Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954, Wyott Ordung)

Monster from the Ocean Floor’s a low-budget creature feature; tourist Anne Kimbell becomes convinced there’s an irradiated sea monster off the coast of her Mexican vacation village. Her pseudo-beau, Stuart Wade, is convinced she’s wrong. He’s a marine biologist.

His boss, played by Dick Pinner in an (eventually) absolutely delightful turn, thinks Wade ought to listen to Kimbell.

Now, Kimbell’s only interested in the sea monster to help the people in the village. Monster opens with some narration about the cooperation of these fine vacation villages (seriously). Wade can’t understand why Kimbell would want to help anyone; she responds maybe the world’s in the bad state it’s in because no one ever wants to do anything to help.

Monster will have numerous delights, such as director Ordung pulling double duty as the local witch’s reluctant hitman, constantly messing up his murder attempts, and then the actually good undersea photography, but Kimbell continually turning down Wade for being a bland flake might be the best. Kimbell doesn’t have any character development other than listening to people, caring about them, and painting.

And not falling for Wade’s bull.

Now, Monster has some terrible ADR. It’s so bad it’s unclear which voices belong to Kimbell and Wade. One of Kimbell’s performances (or performers) is better than the other, ditto Wade, though it doesn’t matter much with Wade. He’s a wet towel either way.

Kimbell’s quest for information will first lead her to Jonathan Haze, a white guy in brownface as a Mexican; the accent is something. Haze will get Kimbell looking for Ordung. Ordung’s the village… layabout? It’s unclear. But everyone knows him, including Inez Palange, who needs him to kill Kimbell as a sacrifice to the Monster.

The Monster only started showing up in the late 1940s, directly tied to the Bikini nuclear tests, so how many people have Palange sacrificed over the eight years? Unclear. Is Ordung doing the killing? Unclear.

Probably not because every time he tries to kill Kimbell it goes wrong, usually because of her competence. Monster is an incredibly slow-moving picture—especially for just over an hour—and much of the film is Kimbell listening to people or waiting for people to respond after listening to her. It’s talky, and it’s slow.

But she’s always ready to go when she’s up. What makes it even more fascinating is how matter-of-factly the film presents her agency; sure, it’s not playing Wade as a doofus, but it’s not pretending anyone finds him any more charming than they should. He seems like a jackass, and Kimbell’s too good for him.

There’s an action-packed finale with miniatures, lots of undersea photography—often involving a really cool personal submarine—and (apparently) Kimbell doing her own underwater stunts.

Monster’s sometimes tedious, but it’s a quirky little picture. Ordung unintentionally gets some rather interesting shots, the budgetary limitations leading to some creative success. And Kimbell’s always a likable lead.

It’s surprisingly solid, given all the constraints.

Moon Knight (2022) s01e06 – Gods and Monsters

So, “Moon Knight” finishes considerably worse than expected. It’s got a bad ending, but the ending isn’t anywhere near the biggest problem. It’s got some—well, a—a missed opportunity. They underuse Antonia Salib’s character, who only appears in a couple scenes, one in long shot, but talks to May Calamawy through corpses and then her body, never appearing. It’d have been cool if Salib’s hippo goddess had appeared and Calamawy had gotten to interact with her.

Instead, Calamawy mugs her way through a superhero origin scene, and, wow, is she terrible. Calamawy’s superhero arc in this episode is easily the most successful thing, even though it’s absolutely pointless because director Mohamed Diab is even worse at directing two good guys fighting a bad guy than he is one-to-one. He’s so bad. So, so bad.

And if Diab’s direction weren’t terrible, the episode might squeak by, even with the execrable writing (credited to Jeremy Slater, Peter Cameron, and Sabir Pirzada). Diab manages to make a kaiju fight boring, which is never a good sign. Admittedly, he’s got talking kaiju—F. Murray Abraham’s bird god and his nemesis, a crocodile god, voiced by Saba Mubarak—and the performances are ghastly. Abraham’s not good in “Moon Knight,” he’s particularly bad in this episode, but he’s at least got some personality. Mubarak’s just as bad, with absolutely none. She does get some of the worst writing I’ve sat through in a while; I do need to be fair on that point. It would take one hell of a performance to get through that dialogue. Not even Ethan Hawke can rise above the material like usual this time. He ends up covered in Slater, Cameron, and Pirzada’s excrement, too, dripping off of him, line by line.

But he’s not atrocious. Abraham and Mubarak are atrocious, and, frankly, whoever directed their performances is incompetent. Diab or whoever. They’re voice performances. Have them do it again until it’s not terrible. Hell, hire a random person off the street. Hell, use Siri. Like, anything would be better.

Actually, given Mubarak implies she at least likes Abraham enough for them to be co-rulers of the world, do it funny. Get a couple to do it. Make it a bit. Something. Anything. Anything with some personality. But no. Because it’s “Moon Knight,” and the only personality they want is Oscar Isaac talking to himself in different voices. And even then, not too much, in case he’s accidentally good, and someone wakes up long enough to realize what they’re watching.

The writing’s also incredibly lazy. It’s like they heard the “Indiana Jones doesn’t matter to Raiders’s plot” thing and thought they should ape it. How does the episode resolve the Gordian cliffhanger from last time? It’s fine; Calamawy hangs around Harrow, who takes her through the level.

In a different superhero show or movie, Calamawy might work out with her new superhero thing. She goes from zero to hero immediately; there’s no onboarding process. Less bad writing, mildly competent direction, she might work out. Not here. No, not here.

Isaac and Hawke, who have spent the series posturing like they’re developing characters, eschew such ambitions for the finale. Maybe passively; the writing eschews any acting ambitions for them. It’s worse for Hawke; Isaac’s in the franchise now, so there are limits; Hawke could’ve done something, and instead, he gets a terrible fight scene—there’s no superhero fight like Moon Knight, Hawkgirl (oops, sorry, Isis, oops, sorry, Wing Lady), and Cane Guy. It doesn’t have to be terrible because the characters are silly-looking together. Diab’s just maladroit at directing action scenes.

There are a lot of experienced actors in this show—Abraham, Hawke, Isaac; lots of years, lots of nominations (only one Oscar, but still), lots of experience. Salib acts circles them, and everyone else. With a voice performance, with maybe twenty lines. Hopefully, Hawke got a new swimming pool or something. And Isaac will get to be in New Avengers: Endgame Part II or whatever (not the A-tier, but the backup plan). But, wow, “Moon Knight” sucked.

It’s a shitty show. Like , Moon Knight’s a dull, pointless comic. But it’s a shitty TV show.

Egads, it’s a shitty TV show.

Moon Knight (2022) s01e05 – Asylum

Some of this episode of “Moon Knight” is the best written the series has been. There’s also an all CGI Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility who’s an anthropomorphic hippopotamus and is absolutely adorable and should have her own show. Voiced by Antonia Salib, the character should’ve narrated “Moon Knight” or something. It’d have made the show a lot more entertaining.

So, even though there’s the adorable CGI hippo lady and some compelling writing, it’s also definitionally the least exciting episode of the show so far. As Ethan Hawke brings about the end of the world in the real world, Oscar Isaac—both versions, the angry mercenary, and the hapless Brit—are on Salib’s sail barge in the Egyptian underworld. They’re dead and on their way to the afterlife, which will be Hell if angry Isaac doesn’t tell hapless Isaac all their life secrets via interactive flashbacks. At some point in the episode, everyone decides it’d be better if Salib helps resurrect Isaac so he can save the world—“Moon Knight”’s best punchline at this point would be Isaac being too late but Thanos’s snap foiling Hawke’s plan.

How will Isaac get back to life? Unclear because he’s still got to go through his flashbacks. Instead, hippo goddess Salib is going to get a message to May Calamawy (who does not appear in this episode) in the real world and tell her to free F. Murray Abraham from his statue prison, which would require her to break into the Great Pyramid of Giza and defeat the Egyptian gods in doing so. Abraham will then be able to resurrect Isaac or something. This part of the episode is not the better-written part of the episode. Quite the opposite. Especially since they rush through it because they know it’s hurried nonsense.

“Moon Knight”’s also only got one episode left, which means… whatever happens when Isaac saves the Marvel Cinematic Universe next time isn’t going to be elaborate. There’s just not time for it. The only thing it’s guaranteed to be is disappointing. Because even the hippo lady ends up being disappointing. She’s not in the episode anywhere near enough, and the opening suggests she’s a bait and switch, something to get you back for yet another tedious entry. Because while Isaac and Isaac are journeying through flashbacks to reveal the truth, one or the other Isaac is also “leaping” to the delusion where Hawke’s a psychiatrist trying to help Isaac with his problems and not a C-tier Marvel villain.

Now, Hawke’s still great, and his getup this episode, which hapless Isaac describes as “Ned Flanders,” also reminds of Stan Lee. Hawke should do a Stan Lee biopic. And Isaac’s also great. At times. That “series best” writing is just giving Isaac enough to act off, especially since he Parent Traps it through most of the episode; sometimes, there are two great Isaac performances at once. Not often; usually, it’s one or the other (for some reason, hapless Isaac’s a little taller than angry Isaac), but sometimes.

The flashbacks focus on Isaac’s abusive mother, Fernanda Andrade (sort of), and she’s a one-note movie harpy mom. Dad Rey Lucas makes more of an impression, but only because he’s costumed to look like Rick Moranis, which would’ve been an excellent casting get. Pointless, but at least amusing.

Abraham, who sat out last episode, has one scene this time, and he’s terrible as always. His casting is another one of “Moon Knight”’s bewildering questions, along with how’d such a boring show get greenlighted and why’d they hire Mohamed Diab to direct any of it. At least there aren’t any fight scenes for Diab to screw up, but still. It’s a profoundly pointless production.

Moon Knight (2022) s01e04 – The Tomb

The Tomb opens with a surprisingly well-directed suspense sequence as May Calamawy tries to escape the bad guys. It’s even more surprising because Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are directing this episode, and they were terrible on the last one they did. Eventually, the direction becomes a lot more middling—eventually being about five minutes—but for a while, at least “Moon Knight”’s disappointing in one fewer quadrant.

And this episode might be the best. There aren’t any lousy fight sequences, mainly because Oscar Isaac no longer has F. Murray Abraham possessing him, so he can’t do costume stuff. The moments where Calamawy and Isaac moon at each other (no pun) are more effective than I was expecting, especially since Calamawy’s got the hots for hapless Isaac’s personality, even though she married badass Isaac. We get some backstory on their courtship and badass Isaac’s motivations for seeking her out. It’s pat, forced material, whereas hapless Isaac infatuated with his literal alter ego’s wife is at least quirky.

Albeit boring, because it’s still “Moon Knight,” after all.

The episode’s about Isaac and Calamawy getting to the—you guessed it–Tomb level in this video game of a television show. There are actually not a lot of video game action sequences, except the one where Calamawy’s got to hop across ledges. There’s actually a lot of great Egyptian tomb production detail. The NPCs in this episode are zombies? We don’t get to see them, but they’re zombie Egyptian priests set to turn anyone living into a mummy, except Ethan Hawke and his mercenaries. It’s unclear if Hawke knows about the zombies and why they don’t bother him and his gang.

Hawke’s got a great villain monologue. The performance anyway. The content’s not good at all and leads to a pointless (“Moon Knight”’s keyword) scene between Calamawy and Isaac. But at the very least, Hawke’s reliable. Is he enough to make “Moon Knight” worth watching? Heck, no. But he’s excellent.

However, the show finally figures out a way to connect with the audience. It just has to pretend it’s something it hasn’t been in four and a half episodes, shucking everything it’s done until now to do a Twelve Monkeys rip-off. Even if the episode didn’t end on two strong points, one because of Parent Trap-like twins’ banter, one because of a sight gag, the Twelve Monkeys stuff would be the best the show’s ever been.

When the best you’ve ever been is the least you’ve ever been like yourself….

Also, there’s a really brief sequence of F. Murray Abraham’s statue being put in the prison with the other Egyptian gods turned into statues, and there are a whole lot of them. The Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Ancient Egypt looks very packed. Maybe they can do a Thor crossover, after all.

At this point, I’m guessing the only actual MCU connection will come in the last episode’s end credits, some giant shoehorn.

The next episode should at least be more engaging than usual. Unless they don’t deliver on their promises, which seems more likely the more I think about it, so I’ll stop.

Moon Knight (2022) s01e03 – The Friendly Type

For about five minutes, this episode’s the best episode of “Moon Knight.” It immediately goes downhill and even when it’s the best “Moon Knight,” it’s still rocky, but for a moment it clicks. The episode with May Calamawy getting a fake passport so she can go to Egypt—Oscar Isaac went without her last episode—and Calamawy's got a huge exposition dump with the forger, a “how did you not stunt cast this part” Barbara Rosenblat. Turns out Calamawy's dad was an Indiana Jones-type and now she steals artifacts away from European thieves and returns them to their original owners.

Maybe. It gets shockingly more specific about Western museums robbing other countries of their physical heritage than I thought the Disney Channel would allow. Though there’s also a dead kid joke in the episode so maybe no one’s paying attention, which also would explain how this series got put into production. Clearly no one cares, otherwise they wouldn’t have hired F. Murray Abraham (who, this episode reveals, isn’t miscast, just giving a lousy performance), and they would’ve gotten directors who didn’t make Calamawy and Isaac such a charisma vacuum.

Also someone might have noticed this episode’s entirely pointless. In a show about a pointless character—unless you want some cool art, which doesn’t even translate to live action—doing pointless things, they somehow managed to waste an entire hour. The episode’s all about Isaac not being able to find Ethan Hawke’s dig site. He tries interrogating local toughs, which gets problematic whenever he sees himself in a mirror and the hapless, nice guy version of Isaac tells the mean guy, mercenary version to stop.

Director Mohamed Diab did the first episode of the series, which had Isaac entirely in hapless mode, so he’s had some experience directing it but apparently he forgot and now it’s just terrible. Hapless Isaac is simultaneously suicidally naive, unintentionally irresistible (to Calamawy, at least), and an expert movie Egyptologist. Movie Egyptologist meaning whenever they get to one of the puzzles in the level, hapless Isaac knows exactly how to solve it, while hard-living professional mercenary mean Isaac can’t do a single thing right.

The episode’s got three writers—Beau DeMayo, Peter Cameron, Sabir Pirzada (all new to the series)—and somehow none of them are any good. At least not on “Moon Knight,” because no one writes good Moon Knight. Well-written Moon Knight is not a thing in comics and now, obviously, not in TV either.

The episode also reveals the Egyptian gods are hanging around Earth watching human events unfold without interfering—kind of Eternal of them–and have world-wide teleportation powers. They do not, however, have access to satellites or drones. The whole episode’s about trying to find Hawke’s hundred person dig site, remember. And there’s no way to find it without someone sharing the pin in Google Maps.

It’s insipid.

There’s finally mention of the MCU, but not about Thanos, superheroes, Thor (do the Asgardian alien gods hang out with the presumably alien Egyptian gods). No, instead they mention a location from “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” giving Calamawy a bunch of incongruous backstory.

The episode also introduces Gaspard Ulliel as a Egypto-phile Bond villain who doesn’t know Ancient Egypt stuff is magic, actually, but finally finds out. Ulliel does as well as can be expected with bad writing and bad direction.

Sadly, this episode doesn’t have any great Hawke “rising above the material” scenes. It has him not drowning in it, but nothing more.

At least it’s only six episodes.

Moon Knight (2022) s01e02 – Summon the Suit

For what felt like an eternity–Summon the Suit is forty-five boring but not poorly paced minutes—it seemed like someone making “Moon Knight” was doing it as a satire. A satire would cover Oscar Isaac’s silly (but not bad) lead performance; it would cover F. Murray Abraham’s comically obnoxious Egyptian god ghost, who Isaac finds out is basically possessing him. Villain Ethan Hawke, who’s stunningly good, is playing the part like it’s a satire; maybe it just seems like if they were trying for it, they could keep up with Hawke.

They don’t, obviously, because it’s not a satire. Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead aren’t thoughtful enough to even hint at it. Eventually, the script, credited to Michael Kastelein, clarifies we’re supposed to be taking it seriously.

Too bad.

This episode has Isaac finding out about his other personality. They talk to each other through mirrors. Isaac also meets his alter ego’s estranged wife, May Calamawy, who is not a girlfriend’s head in a refrigerator (yet). However, I still doubt she will have a conversation with another woman, much less pass Bechdel. Calamawy is okay. As an actress, she’s sympathetic because she’s got a terrible part. It doesn’t make her performance any better, but she’s not a glaring misfire like Abraham.

Seriously, they should’ve just gotten Tom Hardy to Venom voice him. It’d be funnier (and Abraham’s played for jokes anyway). The CGI on the Egyptian god ghost is also wanting. This episode has him talking to Isaac, and it looks underdeveloped. They needed another pitch.

So Isaac Prime is the hapless British museum employee who thinks he has a mom who loves him. Mirror Isaac is an American mercenary turned costumed adventurer. Very much not Egyptian Abraham can grant them superpowers and the neat suit. There’s an action scene with Moon Knight fighting a demonic jackal (and he’s the only one who can see it), and it basically looks like a white-suited Batman movie, which was always the point. Bully for them.

Unfortunately, outside the middling Moon Knight action sequence, Benson and Moorhead’s action direction is less exciting than watching someone else watch someone else play a video game. Hapless Isaac doesn’t get to do action, so he just watches Calamawy do it. And since the show really doesn’t care at all about Calamawy’s experience of events, it’s all dramatically inert.

The way they contrive her into the episode isn’t even sixteenth-assed.

There are also zero Marvel Cinematic Universe connections, with Hapless Isaac seemingly unaware of superheroes. When he talks about something being exciting, he says it’s like MI-6 or Area 51, not, you know, a Marvel Earth where a bunch of space aliens invaded and temporarily zapped half the population. Or maybe it’s set in the past. Who cares.

Hawke nearly makes the show worth watching, and Isaac does have some fine acting moments (often opposite Hawke, which helps things). But “Moon Knight” is an exceptionally pointless, entirely pedestrian vehicle.

Moon Knight (2022) s01e01 – The Goldfish Problem

There are no Marvel Cinematic Universe references in the first episode of “Moon Knight.” No mention of the Snap, no Steve Rogers musicals, no explanation why the Eternals wouldn’t have mentioned the Egyptian Gods being real, actually, and it’s kind of okay. Except there are so many good comics-related jabs to take, I’ve got to get them out of my system. First and foremost, it turns out “Moon Knight: The TV Show” is even less compelling than a Moon Knight comic book, which is incredible. Despite often having great artists, Moon Knight comics are infamously stinkers.

Second… well, second isn’t bad. On the show, one of Moon Knight’s alter egos is named Steven Grant. The main one. So, “Moon Knight” is a multiple personality black action-comedy. The character’s from the seventies and eighties when multiple personality disorder was still a thing, so whether or not it’s actually ableist is a whole other question and not the point of the Steven Grant thing. Steven Grant is the name of a comic writer. Not sure if he did Moon Knight, not sure if the name’s coincidental, but it’s potentially neat.

Third comics-related thing… the passive misogyny. There are no positive female characters in the episode; there is either dismissive like love interest gone wrong, Saffron Hocking, or winged harpy boss, Lucy Thackeray. It’s a big swing from a Marvel show like they’re promising to hit that audience who really hates having strong female characters or even female characters around. I don’t just bet “Moon Knight” never passes Bechdel; I’ll bet they never even have two women together onscreen talking. One of the bits involves lead Oscar Isaac leaving voice messages for never seen Mom, who also never answers his calls. It’s a cruel joke since it turns out Isaac’s just the dope who the Egyptian god lets drive the body when they don’t need it. But it’s also possible Mom’s head’s in a fridge somewhere.

Finally, the Egyptian god. Apparently, it’s F. Murray Abraham, who’s not very distinctive. He incorporeally speaks to Isaac, which makes it feel like a desperate Venom riff.

So is there anything good about it?

I mean, Isaac’s okay. Outside the setup—he’s a chronic sleepwalker who has to tie himself up at night (only he’s not, he just doesn’t remember he’s also a super anti-hero or whatever), and so he’s late to work where people are all shitty to him—and the one action sequence, which is a James Bond car chase thing but with lousy CGI, most of Isaac’s scenes are with himself. And Isaac’s compelling. He does panic and fear well. The sequence where a monster mummy dog is chasing him through a museum and Isaac gets more and more scared is… better than a lot of the episode.

But the more impressive performance is Ethan Hawke as the bad guy. He’s trying to bring back some Egyptian goddess, and Isaac’s fouled up the plan. Only he doesn’t remember because it’s his other selves who did it.

Hawke’s really good with a nothing villain part. He oddly makes the show seem more legit than Isaac.

Mohamed Diab’s direction is middling, even for a middling Marvel outing. Credited to Jeremy Slater, the script seems like it was written either for Ryan Reynolds or, I don’t know, Dana Carvey back in the nineties as a pure comedy vehicle.

Nice cinematography from Gregory Middleton is the only technical standout.

If there’s a way to crack Moon Knight, the show indeed hasn’t found it. Thank goodness it’s only six episodes. Though, based on this first one, it’s going to be a slog.

Monster from Green Hell (1957, Kenneth G. Crane)

Monster from Green Hell is impressively boring. Despite running a theoretically spry seventy minutes, the film Hell’s a slog from minute five.

The film opens with unlikely scientist Jim Davis and sidekick Robert Griffin sending rockets into space to test cosmic rays on animals. Their launch site? A very recognizable, very wanting composite still of Monument Valley. One of their test rockets goes off course and crashes in Central Africa. Despite Davis thinking they should worry about that sort of thing, no one cares; not Griffin, not the government, just blandly heroic Davis.

Now, if Hell weren’t just endless long shots of people walking, and the script was talkier, it might achieve some camp value thanks to Davis. He’s profoundly miscast but entirely straight-faced about it. Griffin at least seems like he could be a scientist sidekick. Davis deserves at least a prize for delivering some of the science exposition; incredibly, he’s able to clomp through it, always with his Midwest cowboy drawl.

Unfortunately, Hell isn’t about the talking; it’s about the walking.

The on-location Africa footage is recycled from 1939’s Stanley and Livingstone, which dramatizes events from 1871. In other words, Hell isn’t just colonial; it’s disturbingly colonial. For example, when Davis and Griffin are trekking across Africa, Arab guide Eduardo Ciannelli carries a whip to keep the porters in line. It’s a lot. Especially since the movie’s already established its token credited Black guy, Joel Fluellen, and he’s more modernly presented.

The movie’s first half is Davis and Griffin’s trip across Africa to Fluellen’s village. The audience already knows they’ve run into a monster from the rocket crash; it hangs out in Green Hell and is stampeding the animals, causing turmoil all over the continent. The new apex predator has arrived, and it’s a giant wasp. Or at least it’s head and pincers because they couldn’t afford much more. They certainly couldn’t afford for it to fly.

The special effects on the giant wasp are not great. They’re gross, which helps in effectiveness, I suppose, but Monster’s wasp is a lousy giant fifties sci-fi monster, as it turns out. Primarily because of budget, partially because of writing, nothing is interesting about it. Could a good director have made it work? Probably. Director Crane has a grand total of one decent shot in the entire picture.

Also in Fluellen’s village are Christian missionary doctor Vladimir Sokoloff and his daughter, Barbara Turner. Turner looks miserable the entire time like she agreed to do the movie but didn’t think it’d ever get made. Sokoloff’s terrible and not in a fun way. When they’re around, Monster slogs even more than usual.

The only thing the film’s got going for it is Ray Flin’s surprisingly good black and white photography. In addition, there’s some stop motion animation, which is more creative than the composites the film usually uses for the menacing Monster. But it’s not, you know, good stop motion.

Monster from Green Hell is a bewildering, boring B. However, it’s strange enough you can imagine the behind-the-scenes story is a far better one than the finished product.

The Monuments Men (2014, George Clooney)

The Monuments Men is cute. It probably shouldn’t be cute, or if it should be cute, it should somehow be more cute. But it’s fairly fubar. The film’s got very little dramatic momentum since it can never find a tone and also because its scenes try to skip over the drama or do whatever it can to avoid it. It’s competent. It’s occasionally well-acted. Some aspects of the writing are okay though maybe not. It’s not an incompetent script when it comes to the scenes, the film’s just edited in such a way any scene with attempts at character development completely flop because no one has a character.

The film is about the Allied efforts to recover fine art after the Germans stole it during World War II. George Clooney—in addition to directing, co-producing, and co-adapting—is the ostensible lead. He’s the one who presents the idea at the beginning, then he ceases to have any dramatic relevance. But basically he puts a team together and they try to save Art History 101 from Hitler.

The team is a reasonably eclectic bunch of recognizable actors, including Matt Damon to ensure some box office, Bill Murray because Clooney (very wrongly) thinks Murray can make something out of a nothing role, John Goodman, Bob Babalan, Jean Dujardin as the French guy, and Hugh Bonneville as the British guy.

Performance wise… Bonneville’s the easy winner, then probably Cate Blanchett as Damon’s contact in Belgium, then Damon, then Dujardin, then… Goodman? Murray and Babalan are supposed to be beginning an unlikely but beautiful friendship and have zero chemistry together. Like, there are some okay sight gags with Babalan but… they’re sight gags. They’re way too easy and Babalan is clearly not trying. Murray seems actively bored (it’s kind of hard to blame him) but Babalan’s a close second for disinterest.

Everyone else tries. Though Clooney’s phoning it in, which is a big problem since he’s occasionally narrating and gets some monologues you’d think he’d want to do at least another take on, both as an actor and the director.

Dimitri Leonidas plays their translator. He’s good.

The film pairs off most of the cast—Damon and Blanchett, Goodman and Dujardin, Murray and Babalan—for a bunch of adventures, sometimes involving recovering the art, sometimes bad, lengthy jokes, sometimes danger.

But it’s all kind of trite, something Alexandre Desplat’s score annoyingly reminds every few seconds. With some exception, the entire cast is interchangeable. Their specific art history jobs don’t even matter.

And while it’s obviously based on true events… only one of the characters hasn’t had his name changed so it’s not based on true events enough anyone would want to be accountable for historical accuracy so Clooney and co-writer, co-producer, and cameo co-star Grant Heslov really should’ve found some drama in the film.

Though Clooney’s missing a lot. Like any sense of scale. In addition to being incapable of directing the ensemble cast.

Monuments Men seems like a project where everyone decided it was “good enough” at some point without ever finding “good.” The plotting—you can’t even say the script because it’s hard to believe cause and effect escaped Clooney and Heslov so something must’ve gone wrong later—but the plotting is meandering, pedestrian, and amateurish.

A good score could’ve probably held it together, but Desplat’s score is not good at all and it works against the film.

If it weren’t for Clooney being such a multi-hyphenate on the project, you’d think he was forced to do it under contract.

And that end cameo is a big fail. It’s “cute” but pointless and ineffective. Just like the movie.

The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever (2013, Mark Robertson)

The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever is about a New Jersey amusement park called Action Park, which opened in the late seventies and ran for twenty dangerous years—there were apparently six deaths and countless injuries (enabled by the owner running some kind of insurance scheme). The video has a mix of original commercials, interviews, and some recreations. Not sure where the recreations were shot (the park reopened under a different name, with most of the original rides gone, and an emphasis on not maiming customers).

Is it interesting? Not really, no. The filmmakers seemingly picked most of their interviewees for availability, not having any actual salient information about the park. For instance, not a single person interviewed seems to have ever been injured in the park, which is great for them and all, but they've got a particular kind of bias. They braved the park and survived.

Unlike the people who died.

It's unclear if they count the drownings in the six deaths, because when they're interviewing the current owner (and son of original owner), he makes it sound like there were a lot of drownings.

Concerning since he was a lifeguard at the time at the park.

Though apparently the park was just a good place for teenagers to get drunk and bully each other without any adults caring. Because teenagers ran all the rides, even though they weren't old enough.

Because cool. It made men out of all of them. Men who don't think there's anything wrong with rules and laws in place to prevent people from dying at amusement parks. Even skipping all the toxic masculinity stuff and even the fact it turns out to be a bad promotional video for the reopened park… there's also the incurious nature of the filmmakers. They got a former park manager on the phone; he and a law professor provide the more negative side of the park, but everyone else is a cheerleader for it. Yet, again, none of these people had any tragedies. So why not find someone who actually had a negative experience. Since those involved broken limbs and, you know, death.

Instead, there's the owner saying people need to get over themselves and embrace the nostalgia for getting drunk and spitting on people at the park.

It's a weird, limited, and draggy short.