Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021, Destin Daniel Cretton)

The third act of Shang-Chi makes it real obvious what’s been wrong with the movie the whole time–it doesn’t matter if Simu Liu is onscreen. The third act has a bunch of different characters fighting a bunch of different bad guys, and Liu disappears for a few minutes to do the whole “how’s the hero going to get inspired from the edge of death” bit and… the movie doesn’t need him. Because even though Liu’s Shang-Chi, the star, he’s never the interesting character in a scene.

The film starts with Tony Leung Chiu-wai (who apparently spoke English this whole time, which is devastating because he finally “comes” to America, and it’s this movie). He’s a near-immortal warlord who wants to capture a mythic village so he can see dragons or something. It’s an Alexander wept moment, don’t ask questions. Leung gives a captivating performance in an absolutely crap part. He went nine hundred and seventy-five years without ever doing any character development, and now he’s rushing to get some in.

Anyway. Still the opening. Leung meets Fala Chen in the village, and they have a wuxia fight. Or at least as close as Shang-Chi gets to a wuxia fight. Director Cretton at least tries with this fight. None of the other fight scenes in Shang-Chi have any real… what’s the word. Effort. The other fights don’t have a style goal. Or at least they don’t have a visible style goal. If Cretton was actually going for something, it’d be worse because he, cinematographer Bill Pope, and the three editors (Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir, Nat Sanders, and Harry Yoon) never achieve it. Or even make it clear they’ve got actual ambitions other than getting to the next scene.

Leung and Chen fall in love, and throughout the film—via flashbacks—we learn he gave up a life of international crime bossing for her, settled down, had a couple kids who grow up to be Liu and Meng’er Zhang. Chen dies under mysterious circumstances, but only to the audience; it’s just the flashback doesn’t want to tell us yet. Because Dave Callaham and Cretton’s script is tediously manipulative. There aren’t any surprises in Shang-Chi, which just makes it all the more amazing it’s able to get to so many compelling moments thanks to the cast and, I don’t know, a competent production’s momentum. And it’s a low competent. Like, Disney did not pony up for real effects money on Shang-Chi. The composites are so bad it’s almost a Warner Bros. superhero movie. Almost.

In the present, Liu’s a San Francisco valet parker who spends all his time hanging out with best friend, Awkwafina. They’re just friends. It’s never explained why they’re just friends, possibly because Liu, Awkwafina, and Zhang are weirdly asexual, but they basically lead this amusing sitcom life. Just with fast cars. What’s weird about the Liu and Awkwafina stuff is the actors can obviously do comedy—Awkwafina from this movie and, you know, Liu from “Kim’s”—but Cretton doesn’t know how to do it. Or more, he doesn’t try to do it. It’s the aforementioned lack of effort kicking in again. Instead of it actually being funny, it’s a too-brief nod at funny.

Really quickly, Liu has to fight some bad guys on a bus, which ends up forecasting Cretton’s inability to do action sequences, and then he and Awkwafina are off to Macau to meet up with previously unrevealed sister Zhang.

They then meet up with dad Leung, who reveals he’s going to go get all the dinosaurs from Isla Sorna. Sorry, wait, I’m thinking Lost World: Jurassic Park but Cretton cribs a scene from there, so I got confused. Leung wants to invade the village and rescue the soul of dead wife Chen from the shitty villagers who wouldn’t let them live there because he’s a warlord.

Even though Awkwafina’s already the comic relief, they need more, so Ben Kingsley comes back from Iron Man 3 (more specifically, the superior Marvel short, All Hail the King), and occasional smiles occur during the subsequent action. Up until they get to the secret village, where Michelle Yeoh enters the movie, and all of a sudden, it’s interesting. Because even though Leung’s mesmerizing, it’s a lousy part. Yeoh’s part isn’t good, but it’s not a terribly underwritten villain part. She’s the cool aunt. She’s basically the hero of the last third of the runtime.

Eventually, Liu will be critical in saving the world from dragons or whatever, but he doesn’t have to act while doing it. Most of the time, he’s just a part-CGI model in extreme long shot.

There’s no one who doesn’t take over the scenes with Liu. Awkwafina from go, then Zhang, then Leung, then Yeoh, but also the supporting actors in scenes, like bit player Ronny Chieng. There’s an astounding lack of direction from Cretton when it comes to his actors. All of them muscle through—I mean, relatively, like Zhang’s likable but not particularly good and Awkwafina is one-note—just not Liu. He’s so unimportant in his own movie it can lose him, and it doesn’t matter, which makes the hero’s quest finale all the more lackluster.

Shang-Chi’s never bad—it’s incredibly safe—but it feels like it’s never bad because Cretton and company figured out a way to produce the film without any stakes. Certainly not for Cretton. Or Liu.

For a specific viewer, Leung will more than make it worth it. Even when he becomes CGI. Or more, he doesn’t become CGI for long enough for it to hurt him. Ditto Yeoh, actually, whose big action sequence ends up being as a too-small CGI model. Then there’s Kingsley; his return is fun but underwritten because Cretton and Callaham are dreadful at comedy.

Also, since the flashbacks to Chen’s story go on for so long—it’s third act before we get the whole story and the movie completely, and very intentionally wimps out on the implications—even though Chen’s okay, she just reminds if they’d gotten Maggie Cheung for the part… I mean, then you’d have a movie worth Tony Leung Chiu-wai. But no. Because it’s a rote and joyless outing, albeit an aridly competent one.

Escape from Mogadishu (2021, Ryoo Seung-wan)

Escape from Mogadishu is almost incalculably problematic. I can't do the math, and I'm sure there's a bunch I don't even see, but it's a doozy. It's a South Korean "inspired by a true story" about the Somali Civil War, specifically the South Korean diplomats and the North Korean diplomats working together to get out. It's done in the style of a Hollywood bureaucrats in danger thriller, which bakes in a gaggle of new problems. Including showcasing African poverty for first-world consumption–it's a white man's burden picture, only it's not about the white men. Instead, it's about Koreans doing a riff on it, trying to benefit from the behavior. Only for different reasons—South Korea and North Korea need African nations to sign off on them joining the U.N., so the first act contains wacky bureaucrat comedy. Just with guns, violence, and racism.

Then there's the stuff about religion, including the allied but foolishly corrupt Somali government apparently being secular and the rebels being Muslim. The insurgents care about their children; the government bureaucrats and thugs don't even care about each other. Plus, there's static between the South Korean Christian evangelical and the Buddhists. Further complicating, the evangelical (Kim So-jin) is the wife of the ambassador, Kim Yoon-seok, and is using that unofficial position to force her religion on them.

Then all the stuff with the North Koreans and the South Koreans. The film humanizes the North Koreans—callous, jingoist bigotry is left to the dueling intelligence officers, Jo In-sung and Koo Kyo-hwan. Koo's a diehard Communist; Jo's a diehard asshole. Jo's never in it for capitalist ideology; he always just wants someone to shit on. Starting with the native Somalis (while Koo brings care packages to outcast school children). But Koo also likes pranking the South Korean embassy, something his boss, Huh Joon-ho, finds amusing. Especially since he's been a diplomat for twenty years or something and Kim Yoon-seok's just there on temporary assignment.

There's a lot of back and forth with the two sets of people learning they're just people, with some well-timed reveals about the shitty police state the North Koreans all live in. Of course, some South Korean bureaucrats are shitty people too, but not all of them. It's a mess.

It's also extremely well-made and mostly well-acted. The good performances make up for the middling ones, which is really just Jo, but he's always around, consistently middling, and always an asshole. He does get a good fight scene, though it does work to call back to an opening scene observing since Africans make racially uninformed observations about Koreans, can't Koreans really do the same?

However, the last thirty minutes are mostly phenomenally directed "real people in danger" action thriller. Director Ryoo, editor Lee Gang-hee, and cinematographer Choi Young-hwan turn in a truly harrowing sequence. At some point in the first half of Escape, I thought the movie's goal was to have a quote where someone calls it "harrowing." I never thought it'd get there, but it does. The harrowing caravan escape sequence is harrowing. It even brings the film higher than it finishes; Ryoo and co-writer Lee Ki-cheol can't resist getting cheap digs in at the North Koreans and then some macho character development.

Huh's performance is phenomenal. Kim Yoon-seok's very good, but he's mainly opposite Jo, who's never good. Or they're doing a comedy bit with Jeong Man-sik, who plays the incompetent career bureaucrat trope. Koo's okay as the North Korean spy guy, but it's a caricature part and corresponding performance.

The first half is a long slog. The second half is over too soon. But it's definitely far below "it's the best they could do regarding a complex situation." Escape's confrontational and proud of its bric-a-brac politics, which never serve the characters, just the film. It's intentionally craven. So whether or not the multiple hurdles, pitfalls, and just plain ugliness are worth getting through the rest for that great Escape sequence depends on the individual viewer.

The Longest Day (1962, Ken Annakin)

The Longest Day picks up when the Normandy beach invasion starts. It happens maybe ninety minutes into the three-hour film. There are the overnight paratrooper drops, which have such dull action scenes it seems like the film will never improve, but then it turns out the large-scale battle choreography is exceptional and could potentially make up for the rest. It doesn’t, however, because Robert Mitchum turns out to be terrible once he gets more to do—he’s playing the rah-rah American general who chews on stogies—and is the one who motivates the men to get off Omaha Beach, the only unsuccessful D-Day landing point. In the film, anyway. It’s been way too long since my World War II class in undergrad. I mean, I aced the blue book, but not a-plussed it. Not that one.

Anyway.

The actual history doesn’t matter. It should because Longest Day is an exhausting exposition dump through the first hour as actor after actor churns through facts and figures, but no one ever thinks to describe the plan. Even though it’s a war movie with a mission and working a plan description into it is literally the easiest thing in the world (Longest Day is great to see how subsequent war films succeeded its narrative failings). Instead, it’s just a variety of guest stars mugging through endless dialogue. The worst performances—for the dialogue dumps—Robert Ryan and Rod Steiger. John Wayne’s not good at them either, but he’s nowhere near as bad as those two. And Steiger’s just in it for a scene. Ryan’s at least got a briefing. There really aren’t many dialogue dumps from the Germans, except maybe Richard Münch. He gets to describe the D-Day invasion before it happens because it’s what he would do if he were Eisenhower, but Eisenhower’s got no stones.

According to The Longest Day, D-Day succeeded for a handful of simple reasons. First, Eisenhower manned up and acted recklessly with the invasion location and launching in lousy weather. Second, Adolf Hitler was a silly yelly milksop who needed his nap (his generals dismiss him as a “Bohemian corporal,” though that quote is from somewhere else). Third, a bunch of the German generals were just lazy or intentionally distracted. Again, I can’t remember my D-Day history, but it seems like if you’re doing a three-hour Army recruitment commercial, you should at least make the good guys deserve to win for something other than dumb luck. Because if it is just dumb luck….

There’s a nod to the futility of war, right at the very end, with Richard Burton acting opposite Richard Beymer. Burton’s bad in the movie but not risible. Beymer’s middling in the film but never better. Get them together, however, and they’re just godawful together. Especially with the dialogue. Especially since it takes place at sunset on June 6, after the film’s skipped ahead not a few hours, but something like ten. Because ten p.m. sunset on June 6, 1944. Thanks, Google. I’d have used military time, except the movie doesn’t for the first hour, so I kept wondering how Eisenhower was going to hold a meeting at 9:30 in the morning on June 6 when the invasion boats left already.

The invasion boat arrival scene with Hans Christian Blech is one of the best, not large-scale scenes. The film’s never good with its composite shots, from the second or third scene, and you think it’ll somehow not matter because of the gravitas, but it matters every single time, especially with Mitchum, who doesn’t need any more excuses to be checked out. At least Wayne’s engaged. Wayne’s not good, not at all, but he’s engaged in the film. Mitchum is phoning it in. Eddie Albert holds up their scenes together, which is concerning.

The film’s got three credited directors, but there are at least two more uncredited contributors, and then whoever orchestrated the battle sequences, which were shot from helicopters, it looks like. Those sequences are about the only time the lousy sound effects are okay. Otherwise, Longest Day’s editing, visually and aurally, is never impressive. Some of it's obvious lack of coverage and continuity—neither Annakin nor Marton establish their battle scenes well. Wicki doesn’t get any battle scenes. Maybe the marching scene, which ends up being better than the paratrooper stuff. And then the landing. Okay, so for actual action, Wicki does best. Then whoever did the French commando scene, which has some of the film’s best-acting courtesy Georges Rivière.

Longest Day has over a hundred speaking parts. It’s got a big name American, British, French, and German movie stars. It’s got like six good performances, a whole bunch of middling ones, then a dozen terrible ones. Best performances are—in alphabetical order—Blech, Münch, Edmond O'Brien, Wolfgang Preiss, Rivière, Robert Wagner. I’m not going through the worst, but Peter Lawford and Nicholas Stuart are on the list; Stuart doesn’t even have any lines. There are a handful of senseless cameos—Steiger, O’Brien, Henry Fonda—because no one can really figure out how to write the characters. They’re just star cameos, not people, not even caricatures. Jeffrey Hunter gets a big part in the last hour, but Marton directs him poorly. Red Buttons is better than most of the other guys he’s around. Mel Ferrer’s fine in his brief appearances. Sean Connery’s dull but better than some of the other Scots, particularly Kenneth More, who seems to have been churned out by the War Office.

If Mitchum or Wayne were good, Day’d have something. Or if Beymer were good. Or Sal Mineo. Burton’s not in it enough to matter. But the direction would still be wanting. The script—only five screenwriters—is a mess. The helicopter sequences are fantastic, though. Shame it’s profoundly shallow.

Even before you get to the Paul Anka theme song.

The Great Ziegfeld (1936, Robert Z. Leonard)

Second-billed Myrna Loy shows up in The Great Ziegfeld at around the two-hour mark. The film runs three hours. The about a half-hour of it is musical numbers; they’re presumably recreations of the actual Ziegfeld stage productions, but even without having read the Wikipedia article first, it’s obvious Ziegfeld’s a glorifying tribute. Loy’s most significant scene is when she—playing stage, film, and radio star Billie Burke—tells husband Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (played by William Powell) she’s okay with him cheating on her to get his mojo back. The way Loy sees it, Powell needs to cat around with his showgirls to make a show a hit. Unlike Powell’s other ingenues in the film, he’s not trying to star-make Loy; she knows the showbiz score. At least when it comes to brilliant men.

Of course, even with Hayes Code constraints, Ziegfeld goes out of its way to show Powell as a better husband than his wives realize. First wife Luise Rainer is the protagonist in the first half of the picture and gets so shafted in the second we don’t even find out she died, spending her life after leaving Powell miserably pining for him. He was supposed to run back to her, and we see him start that process, then the film cuts ahead. The film successfully obfuscates the actual couple’s common-law marriage and then their common-law divorce. It also drops the most important mistress, instead turning Virginia Bruce’s pursuit of Powell into a drunken jealousy (of Rainer) arc for Bruce. Powell’s just a hapless victim; Bruce kisses him once, Rainer sees it, leaves him. In the dialogue, Powell explains he’s just got to keep the girls happy, and sometimes the only way is for them to drunkenly maul him.

He had been grooming Bruce earlier, but it could’ve very well just been for stardom.

Because for Powell to get really excited about a woman, he’s got to steal her from best friend, alter ego, and rival Frank Morgan. They start together at the Chicago’s World’s Fair, with Morgan hawking Egyptian bellydancers and Powell trying to play it straight with strongman Nat Pendleton. Once some horny bored housewife notices Pendleton’s pecs, however, Powell realizes he’s got some premium beefcake to sell, and he starts making it big.

Even though selling beef—literally what Powell’s disappointed musical teacher dad Joseph Cawthorn says to him—isn’t what Powell wants to do with his life long-term, he does realize if he sells cheesecake, he can make a fortune. Not just chorus girls, but glamorous chorus girls, ostensibly the average American girl (so many of them look exactly the same; it’s quickly uncanny). There are never any casting sessions—other than Powell proving his fidelity to the audience and resisting nubile Jean Chatburn–and there’s little insight into Ziegfeld’s actual creative process. Director Leonard only seems interested in the musical numbers, not even feigning interest in the characters.

Outside Rainer for the first half.

Heck, the movie even fudges the ending, even though the film came out only three years after the story ends. Nothing matters as much as the musical numbers.

There’s an impressively mounted one with a giant staircase. But it’s impressive as a technical feat, not because Leonard all of a sudden gets better at directing the numbers. Then there’s a great Harriet Hoctor ballet number. Oh, and Fanny Brice (as herself) is all right. Though it sort of douses her in misogyny. The film’s wading in it—and with a delayed bit of racism thrown in too—but Ziegfeld’s intentionally cruel to Brice and leans in on it. Everyone must suffer for the Ziegfeld genius.

Powell’s fine. It’s a very flat part, but he’s likable. Loy’s okay. It’s an extended cameo, and they should’ve created the unbilled major supporting role with Ziegfeld. Plus, she gets a crap part. Not crappier than Rainer, obviously, because Ziegfeld tosses Rainer for Bruce, but then it turns out it isn’t actually promoting Bruce. It’s just getting rid of Rainer.

Oh, the Ray Bolger number is good.

A.A. Trimble is a lousy Will Rogers.

Morgan’s easily the best performance, but it’s also the least complicated role.

Incredible photography from Oliver T. Marsh, George J. Folsey, Karl Freund, Merritt B. Gerstad, and Ray June. Sometimes bad editing from William S. Gray; some of it is lacking coverage or just weak direction from Leonard, but not all of it.

Subtracting out the musical numbers, Great Ziegfeld’s a middling, lengthy studio programmer with some good stars. With the musical numbers… it’s the same, just with unimaginatively presented, grandiose musical numbers. While they don’t add anything to the film, they would look great on the big screen.

Louis Theroux: Shooting Joe Exotic (2021, Jack Rampling)

If its aloof and earnest host is to be believed, Louis Theroux: Shooting Joe Exotic was totally going to be about said host, Louis Theroux, journeying to Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic to do a new documentary about Joe Exotic. Exotic appeared on one of Theroux’s documentary specials ten years ago and, since being convicted of multiple crimes and then becoming a folk hero for people who don’t think Covid is real, actually, thanks to the Netflix series “Tiger King,” wrote to have Theroux come and tell his side of the story.

Only Exotic—and many other people—all signed contracts with the hacks behind “Tiger King” and can’t talk to anyone but them for season two or whatever. Theroux gets to the United States and basically can’t interview anyone he thought he’d be able to interview. So instead, he talks to Carole Baskin (who “Tiger King” directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin implied murdered someone to make for compelling Netflix), some relatives of Exotic’s who aren’t getting Netflix money, and the lawyers trying to get Exotic pardoned. And lots of Theroux watching old footage of him and Exotic and musing on what he was or wasn’t thinking. And lots of Theroux reading correspondence aloud.

It’s never as interesting as it should be, partially because Theroux doesn’t really want to interrogate his past behavior, like when he eggs Exotic on about Baskin in the footage from ten years ago. Exotic’s in prison for trying to hire someone to kill Baskin (in addition to killing a bunch of animals at his zoo). Theroux just didn’t take Exotic’s rants about hiring someone to kill Baskin seriously. Seems like Theroux should do a Google search on his former interviewees to see what else he’s missed, especially given his track record with other past subjects.

There’s not much structure to Shooting. We find out whether or not Exotic gets pardoned, but not really any fallout from it because who’s Theroux going to talk to about it. Anyone not glad he’s still in prison—other than the lawyers who make you wonder why there are even bar associations—is under contract with Netflix. Shooting doesn’t use much footage from “Tiger King,” but there are enough reminders of some of that series’s worst people, and there’s a bit of catch-up with what’s going on with them. It just reminds it was actually all about terrible people doing terrible things, and thanks to the old footage, it turns out Theroux was encouraging of it for television’s sake.

Theroux doesn’t comment on the “Tiger King” phenomenon other than to mention the series dropping at the right time of lockdown. He presents reaction to the show as universal, not addressing viewers who realized the manipulative hackwork Goode and Chaiklin were doing; everyone fell in love with Joe Exotic. Only they actually didn’t, which doesn’t help Theroux’s “who could’ve known” take on all of it.

Theroux’s a fine host and ages really well—it’s hard to tell the historical footage from the modern—but Shooting didn’t need to be ninety minutes. It didn’t need to be, but it certainly didn’t need to be so long for so little. It’s rubbernecking a rubbernecking of a rubbernecking.

But Team Carole, obviously.

The Magnificent Meyersons (2021, Evan Oppenheimer)

Despite some occasionally annoying visual techniques (which I'll enumerate later), director Oppenheimer always shows enthusiasm for the directing of The Magnificent Meyersons. He loves directing New York City walk and talks, whether on the street or in a park. Most of Meyersons takes place either in a park or on the street. Sometimes seemingly the same street, just different sides of it. The dialogue pacing is usually good enough an occasional goof doesn't matter. There's a tranquil, meandering sense to it all. But it's unclear whether or not it's supposed to meander quite so much.

Meyersons takes place either all in one day, but since Oppenheimer's drone shots of the city are all from the same time of day and don't change with the sun's position, or match the location of the characters, maybe it's two. It seems more like one, though. If it's not supposed to be one day, there's another continuity problem in the script, which is a substantial pile.

The film opens introducing the Meyersons of the title. There's Ian Kahn as the intolerant robber baron who turns out to be the hero. He loves his daughter, Talia Oppenheimer (who's terrible; I hadn't realized she presumably got the job because her dad made the movie, maybe it plays better knowing), and worries about her getting cancer. He doesn't seem to care about any other little kid on the face of the planet but whatever. We don't find out until the third act he's supposed to be the hero when he's a dick to someone else, and it turns out Oppenheimer wanted us rooting for Kahn. Who's always an intolerant robber baron. His contribution to the first two acts of the movie is solely him being a loud-mouth dick. Turns out since he's rich, he's right.

Anyway.

Then there's Jackie Burns. She's got the best arc in the movie, even though it's done in the first act. It involves her husband, Greg Keller, who's kind of a tool. They're good together—and it's believably they're married, which shouldn't be a big deal, but when all the kids eventually get together, you don't think they've ever even met before shooting that day. She's having a kind of crisis, and it gets some resolution. Since nothing else in the movie intentionally avoids closure, she kind of gets the only full arc. And it's thanks to Keller, who doesn't get to hang with the fam later. She's in publishing; it doesn't matter.

Daniel Eric Gold is the younger brother and the rebel. He's in rabbinical school, his best friend is a priest (Neal Huff), and he meets his congregants in a park. One such congregant, Lilli Stein, visits him multiple times—so in one day—to tease him about being a future rabbi. Gold's the likable one. Or so you'd think. The movie keeps setting him up for a big arc, and it's never a thing. Not during the first twist, not during the last twist. Oppenheimer needs to gin up a twist every twenty-five minutes to keep the movie going, which is a bummer because when it's sort of lyrical navel-gazing, the film is at its best. Even with tedious transition shots–editor Evan Wood slows down the drone footage, making it more obvious that it's the same place as before and none of the characters are at that location.

The last kid is daughter Shoshannah Stern. She's a cutthroat realtor who no one's going to suspect because she's deaf, and people make a big deal out of her being capable when she's not around, which also means it's okay she's cutthroat. The cutthroat arc goes nowhere. In fact, it fails when you look at the movie's timeline because Stern makes an appointment then spends the entire second act having coffee with girlfriend Lauren Ridloff. Stern and Ridloff are good together. It helps a lot. Ridloff also doesn't get to go to the fam get-together, but probably should have; if Kahn's not a dick to his sister's Black girlfriend, he at least isn't a dick to his sister's Black girlfriend.

Mom is Kate Mulgrew. She's a pediatric cancer doctor who's miserable with her life because, well, she tells little kids they're going to die. Mulgrew's excellent. Either best or second-best performance. Barbara Barrie plays her mom, and they have a big scene walking around a park and talking before Mulgrew has to inspect Talia Oppenheimer for cancer (in the park). Melissa Errico plays the daughter-in-law (it's hard to imagine her and Kahn being married but sure). Errico doesn't have a part other than to take the kid to the park to tie into Mulgrew's plot, except people giving her shit for being Italian. Including her kid. Then again, maybe Kahn does make sense as the spouse.

The movie revolves around this typical day becoming fantastic a couple times, with flashbacks to Richard Kind abandoning the family twenty years before being thrown in to justify their current unhappiness. Kind's uneven, though the video filters Oppenheimer uses on the flashback sequences don't help any. Only Mulgrew's flashback shows any imagination (because they weren't willing to de-age her), with most of the kid actors playing the regular cast in flashback indistinct. Except for Anna Dale Robinson, who's got an essential part and is bad. Though Kind's blowing it too, because Oppenheimer fails at the single scene he needs to write well. The rest of the movie, even the contrived stuff, can get away with the nonsense platitudes. But if you're going to do it epical, you need to be able to deliver.

The whole thing seems like it just needs another ten or fifteen minutes, depending on whether or not they get rid of the drone footage. Good-looking digital video—with mostly strong photography from Derek McKane—helps. Daniel McCormick's repetitive score is satisfactory in the first act, tedious (like the drone shots it accompanies) by the end.

Meyersons is a middling, indie streets of New York City comedy. Far from the worst thing. And there's terrific acting from Mulgrew and Barrie.

Wrath of Man (2021, Guy Ritchie)

When did Guy Ritchie get so enthusiastic about his actors’ performances? Wrath of Man is a lot of things—and a little much—but it’s a middling cross between revenge and heist picture where the cast gets a great showcase. Sometimes too much of one, with the script way too talky in the first act. Man’s based on a French movie (though I’ve never seen opening titles speed through acknowledging it’s a remake like Man, the card is up for maybe eight seconds), with director Ritchie sharing co-screenplay credit with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies. None of them deserve many pats on the back, as there’s constantly terrible dialogue because someone wants to make it feel gritty with distinct dialogue. You know, kind of like Heat.

Obviously, it’s impossible to do an armored truck robbery in L.A. story without acknowledging Heat a little and Ritchie gets it out of the way early. He goes on to whiff the big heist sequence (with the bad guys masked in body armor and invincible against any guns but their own). After promising it’s going to be great for the entire movie, with over-the-title top-billed but really it’s an ensemble by the end Jason Statham showing up at an armored car service, looking for work. L.A.’s had a rash of armored truck robberies lately—I mean, it’s so widespread even Post Malone would do it—and this company in particular had a bad robbery where some people got killed. Is Statham sure he wants the job? Of course, because he’s there to figure out who’s behind the armored truck robbery. Why?

Watch the movie. Enjoy watching Statham kicking ass while working with lovable old timer Holt McCallany, job weasel Josh Hartnett, and interested lady coworker Niamh Algar. Man’s too intentionally shitty in its pursuit of gritty to be entertaining; it’s all homophobic and misogynistic jokes amongst the staff—even though everyone’s a terrible person in one way or another so we don’t mind when they’re put in danger or die. It’s Statham’s movie, he’s the only invulnerable one. Him and the guy he’s after.

At the armored car depot, the acting’s all solid. McCallany, Hartnett, Algar, Eddie Marsan doing what seems to be a spoof of an accent as the boss; they’re all good. They’re ready and able for when Man need elevate them.

But it never elevates them because it’s got a fractured narrative (courtesy the original French movie), with time jumping forward, back, back more, forward, forward more. Ritchie kind of plays with it but once you find out it’s not original it’s just a little too ostentatious. It’d have been nice for Ritchie to do something more than assemble a decent cast and film them all right… but he really doesn’t. He coasts along on technical competence and performance and then he really screws up the third act. It’s a complete disaster. While still fine. It’s just a bad fine. If it weren’t for the actors, it’d be a fail.

The film doesn’t just reveal Statham’s involvement in the prologue armored car robbery, it eventually moves to the perspective of the armored car robbers, looking at two different gangs of them who might plug into one of the other time lines for a narrative “surprise.” When the gimmick is the point of the gimmick, there’s no real accomplishment, just not failing.

And again it doesn’t fail because of the actors. There’s good small work from Jeffrey Donovan, Laz Alonso (Mother's Milk from “The Boys”!), Darrell D’Silva, and Babs Olusanmokun. There are some mediocre performances, then some bad ones. There’s a charmless, desperate stunt cameo (well, there are two but only one matters) and then Scott Eastwood. Eastwood ends up playing a big part in the movie after being ancillary for much of it and sadly Ritchie does not get Eastwood to stop squinting like anyone’s going to think he’s his dad. He’s got a few all right moments, but he’s mostly dull. There are much worse performances, but Eastwood’s an opening titles billed star whereas no one else is as important. It’s too bad.

Especially given the third act’s not very good. And is predictable. Wrath of Man ends of being all too predictable because of its indifference and cynicism. It’s just a combination revenge and heist picture with competent muddy cinematography from Alan Stewart and a not-incompetent, intentionally wholly unpleasant, not ineffective score from Chris Benstead.

It’s fine. It was silly to expect more, even though almost everyone’s obviously capable of doing more.

Maybe not the screenwriters. Almost everyone else. Even Eastwood.

Well, maybe just maybe Eastwood.

Pi (1998, Darren Aronofsky)

The incredible thing about Pi is how well director Aronofsky is able to compensate for his lead. Pi is about mathematician Sean Gullette discovering a pattern hidden in the stock market—or so he thinks—and trying to navigate the repercussions of his discovery. Wall Street firm lady Pamela Hart is after him for the equation, so’s Hasidic Messianic Jewish guy Ben Shenkman; Shenkman wants the code to bring about the coming of the real Messiah, Hart wants it to control the world economy. Basically Pi might be a prequel to Sneakers or it might be a prequel to Prince of Darkness or it might just all be in Gullette’s imagination because Pi is about him suffering a tragically debilitating psychotic break. Besides showcasing Aronofsky’s direction, Matthew Libatique’s wonderful high contrast photography (hiding some of the low budget aspects and instead making them appear to be personality), and Clint Mansell’s sometimes great, sometimes annoying music, Pi is mostly just a great look at how people sometimes really need mental health care and the results of them not getting it is very bad.

There are touchstones to Gullette’s experience of the film—fetching, caring neighbor Samia Shoaib is pretty for sure real, ditto nice little neighbor kid Kristyn Mae-Anne Lao, who does math problems with Gullette. And Mark Margolis, as Gullette’s former professor, current Go opponent (Aronofsky and Libatique lean in on Go being monochrome) and life mentor; Margolis is pretty real.

Margolis is trying to convince Gullette he’s on a fools errand trying to discover the mathematic equation pi in the world around them, which would either let Gullette get rich off the stock market (or not) or just help him understand how the confusing world functions. The film leaves a lot open in the end, with very little revealed about protagonist Gullette despite him narrating and Pi being a character study; Gullette wouldn’t be able to handle it, acting-wise. Aronofsky has to figure out how to do a character study where it doesn’t matter the lead actor, who’s in every scene of the movie (albeit only an eighty-four minute one), is at his very best doing a combination Johns Turturro and Cusack impression. At his very best, which is rare and always requires someone else to hold up the scene, like Lao or Shoaib; Margolis and Gullette rarely share shots in their talking heads scenes so who knows what Margolis was acting off. Who knows how good Pi might be with a compelling lead performance.

Aronofsky and his crew try to compensate, doing a rapid, handheld urban nightmare. Libatique’s photography is striking enough you wish they’d slow it down so the scenery would make an impression instead of being flashes of light. It’s technically superlative photography. Just gorgeous. The movie’s just too fast for it to really resonate past how Aronofsky needs it to work, what he needs it to convey, because he can’t rely on Gullette to do the work.

Gullette’s the only bad performance. Besides his lead, Aronofsky seems to care about acting. Margolis almost has a great part; he’s excellent and the part goes to pot along with the movie in the third act so it doesn’t matter much. Shenkman’s really good. Hart’s fine. Stephen Pearlman’s good in a cameo. Lao’s cute. Shoaib’s good. It’s just Gullette. His performance appears to be thoughtless. If it’s not thoughtless, there’s a real problem with how Aronofsky directed him then.

I mean, Pi’s a lot better than I remember. Though everything wrong with it I remember is still wrong with it this time.

Bonobo (2014, Matthew Hammett Knott)

Bonobo has a lot of good instincts, but director Knott and his crew don’t seem to know how to realize them. The most obvious problem is cinematographer James Aspinall, who doesn’t seem to know what he should be doing—Bonobo is always too sharp and too muddy, a decidedly DV problem—but then you realize there’s bad headroom in every single shot of the movie and you’ve got to wonder what Knott thinks he ought to be doing. Knott seems to know what kind of narrative distance the film needs, but can’t execute it due to bad composition and half-hearted writing. Knott co-wrote with Joanna Benecke and they know what scenes the film needs but not how to write them, which fits since Knott doesn’t know how to shoot them and Aspinall doesn’t know how to light them.

Some of the problem is the low budget and the filmmakers not knowing how to compensate. For example, the majority of the action takes place at a “Bonobo community,” where the residents try to do as the bonobo do—lots of hugging, lots of touching, lots of sex—but it’s a house in a residential area so there have to be neighbors. Only Knott’s trying to hide them not having great locations so all of a sudden the suburban look will come through out of nowhere. Of course, Knott doesn’t know how to do establishing shots in the interiors either so it shouldn’t really be a surprise. But—right up until the last scene—somehow every miss manages to be obvious.

With a rewrite and a better director, cinematographer, and composer (while not terrible or anything, Eugene Feygelson’s omnipresent score gets tedious fast), Bonobo could be something special because it’s got a solid premise. Tessa Peake-Jones is a fifty-something suburban (or whatever they call it in the UK) mom to law school dropout Eleanor Wyld. Wyld has run off to the aforementioned bonobo nudist house—six months before the movie begins—and Peake-Jones finally goes to check on her.

There Peake-Jones meets community leader Josie Lawrence, a primatologist who’s stopped observing bonobos in the wild and instead just has lots of sex with the house full of hotties she’s assembled. Her prize stud is James Norton, who just happens to be paired with Wyld for the time being. Norton’s going to quickly reveal himself to just be a manipulative narcissist—mocking Lawrence’s age behind her back to the other dudes and so on—and he’ll be the film’s second biggest plot fail.

The biggest plot fail, however, is Wyld. She and Peake-Jones can’t talk for the first two days Peake-Jones is visiting the house, so Wyld just says crappy things about her mom while Peake-Jones goes through a manners comedy before forming a very nice bond with Lawrence. From that point, the narrative starts following Lawrence as well as Peake-Jones and relegates Wyld to supporting their arcs.

It makes some sense because the writers clearly don’t have a character for Wyld so they’re trying to avoid it (just like establishing shots), but it means there’s a lot of meandering in an eighty minute movie.

Still, Peake-Jones and Lawrence have some really good moments. Norton’s not bad, just got a bad part. And Wyld’s got a lot of potential, shame they don’t do anything with her.

Bonobo seems to know what an indie darling needs to be an indie darling, but Knott doesn’t have a single idea of how to incorporate those elements into his film.

The Midnight Sky (2020, George Clooney)

The Midnight Sky goes wrong for a number of reasons. It’s too thin, even with phenomenal special effects—half the film is an Arctic adventure tale, half the film is a hard sci-fi but done as a 2001 homage. They’re destined to collide, but the Arctic adventure ceases to be an Arctic adventure by that time and instead has become… well. It’s kind of hard to describe.

A poorly executed character study maybe?

Doesn’t matter. The Arctic adventure stuff and its importance in the narrative is a complete waste of time. The space stuff is where it’s at in Sky, which is a problem since it’s a movie where George Clooney directs George Clooney in an Arctic adventure poorly juxtaposed opposite a space mission’s return to Earth.

The year is 2049. We make big advances in science real fast apparently, but there’s another global pandemic or something about to it, we just know it. So we’re going to colonize a previously undiscovered moon of Jupiter. Clooney has spent his whole life working towards that goal—starting when he’s in flashback and the character is played by Ethan Peck. Oddly, we know what George Clooney looked like thirty years ago and he did not look like Peck. Also Peck’s performance is terrible. Like. Real bad. Just real bad.

The whole flashback thing is a disaster. It doesn’t have to be a disaster. If Clooney were interested in pulling it off—Clooney the director here—it could be fine. Because Sky shows it can be fine, when it’s in space and Clooney gets to do the mechanics of speculative space travel stuff. Then he’s interested.

But when he’s literally the star of the movie… not so much.

Clooney’s the last man on Earth until he finds out he’s not. There’s a forgotten little girl (played by Caoilinn Springall), who’s forecast in the first scene with a jackhammer. There’s no nuance, no subtly. Midnight Sky hangs at least three Chekov rifles on the wall in the first act, with Clooney holding the shot on them about five times too long. Stephen Mirrione’s editing is one of the film’s strongest technicals and the film’s got lots of strong technicals, but the literal physical plot giveaways? Mirrione can’t cut those lingering shots well because they’re bad shots.

So Clooney’s got to warn the last spaceship to turn away from Earth or else they’ll die and now he’s got to bring this kid across the Arctic with him. And there are dangers and so on. There are some great action thriller sequences with it, but since they add up to bupkis with Springall (who suffers the thin writing worst in the cast, which is impressive because there’s so much thin writing), they’re kind of a waste. They’re Clooney padding it out with technical success while it turns out, giving himself this great character study part, he’s got zero interest in acting the role. It’s an incredibly loose performance; Clooney puts no effort into directing Clooney.

And, outside Springall, pretty much no one else either. He just sort of lets them try to figure it out on their own, though Tiffany Boone and Demián Bichir do get some direction and to good effect. They’re on the spaceship with Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, and Kyle Chandler. Oyelowo is the best—and gives the film’s best performance; he’s the captain. Jones is the engineer maybe. She’s pregnant. There’s a bit of pointless tension over introducing the father’s identity, but it’s in the space section so it’s permissible.

Chandler’s the pilot. Chandler gets the least direction. At times you wonder if he literally rejected it. He’s fine though. Jones is fine too. Though with less affability than Chandler.

We’re going to find out—if we can’t guess—Jones is going to be incredibly important only she’s never incredibly important. Quite the opposite. She’s the least interesting character on the spaceship because otherwise the third act twist and turn won’t work.

She also gets all the alien planet scenes to herself and they’re all terrible CGI composites. Like, Martin Ruhe should be reprimanded terrible. Otherwise his photography’s fine. It’s not great. It’s fine.

But the production values are strong, even if Jim Bissell’s production design is 2001 plus Alien plus I think “Doctor Who” plus The Thing plus… you get the idea. There’s not a single original visual in the movie, which is understandable, there have been so many sci-if movies you can’t reinvent the wheel or spinning centrifuge again.

The lighting in the spaceship itself is always good.

The real star ends up being Alexandre Desplat’s music, which seems to be from that better movie Oyelowo is acting in. Seriously, by the third act, it’s incredible Desplat was able to come up with such good music to accompany such insipid narrative.

So.

The Midnight Sky is a technically excellent sci-fi outing—also, the 2049 thing, seriously, if they’d bumped it another thirty to fifty years it’d end up making the movie at least ten percent less silly—but otherwise it’s a well-acted stinker. Though, cut all the Clooney stuff and add some more space stuff and the story’d probably be good.

But with the Clooney stuff? It is not good. It’s not even disappointing, because when Sky crashes, it does so proudly under its own hubris. It has it coming, which is a disservice to the better performances and the quality production.

Clooney maybe should’ve found a better lead for it; someone whose acting he was interested in watching would’ve been a good start.