t remember him from it, so he mustn’t have had more than two lines because, at three lines, you realize how bad his performance will be. And it just gets worse and worse.

Ditto Ian Bliss, who appeared last time as a counter-revolutionary and potential traitor to the humans. He’s got the film’s most important scene… maybe second important, but it depends. Most important or second most important. And he sucks. He’s comically bad. He’s supposed to be mimicking one of the other actors in the movie, and it’s painfully obvious he’s doing it, but none of the characters notice, so they’re all taken by surprise later on. It makes all the good guys seem like they’re not actually attentive enough to pull off saving the world.

Anyway.

Reeves is in his coma, but not really; he’s in the Matrix, where he learns the programs can love, which changes everything. If they can love, they’re people too. It’s an interesting idea—the value of life extending to artificial life—and probably the only one in the entire movie? Matrix Revolutions doesn’t even try with the philosophical nonsense of the last one. Instead, there’s a bang bang, boom boom solution to things in this one.

Moss and Fishburne have to go save Reeves, returning to visit last movie’s bad guy, Lambert Wilson. The previous film started with the machines due at humanity’s last refuge in thirty-six hours to wipe them out. This movie begins with those same machines due in twelve hours. So when Wilson says, “Didn’t think I’d be a returning villain so soon?” to our heroes… it’s been like three hours since they’ve seen each other. And Wilson’s got an entirely new gang of sidekicks, who are going to do a big fight scene, and then Moss and Fishburne will have to work for him and on and on and on. Until Moss cuts the bullshit and the cliffhanger resolve is all over.

Then it’s just setting up Moss and Reeves to go to the never-before mentioned Machine City, where all the programs live, presumably, under the watchful eye of the MCP—because he’s going to convince them he’s their savior too. Fishburne, Pinkett Smith, Leonard, and still charmlessly in the movie Harold Perrineau are going to the human city to try to stop the first wave of the invasion. They’ve got the only weapon left on the planet to do it. We didn’t see the destruction of the others; Revolutions covers it in a poorly acted exposition dump. Because it’s a bad movie.

The big set-piece is the humans trying to fend off the invading metal octopus monsters while Pinkett Smith tries to make the Kessel Run less than twelve parsecs. There’s a really shitty subtext about it because Lennix, Pinkett Smith’s boyfriend, doesn’t just not think she can do it, he didn’t listen to her when she undoubtedly told him about the times she did it. I get the Fishburne, Lennix, and Pinkett Smith love triangle thing doesn’t really work out because Lennix is risibly bad, and Fishburne and Pinkett Smith repulse each other like magnets in the chemistry department… but why not fix it? Maybe there was a deadline. It’s always good to kill your darlings with a rushed finale; everyone says so.

Again, anyway.

The big battle scene is terrible. This time out, Bill Pope’s photography is slightly better than the second movie, but it’s still unbelievable he’s had other jobs, including doing the excellently photographed original. It’s a mawkish scene, all about macho battlefield stuff while playing with bad eighties toys done in not terrible CGI. Not good CGI, not well-lighted CGI, but not terrible CGI. Not well-directed future war action either. But. The CGI exhibits competence at some base levels. It’s long, it’s boring, and there’s this weird subplot with Nona Gaye and her female sidekick, who very much don’t have macho war movie bonding going on. The movie intentionally gives it to The Not-Feral Kid (Clayton Watson) to do a lousy job with it while Gaye gets action but squat as far as character. Gaye’s bad, but Watson’s much, much worse. It’s just another crappy part of the movie.

Speaking of Not-Feral Kids… there’s a genuinely awful cameo from Bruce Spence. It seems like a Road Warrior reference, making it the only time the Wachowskis fully extend the homage, but Spence is so terrible they really shouldn’t have done it. Revolutions is even worse than the last one. It’s an achievement in missing the target time after time.

And, so, finally, let’s talk Hugo Weaving. The first movie’s break-out performance. The first sequel’s pointless addition amid pointless additions. He’s now the anti-Reeves, wanting to take over the Matrix for himself by turning everyone in the Matrix—presumably humans (we never see it because dead civilians after all) and programs alike. Reeves will have to do a flying kung fu battle with him to save the world.

The flying kung fu battle’s better than you’d expect, given the rest of the movie, but Weaving’s performance isn’t just easily the worst in the film; it’s cartoonish in a way it’s unbelievable Weaving wasn’t trying to make it bad. Like he was out to sabotage the movie. It’s unspeakably bad. And utterly pointless.

The nicest thing to say about the Matrix Revolutions is Reeves, Moss, and Fishburne never embarrass themselves. Reeves and Moss get some saccharine sludge for material, and Fishburne’s got to act opposite Lennix and Leonard, but they make it through professionally. Ditto Mary Alice (replacing Foster), Lambert, Bernard White as a very special program, Gina Torres, and Collin Chou (maybe). Everyone else is bad and worse. And there’s no end to the worse.

Rupert Reid’s particularly annoying as Lennix’s sidekick, not just because he should’ve been there last time, but also because he manages to be even less charismatic than Lennix. You don’t want a performance less charismatic than Lennix’s. It’s a dangerous place.

Bad music from Don Davis.

Not bad editing from Zach Staenberg; he’s doing the best he can with insipid material.

In addition to being an insipid mishmash of action and sci-fi movie nods, kiddie pool depth philosophy, and bad acting, Revolutions is also a really boring version of that movie. Revolutions is bad, disappointing, and bored with itself.

The only bigger “Why?” than “Why watch Matrix Revolutions” is, “Why make Matrix Revolutions.”

At least be honest and call it The Matrix Contractual Obligations.