MEGALOPOLIS

Directing: C
Acting: C+
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C
Special Effects: B-

Undoubtedly there is a niche group of people who are convinced Megalopolis is a crowning work of staggering genius. Those people are wrong.

Here is how I would characterize my experience of Megalopolis: it was 138 minutes of me having no idea what the hell is going on. I went in fully expecting it to be a mess, after endless press coverage of writer-director Francis Ford Coppola self-financing the film to the tune of $120 million and mixed responses at film festivals. But, I thought: it might have some redeeming value. The cast, the acting, the visuals, the production design. To one degree or another, all of these things disappoint.

Megalopolis does have a few images I very much enjoyed, at least in isolation, taken out of a context I could make absolutely no sense of. My favorite is an old satellite crashing in pieces onto Manhattan, a beautiful image that culminates in an overhead shot of nothing more than dust plumes puffing into a single intersection. The fact that this is not the kind of movie Coppola intended to make notwithstanding, it has the promise of a visual thrill that then delivers nothing. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a ruined orgasm. Given that the narrative moves forward with zero clarity on exactly what kind of effect this event had on the city, that description could apply to the movie as a whole.

The setting, incidentally, is never identified as New York, even though every image of the city is very clearly that. Instead, this story takes place in “New Rome,” the center of an empire on the verge of collapse, images of architectural columns and modern iterations of coliseum entertainment. We see Shia LaBeouf in a toga (much of the time, inexplicably, dressed as a woman, his character treating the act as a kind of lark), and Aubrey Plaza literally lounging in opulent surroundings and feeding herself grapes. Meanwhile, we get sporadic glimpses of unrest around the city, police cars passing by with “NRPD” stenciled on their sides.

I could never quite ascertain whether “New Rome” was supposed to be a country or a city. At one point it’s referred to as the “greatest country the world has ever known,” but we only ever see city leadership: the Mayor (Giancarlo Esposito), facing off against his powerful rival, architect and Chairman of the Design Authority of New Rome, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver). Is New Rome a city-state, or what? Some “empire.”

Coppola leans so hard on this, “a fable”—that being literally the subtitle of the film—being Shakespearean that, in a very odd press conference scene early on in the film, Cesar Catilina delivers Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” monologue in its entirety, playing it as an amusing performance for the press. The problem with Coppola’s script overall, combined with the entire movie’s fever-dream editing, is that everything happening is seen at a distance, a peculiar remove. On the surface, Megalopolis plays like a cross between Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film Brazil and Damien Chazelle’s 2022 film Babylon; beneath the surface, it seems to aspire to be a spiritual sequel, or the 21st-century answer to Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis, only stripped of any recognizable substance.

There’s a lot of familial relationships in Megalopolis, complete with offhand suggestions of incestuousness. John Voight plays Hamilton Crassus III, the city’s resident multibillionaire and Cesar’s uncle. LaBeouf’s Clodio Pulcher is Crassus’s son, and Cesar’s troublemaking cousin, trying to stir up unrest around the city (complete with an awkward cut to a Black family, one of them stoically raising a fist to one of Clodio’s pandering speeches). Nathalie Emmanuel plays Julia Cicero, the Mayor’s daughter who winds up as Cesar’s love interest.

When I see a movie like this and all the talent involved, I can’t help but wonder: did they just want to be able to say they worked with the Francis Ford Coppola? Even though he hasn’t produced a masterwork in 45 years? This is the guy who gave us The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now—but he also directed Robin Williams as an overgrown man-baby in Jack, and I don’t care what anyone says, 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is unwatchable.

Even three decades after that, we still get the likes of Laurence Fishburne as a driver and assistant; Dustin Hoffman as the Mayor’s fixer; Aubrey Plaza as a TV newsmagazine host named Wow Platinum; and Jason Schwartzman as a member of the Mayor’s entourage in Megalopolis. Some of their comparatively limited screen time is amusing; most of it feels like a waste. They all move about in a hyper-stylized world that feels rendered on a limited VFX budget, interacting according to a plot that feels as though it’s been poured into a blender.

I haven’t even mentioned that Cesar has invented an ultra-sustainable material called Megalon, which he’s been granted license to use to rebuild the city (get it?). Somehow, it also grants Cesar the ability to control space and time. How that fits neatly into his dream of converting the city (country??) into a utopia, I couldn’t tell you; Megalopolis lost me from there. It did, however, allow for a lovely romantic image of a couple embracing on suspended building beams, a dropped bouquet of flowers suspended in midair just below them. If only I could harness Cesar’s power and harness that one moment, and stretch its impact across the rest of its utterly convoluted runtime.

One moment in time can be very misleading.

Overall: C+

ALIEN: ROMULUS

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

Alien: Romulus plays a lot like it’s just “The Alien Franchise’s Greatest Hits.” Whether that’s a good or bad thing is a matter of opinion, but I mean it very much as a compliment.

There’s a fine line between homage and artistic theft, and this film often straddles that line. There’s a lot of fan service going on here, and if you’re familiar with the previous Alien films, you will find yourself watching, as if on a visual scavenger hunt, for the references and visual nods to virtually all of them. I, for one, had mostly a great time with this.

The score, by Benjamin Wallfisch (Blade Runner 2049), almost immediately features recognizable musical references to the Jerry Goldsmith score from Ridley Scott’s classic original 1979 Alien. (Side note: it’s a bit of a stunner to realize this franchise is now 45 years old.) The story takes place either on or just above a colonized planet very reminiscent of that featured in James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens, complete with elevator shafts and high wind levels—only in this case, it has an established, bustling society rather than a decimated group of fledgling colonizers. Even the films widely considered “lesser” in the franchise get nods, including a pretty obvious recreation of the most famous shot from David Fincher’s 1992 sequel Alien3, in which the alien hovers harrowingly close to Sigourney Weaver’s face. And this film’s already controversial final act is a basic recreation of the infamous final sequence from Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 1997 sequel Alien Resurrection, only with the concept inverted. Not even the prequel films are excluded, as we get introduced to a creature with a passing resemblance to (but clearly not narratively connected to) the humanoid aliens from Ridley Scott’s 2012 semi-prequel Prometheus.

I have not seen the two prequels anywhere near as many times I have seen the so-called “Quadrilogy” of original films in the franchise; as far as I can recall, I have still seen Ridley Scott’s 2017 follow-up to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, the one time. Which is to say, for all I know, Alien: Romulus also has some kind of direct nod to Covenant as well, and I just don’t remember it well enough to recognize it. The same could be said of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2004 crossover Alien vs. Predator (which I did see but very much wish I hadn’t) or Colin and Greg Strause’s 2007 follow-up Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (the one feature film featuring “xenomorphs” that I never bothered to watch, by all accounts wisely), although these are quite rightly not considered officially part of the Alien anthology, and I rather hope that, rather than there being references that I did not recognize, Romulus director and co-writer Fede Alvarez and writers Rode Savages and Dan O’Bannon simply did not bother with them.

The story beats of Alien: Romulus pretty faithfully mirror those of the 1979 Alien, right down to the team of working class miners getting picked off one by one until one of the women emerges as the unlikely hero. This gives the story a certain quality of predictability, but Romulus still has plenty about it that makes it stand apart. Perhaps most significantly, the principal cast is all quite young—all adults, but somewhat barely: Cailee Spaeney (Civil War), for instance, is all of 26 years old, and her character, Rain, could easily be read as several years younger. None of the previous films in the franchise featured a principal cast exclusively of characters so young, and the characters here get introduced to us behaving with a kind of dipshittery authentic to their age.

Of course, we simply cannot have an Alien movie without a “synthetic” (“I prefer the term artificial person,” we are told), here a character named Andy, played by David Jonsson in easily the film’s best performance. Andy is a nearly obsolete model, a lifetime companion to Rain who was long ago orphaned by the dangers of the mining work her parents did. Jonsson has a uniquely nuanced understanding of a robot programmed to convey the subtle emotions of someone with a childlike devotion to a functional sibling, yet a relentless drive towards his “directive.” Depending in what disc gets inserted into a port in his neck, his directive is either to serve what’s best for Rain, or what’s best for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, causing subtle shifts in allegiances depending on where we are in the story—and, thankfully, Romulus never goes down the clichéd route of a robot taking on implausibly human motivations counter to programming.

It’s difficult to gauge how successfully Alien: Romulus might play to someone coming to this franchise for the first time with this movie. It’s certainly true that the experience is enhanced by a broad knowledge of nearly all the films that came before it. Even the obvious references land with somewhat varied success, and an iconic line from the 1986 Aliens gets uttered in a way that doesn’t work as well as the smattering recognition of appreciative chuckles through the audience might suggest. There is even an appearance of an actual character from an earlier film, which I won’t spoil except to say that it’s a digital recreation of an actor who has since passed on, and the one instance in the film of obviously subpar visual effects. (The rest of the movie looks great.)

The bottom line is that Alien: Romulus is a consistently and undeniably entertaining action-horror thriller, its most critical successes being its propulsive pacing due to skilled editing, and several sequences with exeptional cinematography. This feels like a lived-in world, fleshed out in new ways in spite of its admittedly unavoidable familiarity. If anything, it could be argued that it has a bit too much going on, but given the nesting layers of threats—not all of them from the xenomorphs—posed to these characters, it all clicks together surprisingly well. The most important thing I can tell you about this movie is that I had a blast, and it’s not often that can be said of the seventh film in a franchise.

Remember me? Remember this? It warms the heart to reminisce!

Overall: B+

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B-

I’m so sick of the fucking multiverse.

Deadpool & Wolverine takes a moment to acknowledge that it knows this about me—and, presumably, a whole lot of other viewers. The problem is not only that the moment comes far too late in the film, but after spending a majority of the film leaning on the Marvel “multiverse” as a critical element of its premise, its setting, and the driver of its incredibly convoluted and frankly stupid plot.

It’s always a convenient device, isn’t it? Well, less and less so as the years of is use drag on. I don’t think any Marvel movie has used “the multiverse” in a particularly clever or certainly original way, aside from the exceptional Spider-verse movies. Marvel runs out of ideas for specific characters, and then recycles them using the same characters in “alternate universes.”

With Deadpool & Wolverine, we get a “threequel” in the Deadpool franchise, and a resurrected Wolverine as a follow-up to the relatively uncompromised vision that was Logan (2017), one of the best superhero films of the 21st century. Not that that’s a particularly high bar. I wish I could say it’s a delight to see the return of Dafne Keen as Laura, except that she’s utterly wasted in this movie, given nothing of real consequence to do onscreen. The same can be said of the plethora of cameos by other actors who were once big stars in franchises of their own, now showing up to take part in CGI-laden battle sequences that barely have visual comprehensibility.

I can say this for Deadpool movies: at least they’re consistent. Every one of these movies is of B-minus quality, but I cannot deny they make me laugh. Deadpool & Wolverine has a lot of very funny gags, delivered by actors with very good comic timing. These are the things that elevate a movie that would otherwise just be garbage.

When the movie starts, before the opening credits, this film rather pointedy acknowledges how very dead Wolverine is. Well, that Wolverine, anyway. Almost immediately. director Shawn Levy, along with writers that include Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds himself, introduce the “Time Variance Authority” previously introduced by the Disney+/Marvel series Loki, which had a first season that was surprisingly fun and a second season that was relatively lame. One wonders how many viewers of this movie now have seen Loki and have the kind of working knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that has been expected of viewers for so long that a good majority of them are now utterly over it. In any event, you can pretty easily imagine how we get Wolverine back into a feature film as played by Hugh Jackman—for the ninth time. The man was 32 the first time he played this character. He’s 55 now, and among Deadpool’s endless meta gags in this movie, he quips that Jackman will be playing this character until he’s 90. It feels as though that may actually happen.

The thing is, I’m not nearly as sick of Wolverine as I am of the multiverse, because Jackman has an unstoppable onscreen charisma, and a genuine chemistry with Ryan Reynolds. And I won’t deny my delight in how much more Deadpool leans into a winking queerness with every film, this time constantly leering and lusting after how hot Wolverine (or, as the case may be, Hugh Jackman) is. Most of the time, Deadpool, in all its iterations, is dumb but fun.

Still, I wish they had come up with a better story idea. What we get here as a story arc is frankly lame, only partly saved by the rapid-fire comic delivery. As is often the case, though, Deadpool & Wolverine suffers from an uninspired villain, here played by Emma Corrin as a cross between Lex Luthor and Sinéad O’connor. Corrin was fantastic as Princess Diana in The Crown, so they’re clearly a gifted actor—yet another just wasted on this movie.

Ultimately, Deadpool & Wolverine boils down to a skilled delivery of an uninspired project packed with countless uninspired supporting characters. In the climactic sequence, it steals a conceit straight from Spider-Man Into the Spider-verse, then amplifies it, and “playfully” vulgarizes it. That is, of course, what the Deadpool movies have been doing all along: throwing out all the bloody violence and profanity it can just because it’s an R-rated superhero movie. This time around, characters say “fuck” so often it starts to sound forced, almost compulsive, as though being uttered for no other reason than to increase the count of its usage. There comes a point where that just gets boring.

I’ll never understand why studios think giving every single one of these identical story beats is a good idea. Foul language and giddy dismemberment does not alone make a movie stand apart; it has to have a uniquely compelling story, and on that front, this movie is utterly lacking. in the end devolving into the same climactic, mediocre special effects bullshit as countless others before it. If this movie has any saving grace, it’s the two leads. If you focus on their delivery and stay “in the moment” at all times without regard to wherever (or whenever) the hell the “sacred timeline” movie is going, you’ll have a relatively good time.

Just because he’s delighting fans by wearing a yellow suit doesn’t mean we haven’t seen this before.

Overall: B-

A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: B

A Quiet Place: Day One is a serviceable science fiction thriller, which suffers by standing in the shadow of John Krasinski’s original and great A Quiet Place (2018), and its sequel that was nearly as good, A Quiet Place Part II (2021). The sequel has its own incredibly exciting opening sequence set during “Day One,” and it has more finesse than all of A Quiet Place: Day One, except that it’s just fun to return to this world, now in the setting of New York City.

We get opening title cards telling us what decibel the average noise level of New York City is, and that it’s equivalent to “a constant scream.” This is never spelled out explicitly. but the subtle implication is that this makes New York the primary target area of these predatory alien creatures that prey on anybody that makes noise.

I was relatively entertained by this movie, but I do have a lot of nitpick questions—at least one of which actually extends back to the opening scenes of the 2018 original film. In that movie, we see abandoned stacks of what look like the New York Post, with ironically screaming headlines that read, IT’S SOUND! At what silent printing press were these newspapers printed, I wonder?

In Day One, the discovery of how the alien creatures hunt happens astonishingly quickly. It’s set on the first day, right? No, wait—spoiler alert!—it does go through at least Day Two. The primary character we follow here is Samira, a terminally ill woman played by Lupita Nyong'o. She’s been granted a field trip into the city from her hospice clinic, and this is when the alien meteorites start crashing to the ground, and then mayhem ensues when the creators attack. Samira is blown against a glass wall by the force of an explosion and knocked unconscious. When she wakes up, apparently by magic, every human alive already understands that the way to protect themselves is to be quiet. Helicopters flying overhead shout through megaphones that “the attackers” can’t go into the water. All of this was apparently ascertained in a matter of hours, during which everyone alive would just be in a state of panic.

I have a lot of questions about these alien creatures, which apparently have no idea how much they owe their very existence to the Alien franchise. The predatory animal behaviors and reproductive practices of the “xenomorphs” in that franchise are made clear early on, though, and they make sense. The creatures in A Quiet Place hunt based on sound, that much is clear—but, to what end? We see them slash through people and snatch them, but we never see them eat people. Are people food to these things, or what? What bought them to Earth to begin with, anyway? How did they travel through space? Who designed the spacecraft, if all these guys know how to do is attack humans?

Day One is the first of these films not to be directed by John Krasinski, although he does get a story credit on the script. This film is otherwise written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, whose previous feature film was Pig, an unusually great acting showcase for late-career Nicolas Cage. The script here gives us an unprecedented glimpse into the alien creatures’ natural behaviors, a scene in which they pull open what look like eggs of some sort. But instead of hatching, the creatures open these pods and feast on their contents. We are given no context for this at all, no sense of what is actually happening there or why.

By the way, Samira has a cat, which she takes around with her everywhere, on a leash. The cat’s name is Frodo, and apparently Frodo is one of those rare cats, quite conveniently, who never meows. He runs off during chaos more than once, but he never gets lost. He’s less a cat than a convenient plot device. He captivates a random dude named Eric (Joseph Quinn) who winds up being the second lead of the film.

It doesn’t sound like I enjoyed this movie very much, does it? This is one of those movies I’m not sorry to have seen, that engages me just as much as it means to, but at which I cannot help but ask a great many nitpicky questions. It’s amusing to think of Samira, whose terminal illness changes the stakes of her fate as compared to everyone else around her, on a quest through New York City for one last meal of Patsy’s Pizza. Samira, Eric and Frodo walk deeper into the abandoned city while the other people still alive are making their way toward boats evacuating the city.

Among these people is Henri, the character played by Djimon Hounsou who was also featured in A Quiet Place Part II, the one clear strand of connective tissue between this and the previous two films. He even talks a bit about the boat evacuation in Part II, though a lot of what plays out in Day One doesn’t quite match the descriptions provided by characters in the other, definitively better movies.

A Quiet Place: Day One features a lot more action sequences than the other films, which relied much more on suspense—but, Day One also ratchets up the tension effectively in its own way. I did find myself wondering why we should care about these particular characters as opposed to anyone else barely escaping the city with their life. I suppose the terminal illness is a relatively clever conceit, in how it drastically changes the character’s motivations.

Ultimately, though, I’d have to say that A Quiet Place: Day One is really only for the franchise diehards. I never saw the first two films in theaters because I was afraid to; I literally saw them both for the first time only last month—and then was incredibly impressed by both of them. If you’ve never seen the others and you start with this one, it would just be a compelling but standard alien invasion action thriller, albeit with very good performances. If you have seen the other films, you’ll spend a lot of time thinking about how much better they both were.

The star making performances in this film are by Nico and Schnitzel, who play Frodo the cat.

DUNE PART TWO

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A
Editing: B+
Special Effects: A

The word “iconic” has been overused for decades. For this reason, I don’t ever use it. Maybe Dune Part Two is the exception that proves the rule. There is a moment in this film that is so visually iconic, it looks like the cover of a pulp science fiction novel come to life. There’s nothing kitschy about it, though; it’s very earnest—a key element of both these movies’ success.

I have to admit, I spent a fair amount of Dune Part Two thinking that it might not be living up to the hype. I wanted to be bowled over, overwhelmed by my love for it, and that wasn’t quite happening. The thing is, that’s just not how Denis Villeneuve operates. This is an artist with such unparalleled skill as a storyteller, you need to regard the piece in its entirely before you can properly judge it. This movie does not disappoint.

There’s something about Dune Part One, released in the fall of 2021—two and a half years ago—that makes it stand apart. I really liked that film when I first saw it, but I didn’t love it. And yet, every single time I rewatch that film, I appreciate it more than the last. I’ve seen it at least four times now, and I still notice new details every time.

It is for that reason that I expect the same thing with Dune Part Two. I’m not yet prepared to declare my undying love for it, but, much like Paul Atreides’s visions, I can see a near future where I’ve gotten to that point. I am genuinely looking forward to seeing this movie again, and will certainly be seeing it many times. This first go-round, I know there is much I did not catch, which is to be expected with films so well adapted from literary source material, but material I have not read. I have started to consider reading it, though.

I am especially looking forward to the point at which both Dune Part One and Dune Part Two are avaiable to watch together, back to back, as one film. Part One was two hours and 35 minutes long; Part Two is two hours and 46 minutes; the two combined, as one interrupted narrative, would make a five hour and 21-minute movie. When combined, maybe one of the greatest science fiction films ever made.

Has anyone else thought to compare this to Kill Bill Vol. I and Kill Bill Vol. II? Wildly different movies, obviously, but a key thing in common: a first part that ends abruptly, with much of the story clearly left to go—but incredible up to that point. Then the second, concluding part comes out, and even the first part is improved when regarded as part of the whole.

And there’s a lot new to discover in Dune Part Two, particularly when it comes to the cast. Zendaya had all of seven minutes of screen time in the first Dune, and as expected, here becomes a critical part of the story. She is great as expected as Chani, as is Timothée Chalamet as Paul—effectively embodying a young man who is maturing, for both good and for ill, before our eyes—but I simply must mention Austin Butler, as Feyd-Rautha, nephew to the grotesque Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). I could already tell from Elvis that he was a very good actor, but only when comparing that to his performance here does Austin Butler prove to be an astonishing talent. He’s not just the most eminently believable psychotic character in this movie, but he takes it a step further with an incredible vocal performance just similar enough to Stellan Skarsgård’s to make him believable as a relative of his.

There’s a lot of other new famous faces introduced to Part Two: Christopher Walken as the Emperor; Florence Pugh as his daughter, Stellan Skarsgård; Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot Fenring, one of the Bene Gesserit; even Anya Taylor-Joy as a flash-forward of Paul’s little sister. Unfortunately, none of these top-notch actors get much to work with, while Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson (as Paul’s mother, Jessica), Josh Brolin and especially Javier Bardem get all the desert scenery to chew. Anya Taylor-Joy get about one minute, if that, of screen time.

It’s understandable, however, for them all to want to be part of something that is greater than the sum of its parts. There may not be any better example of that phrase than the two Dune movies—and, incidentally, unlike many other franchises, you absolutely need to have seen Dune Part One in order to fully appreciate, or possibly even understand, this movie. They really should be regarded as part of a collective whole, like Kill Bill or The Lord of the Rings.

The special effects, once again, are spectacular. Even more of this film takes place on the desert planet of Arrakis than the previous one did, and still Villenueve makes it a work of art, between the incredible cinematography and the seamlessly integrated visual effects. The fact alone that he manages to render characters riding sandworms without it looking ridiculous is an impressive accomplishment. The sandworms alone give the film an arresting, visual grandeur.

None of this would matter, of course, without such rich storytelling, in a fully realized, wholly separate universe. For much of this film, we see Paul learn the ways of the Fremen, the people native to the desert, fighting alongside them, protesting their insistence that he is their Messiah while also using that faith to his advantage. This film certainly has more to say about religion, a running subtext to the intergalactic political intrigue and fighting between different planetary clans. Which of these “houses” will ultimately gain the greatest power is incidental to the means by which this power is attained.

I will say, I could feel large swaths of the source material left unaddressed, at least not directly, while watching Dune Part Two. But, like Dune Part One, it is denslely packed with information, which no doubt gives greater satisfaction to those familiar with the books, and more easily picked up on by the rest of us with subsequent viewings. “Epic” is another word I try to avoid because of its overuse, but it is unavoidable here. This is an epic film for the 21st century, done right in a way it hasn’t been for decades, a classic that might just be beloved for generations to come.

Just when you wonder when there will be shock and awe . . . it comes.

Overall: A-

I.S.S.

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C
Cinematography: B
Editing: C
Special Effects: B

I.S.S. isn’t smart enough to be a clever thriller, and it isn’t dumb enough to be “dumb fun.” Didn’t these astronauts ever learn about the “Goldilocks Zone”?

At least The Beekeeper has the decency to feature exciting fight choreography, fun explosions, innovative death scenes, and groan-worthy “protect the hive” metaphors. I.S.S. seems to think it can skate on the supposed novelty of its premise, with all of six characters—three of them American, three of them Russian—directed to “take control” of the International Space Station after nuclear armageddon occurs on the Earth below.

Here’s the question I couldn’t let go of. What’s the fucking point? Writer Nick Shafir and director Gabriela Cowperthwaite would have us believe it’s a sensible expectation that some of these characters have hope of returning home. They want to see their kids again!

Earth to I.S.S. crew! Your kids have been incinerated! Not once does any one of these characters even entertain this as a possibility. The nuclear flashes seen on the planet’s surface below are in the dozens, do they think all that radiation is just going to mind its own business on one side of the Earth?

Cowperthwaite once directed the very good 2013 documentary Blackfish, about the tragic consequences of keeping orcas in captivity. What the hell is she doing here? I’d say this is the cinematic equivalent of a corporate CEO winding up living in a ditch, but I should be fair, that’s a little harsh. It’s more like a corporate CEO winding up the manager of a regional Sizzler.

I suppose these metaphors are a little random. They’re definitely more creative than any of the boilerplate ideas presented in I.S.S., which seems on the surface like it’s . . . fine. If you’re at or below average intelligence, this movie might work for you. If you think about it for a minute, you might realize this movie is insulting your intelligence. You might be forgiven for missing that, given all the actors have a charismatic and competent screen presence. They’re kind of fun to hang out with, even if nothing they do or say ultimately makes a great amount of sense.

The story begins with two American astronauts in transport to the I.S.S.: John Gallagher Jr. as Christian Campbell and Ariana DeBose as newcomer bioengineer Dr. Kira Foster. I was skeptical of this film’s logic from the start, given a book I read recently that covered how strict NASA is about bringing personal effects into space, as the slightest added weight comes at exorbitant cost. But, Campbell rides the rocket with one of his kids’ squeeze toys in his hand.

Sure, I came in hot with the nitpicking: it’s just a movie, right? So, these two join the four others already on the station: Gordon Barrett (Chris Messina), evidently the highest ranking American astronaut; and the three Russians cosmonauts: Weronika Vetrov (Masha Mashkova); and brothers Nichoai Pulov (Costa Ronin) and Alexey Pulov (Pilov Asbæk). I guess I’ll give I.S.S. points for casting actual Russian actors.

We see them all settle in; Foster has brought some mice with her. We see the six of them pal around, exchange Christmas gifts. None of this is particularly interesting. The script neatly sidesteps any details about what might have prompted the assured mutual destruction: “We don’t ever talk politics,” they say. “And we definitely don’t talk about what’s going on down there.” What is going on down there, anyway? People gettin trigger happy, apparently.

To me, the most astounding thing about I.S.S. is that no one responds to the unfolding events with any kind of existential crisis. Somehow being stranded on a space station during a nuclear annihilation makes them all safe? Oh wait, one of the scientists on board was working on a radiation treatment! Okay, but why the hell would that research need to be done in space? No matter, we have four or five vials of it to return to the surface and save humanity!

This treatment is just used as a minor plot turn somewhere in the second half of the movie. What Cowperthwaite wants us to focus on is the idea of global conflict distilled down to these six characters, three on each side, with shifting allegiances. In more capable hands, this actually could have been a taut, gripping thriller, an exploration of the human psyche under extraordinary and desperate circumstances. Instead we’ve just got an entire film crew phoning it in.

I.S.S. could have been much, much worse. The script could have been utter garbage instead of just blandly ridiculous. They could have cast bad actors instead of the clearly talented ones here, evidently just getting a paycheck. Good for them, get that cash! If anything were to save this movie, it would be this cast. Unfortunately, once I finish writing this review, I’m going to forget this movie completely and just move on with my life.

Hang in there! This movie might get better. JKJK

Overall: C+

THE MARVELS

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B

The Marvels has all the same old bullshit I tired of eons ago in these superhero “universes”—the supposed stakes of saving the world; the CGI-laden action climax; the same broad story arc as dozens of other superhero movies just like it. Even worse, it relies too heavily on “MCU world building” that connects all these movies, the onetime novelty where the collective audience consensus finally seems to be: we’re over it.

And yet: there are things that set The Marvels apart. Like Captain Marvel (2019) before it, this is the exceptionally rare movie about a woman superhero. Indeed, this time, it’s about three women superheroes—one of whom is a woman of color. I am all about supporting movies like this, just to keep the studios keyed into the idea that they clearly have an audience. But, it also helps if the movie is actually good.

One of the unfortunate things for viewers who haven’t consumed all of the MCU content is that The Marvels, like most MCU movies anymore, relies on shorthand assumed to be understood by viewers who have. I’ve heard moderately good things about the Disney+ series Ms Marvel, but haven’t gotten around to seeing it, so this film is my introduction to her—otherwise known as Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani)—as a character. Incidentally, I did watch WandaVision on Disney+, but even two years ago is long enough for all the MCU mediocrity I’ve viewed to simply blend together in my memory. I know I liked Teyonah Parris’s screen presence as Monica Rambeau then, and I still do now.

How it comes to pass that Kamala, Monica, and Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Captain Marvel herself, have found themselves in a predicament wherein every time they use their power at the same time, they teleport to swtich locations, I could not pretend to explain. The Marvels is packed with science fiction techno babble that is utterly meaningless, and all you can do is let it go. If you keep an open mind to the objective stupidness, The Marvels is actually pretty fun.

It’s the scenes where it goes gonzo-bonkers that I wish it had more of. Goose, the “flerkin” who looks like a regular domesticated house cat but is actually an alien that can swallow things exponentially larger with giant tentacles coming out of his mouth, was easily my favorite thing about Captain Marvel in 2019, and that remains true now. And director Nia DaCosta, along with her team of writers, really ups the ante with Goose this time around: Goose’s ability to swallow giant things whole, and then cough it up like a hairball later, slimy but otherwise completely unharmed, becomes a pivotal plot point. I didn’t know I needed to hear an overhead intercom voice say in a deadpan tone, “Don’t run from the flerkins. Let them eat you.” But it arguably made my week.

In other words: I came for the cats. Or the flerkins, to be more specific. Not to get too far into spoiler territory here, but this time we get more than just goose, but in a way you may not be able to predict, and it’s bizarre, fun, and hilarious.

I just wish flerkins weren’t the only area in which The Maevels leans into getting super weird. Weird is good! The rest of it, really, is just rote. The villain, Dar-Benn, is just dull (through no fault of Zawe Ashton, who does the best with what she has to work with), and represents otherworldly aspects of the Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel story that come across like a cross between Superman and Star Trek, with dying suns and generations of alien-ethnic rivalries. The stuff Captain Marvel has to condend with is rarely earthbound, and within the MCU context—Guardians of the Galaxy notwithstanding—it makes her less interesting. The most interesting superheroes are specimens of flawed humanity contenting with awesome responsibilities, who are dealing with other human beings.

All that said, Larson, Parris and Vellani have an undeniable chemistry as a trio, and the addition of Khan is particularly welcome, with her South Asian family getting the kind of representation seldom seen in films like this. Her parents, played by Mohan Kapur and Zenobia Shroff, make the most of the screen time they are given—even as a fight takes place in their house that destroys a bunch of their stuff, and even blows a hole in their ceiling. This is the kind of stuff that annoys me, the massive collateral damage that barely gets acknowledged, or might just get a sigh or an eye roll. Sure, these movies are utter fantasies, but if you are going to set any part of them on our version of Earth, there should be some modicum of groundnedness.

But, yet again, I nitpick. I guess you could say this is my passion. After Goose the flerkin, my second favorite thing about The Marvels is the run time: one hour and forty-five minutes. I saw that and thought I must be dreaming, it was so shockingly reasonable. Did someone get fired so another person could finally come in and say it’s okay to stop making these movies as though we are pretending they’re epics? There are many complaints one can have about The Marvels, but at the very least it’s not bloated.

Instead, it’s a breezy hang with three very different women with great chemistry, and a mouth-tentacled alien cat. If we could just get more weirdness on the level of kitty tentacles and less in the way of tired plot tropes, we’d really be getting somewhere. On the other hand, even a meaningless good time is still a good time.

People aren’t talking enough about how Tango is the real star of the movie.

Overall: B

THE CREATOR

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: C
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B+

The Creator is a visual achievement, and if that’s all you need, it will work very well for you. It’s also a narrative mess.

This film seems to be leaning into ideas of xenophobia, American exceptionalism, the narrative structure of Apocalypse Now (which itself was a loose adaptation of the 1899 Jospeh Conrad novella Heart of Darkness), and even, arguably, both-sides-ism. The script, co-written by Chris Weitz and director Gareth Edwards, doesn’t fully commit to any of these things to achieve any truly crystalized ideas. This movies seems to want, at the same time, to entertain both American military jingoists and self-identified compassionate leftists.

It’ll probably satisfy average viewers just looking to watch a science-fiction action movie. And on that front, it does impress: Gareth Edwards, with previous directorial offerings from Monsters (2010) to Godzilla (2014) to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), has an established history as a gifted visual storyteller. He knows how to integrate visual effects on a modest budget that serve the story rather than the other way around. And in The Creator, every scene is visually compelling. with attention paid to every part of the frame, foreground as well as background. Combined with the production design, it makes for very effective world building.

I just wish the story these things are serving were better. Too many things don’t add up, not least of which is the idea of a world threatened by AI that exists in self-contained, individual robot units, some of them with only robot parts, some with heads and faces indistinguishable from humans, aside from cylindrical holes that pass through where ears would otherwise be. I’m frankly astonished that Edwards would make a movie like this without once considering the idea of, say, a wifi network in which all of these machines are connected to each other, as one unified whole. These AI “beings” exist as though they are all singular personalities, much like androids. Except this is never the way that would go, especially if humanity were to declare war on the lot of them, as has happened here—due to a coding error that resulted in Los Angeles getting nuked, fifteen years before the events of this movie.

We’re moving through the 2060s here. What’s the state of climate change, then? No one ever even mentions it. I suppose I’m nitpicking here, but still, I prefer movies like this to make sense. The best science fiction extrapolates from plausible, present-day realities, which this film all but ignores. Instead, it relies on wild plot contrivances.

I hesitate to even get into the moral quandary of “compassion” for artificial intelligence. Multiple times we hear the line: “It’s not real. It’s just programming.” This movie clearly wants us to hear that as misguided, and take the side of the AI. The problem with this is that “it’s just programming” is actually correct. Ironically, humanity is wildly vulnerable to emotional manipulation by AI to think it’s “alive,” and The Creator itself is a movie that successfully manipulates our emotions. To say there’s a lot to unpack with this movie is a wild understatement.

Further complicating matters is how undeniably entertaining it is, at least when you’re not thinking too much about its many plot holes and lapses in logic. John David Washington makes a great protagonist in this world, easily seduced by the adorableness of “the weapon,” a super-advanced “AI” being designed to look like a little girl, played by a seven-year-old Madeleine Yuna Voyles—complete with her own cylindrical hole through her head, ear to ear. These two have great chemistry together, and could have been a classic duo in a better written movie, the “lone wolf and cub” trope notwithstanding.

Between the acting, the cinematography, and the visual effects, The Creator has more than enough going for it to keep viewers rapt from start to finish. When it comes to the technical elements, this is a very well crafted film. If you don’t mind that it really has nothing original or even cohesive to say, then I guess it delivers.

Sure, it looks great if you only look skin deep.

BIOSPHERE

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

I have wildly mixed feelings about Biosphere, which I really wanted to like. I also went into it quite eager to find out what this movie about two men stuck for years, with only each other, in a sealed biosphere after a global catastrophe, would have to say about sex, and attraction, and what having no other option does to people. We’ve all heard the stories about prison, right? Presumably this would be a similar scenario, just minus the criminal aspect.

What I did not expect was for it to tackle sexuality within minutes, and head on, and then effectively make it part of the entire premise. It just didn’t do it in anywhere near the way I thought it might, or even that I particularly wanted it to. I won’t spoil the turns the story takes, but I will say it felt a little bit like a copout, and like a movie that thinks it’s progressive is actually being a little regressive.

Beyond that, the premise has vast potential for deeply nuanced discussion of sexuality and gender roles, of which director Mel Eslyn, co-writing with Mark Duplass who also co-stars, barely scratches the surface. Instead we are presented with a pair of childhood friends who are now dealing with the fallout—quite literally, it would seem—of the most recent U.S. President’s deeply bad decisions, in the face of the advice of a best-friend advisor (from the opposing political party, no less).

The fact that these characters are middle-aged men who were recently the President and his advisor turns out to be utterly pointless. Very few truly political ideas get explored, and this backstory seems to exist only as a handy backstory and nothing more. I’d have found Biosphere much more successful were it about two best friends who happened to build a safe haven in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that was not of their own making. That way the story could focus on their relationship as friends and regular people, Americans sure, but the idea of their political leadership (or lack thereof) feels very awkwardly shoehorned in.

It also has nothing to do with the supposed “evolutionary jump” that occurs to the fish in their tiny pond, as well as to Billy and Ray themselves. And here we come to my biggest hangup about Biosphere, the same issue I had with last year’s Crimes of the Future: the preposterousness of a so-called leap in evolution that does not, could not, and will not ever happen. The fact that they even directly reference the “Life finds a way” quote from Jurassic Park is meant as amusing but just underscores how derivative this truly hair brained idea is. This could have been so much more incisive a story had Eslyn and Duplass merely stuck with an exploration of what forced, extended isolation with just one other person does to people in ways that are actually plausible.

To be fair, that is not especially the Duplass brand. Mark Duplass plays Billy, the former president; Sterling K. Brown plays Ray, the guy who was really pulling the strings—this being one of the sources of resentment between them, which could just as easily have been done without making them titans of politics now rendered restless man-children.

What eventually happens to them borders on otherworldly. A bonkers as the plot becomes, they are fun to watch together, and the one real compliment I will give to the writing is the fact that this is a two-hander in the truest sense of the phrase—we see no other actors onscreen, ever, except these two—and the film still manages to hold the viewer’s attention. Duplass and Brown feel like childhood friends.

But, the more Biosphere went on, the more embarrassed I became by it, as it couches itself in what it wants us to take on faith are extrapolations of real-world scientific ideas. Except that fish are not amphibians and humans are not fish, and Biosphere is finding ways to conflate them all in ways it hopes we won’t notice.

I might be willing to forgive a lot if, for instance, the fantastical things that occur were a springboard or nuanced examinations of human relationships. I think Biosphere is crafted to make us think that is indeed what it’s doing, except that every idea it examines, it does little more than regard as a slight amusement. This is a movie deeply confused about what it wants to be, which is a disservice to any of the legitimate ideas it touches on.

The laws of nature get thrown right out the biosphere window.

Overall: C+

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-
Animation: A+
Special Effects: A-

Some movies take a while to make clear they are great. Some take a few scenes, a few minutes, for it to sink in that you are watching something special. Once every few years, sometimes even a lot longer, a movie comes along that confidently announces it stands apart as of its opening frame.

The fact that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is one of those movies is just one of many reasons why I love it. A movie this good that’s a sequel skirts the edges of astonishment. Would it be hyperbole to utter this film title in the same breath as The Empire Strikes Back? The Godfather Part II? Maybe. Time will tell. Right now, I am sorely tempted. I mean, I just did it.

I had been deeply impressed with this film’s predecessor, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse when it was released in 2018. It blew me away, and a film so skillfully nuanced, funny, entertaining and beautiful that was both a superhero movie and an animated feature almost defied belief. To say it exceeded expectations would be an understatement. What’s even more amazing is that there’s a strong argument to be made that Across the Spider-Verse is even better.

Its three-person writing team has only one in common with the first film (Phil Lord), and its three-person directing team is entirely new (including Soul co-director Kemp Powers). By definition, they still have to explore the endless possibilities of the wildly overused “multiverse” concept, but these animated films about it not only find almost shockingly clever angles with it, but actually improve with their own iterations. Somehow the convoluted plot mechanics actually make more sense this time around.

And they take their time with it: this movie is 140 minutes long—a record for an animated film—and it doesn’t even finish the story. I’m being careful not to spoil plot details here, but I do think it’s useful to know that the original title for this film was indeed officially Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Part 1. Now they’ve dropped the Part 1 and the next installment will be called Beyond the Spider-Verse. It remains a part 1, though: with tons of story left to go, the film ends with a comic-book style caption: To Be Continued. It was an entertaining experience being in a theater full of people who did not already know to expect this. It was a unique combination of sounds that emitted out of the crowd.

And I cannot stress this enough: those minutes truly fly by. Like its predecessor, the animation is a sight to behold, that being the only consistency across different and distinct animation styles depending on the dimension we’re in. My favorite is the dimension the film opens in—after thrillingly rendered, animated title sequences that flip through dimension styles even through the many production company logos—which is the one home to “Spider-Gwen” (Hailey Steinfeld). The animation itself responds to characters’ emotional states, the colors of their environment flowing in waves away from them like water color paint.

Every style of animation is beautiful, though, an impressive feat given the many different, wildly differing styles, many of them clear visual references to literal comic book drawing and painting styles. This is the kind of literalization in adaptation that movies like this need, giving it a visual depth that augments the incisively written script. The spectacular action sequences are almost incidental, even as they serve the story rather than the other way around, and we become deeply emotionally invested in the relationships—particularly those between the title character, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore, reprising the role even though he’s aged five years whereas teenage Miles is only supposed to be a year older—Moore was in his twenties either way) and his parents (Luna Lauren Vélez and Brian Tyree Henry, both fantastic); also Gwen Stacey and her father (Shea Whigham, voicing a man beautifully drawn). And, of course, Miles and Gwen, whose romantic potential remains a question, whether or not they will be dimension-crossed lovers.

I even liked the villain better this time around, given the knowingly on-the-nose name of “The Spot,” and voiced by Jason Schwartzman. Due to an accident with an Alchemax collider, he’s been rendered a white body with black spots, all of which can be used as portals. The Spider-Verse films are never content with keeping things simple, though, and an alternate dimension Spider-Man from 2099 (Oscar Isaac) seem to exist in a gray area between heroism and villainy.

Across the Spider-Verse reportedly has settings in six different dimensions, but there are channel-surf-like movements through many more, most of which are delightful surprises that I won’t spoil. I simply have to mention my favorite, however, even though few others will care about it as much as I do: “Mumbattan,” which basically splices together Mumnai with Manhattan, and features an Indian Spider-Man named Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni, previously featured in the Deadpool films). Once Miles, Gwen, Spider-Man 2099 and yet another dimensional badass Spider-Woman (Issa Rae) who has her own motorcycle enter the Mumbattan dimension, we are treated to an extended sequence with both fantastic action and a lot of very funny gags that should land well with South Asians. (This is some excellently integrated content for potential international audiences.)

There is an incredible number of characters in this film, apparently some 240 of them, a whole bunch of them in a spectacularly funny and entertaining action sequences featuring seemingly infinite versions of Spider-People (or in multiple cases, Spider-Animals). The humor and gags in this movie come at such an unusually fast and steady clip, I am eager to see it again just to see what I missed the first time around. And this is in the same movie that had me so deeply absorbed in its story and its characters that I actually got misty-eyed. It can be hard to trust any assertion that a movie has everything you could possibly want and more, but in this case, you can take that to the bank. The movie’s producers almost certainly will. This movie is a truly amazing specimen of cinematic craft.

There is simply nothing not to love about this movie.

Overall: A-