2021年3月23日 星期二

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League


I have no real argument to make here, so I'll just list my thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League below.

1. It's definitely better than Joss Whedon's version.  The plot makes more sense, the characters are better developed, and the story unfolds at the right speed.  Could Justice League have been shown as two movies?  I don't think so.  Sure, that battle in the sewers takes place around the two hour mark, but ending the story there would have felt weird.

2. Darkseid could have been a cool villain.  Too bad we'll never see him again.  At least not that version.  I like how the both he and Desaad looked in the movie, even though he comes off feeling a little too similar to Thanos.  This isn't a criticism of Justice League, since it could be argued that Thanos is something of a Darkseid clone.

3. Man, did Joss Whedon ever butcher that ending.  In the Snyder Cut the Flash isn't racing around trying to save some random family in harm's way, Superman and Steppenwolf never really fight, and both the Flash and Cyborg have a lot more to do.  I thought the "Unity" idea was kind of silly, but even so the ending is MUCH better than what Whedon did.

4. The Flash is less irritating in the Snyder Cut, less deliberately quirky.  The bit where he saves Iris on the road was my favorite part of the movie.  I still don't like the costume, I'm still not an Ezra Miller fan, but the character makes more sense now.

5. For that matter, Cyborg has more reason for being in this movie.  More of his backstory is included, and he's central to the story.  Placing his origin right after Flash's rescue of Iris felt a bit redundant, and his father's explanation of his abilities wasn't necessary, but Cyborg had more of a personality in Snyder's version.

6. Wonder Woman straight killed that dude in the beginning.  Not sure if she needed to do that or not.  Oh well, water under the bridge.

7. Batman's motivation for forming the League?  I get it now.  In Whedon's version he just seemed like some dude wandering around and stumbling into things.  His comments on faith and owing a debt to Superman made sense after BvS.


8. Superman?  I still feel like Justice League failed to use Superman properly.  He's the ace up the League's sleeve, but it's hard to get any feeling of him as a person, or of the emotions he's going through.  I get that he has amnesia for part of the movie, but it doesn't feel like he has much reason for being there.

9. Maybe too much Paradise Island?  The war that took place in ancient times looked cool, but all that narration distracted from the main thrust of the movie.  As a viewer you want this movie to get going, and there are way too many scenes on Paradise Island.

10. Marian Manhunter didn't need to be in this movie.  Including him felt like checking off a box.

11. Removing Aquaman from Justice League in favor of Shazam/Captain Marvel might have been fun.  What does Aquaman actually do in this movie anyway?  What does he contribute?  Seeing Shazam's reactions to what was going on would have been more entertaining.

12. Steppenwolf looks a lot better in this version.  The cgi used in Whedon's cut was terrible.

13. Jared Leto could have been a great Joker.  All this talk about him ruining the character is nonsense.  The guy has been excellent in so many films.  We'll never know what happened with Suicide Squad, and executives at Warner Bros. are already denying that an Ayer Cut exists, but blaming Leto for that hot mess of a movie is dumb.


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2021年3月22日 星期一

Some Other Movies From 2001 (2)


For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2001 entry.

The following things happened in 2001:
  • America Online and Time Warner merged to form AOL Time Warner.
  • Wikipedia was launched.
  • The U.S. and Britain bombed Iraq repeatedly.
  • Pop singer Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash.
  • 2,977 people died as a consequence of the September 11 attacks.
  • The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in response to 9/11.
  • The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was established.
  • Apple introduced the iPod.
  • The People's Republic of China joined the World Trade Organization.
Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix. 

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.


Some Good Ones

1. Save the Last Dance

Julia Stiles - an actress I often find irritating - stars as a white high school student dropped into the ghetto after the death of her mother.  My chief complaint is that the high school students act way more mature than would be the case, and the "gangsta friend's" subplot is one of the most predictable things ever.  As early 2000s dance movies go, I think 2003's Honey works better.

Fun Fact: Thomas Carter, the director of this movie, also directed Coach Carter, a really underrated film.

2. Don't Say a Word

Michael Douglas stars as a psychiatrist extorted into revealing a patient's secret.  Sean Bean is in it... and guess how the movie ends for him?  Not well, my friends, not well.  It's professionally made but it seems to be missing something.

Sad Fact: This movie hit theaters right after 9/11.  Shots of the World Trade Center were removed from it just before its release.

3. Joy Ride

Paul Walker and Steve Zahn prank call the wrong guy on a CB radio.  The weird thing about this movie is that it feels like it's about to end halfway through.  Then, for whatever reason, they continue their drive without notifying the police, and of course the crazy truck driver shows up again.

4. The Score

It's interesting to see director Frank Oz attempt something darker, but this movie really falls apart toward the end.  It was Marlon Brando's last film, and seeing Brando (the elder Corleone) and De Niro (the younger Corleone) onscreen together is cool.  Edward Norton pulls up the rear as a newcomer with an idea for a new heist. 

The Score gets bogged down in its own details.  The first half hour is solid, but then you start to wonder why we need to know that much about the access codes, and why so many shots of De Niro's character mapping the sewer system were necessary.  This, and the way De Niro tricks Norton's character at the end is just stupid.  Why wouldn't he have checked the bag?  Why would he have thought De Niro was so easy to outsmart?

To make matters even worse, that's the shittiest happy ending ever.  At some point a person as smart as Norton's character is going to find De Niro and exact revenge, or he's going to get caught and tell everyone that De Niro has the scepter.  And where's Marlon Brando in that ending?  Are we supposed to assume that he got his money, too?


This movie needed more Don Cheadle.  Joseph Gordon Levitt is good in this look at life in a juvenile detention facility, but yeah, more Don Cheadle would have helped.  Definitely worth watching, but given that Scum explored similar subject matter with more depth I'd describe this movie as simply "Good" rather than "Excellent."

Fun Fact: That argument about superheroes is amusing in retrospect.  Three of the people engaged in it would go on to play superhero sidekicks later on.  Don Cheadle would play War Machine in Iron Man 2, Joseph Gordon Levitt would play Robin in The Dark Knight Rises and Elden Henson would play Foggy Nelson in Netflix's Daredevil.


Pretentious Enough for Ya?

1. Waking Life

A young guy walks around listening to various people lecture on the nature of the self, human experience and perception.  Oh, and there's a lot of stuff about dreams.  I was not at all surprised to learn that Richard Linklater directed it.

And no, I'm not trying to dismiss Waking Life.  It's worth seeing.  I loved the soundtrack, and it scores serious points for referencing Philip K. Dick's V.A.L.I.S. trilogy.  Linklater would go on to direct the film adaptation of A Scanner Darkly five years later, and his affinity for PKD-style paranoia is also evident in this movie.

2. Mulholland Drive

Hey, it's Laura Herring, last seen in 1990's The Forbidden Dance!

Besides her, Naomi Watts is in this one starring as... an aspiring actress?  A jilted lover?  A figment of someone's imagination?  I figment of her own imagination?  David Lynch directed, so you can probably guess how deliberately stupefying it all is.  

At least it's not long.  That's something, right?


Some Bad Ones

1. Thir13en Ghosts

All that money spent on makeup and other effects, only to squander it on an uninteresting story populated by uninteresting characters. Tony Shalhoub stars as a father of two inheriting a haunted house, with Matthew "Scooby-Doo" Lillard as a psychic.

2. Original Sin

I'd like to find the director of this film and tell him to go fuck himself.  What a nonsensical two hours.  I get why Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas purchased a ticket for this train wreck, but damn, this movie is full of the most anachronistic behavior ever captured on film.  Would people at that time have done half those things?  Made those kinds of choices?  Hell no.

Depressing Fact: Original Sin is a remake of the Francois Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid.  I'm sure the original of this Original Sin is much better.

3. Spy Game

Yawn.  Robert Redford making phone calls.  Robert Redford sending faxes.  Even with Tony Scott directing it's not exactly a thrill ride.  This might have been a good movie if they'd focused on Brad Pitt's character instead of Redford's - there's a moral ambiguity to his character's story  that's more compelling. - but as it is the framing narrative adds nothing to the movie.

Fun Fact: Brad Pitt passed on The Bourne Identity to do this film.  Good news for Matt Damon?

4. The One

Evil, multiverse-hopping Jet Li versus non-evil, non-multiverse hopping Jet Li.  It's silly fun in the beginning, but by the end it makes almost no sense.  Hong Kong director James Wong would go on to direct Dragonball: Evolution, so you know what you're in for here.

5. Evolution

When you think about it this Ivan Reitman-directed comedy isn't all that different from Ghostbusters.  Bumbling scientists in an out-of-the-way college stumble on a new scientific phenomena, tests are conducted, the government intervenes, and bumbling scientists are called in to set things right.  It's just that Evolution, unlike Ghostbusters, just isn't funny.  David Duchovny and Orlando Jones do their best with the script, but even so most of the jokes fail to land.

6. Enemy at the Gates

Jude Law and Ed Harris star as two snipers hunting each other through the ruins of Stalingrad.  This movie reminds you how much better genuinely Russian or German movies on similar subject matter are.  And even if Stalingrad and Come and See didn't exist, there's also movies like Saving Private Ryan, which do a much better job of framing a large conflict in human terms.


So Bad It's Not Bad


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with murderous Satanists standing in for murderous rednecks.  And let me tell you that nothing - and I mean nothing - demonstrates your commitment to the craft of acting like mouthing some of the lines in this movie.  "We're going to have a fucking great time or a great time fucking!"  And this isn't to imply that anyone in this movie a great actor or actress - they're atrocious - but I admire their commitment nonetheless.

"Die in hell, motherfuckers!!"  Wouldn't that be a desirable outcome for Satanists?


Not Sure What's Going On Here, Not Sure If I Care

1. Swordfish

Studio Executive: "Hey, this script is terrible.  How can we keep people from noticing?"

Yes Man: "Uh, how about casting John Travolta as the bad guy?  And rising star Hugh Jackman as the hero?  And we'll have Halle Berry running around half naked for most of the movie?  Oh, and don't forget explosions!  We'll have a lot of those!"

Studio Executive: "Works for me."

...and to add insult to injury, this movie has the audacity to compare itself to Dog Day Afternoon, and to then to imply that it's somehow better for having a morally ambiguous conclusion.  No, John Travolta.  I don't think so.

Fun Fact: Both Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry appeared in this movie between X-Men and X2.  Berry would win the Oscar for Best Actress the same year for Monster's Ball.

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2021年3月18日 星期四

The Boys (I Know I'm Late to the Party)


Those who've been reading this blog for a while might think I've given up on the superhero TV shows.  This is not the case, though I have to admit that I gave up on the Marvel Netflix shows after The Defenders.  The CW stuff never did much for me.

I did, however, recently watch the first two episodes of Superman and Lois.  The verdict?  I thought they were terrible.  Bad, bad dialogue.  Good production values, a good cast, maybe a decent story, but really bad dialogue.  Sorry to offend fans of the show, but I wasn't into it.

But maybe part of my problem was that I'd already seen the first season of The Boys long before.  After you've seen Homelander murder people it's hard to see Superman the same way.  I (fucking) loved The Boys, whereas Superman and Lois suffered by comparison.

To be more specific, I watched the first season of The Boys not long after it came out.  I was unfamiliar with Garth Ennis' comic series, though I'd read a lot of his work on Preacher, Crossed and various Punisher books.  No, what brought me to The Boys was its similarity to a much older comic series, Marshal Law.

In case you're unfamiliar with Marshal Law, and to be fair, many people aren't familiar, he appeared in the late 80s under Marvel's Epic Comics imprint.  He was a super-powered policeman operating in a world full of deranged superheroes, in the wake of a Vietnam War-style conflict overseas.  The series was written by Pat Mills and drawn by Kevin O'Neill.  Both writer and artist were British, and they used Marshal Law as a way of poking fun at American superheroes.

Marshal Law didn't last long at Epic.  Mills and O'Neill later took the character to other comic book companies, but he nevertheless remained an obscure character, known only to those versed in the adult-oriented comics from the late 80s and early 90s.


Garth Ennis, by the way, was aware of Marshal Law before he began writing The Boys.  But where Marshal Law focuses on a single character, The Boys is centered around a group of anti-supe "terrorists."  Where Marshal Law was full of pyrotechnics and adrenaline-fueled sex and gore, The Boys has more of a story.  I will always love Marshal Law, but it would have been hard to make a movie or TV show out of the original series.

What the Amazon Prime series adds to this mix is some great writing handed over to some great actors.  Jack Quaid (son of Dennis), Karl Urban, Karen Fukuhara and most of all Antony Starr, a kiwi actor who absolutely kills it as Homelander.  I don't know where they found half of these people, but they were well chosen.  Karl Urban was the only obvious choice, given his work on Dredd.

I think the first season of The Boys has the best moments, and the second season tells a better story.  That scene in the first season wherein Homelander is encouraged to breastfeed, the laser-shooting baby in the hospital, and even the way Jack's Quaid's girlfriend is killed in the first episode are all great.  I don't know which of these moments were present in the comics, but even if they were present it's not a given that they'd have the same kind of impact in the same kind of way.

The second season?  Man, there are so many twists and turns there.  Stormfront and her backstory are front and center in the second season, and I veered between hating her and feeling sorry for her.  The ending of this season, with the beatdown and the way a major character dies really sets it above the first season.  But both seasons are great in different ways.  

Going from this kind of show to Superman and Lois isn't easy.  Wandavision?  Maybe, but Wandavision also isn't on the same level as The Boys.  I could still watch and enjoy Wandavision, whereas a helping of Superman and Lois just made me wonder why nobody says "fuck" in that universe, and how such wholesome people (even their "troubled" sons) can stand to be around one another.  I get that the caustic humor present in The Boys puts a lot of people - especially religious people - off, but once you've gotten into The Boys it's hard to take Superman and Lois all that seriously.

I will say that doing a spinoff of The Boys is worrying.  This kind of move usually indicates a loss of quality.  But I'm looking forward to the third season of The Boys just the same.  Between now and then I suppose I'll have to tide myself over with The Snyder Cut, provided of course that The Boys hasn't corrupted that for me as well.


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P.S. Here's a thought: what's preventing anyone from including Marshal Law in The Boys universe?  He's now owned by his creators, and all they need to is sign off on the inclusion.

2021年3月3日 星期三

"Bleak House" by Charles Dickens (1852)


 "'I mean a man whose hopes or aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all of it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other.  All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is the kind I care for.'"

Charles Dickens was the author of Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities.  I think it's fair to say he was the greatest author of his generation, even if he had some stiff competition from other American, British and Russian authors of the time.  For all the excellent authors of the early and late 1800s, its probably Dickens who casts the greatest shadow over Western thought and culture.

Bleak House is probably the last of his books I'll read for some time.  Why?  Because I've read all of the other famous ones.  His bibliography is huge, and there are some odds and ends I haven't read, but I'm not likely to come across any of those other, far more obscure works any time soon.

In Bleak House Esther Summerson, a young woman of unknown origins, is released into the care of her guardian, a Mr. Jarndyce.  From that point on her fortunes become increasingly entwined within an ongoing inheritance dispute within the Court of Chancery.  Lurking in the background of her story is the highborn Lady Dedlock, a woman with whom she shares a mysterious relation.

I could never fault Dickens in terms of style, so let me just say that Bleak House is Dickens at his most densely descriptive.  He tells this story with his characteristic lack of moral ambiguity, but given the literature of the time I can't fault him for that.  In the mid-1800s very few people were ready to venture into those waters.

For the most part I found Bleak House very hard to get through, and this is coming from someone who's thoroughly enjoyed all of his other famous books.  My main complaint is that so very little happens actually happens in this story, and it's extraordinary length becomes a real obstacle after a certain point.  I liked the ending, and there was a certain ambiguity to this ending that shows Dickens' skill as a writer, but it seemed like an eternity passed between the opening and closing chapters of this novel.

For those unfamiliar with Dickens, I'd recommend starting with one of his shorter books.  Oliver Twist, for example, or The Christmas Books.  Books like Bleak House are best approached when you've finally come to a conclusion about an author, and when you've finally decided that he or she deserves the title "great."

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Some Other Movies From 2000 (2)


For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2000 entry.

The following things happened in 2000:
  • The world didn't end.
  • Some, not all, computers crashed.
  • The Dot-com bubble burst.
  • The PlayStation 2 was released in Japan.
  • Microsoft was found guilty of having violated antitrust laws in the United States.
  • India's population reached 1 billion.
  • George W. Bush was elected President of the United States.
Underlined films were viewed on Netflix.

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.


Excellent

1. Cast Away

In case you've been living under a rock - or were stranded on a tropical island - in Cast Away Tom Hanks survives on a coral atoll after a plane crash.  I can't say I've loved everything director Robert Zemeckis has done, but two decades after seeing this in the theater I enjoyed Cast Away just as much.  The story is captivating and Hanks made the role his own.

Fun Fact 1: This movie was made over the course of two years to allow for Hanks' weight gain and weight loss.

2. Boiler Room

The Wolf of Wall Street long before The Wolf of Wall Street.  Ben Affleck's opening pitch has been doing the rounds on YouTube, but the person holding this movie together is Giovanni Ribisi, who stars as a young man trying to get rich trading stocks.  I really liked the relationship set up between him and his father, which is something a bit more subtle than what you usually see in this kind of movie.  It's not as funny or as over the top as The Wolf of Wall Street, but it's still a very engaging movie.

Fun Fact: I haven't seen director Ben Younger's Prime, but Bleed for This, his most recent movie, is pretty good too.

Fun Fact 2: Vin Diesel is in this.  It's proof that he can actually act!

3. Men of Honor

Melodramatic at times, but what an ending.  Both Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert De Niro are great in this movie, and among De Niro's many excellent performances his performance in Men of Honor might just be my favorite.  This movie tells the real-life story of African-American Master Diver Carl Brashear, and even though it tries a bit too hard to shove racial politics to the forefront it's still an involving story.  Critics weren't kind to it, but it worked just fine for me.

4. Erin Brockovich

Evil corporation knowingly endangers the lives in small town America and then attempts to cover it up.  In movie terms it's a theme that's been explored countless times, but Julia Roberts' character was really something new, something we hadn't seen before - a beautiful woman with a serious character defect who succeeds anyway.  I'd say this was Roberts' best performance, but then again there's August: Osage County to consider.  Just the same, both her and Albert Finney are excellent in this movie, the script was first-rate, and Steven Soderbergh's had a real eye for the story he was trying to tell.

Fun Fact: This movie won Julia Roberts the Oscar for Best Actress.  Steven Soderbergh won Best Director the same year for Traffic.


 Some Good Ones


It tells a good story, and Bill Pullman was a good choice for the lead, but it bungles a couple of pivotal scenes.  If only the director had been more invested in the characters, and less involved with applying a Hollywood gloss to the story.

2. Love and Basketball

It's a solid movie, but Omar Epps' dad is hard to sympathize with.  "Son!  Don't make the same mistakes I did!  A life in the NBA isn't for you!  The money!  The fame!  The women!  Not for you!"  Whatever, dude.

3. Sexy Beast

A London gangster is pulled back in for one more job.  Ben Kingsley steals every scene he's in, and Ray Winstone is convincing as the reluctant thief.  The fact that the heist is somewhat beside the point weakened the movie for me, and that little flourish at the end was completely unnecessary.  Even so, a well written film.

4. Scream 3

How many people get knocked out in this movie?  And how many times each?  And why is it so hard to shoot people in the head?

Scream 3 is a slasher movie about the making of a slasher movie which was based on a series of murders which were in turn based on slasher movies.  More "meta" for your money!  Wes Craven returned to direct it, and even though it trades in a great deal of implausibility it's still a decent conclusion to the franchise.  Scream 4I haven't seen it, have you?

Fun Fact: Carrie Fisher is in this for a bit.

Take It Or Leave It: A fifth Scream movie will be coming out next year.

5. Hollow Man

By no means a bad movie, but I think director Paul Verhoeven was trying a too hard to please too many people.  As it is it's a fairly derivative invisible man movie, featuring Kevin Bacon, Elisabeth Shue and Josh Brolin.  Even so, I'd take it over the more recent The Invisible Man.  Neither movie is especially interesting in terms of story, but at least Hollow Man added something new to the genre.

6. Battle Royale

I get why Quentin Tarantino liked this movie. It seems like exactly the kind of movie Quentin Tarantino would like.

The warnings in the beginning had me worried. I thought maybe this was going to be a Grotesque-style gore extravaganza, but instead the warnings were just post-Columbine paranoia.  As if any movie could compete with a modern sense of alienation as far as motivating violence goes.

But I digress.  Battle Royale involves a group of ninth graders forced to play a round of The Most Dangerous Game, or maybe it's The Running Man, but definitely not The Hunger Games, which appeared long after.  It's a surprisingly fun movie, even if the characters are never really developed.

Fun Fact 1: Tarantino borrowed from this movie when making Kill Bill Vol. 1.  The actress who plays Gogo in Vol. 1 also appears in Battle Royale.

Fun Fact 2: The director of this movie, Kinji Fukasaku, directed two other B movie classics: Shogun's Samurai and Message from Space.


Hmm...


If you can buy Icelandic singer Bjork as a Czech immigrant living in the U.S. who's slowly going blind... you might like it?  Then again I'm also not buying the two crimes committed halfway through the movie.  The script just didn't set those up well.  Dancer in the Dark could have also used a bigger budget.  The musical numbers are awkward transition points, and they don't feel very necessary to the film.

I've been a Bjork fan since Homogenic, and even I struggled with this one.  It's SO depressing, even judged against other Lars von Trier films.  I had to quit an hour and a half in.  I wouldn't argue that Bjork's performance isn't riveting, but the movie doesn't hold together.


Silly But Fun


Call me crazy, but I enjoyed this movie more than both Anaconda and Komodo.  The special effects are crap, but it knows it's bad and it doesn't care.

The cast is pretty great too: William Zabka (The Karate Kid, Back to School), Wil Wheaton (Stand By Me), Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street), and Dana Barron (National Lampoon's Vacation).  It's like an 80s All-Star team - minus the major stars of that decade.


Some Bad Ones

1. Center Stage

Zoe Saldana and several actors I've never heard of try to make the grade in a prestigious New York dance school.  Both Saldana and the lead in this movie can act, but the other cast members - who I can only assume were chosen based on their dancing skill - are painful to watch.

2. Next Friday

The first half of this movie is funnier than the first installment.  The second half?  A real grind.  Like the first film, there are whole sections of this movie that could have used more music, and many of the scenes don't feel very cohesive.

Depressing Fact 1: The actor who played "Roach" in this movie committed suicide the same year.

Depressing Fact 2: Tommy Lister Jr., who plays the heavy in Next Friday, is also dead.  The cause of his death is still being determined, but it's assumed he died of COVID-19-related complications.

Depressing Fact 3: John Witherspoon, who played Ice Cube's dad is - you guessed it - also dead.  He died of a heart attack in 2019.


Hey guys, for a movie called Shark Lake there aren't many sharks or much lake on hand.  And don't be fooled by Dolph Lundgren, who's not in that much of the movie.  Most of Shark Lake involves an annoying cop lady trying to claim a child that's not hers.  A riveting thriller?  Watch Jaws instead.  A gorier take on the genre?  Watch Piranha 3D.   Shark Lake is a waste of time.

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