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.

Them! (1954, Gordon Douglas)

Them! combines Atomic Age giant monster sci-fi and “by the book” police procedural, with a little (too little) war action thrown in. Nine years after the atomic bomb tests in New Mexico, residual radiation has caused common desert ants to grow to enormous sizes. In their hunt for sugar, these ants quickly have become carnivores, feeding on the random, unlucky camping family.

The film opens with highway patrol coppers James Whitmore and Christian Drake happening across a little girl (Sandy Descher) wandering the desert. They find her family’s camper, seemingly torn open; no other survivors but a damned peculiar footprint in the sand.

Unfortunately, it’s New Mexico, and there are sandstorms all the time, so these footprints will appear and disappear through the first act when they’re still trying to figure out what they’re dealing with. The FBI gets involved (because Descher’s missing dad was an agent) in the form of James Arness. Arness is a charisma vacuum. Whitmore’s muted but with a lot of personality and character; Arness is the opposite. When Joan Weldon arrives as his love interest and is just as milquetoast… well, their sparing flirting interactions beg for a giant ant to come in and eat one or both of them.

Weldon’s a government scientist, flown out because of the footprint, sidekick to her father, Edmund Gwenn. They’re both doctors, but she’s a girl; the movie tries to get mileage out of it for so long it’s a surprise in the third act when no one’s giving Weldon shit anymore.

The title comes from Descher’s eventual witness statement—she can’t describe the giant ants; she can just scream, “Them!,” over and over. Got to keep them (no pun) a surprise for the reveal, which happens pretty soon after that scene. For the rest of the movie, whenever someone’s talking about the giant ants, even when it’s different giant ants because there’s a very detailed plot development regarding princess ants on their wedding flights, the actors always emphasize “them” in their deliveries. It’s cute, albeit tiresome.

The film keeps the gang together as it travels from New Mexico to Washington D.C. to California by limiting who knows about the giant ants. Gwenn says you can’t cause a public panic; Arness and Whitmore already know the score, so they’re the perfect flatfoots for the procedural. Lots of interviewing witnesses, not a lot of giant ants.

Except sometimes, there are a lot of giant ants. They can do the life-size monsters, but they can’t do enough of them, especially not after Gwenn’s shown nature documentaries of real ants to frighten everyone at the potential.

But when it’s limited numbers of giant ants, Them! scores better than it seems like it can too. Director Douglas doesn’t do anything particularly impressive, but he does do all right when it’s Whitmore and Arness versus giant ants in the desert. The finale set piece—set in the concrete Los Angeles river bed—is inspired and bigger than expected, but it’s also where Them! runs into technology and budgetary constraints. The desert is where the film’s most successful giant monster thriller action-wise.

It’d probably help if the acting were stronger overall. Whitmore’s good, but once pretty boy Arness shows up, it’s obviously Whitmore’s demoted to sidekick. Gwenn’s solid as the scientist who warns everyone about the atomic future, getting through a bunch of mealy dialogue, but it’s not a particularly good part. Arness and Weldon are tiresome or bad. Onslow Stevens is also bad as the general who oversees the operation, though most of the other supporting cast is fine. Fess Parker works hard in his little scene, a pilot who no one believes has seen giant ants.

The procedural storytelling covers the acting deficiencies, right up until the finish, when the movie rushes the finish and at a reduced scale.

Them!’s fine. It seems like it should’ve been better, but it’s also not unimpressive as is.

The Karate Kid (1984, John G. Avildsen)

The Karate Kid runs out of movie before it runs out of story. The film’s been steadily improving on its way to the third act, culminating in a showdown between Jersey transplant (to L.A.) Ralph Macchio and his bully, William Zabka. There’s a lot of angst to the rivalry; they first tussled when “alpha” Zabka caught Macchio flirting with his ex-girlfriend, Elisabeth Shue, but then it also turns out Zabka’s a rich kid, and Macchio’s not. The film’s first act is Zabka and his goons escalating their bullying—it’s assault real quick—before Macchio enlists the aid of his own karate expert, Pat Morita.

Actually, Morita saves Macchio when Zabka and his pals are trying to beat him to a pulp. Morita tries to handle it maturely, going with Macchio to confront Zabka’s teacher, only to discover he’s getting all the violence and aggression from that teacher, played by Martin Kove.

Zabka, Kove, and the rest of the goons are phantasmic villains in the second act (Morita says they’ll have a showdown at the local karate tournament, so no one can beat on Macchio until then), giving Macchio time to learn karate. And also have a rich girl, poor boy romance with Shue, which has its own foils before working just in time. It’s all right, though; Macchio and Shue—neither teenagers, both playing teenagers—are cute together, and Shue manages to imply a lot more character than Kid provides her.

Kid doesn’t provide anyone much character, really. Morita gets the most backstory. After spending the first half of the movie sometimes dispensing comic wisdom to Macchio, the film reveals his tragic history. However, it does mean Morita pretty much sat around for forty years waiting to play mentor to a random kid. It’s effective, however, because Macchio and Morita have great chemistry. It’s kind of the only good thing director Avildsen does in the film, which starts in a hurry and somehow manages to finish even faster, but the Macchio and Morita friendship is outstanding. Thanks to their on-screen rapport, not the writing of it. Robert Mark Kamen’s script doesn’t do character development. For the majority of the cast, they don’t even get character.

For instance, Macchio’s mother, Randee Heller, moved the two out to California so she could get a job at a computer start-up. Apparently, she ends up managing a restaurant without ever starting the computer job, but it doesn’t matter because she stops being in the movie for the second act. She shows up three-quarters of the way through the tournament in the third act, seemingly just so Macchio can act tough to her when injured. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even watch him compete.

Similarly, Macchio doesn’t have much of a character arc either, despite making an “only in the movies” best friend, learning karate, and dating Shue. The film takes place over three months; the first act speeds through that first month, then the next two comprise the second and third acts (there’s an inexplicable opening title card telling us it’s September, a device the film never employs again). Even though the film’s got its editing problems, it’s reasonably impressive how quickly they move things along at the beginning. When Macchio and Morita finally start their karate training plot, it feels like an entirely different movie (their friendship starts before the karate).

Acting-wise, Shue’s the easy best and only because she occasionally does something subtle. Macchio and Morita are likable, both flexing in broad roles, but they’re never really good. The script gives Macchio way too many mugging for the camera bits. Kove and Zabka are hiss-ready villains with no real depth, though at least they try a little with Zabka. But more because he’s a rich kid like Shue.

Good photography from James Crabe; it carries a lot of water for Avildsen’s bland direction. A competent but uninspired score from Bill Conti doesn’t help things, but it’s better than the pop soundtrack, which provides only one good montage backing (Young Hearts by Commuter). The rest of the songs are very trite eighties stuff.

The last finale’s a hurried, truncated mess, but Karate Kid could be a whole lot worse. Macchio and Morita more than make up for the rest of the film’s bumps, but they can’t help with the finish. Mainly because they’re not in it enough.

Spiritwalker (2020, Yoon Jae-geun)

I was expecting Spiritwalker’s MacGuffin to disappoint, but I wasn’t expecting it to completely derail the film. Spiritwalker is a high-concept action thriller about an amnesiac, Yoon Kye-sang, who discovers he is quantum leaping from person-to-person every twelve hours. He also has a very particular set of skills. Those skills come in handy because everyone he jumps into is some kind of underworld figure. Yoon’s got vague memories of his life before—something about a woman, Lim Ji-Yeon, of course—and his only friend is Park Ji-hwan.

Park’s character is an unhoused person who happens upon Yoon in a car accident and calls it in (while searching the car for loose items). He’s also the most uncomplicated fun Spiritwalker ever gets to have, with lots of comic reactions to discovering Yoon in a new body. Yoon mostly plays the part every time, with reflections and camera footage showing the actual person he’s possessed. After the MacGuffin reveal, Spiritwalker makes several bad moves, but the worst is Park mostly disappearing from the movie, followed by director Yoon Jae-geun not using Yoon enough. It wouldn’t end up mattering—the third act is a CGI composited action ballet bloodbath–but after a whole movie creating his character, director Yoon shafts actor Yoon.

There are some other big problems in the post-MacGuffin film, as well, like Spiritwalker deciding the criminal underworld also needs a covert espionage agency subplot tacked on and then final boss Park Yong-woo having a pointless drug addiction bit. The movie runs an hour and fifty-ish minutes and could easily lose ten from the third act. There’s lots of needless activity just to drag it out, which makes sense since the MacGuffin’s so bad.

Approximately the first half of Spiritwalker is a sort of neo-noir. Yoon is working his way through this criminal organization, jumping from crook to crook and trying to remember what’s going on. Sidekick Park can only help so much, and since all of the people Yoon’s inhabiting are dangerous criminals, no one really wants to exposition dump with him. Especially not Lim, who thinks he’s a bad guy (obviously).

The amnesia and identity crisis mix works, especially since director Yoon never tries too hard with the action. All of actor Yoon’s “particular skill” scenes surprise him, which makes the scenes more entertaining and sympathetic. The reveal on the quantum leaping will be both bad and insipid, but—again—what happens after is even worse. As a thriller director, Yoon’s solid. As an action director? Not so much. His composition for the third act is always off and always predictable. He goes through the same setups over and over. All of Spiritwalker’s technical pay-off comes in the early second act; the rest is a visual bore.

Until the script literally abandons him, actor Yoon’s a good lead. He does the confused quantum leaper thing well, though it might not be a compliment. He’s best at being bewildered without character development. Lim’s fine as the not femme fatale who inexplicably has a similar particular set of skills. That late second act reveal of the espionage agency’s involvement pays zero dividends and trades ostensible coherence for personality. Suddenly, director Yoon wants to be making a John Wick or something, complete with level bosses; Lim gets lost in it all.

Park Ji-hwan is good and fun as the sidekick. Park Yong-woo is fantastic as the big boss; it’s an exceptionally thin part, but Park devours enough scenery to plump it up.

The rest of the supporting cast is solid without being distinct.

Spiritwalker’s only ever going to be able to go so far on its concept, but it should’ve been able to go farther than it gets. It’s never bad and is rather compelling until the loud, yawner of a third act, but it’s a definite bummer.

Scarface (1983, Brian De Palma)

Scarface is a film with a lot of problems. Most consequentially, there’s no character development for Al Pacino; any time there’s ostensibly character development, the film cuts ahead a month or three, or there’s a montage sequence. But the film is incredibly hands-off with Pacino’s character and arc. It leaves Pacino to vamp throughout to keep the energy up. He’s always doing something in the performance, which is simultaneously transfixing and tedious. He’s just making up for director De Palma and screenwriter Oliver Stone’s shortcomings.

It also means he never builds character relationships with the costars, like literal trophy wife, Michelle Pfeiffer (Pacino gets her as a reward for leveling up as a Miami drug kingpin), sister Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, or “best friend” Steve Bauer. Quotation marks because Pacino and Bauer have something like two scenes where Bauer’s not just an accessory. The film tries to bring it all together at the end when Pacino’s being performative about his relationship with Pfeiffer and then later feels regret for not supporting Bauer and Mastrantonio’s star-crossed romance. It’s already too little, too late, but De Palma ignores it so he can do a lackluster action finale. However, ignoring it means ignoring Pacino, whose performance is the only thing keeping Scarface afloat by the finale, so it dings the finish even more than the bad action does on its own.

But the other big problem with the film is De Palma runs out of ideas during the first act. He and cinematographer John A. Alonzo shoot some great crane shots. And then they repeat the same shots. They come up with a transition device. Then they use it over and over again. Except the first time they use the transition device and the crane shots, it’s during Scarface’s infamous chainsaw sequence and nothing else ever as intense. Though the chainsaw sequence isn’t particularly intense either, De Palma gets distracted by a girl in a bikini. Actually, wait, during the first act–when Bauer’s cruising for every girl in a bikini–De Palma’s far more interested in the film (albeit the girls in bikinis). Once the women are more or less dressed, De Palma checks out.

Though some of the problem is lousy cutting from Gerald B. Greenberg and David Ray. Outside the careful and through establishing shots—and De Palma and Alonzo do several great, long tracking shots—the editing is middling at best and sometimes much worse. Pacino’s got a scene where he’s bullshitting his way up the ladder with Bolivian cocaine playboy Paul Shenar and none of the cuts match. Pacino’s shoulders, hands, and body jump between every shot in a single conversation. It’s distractingly inept.

The film’s got three sections: Pacino and Bauer arriving from Cuba and getting established, Pacino working his way up the ladder (at boss Robert Loggia’s expense), then Pacino screwing everything up once he’s made it. The one time Pacino does something good, that single moment sets off his immediate downfall. There are three moments he shows any humanity, and one of them is something they kept in after De Palma called cut, and Pacino and Pfeiffer just had fun for a moment. Otherwise, they never have any fun.

No one has any fun, which the film might be able to do something with if it were willing to close that narrative distance on Pacino, but it never will. De Palma and Stone are incredibly noncommittal and superficial.

Something needs to be said about the soundtrack, particularly the terrible disco songs playing during the club sequences. Giorgio Moroder does the score and produced the songs. The score’s thin, but it’s got its moments, and it’s often at least adequate. If a single one of the disco songs isn’t the dregs of white disco… I must’ve missed it. The songs are really, really bad. So bad they seem like a judgment against the Miami club scene, which—like no one having fun—is definitely something the film could’ve done something with had there been a better screenplay.

Pacino’s acting’s technically superb. It’s all for naught, but he works his ass off. Ditto Bauer. Pfeiffer, Mastrantonio, and Miriam Colon are all fine in the lousy women’s roles. Mastrantonio gets the worst one. Loggia’s a little much but not bad. Shenar’s solid, but it’s a nothing part. Similarly, Harris Yulin and F. Murray Abraham have decent exaggerated cameos.

Excellent art direction and set design, Edward Richardson and Bruce Weintraub, respectively, though it never once seems like anything Pacino’s character would buy, covet, or install. By the final part of the film, when Pacino’s got his mansion—we don’t see his living situation when he’s on the way up because it’d be way too much insight into the character—De Palma’s just showcasing the interior decorating anyway (and showing off how well crane shots can work in mansions). Scarface at least embraces its excesses, for better and worse; it does commit. Just not as much or enough for Pacino’s performance to make the movie succeed.

The Capture (1950, John Sturges)

Given its problems, The Capture’s better than it should be. It’s also never quite as good as it could be—director Sturges starts doing a fantastic chase scene in the third act, but then it quickly peters out, which is too bad because the third act needs something. But the film manages to overcome its weird story—Lew Ayres trying to seduce the widow of a man he killed. Teresa Wright plays the widow. She has an exceptionally thankless part; Ayres’s seduction technique is to berate her into loving him while deceiving her about his identity, of course.

The film’s got a noirish structure, with Ayres starting the film as a fugitive in Mexico. He finds his way to priest Victor Jory and ostensibly reluctantly tells Jory his story.

Ayres was a white-collar at an oil field. After the payroll train gets robbed, his fiancée, Jacqueline White, toxic masculinities Ayres into going out to find the robber himself. He finds the culprit, Edwin Rand, and shoots him when Rand’s got his hands up. Well, one of them; Rand’s injured and can’t raise one of them. So Ayres sees the one and shoots.

Later on, Rand dies. There are complicating factors, but basically, Ayres gets mopey about it; White dumps him for not being happy about directly causing someone’s death; he runs off to a new town. The only hitch: he’s got to ride with Rand’s body back home.

This peculiar arrangement will have absolutely no effect on Ayres except, upon seeing Wright at the station (not knowing her relationship with the deceased, just knowing she has one), he immediately falls for her and starts low-key stalking her until he can insert himself in her life.

We don’t get to see the stalking, thank goodness; it’s just part of Ayres’s narration.

Luckily, just when he’s waited long enough to approach her, she’s also in need of a ranch foreman.

For the second act, The Capture slows down for Ayres to become part of Wright’s life, specifically her son Jimmy Hunt’s. She’s mean to Ayres because she knows his true identity—he lied when he showed up—and she’s known since his first day. So she keeps him around to be mean to him because some kinds of ladies are just mean that way, or so Ayres will tell her.

The Capture’s got a show and tell problem. Ayres is telling the whole thing—without his narration and with a few edits, the film could be recut to make him a creeper—then he’s telling everyone he meets something or other about themselves. Ayres has got it all figured out, which will make the finale even more frustrating because apparently he’s supposed to be experiencing character development, only Ayres isn’t acting it.

To be fair, Niven Busch’s screenplay (based on his novel) isn’t doing the character development either. Why would Ayres have to learn anything? He’s right, isn’t he? Anything bad always just happens to never be Ayres’s fault.

And despite Ayres’s character being a serial mansplainer, Wright having a lousy character and lousier arc, neither of them are bad. Sturges’s direction is solid, and the film’s got a decent pace, even if the narration slows it down. And its mix of Western and film noir is quirky and reasonably engaging.

The third act, which turns Ayres into a very bad detective (dressed just like Indiana Jones), hurts things, but not as much as Ayres’s lack of character development.

Decent supporting performances from Jory and Barry Kelley. Kid Hunt is just okay but never particularly annoying; much better than dad Rand, who’s a drag.

Good photography from Edward Cronjager, especially the actual night shots, not the day-for-night. Daniele Amfitheatrof’s music is a little much, except during that almost excellent chase scene.

Even with its humdrum but still irritating problems, The Capture’s almost fine. Ayres and Wright are professional enough to get through it, and Sturges keeps it afloat.

Woman in the Dark (1934, Phil Rosen)

Woman in the Dark is literally a movie from before they knew how to make movies like Woman in the Dark. The film’s also fairly obviously done on the cheap, and director Rosen doesn’t bring anything to it. But it’s a film noir story trapped in a Pre-Code romantic drama. For a while, it’s a road picture, and all of a sudden, the romantic drama works, but then the film reverts and never recovers.

There are a few reasons it doesn’t work out. First, the suspense drama has a tepid finish, and then all outstanding story arcs get unceremoniously dropped. But mostly, it doesn’t work because Dark starts leveraging comic relief Roscoe Ates. And Ates is mildly amusing for a little while when he first shows up, but only because he’s got Ruth Gillette playing his suffering wife, who has to keep him in line.

For the third act, Ates is solo and failing to get any humor out of his constant jokes. Some very slight restructuring and Dark could be Ates’s movie, which is a problem because he’s very much not the lead.

Fay Wray gets top-billing; she’s the Woman in the Dark. But it’s more Ralph Bellamy’s movie. It opens with him getting out of prison on parole. He was in for manslaughter; he got into a bar fight defending the honor of Nell O’Day. O’Day is the sheriff’s daughter, which raises some parenting questions, but the sheriff–Granville Bates—is an asshole, so whatever.

Also, there’s an age question. O’Day’s probably supposed to be eighteen or nineteen, which means she was a teenager when she caused the bar fight and so on. But, apparently, without causing any scandal either, as she’s a good girl, and Bates will do anything to defend her honor.

Including harassing Bellamy after his release. Bellamy’s moved back home. It’s slightly important, but not really. With a bigger budget, maybe.

Wray shows up on the run from Bellamy’s ritzy neighbor, Melvyn Douglas. Turns out rich guy Douglas is actually a big creep, and Wray wants nothing more to do with him. Bellamy offers to put her up—with O’Day around to de facto chaperone—only Douglas is going to take her back by conniving or force. It puts Bellamy in a bad position; he doesn’t want to punch anyone out and go back to the hoosegow, but Douglas and his sidekick Reed Brown Jr. are getting more and more intrusive.

When Brown finally goes too far, and Bellamy intercedes, it’s almost immediately the worst-case scenario.

Bellamy and Wray have to go on the run—hours after she first sought refuge with him—and there’s a nice road movie romance for the two of them. The film’s adapted from a Dashiell Hammett story, with screenplay credit to Sada Cowan and additional dialogue credits to Charles Williams and Marcy Klauber. One of those people included a subplot for Wray wanting a guy to respect her a little and not just paw at her. It’s sort of an unresolved arc, sort of not, but it’s a very interesting theme for a while.

They end up in the city—presumably New York City, but it’s never made clear because of the budget—where they go to Bellamy’s old cellmate Ates for help. Things keep going wrong, and there are eventually a bunch of stakes; there’s the romance, there’s Bellamy going to jail, there’s Wray going to jail, then there’s someone potentially dying. It’s hectic. And it’s got a very perfunctory, very rushed conclusion, with Ates herding the narrative along.

It’s a bummer.

Okay performance from Bellamy, good performances from Wray and Douglas. Gillette, O’Day, and Brown are all fine. Ates is a goof. Oh, and Frank Otto’s good as Wray’s slimy lawyer.

Woman in the Dark could be a lot worse; it does fail Wray and Bellamy, particularly Wray, whose character is more layered than the role needs. It should’ve been a better part for Wray, instead of evaporating for bad Ates gags.

But it’s engaging enough for sixty-eight minutes.

Summer Days, Summer Nights (2018, Edward Burns)

Summer Days, Summer Nights never really has any “grabber” moments. It’s got a couple big misses, one I’ve got a lot to say about, the other would technically be a spoiler. If it weren’t also a total cop-out. The movie looks the cop-out in the eye and blinks, with writer, director, and costar Burns deciding to acknowledge the big miss he’s committing to making.

Directing-wise, Burns does a fabulous job with Summer Days. The film takes place over Summer 1982 in resort-town Long Island. It’s on a budget, so Burns figures out all these great ways to showcase what he’s got to budget to include. There’s a big block party set-piece, and it’s beautifully done. Shame it comes at the end of the first act, and Burns never tries anything else anywhere near as complex or ambitious with the rest of the picture.

It’s also where the soundtrack—with one exception, the movie’s got a great soundtrack—intentionally reminds of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Summer Nights shows its hand a little much. Burns is doing an eighties teenager movie without any gratuitous sex or racism. There’s non-gratuitous sex, of course. But no racism of any kind. There aren’t any Black people. Lindsey Morgan and Anthony Ramos are Latinx. They’re it for people of color.

There’s also no class privilege stuff, which is weird because it’s part of the setup.

But Burns also isn’t doing a revisionist eighties teen sex comedy. Every female character in the movie proves her worth by having a boyfriend. Summer Days doesn’t just not pass Bechdel; it doesn’t even entertain the possibility it may. There’s even a terrible insert scene where Rita Volk cries to mom Susan Misner about how a boy likes her, and she likes him too, and it’s just not fair for some reason. Burns’s script is a series of romantic dramedy tropes. They never succeed, but sometimes the cast is likable enough, or the filmmaking’s solid enough; it doesn’t matter.

Other times it matters. Especially with Volk’s arc.

The film’s split between three couples. First, there’s protagonist Pico Alexander, playing the son of Burns’s character. They’re working-class, but Alexander only hangs out with the rich kids. When Summer starts, he’s planning on going to college to become a Wall Street tycoon, even though everyone tells him to be a writer. The writing thing isn’t important. It’s Burns’s biggest backstory cop-out. Right away, rich girl girlfriend Carly Brooke dumps him, and he soon finds summer romance with slightly older woman Morgan.

Morgan tells him it’s just going to be a fling. We don’t find out anything about her backstory until the second half of the movie, despite her being the strongest female character.

There’s just no time with the other arcs.

Like Ramos and Caitlin Stasey. They were high school sweethearts, and she broke his heart. Fast forward seven years, she’s back in town. Now, neither Ramos nor Stasey have any personality outside this backstory, so they’ve got couple friends, Zoe Levin and Jon Rudnitsky, to keep their story busy. Levin and Rudnitsky are sort of Summer Days’s unsung heroes, right up until the third act when Burns forgets they were around. But Ramos and Stasey’s plot is a “will they or won’t they” one.

Then again, so’s Volk’s arc with Amadeus Serafini. Serafini is Alexander’s cousin and staying with him and Burns for the summer. Burns sets Serafini up with a job at Misner’s dock, where daughter Volk also works. Volk’s sad her rich boy boyfriend left her for the summer, and Serafini’s got the hots for her because… she’s a girl, and he’s a boy. There’s no other story to them.

Until we get to Serafini’s live music performance, which is kind of a surfer dude Bruce Springsteen song, only it’s a creepy, controlling stalker song about how Volk needs to get with Serafini, or her life is meaningless. He sings it to her in public. It’s a lot. Like, there’s a concept for a relationship there, but the movie does nothing with it. Instead, it’s just Serafini mooning soulfully at Volk about why she should love him back.

Burns does seem to think the eighties setting and the decidedly strong production values are enough to get him a pass on all the lazy, shallow writing, but he is incorrect. They are not enough, mainly since his enthusiasm—directing-wise—for the eighties setting lessens after the first act and is immaterial by the third, except the occasional payphone.

And the third act’s so dramatically inert, strong production values aren’t going to help.

Best performances are Rudnitsky, Ramos, Stasey, and Levin. They kind of come in a bundle. Alexander and Morgan aren’t exactly good, but they’re very likable. They’re the most fun couple, thanks to that likability. Serafini and Volk are the worst. When he’s doing soulful surfer dude, Serafini almost makes it. When he’s weird creeper coworker, not so much. Volk’s got the worst part in the movie, and it’s kind of impressive she’s never terrible. She doesn’t have enough of a part to be bad; it’s a dreadful role.

It’s pretty clear by the second act Burns doesn’t actually have anywhere to go with Summer Days, Summer Nights. But he knows how to get an hour and forty minutes out of that inertia. Unfortunately, ever-competent and often exquisite filmmaking isn’t enough to make the third act palatable.

Even with lower and lower expectations, Summer Days, Summer Nights disappoints. It’s too bad. It looks phenomenal—William Rexer’s photography, Timothy J. Feeley’s editing, Stephen Beatrice’s production design, and Rosemary Lepre Forman’s costume design. They all do great work, as does Burns as far as directing.

Shame Burns didn’t make the script worth the production or even actors.

The Fabulous Dorseys (1947, Alfred E. Green)

The best scene in The Fabulous Dorseys is the jam session with Art Tatum. It’s the only time in the movie about jazz there are Black people, and it’s the only time the movie really lets The Fabulous Dorseys be fabulous. The film’s a biopic about band leaders brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, who play themselves, and their professional disagreements and rivalries. The Tatum scene stands out because it’s them playing, but it’s also them artistically engaged with their craft. And director Green gets to actually film musicians playing their instruments. There are some big band performances (including one where one of the orchestra members can’t remember to stop looking straight into the camera), which are fine and good, but there’s no energy to them.

Everyone’s got energy for that Tatum scene. It’s the realist Dorseys ever seems to get, even though the film’s constantly bumping up against reality thanks to its stars playing themselves, albeit decades older than they ought to be. Plus, neither of them are good actors. Tommy’s better than Jimmy, but Jimmy looks low-key terrified the entire time like he wants nothing more than the scene to be over. Considering the central drama is about Tommy showboating, it kind of works.

But the Dorseys aren’t really the protagonists of The Fabulous Dorseys. Most of the time, the movie’s about Janet Blair, their childhood friend (albeit fifteen years their junior when they’re playing adults) who acts as surrogate sister and parent. Blair’s eventually got to pick between the brothers and her love interest, William Lundigan. Only then, when the movie breaks up Blair and Lundigan over her loyalty to the Dorseys, it brings back the parents and pushes Blair into the background until the third act.

Sara Allgood and Arthur Shields play the parents in the opening flashback and the present. The present taking place over twenty-ish years, though the timeline’s very loose. There’s no Great Depression in The Fabulous Dorseys timeline, which must’ve been nice.

Allgood narrates the movie, with all her narration accompanying cursive text on the screen. It’s an unsuccessful device, but I guess you don’t need establishing shots as much when you can just use the text. The film starts in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, where Shields is a miner who also teaches music. He’s got his two sons learning trombone and saxophone because they’re the rarest instruments, and it’ll be easier for them to get jobs. Uncredited Bobby Warde and Buz Buckley play Jimmy and Tommy, respectively, with Ann Carter playing the young version of Blair. Also uncredited. That lack of credit is rather unfair since the kids run the ninety-minute movie for at least ten minutes.

The flashback establishes Tommy is a jackass who showboats, the brothers fight, the women (Allgood and Carter) have to monitor them, and Shields smacks them around. Initially, the film’s anti-hitting kids, but later on, when they’re adults, and Tommy’s still a showboating jackass, everyone wishes Shields could just beat some sense into them.

For the flashback sequence, Allgood holds the whole thing together. She’s got a nothing part and plays support to lesser actors (not just the kids, but also Shields, who’s only sympathetic thanks to Allgood), but she’s a trooper. And the production values are fine, and Green’s direction is decent.

Once they’re adults, Blair’s going to get that “holding it together” position. In fact, her keeping the brothers together is most of the second act. For a biopic starring the subjects, The Fabulous Dorseys does everything it can to avoid being about Tommy and Jimmy, instead focusing on Blair and her love life.

When Blair first meets Lundigan, the band needs a new piano player. Lundigan’s the local silent movie accompanist, and his skill at composing on the spot impresses everyone. It’s a good scene, especially since Lundigan’s not really playing the piano, but Blair’s got to be thrilled with his playing. Green does a good job directing around it; the silent movie sequence is one of the film’s standouts.

The movie will lose track of Lundigan’s musical abilities, and ambitions as he and Blair get lovey-dovey. Only she can’t give up on the Dorseys and Lundigan’s not having it. Lundigan’s not good, but he’s likable at the start. So when he becomes a dick about whether Blair should consider herself part of the Dorseys, it’s hard to miss him.

The film will employ a couple contrivances and a couple deus ex machinas to resolve the story—again, the busywork seems to be covering for Jimmy and Tommy not being able to act—and it’s occasionally a little mawkish but never craven. Dorseys feels sincere enough, which is crucial because it’s more about sick parents than creative independence. And even if Tommy was comfortable with the film making him out to be a jackass every single time, he wasn’t willing to do a reconciliation scene with Jimmy where he admits it.

Blair’s reasonably good. She’s usually better than the scenes, and her singing numbers work out. Even if she’s way too young to be mothering the brothers.

There are some funny supporting performances, too—Dave Willock and James Flavin being the standouts.

The Fabulous Dorseys isn’t exactly fabulous, but it’s an entirely acceptable outing; it’s not an advertisement for the brothers outside their musical abilities. And while it’s not an innovative movie musical, Green does a good job showcasing the numbers.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021, Jon Watts)

Spider-Man: No Way Home’s got a very appropriate title. There’s just no way to bring this one home, not for any of the things it tries to do. Though “tries” might be stretching it, No Way Home’s script feels like it’s four different ideas strung together with plot points dependent on the latest Academy Award-nominated or winning actor they managed to convince to come back for it.

But as Tom Holland’s Spider-Man seeming comes to its end—and, no spoilers (which I’m going to try hard to maintain), one way or another, something definitely ends here. No Way Home is a very particular collaboration between Disney and Sony; Disney owns Spider-Man: The Character and Sony owns Spider-Man: The Movie Rights. They weren’t even going to make this movie until Holland called the Disney head honcho and pleaded they go back to the table to make a deal. Disney was ready to leave it hanging on the previous entry’s cliffhanger.

So, while the producers are doing press rounds saying Holland’s not done… it’d be “okay” if he were done. No one in the MCU proper will be missing Spider-Man after No Way Home.

The film brings back major stars from all Sony’s previous Spider-Man franchises, though it never really gives them enough time. No Way Home’s set up to be Holland’s movie, but he loses it in the second half, and when it’s time to hand it back to him, they’ve broken it. They give him the pieces and send him on his way, the numerous epilogues just showcasing how noncommittal anyone wants to be about there ever being another Tom Holland Spider-Man movie again. It’s also a bummer for Zendaya and Jacob Batalan, who get to play sidekicks to a much fuller degree in this outing. No Way Home’s most consistently successful, non-gimmick moments are the ones playing off the trio. The movie does noticeably avoid giving Zendaya anything to do but play the damsel—and not just for Holland—while Batalan gets a potential spin-off setup.

To be clear, Batalan’s delightful, but some of that delightfulness is at Zendaya’s expense.

So the movie fails Holland and his Home trilogy sidekicks (it is nice to see Zendaya get to do more in this one, even if it’s just filler), it fails Holland as the MCU Spider-Man, but it also doesn’t really do anything for the returning Sony Spider-Man franchise participants either. I mean, it also really fails director Watts, who’s stuck directing actors in caricatures of former performances. Spider-Man: No Way Home is groundbreaking but only as a force of commercial will. There’s never been anything like it. And probably can’t be anything like it again; some of the actors look so miserable in this outing, it’s hard to imagine them returning.

It’s a movie without stakes for anyone involved, except potentially guest star Benedict Cumberbatch, who’s worried new boss Benedict Wong will find out how badly the guest star spot is going. All Holland wanted was for everyone to forget last movie’s big twist ending, and instead, he and Cumberbatch break the Spider-Verse. Sorry, multiverse. There’s no Spider-Verse crossover, which is the film’s most obvious miss. Well, the movie’s fourth story’s most obvious miss. There are obvious misses in the three stories preceding it, too, possibly four when you remember there’s not actually a supervillain team-up, just supervillain coincidences. Like it’s an old Godzilla movie, and all the kaiju show up somewhere because otherwise you don’t have a fight, and otherwise you don’t have a Godzilla movie.

Is a Spider-Man movie just a set piece with a bunch of swinging and thwapping action? No, but No Way Home would sure like to get away with one.

Most unfortunately, the film fails Holland as an actor. After single-handedly being the most important addition to the MCU since its inception, his (latest) potential finale turns all his character drama into a multiverse detail gimmick. It then drains any of the remaining resonance in the epilogues. No Way Home is just a graceful out for his Spider-career, which is easily the longest in the movies (six real appearances, one pseudo-cameo), and second only to Nicholas Hammond in live-action appearances. And Hammond was doing a TV show.

Holland’s emotional response to the events in the film—when they still matter to anyone—always get neatly wrapped into a Spider-Man lesson from previous participants from other franchises. The epilogues cheat Holland out of his character arc, just like the very tidy finale cheating all the guest stars out of their arcs. One of the significant developments in No Way Home is Marisa Tomei inspiring Holland not to give up even on the bad guys—especially the ones made bad by science mishaps—and it ends up being one of those stories to nowhere, taken off the stovetop for the next surprise guest star.

It’d be easy to blame the whole thing on screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, but it’s obviously not their fault—not to mention the movie shot during Rona, so there were more factors than the Brinks truck not being full enough. Instead, No Way Home is just a series of gimmicks competently realized with a $200 million price tag.

There are some good performances. Holland’s strong despite the material, ditto Zendaya. Cumberbatch is fun. Jon Favreau seems like he’s trapped in a contract. Marisa Tomei’s got shockingly little despite being in the movie a bunch; she does get one kind of funny flirting scene straight out of the comics. Sort of.

Some of the bad acting is just… the whole caricatures of previous performances thing. It’s like looping an entire performance and not just the dialogue. The standout amongst returning villains is easily Alfred Molina, who’s also in it the most and has the closest thing to a character arc.

And some of the previous performance caricatures work. Just not as much for the villains; it seems like if you’re a bad guy and you’re not bringing anything new, it’s a fail, but if you’re a good guy… it can work.

There are also just plain bad performances like Arian Moayed, the federal agent out for Holland’s hide. That story—the resolution to last movie’s cliffhanger—is all busywork, relying on real surprise (and welcome) cameos and then some decent jokes. There will be okay jokes later on, but they’re just funny and not actually good. Kind of like the movie itself: even when it’s not failing, it’s never truly succeeding.

No Way Home doesn’t quite prove truncated franchises are better than unimaginatively completed ones, but it comes real close.