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May 15 2023
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Reviews

“GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3” Review (✫✫✫✫)

SOURCE: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Crying over a talking raccoon.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is nothing short of a moviemaking miracle, a genuinely unique, refreshing, and original experience that reminds us all of the power of movies and what they can accomplish. When the Guardians of the Galaxy made their big-screen debut in 2014, many fans were understandably side-eyeing the whole project. How can a movie about a space scavenger, a couple of bounty hunters, and a talking tree and raccoon win over our hearts? Nearly 10 years later, they’ve done just that, and the best part is they didn’t need to be high-flying superheroes or super soldiers to do so. All they had to do was be themselves. 

By the time they suit up together for Vol. 3, the Guardians of the Galaxy have already been through a lot. Peter Quill’s (Chris Pratt) true love Gamora (Zoe Saldana) was killed, Nebula (Karen Gillan) saw her whole family disintegrate and brought back to life in the span of five years, and Kraglin (Sean Gunn) is still trying to master the arrow after his mentor and father figure Yondu (Michael Rooker) died. Groot (Vin Diesel) is now fully regrown and still saying “I am Groot” over and over again. Oh, and there’s a telepathic space dog named Cosmo (Maria Bakalova) somehow in the mix too, and she is a VERY good dog. 

As the Guardians still try to figure out what their place is in the galaxy after saving it from the likes of Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, a figure from the Guardians’ past emerges: the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), a cruel and psychotic scientist who engineered Rocket (Bradley Cooper) from when he was a baby raccoon. With the High Evolutionary desperate to reclaim his former experiment, the Guardians must team up for one last ride across the galaxy to defend one of their own. 

Written and directed by James Gunn, who directed the previous Guardians of the Galaxy movies as well as The Suicide Squad, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the living embodiment of the Guardians — a wholly unique, wacky, oddball, and heartfelt movie that perfectly captures who they are and why they matter so much to each other. This is a movie that works on every level, from the action to the drama to the comedy all the way down to the soundtrack. So much happens all at once so perfectly that I barely even know where to start. 

I’ll start with the heart of this movie: Rocket. Like all of the Guardians movies, Rocket is the emotional center of this movie, a quippy, snarky, and prickly little cretin who portrays a rough and tough exterior on the outside, but on the inside is quite vulnerable, sensitive, traumatized, and broken. This is the first of the Guardians movies to delve into Rocket’s origins, and they are… horrifying.

I saw this movie with my mom and my wife, and all three of us were crying consistently at every one of Rocket’s flashback sequences. That’s because they deal with a real-world issue, which is animal cruelty. In the first scene where Rocket is dropped into the pen with the rest of the High Evolutionary’s experiments, they quietly comfort him, reassure him, and ask him to say something. “It hurts” are the first words he speaks, quivering and shaking in his corner of the cage. And for most of the movie, that’s the Rocket we see: not the confident, cocky, trigger-happy, gun-loving lunatic, but the lost, scared, and afraid little animal who doesn’t know where he is and wants to be free from the cruel world he’s living in.

Many families will understandably be put off by this film’s darker tone and subject matter, especially in a Guardians Of The Galaxy movie. I for one love it because it shows how it’s relevant to all of us. We all feel like experiments in a broken world, desperately clinging to the small things we can control and finding happiness in the little moments that bring us joy. That’s exactly the spot where Rocket finds himself in this movie, and it humanizes him so, so effectively. The previous two Guardians movies told us what happened to Rocket, but we never really understood what that felt like. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 puts everything into perspective, and its impact is more powerful than an Infinity Stone.

But just because this is a darker, more serious Guardians movie doesn’t mean it doesn’t have the traditional blockbuster fun that the franchise is known for. When we’re not following Rocket’s journey through trauma and recovery, we’re following the Guardians on their quest to protect him, and they’re as infectious and lovable as they’ve always been. Their banter and dialogue with each other is hilarious, the one-liners are clever and quick-witted, and their performances are the most passionate and emotional as they’ve ever been. I love how my favorite moments in this movie aren’t fast-paced CGI action scenes, but rather smaller character-building moments where the Guardians share their emotions, experiences, and fears and help each other work through them together. In one scene in particular, a furious Gamora yells at Nebula during an argument, telling her that they’re family. “So are they,” Nebula responds definitively. 

Speaking of performances, I need to give special praise to Chukwudi Iwuji, who portrays the High Evolutionary with Shakespearean-level commitment. Generally speaking, Marvel villains can be a mixed bag. When done right, they can be as compelling and intimidating as Thanos or Killmonger. When done poorly, they’re run-of-the-mill bad guys whose only purpose is to fight our heroes like Ant-Man’s Yellowjacket or The Eternals’ Deviants. The High Evolutionary is neither of those. He is a downright despicable character, a twisted and sadistic madman who takes great pleasure in inflicting pain and torture upon his poor creations. The fact that he feels justified in his actions makes him a bigger monster than anyone else in the movie, and Chukwudi plays him with such conviction that it makes it hard to see him as anything but a vile, sinister, wicked, wretched, unhinged megalomaniac. I’m not quite sure if Marvel has put out a better villain than Chukwudi. The closest I can think of is Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, and even then, I’m not quite sure that counts. 

There are several other fantastic elements in this movie that are not to be ignored. Kraglin has an excellent arc that brings honor to his relationship with Yondu. Cosmo the space dog is one of the most lovable support characters out of the whole MCU and brings an adorable quality we haven’t seen since Dug in Pixar’s Up. And Will Poulter gives an excellent performance as a new character named Adam Warlock, who is the closest thing to a traditional superhero we get in this movie. His part is small, but he too has a wonderful arc and serves a vital purpose in the story, just like all of the characters do. 

When it comes to great superhero movies, the biggest challenge many filmmakers face is making sure their film does justice to the characters’ legacies, whether you’re talking about Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Black Panther, or Spider-Man. But James Gunn’s accomplishment with The Guardians Of The Galaxy stands apart. Many years ago, he introduced a whole crew of galactic misfits that nobody expected anything from. Yet, his biggest accomplishment isn’t bringing a talking raccoon and his ragtag group of friends to the big screen — it’s how much we end up caring about all of them.

Or, to put it another way, “We are Groot.” 

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Nov 22 2022
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Reviews

“BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER” Review (✫✫✫)

SOURCE: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Long live the Black Panther.

“In my culture, death is not the end. It’s more of a stepping-off point. You reach out with both hands, and Bast and Sekhmet lead you into a green field… where you can run forever.” These words that Chadwick Boseman spoke in his first appearance as T’Challa in Captain America: Civil War echoed in my memory while watching Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, a poignant and thoughtful reflection on the Black Panther legacy, what it means to people, and how we are expected to grieve and move forward when our king is no longer with us. Chadwick Boseman is gone. How is the Black Panther expected to survive without him?

After King T’Challa suddenly and unexpectedly passes away, the kingdom of Wakanda is left in a weakened, vulnerable state. The United Nations is after Wakanda and its precious Vibranium. Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) is struggling to balance her new life as a ruler and as a grieving mother. And while all of this is going on, a new threat emerges from the oceans: Namor (Tenoch Huerta), the king of the underwater nation of Talokan, who seeks war on the world for what the surface dwellers have done to his people. Now left to defend itself from both Talokan and the world, a new Black Panther must rise from Wakanda to protect the nation and its people.

It’s difficult to critique or even write about this movie without reflecting on what it was originally supposed to be. Before Chadwick Boseman tragically passed away from colon cancer in 2020, writer-director Ryan Coogler was knee-deep in writing the sequel and even completed a draft before Chadwick’s sudden passing. Coogler famously said after the fact that he “spent the last year preparing, imagining and writing words for him to say that we weren’t destined to see.” That’s the most heartbreaking part of all, knowing that Chadwick had a big part to play in this sequel that we’ll never get to see what could have been.

So when the movie feels like it’s supposed to be two separate movies, in a way, it’s kind of because they’re supposed to be. There are two intertwining narratives that are conflicting with each other in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The first and stronger one is the fact that T’Challa has passed away and the nation of Wakanda is grieving for their fallen hero. The second is a geopolitical thriller about two warring nations and how they can peacefully coexist in the same world together. Both of these premises are strong enough to carry an entire movie on their own. Juggling both of these narratives at the same time in a lengthy two-hour and 40-minute runtime feels crammed.

But I don’t blame Coogler for how convoluted the movie feels. The fact is he and the rest of his creative team were thrust into a very uncomfortable position and had to make a difficult choice — continue telling the story of Wakanda without its hero, or let its legacy die alongside Chadwick Boseman? Ultimately, Coogler and the rest of the cast and crew decided that the Black Panther mantle was far too important to be left alone or forgotten, though maybe they should have taken some time to grieve and flesh out the script a little more when the loss wasn’t so raw to them.

One thing I will say is that the performances are powerful in this movie — quite possibly even more so than in the first movie. But that’s somewhat to be expected. After all, the entire cast isn’t so much acting as they are expressing their true feelings of loss and grief. While the rest of the world lost a king, a superhero, and an icon two years ago, the cast of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever lost a colleague, a mentor, and a friend. That pain translates beautifully and meaningfully into their performances. Even traditionally comedic actors like Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira and Winston Duke carry a much more somber, serious delivery with their lines. And Angela Basset was straight-up fierce as Queen Ramonda. She had a couple of truly powerful monologues in the film that was effective in expressing her strength, her resoluteness, and her sadness all at the same time. 

Even the newcomers were just as impressive. Dominique Thorne (If Beale Street Could Talk, Judas And The Black Messiah) takes over for Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark as the new Ironheart, and while I was initially worried about how she would fit into this already packed story, she was a standout among the cast and gave the film some much-needed attitude and energy to help keep up the pace. And Tenoch Huerta especially crushed it as Namor. Far from the cheap one-dimensional supervillains Marvel is usually known for churning out, Namor is a much more complex, layered antagonist who is compelled to action not by world domination or destruction, but out of deep love, care, and protection for his people. He serves as an excellent foil to Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa, and it makes my heart hurt thinking of all of the great interactions we could have seen from these characters that we’ll never get to.

All in all, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is not as great as its predecessor. Then again though, it doesn’t need to be. While the film makes you feel the weight of Chadwick Boseman’s loss and the hollow, empty feelings that come with it, it’s also incredibly healing and reassures you that tomorrow will still come, even when the ones we love are no longer with us. Chadwick Boseman may be gone, but let us be grateful that the Black Panther continues to live on — not just in the people of Wakanda, but in all of us. 

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Aug 07 2022
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Reviews

“NOPE” Review (✫✫✫)

SOURCE: Universal Pictures

Nuh-uh, nope, nada, nonononono, goodbye, no thank you. 

Mankind has a great interest in the unknown. That’s partly why we’ve always been fascinated with the phenomenon of extraterrestrial life and what’s out there in a larger universe. Is there life beyond our small planet? If there is, what is it like? Is it friendly? Fearsome? Frightening? Or violent? Whatever it is, we as a species don’t have the answers to those impossible questions. That’s why the possibilities of aliens excite us and terrify us at the same time. 

In Nope, Jordan Peele tackles the alien genre in the unconventional way that only he knows how: with loads of thrills, dark humor, eerie, unsettling tension, and a butt-load of subcontext that will fly right over people’s heads. The biggest obstacle most alien sci-fi films face is being too predictable or similar to each other. Let me assure you that you won’t be able to predict a single thing that happens in Nope: not even what the aliens look like. 

In this trippy sci-fi horror flick, Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer play OJ and Emerald Hayward, a brother-sister duo who trains and handles horses for film and television productions. But recently, they’ve been noticing some strange happenings around their ranch. Horses vanish in the middle of the night without a trace. The power cuts off randomly at times without any explanation. And one evening, OJ swears that he saw something move through the clouds. Now determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, OJ and Em outfit their whole house with security and recording equipment to capture… whatever it is they think they saw. 

Ever since Jordan Peele released his Oscar-winning picture Get Out in 2015, fans have come to expect a few things from the acclaimed horror filmmaker. They expect his films to be highly unconventional and unpredictable. They expect high moments of stress, unease, and tension that make us feel anxious and on edge. They expect visceral, violent moments brilliantly building up to spontaneous moments of dark humor. And they expect his films to carry a deeper theme to them, whether it involves racism, prejudice, neoliberalism, feminism, or wealth inequality. 

The best thing that can be said about Nope is that it retains Peele’s trademarks as a director. One of my biggest hangups with most horror movies is that they reveal their penultimate threat way too early so that by the time the climax arrives, it’s lost any and all effect of being fearsome or intimidating. The best horror movies masterfully obscure their villains so that by the time they are revealed, their actions leave an impact and give you a reason to remain afraid for the rest of the movie’s runtime. 

Just like the shark in Jaws, Michael Meyers in Halloween, and the Xenomorph in Alien, Jordan Peele shows as little of the aliens as possible throughout the film. That’s because he understands that aliens in and of themselves are not what mankind as a whole fears: it’s what’s unknown about them. About where they come from, what they look like, and what they want from us. Nope asks those questions just like any other alien film does. The difference is once we’ve discovered the answer, we wish we could forget.

And this is a weird compliment for me to make because I don’t usually make it in my reviews, but the sound design in this film is… horrifying. The first time I heard what I thought was the alien’s voice, I thought “That was a weird creative choice to make.” When I realized what the sound actually was later on, it terrified me and sent shivers down my spine. 

But while the film is a technical and a visual marvel, the script is unfortunately not as well-refined. For one thing, it lacks the depth and complexion as Peele’s previous works have. While both Get Out and Us had clearly-defined themes about racism, classism, and inequality, Nope is a lot more obscure with its message and portrayal. Which is fine with me: Us was just as subtle in its messaging and relied much more on implication rather than spelling everything out for its audiences. The difference is I understood everything Jordan Peele was trying to tell us at the end of Us. By the time Nope’s credits rolled, I had to piece everything together until I thought to myself “Wait, that’s it?” 

Also, while the plot twist near the end of the film was wickedly clever and creative, the alien’s final form in the film is… kind of stupid. And unfortunately, the ending is even worse. 

Looking back at Jordan Peele’s wildly successful filmography, Get Out and Us remains to be the greatest achievements of his young directing career so far. Nope lacks the same edge as his previous works do, but it’s still a lot of fun and brings something fresh and unexpected to the alien genre. Thanks to Jordan Peele, I’m never going to look at UFO sightings the same way ever again. I don’t know whether I should be thanking him or just say “Nope.” 

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Jul 18 2022
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Reviews

“THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER” Review (✫1/2)

SOURCE: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Screaming goats and hammersexuality.

Thor: Love And Thunder is Thor: Ragnarok gone wrong, a silly, spastic, stupid, and straight-up ridiculous experience that feels more like a satire of an MCU film rather than an actual MCU film. Thanks to this movie, Thor is the first superhero in the MCU to have four movies in his franchise. And if it succeeded at anything, it showed why most superheroes should just stick with three movies going forward. 

Taking place well after the events of Avengers: Endgame, Thor: Love And Thunder picks up where everyone’s favorite blonde-haired thunder god (once again played by Chris Hemsworth) left off as he tries to discover who he is (as if he hasn’t already found out the answer to that question after eight movie appearances). But as he begins his journey of self-discovery (again), a vicious new enemy called Gorr the god butcher (Christian Bale) rises with one goal: to kill all of the living gods. 

But wait! As he begins his violent quest, a new god emerges: specially Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) wielding Mjolnir. With two hammer-wielding thunder gods, the two Thors now have to team up to defeat Gorr and bring an end to his god-killing crusade. 

When Thor: Ragnarok burst out onto the scene 10 years ago, director Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit, What We Do In The Shadows) boldly redefined Thor and his mythos, putting him through a compelling story where he lost his home, his powers, and his hammer and asking who the man behind Mjolnir is. Everything in that film worked to near perfection, from the colorful and eye-popping visuals to the deeply dramatic character moments to the gut-bustingly hilarious jokes. It was a great film back then and it remains one of the best MCU entries to this day. 

The best thing I can say about Thor: Love And Thunder is that it replicates *some* of the inspiration behind Thor: Ragnarok. I specifically say “some” because while it possesses many of the same qualities, they’re used nowhere near as effectively as they were in Ragnarok. Still, Chris Hemsworth is as likable in the role as he’s always been, the visual effects are captivating at times, and Taika Waititi brings his usual humorous, lighthearted energy to a character that has typically taken himself way too seriously. 

The problem is Taika has gone completely off of the deep end. While Thor: Ragnarok perfectly balanced its action, comedy, and drama, Thor: Love And Thunder flails about aimlessly without sense or direction, and most of its jokes repeat themselves and quickly become redundant. There are a pair of screaming goats introduced early on that I thought were funny at first, but by the 100th scream, they were giving me a migraine. There’s an odd love triangle between Thor, Mjolnir, and Stormbreaker and Thor gets the bright idea of easing tensions by… pouring beer over them. And the climax involves a ridiculous action sequence where kids are imbued with Thor’s lightning that allow them to fight an army of shadow monsters. That’s what you can expect to find in Thor’s fourth movie, ladies and gentlemen: superkids. 

What of the rest of the cast? How do they handle in this mess of a movie? Well like everything else in Love And Thunder, their skill is technically present. The error lies in how they are used and misappropriated. Tessa Thompson was such a standout as Valkrie in Thor: Ragnarok, but here, she’s shoved to the side in favor of some forced humor and semi-hammersexuality. In the same vein, Natalie Portman is brilliant as Jane Foster, a powerful, fierce, and domineering woman who has fought for and earned the right to call herself Thor too. Yet she is also forced through an overly dramatic plot that feels emotionally manipulative and ends up negating all of the development we see her go through in the film. 

But Christian Bale is the worst of all. Strictly speaking on performance alone, Christian Bale is downright chilling as Gorr, a menacing, slithery presence who feels like the monster that children find hiding under their bed. Between his creepy, eerie performance and a compelling, human motivation, Christian Bale’s Gorr had the potential to be one of the best villains in the MCU. 

But potential does not equal reality, and Taika’s biggest error with casting Christian Bale is not using him enough. Out of the movie’s two-hour runtime, Gorr appears four, maybe five times tops. That’s not enough time to care for and get invested into a villlain’s plight. It’s barely enough time to get invested into a character at all. Because Christian Bale is so absent for most of the film, he ends up having the least impact out of all of Thor’s movie villains. I am not kidding when I say that Christopher Eccleston’s Malekith is a more memorable villain than Christian Bale solely because of his screentime. It’s such a shame, because you can see the effort that Bale puts into his performance. And in the end, it’s all left on the cutting room floor. 

And if anything, that demonstrates the biggest flaw with Thor: Love And Thunder: it is wasteful. It wastes Chris Hemsworth’s and Christian Bale’s amazing performances. It wastes Jane Foster’s debut as the Mighty Thor. It wastes the Guardians Of The Galaxy, its jokes, and its visual effects. That’s ultimately what this movie is: a giant, pitiful waste. 

Guys, I really can’t express this any more bluntly: Thor: Love And Thunder is terrible. The more I think about it, the more it enrages me. For every joke that landed, there were like five that made me groan in the theater. For every emotional moment that pulled at my heartstrings, there were three that felt cheap and unearned. And for every visually stunning and captivating sequence, there was another green screen-assembled mess that looked ungodly awful.

I make no exaggeration when I say this is my least favorite MCU film. There are certainly other films that are as badly written (including Thor: The Dark World and the recently released Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness), but they at least had some technical competency when it came to their editing, cinematography, and visual effects. Thor: Love And Thunder by comparison feels like it isn’t even trying. This is one movie that proves that lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice.

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Jun 30 2022
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“TOP GUN MAVERICK” Review (✫✫✫✫)

Welcome to the danger zone.

Top Gun Maverick is a masterclass in epic blockbuster moviemaking, a fast-paced, enthralling, and wildly exciting sequel that achieved the impossible. This is a movie that has absolutely zero business being this good, let alone even existing in the first place. Yet not only is it a worthy successor to the 1986 classic: in many ways, it’s even superior. The famous catchphrase “the need for speed” is a massive understatement for a movie like this, and if it’s referring to anything, it’s probably my heart rate.

Taking place 36 years (yowza!) after the first movie came out, Top Gun: Maverick follows Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) long after his days at Top Gun. Now a test pilot for the Navy, Maverick is pulled back to Top Gun to train a new team of the program’s top graduates to fly a dangerous mission to bomb an unsanctioned uranium powerplant.

But there’s a complication thrown into the mix: his former wingman Goose’s son, Rooster (Miles Teller) is also part of the class, and Maverick fears he might be dooming Rooster to the same fate as his father. Now caught between the lines of friend and fighter pilot, Maverick needs to figure out how to train his recruits and prepare them to face impossible odds.

Let me get one thing immediately out of the way: I hate legacy sequels. Hate them, hate them, hate them. They rarely ever work, and even when they do, they usually rely too much on the classic movie’s appeal rather than their own. There are, of course, a few exceptions to this. Creed, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Blade Runner 2049 are the immediate examples that come to mind that stand alone as their own stories while at the same time honoring their source material. There are, however, way more examples of movies that merely wallow in their own nostalgia like tepid water without bringing anything unique or exciting to the table. Jurassic World, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, and Space Jam: A New Legacy comes to mind as the biggest offenders. And don’t even get me started on Home Sweet Home Alone. There was nothing sweet about that dumpster fire of a film.

So when I heard that Top Gun was getting a sequel more than 30 years after the first one came out, my first thought was that it spelled out disaster. For one thing, Cruise is pushing 60, and you have to wonder how long his character Maverick could be flying before the government forces him to stay grounded. For another, its director Joseph Kosinski has an inconsistent track record (he previously directed Tron: Legacy, Oblivion, and Spiderhead), and I wasn’t sure how well he would handle yet another 30-year sequel. And lastly, Ehren Kruger penned the screenplay. Have you seen how awful the Transformers movies were? I rest my case.

Imagine my surprise, then, that when I went to see Top Gun Maverick, I was absolutely blown away in every single way imaginable. Top Gun Maverick isn’t just good: it’s great. It’s bloody brilliant, actually. It’s the type of raw, visceral, and lightning-fast moviemaking that is sorely missing in today’s blockbusters. While other movies are content with cashing in on their franchise name after editing a few of their best shots into the trailer, Top Gun Maverick pushes the limit to Mach 10 and doesn’t slow down until after the movie is over. Remember the stunt in Jackass 3D where Ryan Dunn is sitting behind a jet engine as it literally blows him out of his seat? You could replace that jet engine with Top Gun Maverick and achieve the same reaction.

Part of that is because of how the movie was filmed. Insisting that the film be as authentic as possible, Tom Cruise actually put the cast through a three-month boot camp to get them used to the aerobatics and G-forces while flying. That’s because during the film’s aerial dogfights, the cast members are actually in the planes filming themselves while in the air. This leads to action scenes that can only be described as legendary. When the pilots fire up their jet engines, you feel the impact blow against you. When their planes whizz past the screen, you feel the supersonic “boom” echo in your eardrums. And when they’re in a combat situation, you feel the bullets spark as they rip through the wings’ hull. There’s actually a scene where Maverick takes off in a plane and literally blows the roof off of a nearby shed. That scene wasn’t planned: he literally blew the roof off during the shot.

That type of authenticity really brings out the effect in the film’s aerial sequences and allows them breathe and come to life in their own way. But in that same vein, Joseph Kosinski does a brilliant job directing these actors and their performances from the ground. Since he obviously couldn’t be in the air with his cast while they were filming, he and his editing team had to review over 800 hours of footage after they landed. That’s as much as all three films in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Editing that had to be a nightmare, yet Kosinski and Eddie Hamilton make the whole film feel smooth and seamless: like a hot knife slicing through butter.

But the film isn’t just a technical marvel: it is also incredibly well-written and acted. This is especially surprising, because again, everything Ehren Kruger touches normally turns into cinematic poison. But I guess this screenplay, and Tom Cruise’s charm, is immune to it. That’s because at its heart, Top Gun Maverick is a story about trauma, loss, guilt, grief, and acceptance as this surrogate family learns to keep keeping on despite the most important people in their lives no longer being there. I was expecting this film to be a fun time at the movies. What I got was so, so much more meaningful than that, and that is perhaps the biggest surprise of all.

Top Gun Maverick is an unrivaled masterpiece — an epic, exciting, and action-packed dogfighting drama that puts you up in the air with the rest of its adrenaline-addicted pilots and asks you to buckle up for the ride. This is a movie that brilliantly utilizes nostalgia not as the destination, but as a vehicle for something much bigger, gripping and heart-racing. Just wait until it breaks the sound barrier.

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May 13 2022
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“DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS” Review (✫✫)

SOURCE: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Multiverse of Mediocrity.

Let this be a lesson to anyone working on the Marvel Cinematic Universe: if you’re going to come out with a sequel to one of the strangest heroes in your universe, maybe don’t wait six years to release it. Because at that point, not only do you run the risk of it becoming obsolete — you also threaten to have the whole thing crumble under the weight of its own expectations.

Enter Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. In the span between its two movies, the MCU has debuted 18 new heroes, released six new TV shows, concluded the Avengers saga, and even released an entirely new Spider-Man trilogy to top it all off. So much has happened in the MCU that has affected so much already that it’s hard to release any sequel and have it stand alone as part of its own story. One might even argue that you can’t.

Sure enough, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness fails in this sequelitis litmus test, a messy, sloppy film that is all over the place and trying to do way too much all at once. To properly understand this movie, not only have you needed to watch Doctor Strange, Avengers: Infinity War, and Endgame, but also “WandaVision,” “Loki,” Captain Marvel, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and even a few Fox-owned movie properties on top of all that. This is a film with the buildup of an Avengers movie and the payoff of a botched “What If…?” episode.

After he wiped the world’s memory of Spider-Man’s true identity in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is trying to adjust to a world with neither Avengers nor Infinity Stones. But just as he begins to experience some sense of normalcy, he encounters a girl named America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) who is being chased by monsters through several dimensions. Now determined to help this young girl, Doctor Strange enlists in the help Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) to defend her from the monsters of the multiverse.

Before I say anything else, I want to get one thing right out of the way: it was wonderful to see Sam Raimi return to the director’s chair. While most known for creating one of the best superhero movies ever with the likes of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, his filmography has taken him everywhere under the sun, from deeply disturbing horror movies like Evil Dead and Drag Me To Hell to wildly entertaining B-movie blockbusters like Darkman and Army Of Darkness. But with his last feature-length film coming out in 2013 with Oz The Great And Powerful, it’s been nine years since Sam Raimi’s last movie, 13 years since his last horror movie, and 15 years since his last superhero movie. One has to wonder how his directing chops have held up despite being away for such a long time?

The good news is that Sam Raimi’s still got it. More importantly, he still carries his own unique signature that Marvel thankfully allowed him to carry over into one of their most popular franchises. Combining the campiness of his Spider-Man movies with the horrifying imagery of Evil Dead, Sam Raimi creates a dark and disturbing world with Multiverse Of Madness that feels cursed just by the look and feel of it. There were quite a few times where his imagery was so bold, bloody, and grotesque that it actually made me squirm in my seat. There were several moments where characters were getting straight-up dismembered, contorting into twisted, uncomfortable shapes, and even horrifically burned alive.

I was genuinely surprised that Marvel allowed Sam Raimi to go as far as he did with the violence, and even more surprised that this movie didn’t get an R rating. But Raimi teeters the line just enough to where the film never crosses the line of being over-the-top or gory, though I can’t help but wonder how different the film might have felt if Raimi was allowed to go even further.

I also really like the film’s visual creativity, especially in scenes where Strange is traveling through the multiverse. There was one really trippy sequence where Strange is falling through multiple realities, from the prehistoric era to an evergreen paradise to even an animated world flooded with watercolors. The whole sequence was so surreal and outlandish that I felt like I was on acid while watching it. If someone did happen to wander into the theater while under the influence, I pray for their sanity because it might be broken by the time this movie is over.

That said, some of the movie’s visuals don’t work quite as well, and you especially notice it with a lot of the film’s newer characters. America Chavez’s dimensional portals are one instance where they look like firework sprites coming from your laptop’s screensaver. One character in the mid-credits scene is so shiny and pristine that she looks like a scrapped character from Eternals. And one villain has a third eye appearing on his forehead that looks so photoshopped that I couldn’t help but laugh while looking at it.

However, the worst sequence hands-down comes from one fight scene where two sorcerers are casting spells at each other using… musical notes. I’m not even kidding. They literally lift musical notes off of a page of sheet music and cast them at each other like a game of darts. I remind you, this is coming from a franchise that was once a major contender for visual effects at the Academy Awards. And here, they’re just throwing in a fight scene so silly and cartoonish that it feels like it’s a deleted scene from Disney’s Fantasia.

But I can forgive inconsistent visuals. What I can’t forgive is poor writing, and this is unfortunately where the film falters the most. Not only does Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness have one of the worst screenplays out of the entire MCU: I would argue it is the worst screenplay, bar none. Dead serious.

Sure, there are other screenplays that are childish, silly, stupid, half-baked, or even underdeveloped. Thor: The Dark World, Ant-Man, and Eternals are the immediate ones that come to mind. But even at their most basic levels, those movies demonstrate at least some understanding of their characters and what motivates them. Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness completely misunderstands the heart and souls of its characters, and it makes their actions in the film all the more unbelievable.

Imagine following Tom Holland throughout his six-movie arc, falling in love with his charm, his wit, his sense of humor, his intelligence, and his unwavering commitment to doing the right thing. Then all of a sudden in his seventh movie, he throws all of that out the window and starts going on a violent rampage across the city where he starts viciously murdering people in the most gruesome ways possible. That isn’t just a gross manipulation of his character: it’s a straight-up betrayal of his character, and it does a great disservice to him and the arc he’s built up over the course of the entire franchise.

There are multiple characters that are betrayed in a similar fashion in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. And it would be one thing if these were alternate versions of these characters in another universe. But they aren’t: they’re the original characters in the original MCU. That makes their mischaracterizations all the more worse, and it ruins the experience for anyone who has been passionately following their journeys for quite some time.

Oddly enough, there is another multiversal film in cinemas right now titled Everything Everywhere All At Once. Go and see it. Not only does it utilize its bizarre concept to its maximum potential, but it’s also one of the most creative and unique narratives to come out of cinemas in the past several years. The only way Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness even comes close to that potential is in another universe.

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Apr 22 2022
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“SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2” Review (✫✫✫1/2)

A blue speedster, a two-tailed fox, and a hot-tempered knucklehead. 

There’s a general rule to film criticism, and that is to always remain objective. No matter what talent, studio, or subject matter is associated with your film, it’s the film critic’s job to separate all of that from the film and focus on the story it’s trying to tell. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an original idea or an adaptation of a 1990s video game. The quality is clear in either circumstance, and it’s the critic’s job to delineate what does and doesn’t work with the film they’re writing about. 

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is the kind of movie that makes you want to throw objectivity right out the window, the kind that makes you want to paint your face blue, put on your hedgehog ears, and throw your popcorn in excitement as your favorite speedster zooms through the theater. I must be honest, dear reader: I have no idea whether Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is, objectively speaking, good, bad, or brilliant. And more to the point, I don’t care. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is a pure joy to experience, and observing it too closely defeats the purpose of watching a movie like this. 

Taking place after the first movie which, surprisingly, was the last box office hit we got before theaters shut down in 2020, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 picks up right where the last movie left off with everyone’s favorite blue hedgehog Sonic (Ben Schwartz) living with the Wachowskis in Green Hills, Montana. After being banished to a Mushroom Planet in the last movie, Doctor Eggman (Jim Carrey) returns to Earth with a new ally, a red echidna named Knuckles (Idris Elba) who has an ax to grind against Sonic. But Eggman isn’t the only one with a new friend: a two-tailed fox named Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) has also shown up to help Sonic fend off his new foes. Now equipped with an ancient map and the discovery of a powerful artifact called the Master Emerald, Sonic and Tails must team up to get to the Master Emerald before Eggman and Knuckles do. 

Does this plot sound a little insane? Maybe, but some films benefit from a little insanity every once in a while. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is definitely one of those movies. While the first movie was an enjoyable and adorable little introduction to the blue speedster, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 ups the ante by a thousand and asks fans to buckle up for the ride. It isn’t just that it’s more action-packed: it’s more everything. From the laughs to the drama to the excitement to the intrigue, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is just more of what makes Sonic The Hedgehog, well, Sonic The Hedgehog. For casual fans whose surface-level knowledge is limited to knowing that Sonic’s fur is blue, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is simply just more of what the first movie gave us. For longtime fans who have grown up with the franchise ever since his Sega Genesis days, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 gives dedicated fans everything they’ve ever wanted in a Sonic movie. 

Oh I make no exaggeration when I say I was geeking out while watching this film. Nearly everything worked, from Sonic’s quick-witted comebacks to Tails’ ingenuity and invention to Knuckles’ hard-headedness and fisticuff-fueled rage. A few years ago, a movie about a talking hedgehog, two-tailed fox, and an overly-grumpy echidna might sound like a stupid idea to some studio execs. But thanks to the first movie’s success, Paramount saw how fans turned out for it, shrugged their shoulders, and said “Screw it, go for the nerdy nostalgia on this one Jeff!”  

That was the best call the studio could have made for this movie, and director Jeff Fowler really leans in to these characters and what makes them so beloved in fans’ eyes. Here is a movie that, on every level, just gets why Sonic is adored by fans and succeeds in replicating that for the big screen. It isn’t just the fact that the creative team understands the in-game inspirations: it’s that they know the most essential foundations for these characters and leans into them all the way. Other recent video game adaptations like Uncharted or “Halo” misunderstand what made these franchises popular and adapts the wrong parts for their live-action outings. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 does not have that problem. In fact, one might argue that it perhaps relies too much on its source material. But if this movie’s biggest problem is being too faithful, then boy oh boy, is that a great problem to have.

My main gripe with this film is the same one I had with its predecessor, and that is the humans. They’re boring, they’re dumb, and they serve no purpose beyond adding some padding to the cast list. Thankfully most of the movie sidesteps the humans and focuses on the animals and their conflict with the robot mad scientist, but then the second act really focuses in on this stupid marriage subplot that dragged on for way too long and added nothing to the main story. I don’t know if the studio had some clause saying the humans needed a specific amount of screen time or if they thought a film couldn’t function without a more human presence, but either way it doesn’t work. Natasha Rothwell’s character in particular was the worst character in the first movie, and here she has a whole side arc dedicated to her that neither works nor is relevant for the movie she’s in. 

Ultimately, my deep love for these characters and this franchise comes into direct conflict with my objectivity and my duty to appropriately critique this film. As a mere critic, I objectively believe this film is a fun time regardless of whether you’re a casual or a dedicated fan, and it’s definitely a shoo-in for families looking to distract their kids for an afternoon. But as a longtime fan who has followed this series ever since I was a child, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 gave me everything I ever wanted to see in a Sonic movie. So which inner voice do I listen to? Do I listen to the angel blue hedgehog on one shoulder, or the devilish film critic on the other?

Screw it. Objectivity or not, part of a film critic’s job is to also know what they like or don’t like: and I love this movie. Even with the forced human sideplots and gags, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 delivers on the action, the adventure, the humor, and the heart that has made this high-speed hedgehog so beloved in the first place.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is without a doubt the best video game movie ever released, and I am saying that with a straight face. Maybe that doesn’t mean much in a subgenre where there are more failures than there are successes, but hey, I’m celebrating the moment regardless. This is a year that has seen space marines, super soldiers, assassins, aliens, and treasure hunters take over the big screen, yet somehow the movie about a talking blue hedgehog, two-tailed fox, and red-hot echidna is the one that has taken off running. I hope it never slows down.

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Apr 19 2022
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Reviews

“TURNING RED” Review (✫✫✫✫)

SOURCE: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

A young girl transitioning into red panda-hood. 

Puberty is a strange phenomenon to experience. When a caterpillar is born, it doesn’t imagine a life beyond its slimy little six-legged existence. But as it crystallizes and forms into a cocoon, its body begins to change, transform, and blossom into something new. It might have felt confusing, unnatural, maybe even a little frightening for that caterpillar at times. But when it emerges, it is something more fierce, beautiful, and free than it ever was before, and it is all the better because of it.

Turning Red portrays those same sensations and emotions of puberty through the eyes of a 13-year-old Chinese girl named Mei (Rosalie Chiang). Like all other teenage girls, Mei leads a very busy life. She’s a straight-A student who solves puzzles and mathematic equations just for fun. She has a group of girlfriends that love to fawn over high school boys and pop stars. And she has a strict and overprotective mother named Ming (Sandra Oh), who she works with after school in her family temple.

Her life stays relatively normal until one morning, she wakes up to discover that she has changed into a red panda. As her parents discover her transformation, she learns that her red panda form appears anytime she feels an intense emotion. Now faced with a solution to her red panda problem, Mei has to decide if she wants to get rid of her red panda forever or live with her new furry form for the rest of her life.

When it comes to its extensive filmography, Pixar is no stranger to telling stories about adolescence and growing up. Its most recent feature, Luca, was a literal fish-out-of-water story about a pair of sea monsters learning to feel comfortable with who they are, while Inside Out touched on the complexities of emotions and how all of them are equally relevant. Heck, the entire message surrounding the Toy Story series is all about growing up and how your childhood forms you into the person you become. So Pixar is not in unfamiliar or uncharted territory with Turning Red. In fact, one could argue that much of their success came from this very same subject and focus.

The biggest difference between all of those films and Turning Red, however, lies in its viewpoint. Most of the aforementioned films focused on childhood and adolescence through a general lens where both boys and girls could empathize and relate to it. Turning Red focuses specifically on the female perspective, and that makes it so, so unique in a sea of animated movies. It’s not often where you experience a movie where the main character is a 13-year-old girl, and even fewer where she’s struggling with issues revolving around puberty, growing up, and watching her body change in front of herself.

I also like how the movie touches on Mei’s complex relationship with her mother and her desire to constantly please her. Turning Red’s director, Domee Shi, is no stranger to developing intimate narratives surrounding children and their parents. Her Academy Award-winning short film, Bao, was a sweet and intimate little gem about a mother and her dumpling-shaped son, and Turning Red adopts many of the same emotional beats as that film did.

But again, the biggest differences lie in the emphasis on the female angle. In Bao, Domee focused on the strained relationship between a mother and her estranged son. Turning Red is about two generations of women going through the same issues and both offering a unique take on those issues. Like all wise parents, Ming offers a wealth of experience for Mei, a firsthand knowledge of what she is going through and how to get through it. Mei, however, offers a different viewpoint that the red panda isn’t a rabid beast or a monster to be tamed, but rather a part of herself that can be embraced instead of feared. Both perspectives are equally valid, but what I love is that the movie doesn’t provide a clear-cut right or wrong answer on the red panda dilemma and how Mei and Ming should respond to it. It only provides the right answer for them as individuals, and those answers are very different from each other.

Yet, the most touching part about all of this is that the red panda doesn’t affect Mei or Ming’s relationship with each other. Their paths may be different, but that doesn’t mean their love or feelings towards one another has to change. I find it incredibly moving that the film’s most powerful scene doesn’t involve red pandas or larger-than-life Chinese folklore, but instead simply revolves around a mother and her daughter sharing their life experiences with one another. They are, after all, both women. If anybody can understand what they have gone through, it’s themselves.

Turning Red is one of those rare little gems that challenges you not just as a viewer or as a movie fan, but as a person and as a constantly growing and evolving human being. Good movies keep audiences merely entertained or engaged throughout their run time, but genuinely great movies inspire new stories, emotions, characters, experiences, and thought-provoking ideas that stay with you long after you’ve left the theater. Turning Red does just that in a vibrant, colorful, and eye-popping anime art style that makes you want to get up, shake your tail feathers, and let out your inner red panda in a loud and triumphant roar.

Turning Red isn’t just a fun time at the movies: it’s a moving and monumental coming-of-age story that inspires growth, challenges your perspective, and transforms you into something bigger and better: just like its furry red heroine.

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Mar 18 2022
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“The Batman” Review (✫✫✫1/2)

A gothic Gotham and dark knight.

In the genre of comic book movies, few characters have been done and redone as many times as Batman has. In the past 10 years, we have seen five different iterations of the caped crusader on the big screen. This year alone, we’re going to see three different big-screen Batmans, two of which will be in live-action. In this day and age, the greatest challenge that comes with the dark knight is redoing and rebooting the character over and over again and making him feel different every time. 

Thankfully, Matt Reeves’ The Batman achieves this in spades, reintroducing the world’s greatest detective not as this mythical entity criminals fear late at night, but as one man at his wits ending fighting one city and the entirety of its corruption. Never before has Batman felt so grounded in a film. Yes, that even includes Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. 

Taking place two years after he first donned the cowl, The Batman follows Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) at the start of his crime-fighting career as he hunts down Gotham’s worst. But as he begins to strike fear and vengeance into Gotham’s heart, a new serial killer calling himself the Riddler (Paul Dano) enters the fray, claiming responsibility for a string of murders happening throughout the city. Now determined to track down this killer, the Batman scours the criminal underworld looking for clues connecting him to Gotham’s newest criminal mastermind.

One of the most essential elements of any big-screen Batman adaptation is how the city of Gotham is portrayed. In Tim Burton’s Batman movies, Gotham is portrayed like a bleak slum reminiscent of a graveyard, shrouded in shades of charcoal and dark blue. In Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Gotham mimics the look and feel of a modern-day Chicago. And in Batman V. Superman, Gotham is… apparently across the bay from Metropolis. But we don’t need to talk about that film.

So how does Matt Reeves handle his iteration of Gotham city? Pretty amazingly, actually. In fact, The Batman has quite possibly the best realization of Gotham yet. While previous films have shown Gotham as a dreadful, decrepit city that desperately needed saving, The Batman illustrates Gotham as a swamp of greed, crime, and corruption, sharing more in common with a diseased leper than a highly populated metropolitan city. In previous films, there was a glimmer of hope that Gotham could change and be saved. The Batman illustrates Gotham as a truly desolate, hopeless place that we honestly question if it’s even worth saving. In many ways, Gotham is a character in and of itself, and it really informs why Bruce constantly feels the need to suit up at night as the Batman.

But it isn’t just Gotham city that Matt Reeves nails so well here: its also the dark, eerie, unsettling tone that persists throughout the whole film. The opening sequence alone brilliantly sets the stage, with Robert Pattinson delivering a haunting voiceover about being a predator on the hunt at night while criminals cower in fear as they see the Bat Signal light up the sky. Most other Batman films have great introductions to their characters, but The Batman is the first to show the full scope of it and how everyone in this world reacts and responds to a prowler stalking the city late at night. It sets the tone so, so wonderfully. Out of all of the films that have been previously released, The Batman feels the most atmospheric and stays with you long after you’ve left the theater.

I also really like the ultra-realism that Matt Reeves aims for when adapting this big-screen Batman. While most Batman films feel implausible or far-fetched at one point or another, The Batman always feels completely realistic, sometimes nearly to its detriment. Instead of having countless bat gadgets and weapons at his disposal, this Batman carries only one bat-blade and a grappling gun, and that limits how much he’s able to do alone as one man. Instead of having a heavily-armored vehicle like the Tumbler or the Batwing, the Batmobile instead feels like a suped-up muscle car, yet equally capable in its speed and destruction. And instead of being able to fly with his cape, here he has to literally suit up in a flight suit just to be able to glide through the air. More than any other Batman film, The Batman feels the most like it could actually happen. That gives it a level of authenticity and believability that few Batman films have, and even fewer superhero films on top of that.

The cast is exceptional in every way imaginable. Zoe Kravitz brings us the best version of Catwoman to date, playing her not like a whiskers-twirling supervillain, but as a morally-conflicted cat burglar who sees the world through the shades of gray that she grew up in. Colin Farrell is straight-up unrecognizable as the Penguin, playing him as this cartoonish wannabe mob boss that wants to be taken more seriously than he actually is. And without giving too much away, Paul Dano’s Riddler serves as the perfect foil to Pattinson’s Batman, offering a chilling, disturbed performance of a twisted man who wants vengeance from the city that wronged him. I honestly think Dano’s Riddler might be my favorite supervillain performance in a Batman film. That is, after Heath Ledger’s turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

This begs the question of how well does Robert Pattinson do in playing the caped crusader? Well, he’s a mixed bag. On one hand, his performance as Batman alone is mesmerizing and powerful, beautifully illustrating a man tortured and haunted by his demons and who is guided by his grief and trauma. His sheer presence inspires fear and tension, and that is exactly what you need in an actor to play Batman. His voice is also the darkest and most grim Batman voice in the past 10 years. I’d even go so far as to say his voice is my favorite out of all the Batman actors. It’s definitely an improvement over Christian Bale’s growly snarls and Ben Affleck’s garbled autotune.

In terms of playing Batman, Pattinson’s portrayal is perfect — maybe even the best on-screen Batman we’ve ever gotten. The problem is, he isn’t expected to just play Batman: he’s also expected to play Bruce Wayne, and this is where Pattinson’s performance begins to falter. While Pattinson’s Batman is dark, intimidating, and brooding, Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne is… the exact same. There’s no indication that he is the billionaire playboy that the press loves to flaunt on their front pages, or that he’s even capable of playing that part. While at night Pattinson is great at playing the shrouded predator that makes criminals shake in their boots, his performance as Bruce Wayne is the exact same and offers zero nuance beyond his scowls and eye-piercing glares.

Sure, you could make the argument that this is Bruce early on in his crime-fighting career and that he just doesn’t know how to delineate between his public and his private personas. But that implies that this version of Bruce is not smart enough, or at least aware enough, to know that he may need a public persona to fend off wavering eyes. I don’t buy that for a second. This is a guy who can solve riddles, find far-reaching clues, and piece together mind-boggling mysteries like a master detective, and he doesn’t even have the self-awareness to think “Hey, maybe I should B.S. the public so nobody suspects I’m secretly a vigilante?” Give me a break. There’s even a moment in the film where Bruce fears that somebody quietly suspects that he may be Batman. I mean, duh. What else do you think all of that eye shadow is for? A Panic! At The Disco concert?

All in all, The Batman is a bold and brilliant retelling of the dark knight, even if it falters with some creative decisions here or there. I find it fascinating that nine years after Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy ended, The Batman doesn’t feel tired, redundant, or exhausted in its execution. Instead, it feels fresh, exciting, and deeply challenging to the caped crusader and his mythos. Yet, the biggest surprise I found with the film wasn’t how dark, how bleak, how hopeless Gotham really felt. The biggest surprise was after leaving Gotham when the movie was over, all I could think about was how badly I wanted to go back.

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Feb 25 2022
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Reviews

“THE POWER OF THE DOG” Review (✫✫)

SOURCE: Netflix

Putting the dog down.

There’s a metaphor hiding behind the mountains of The Power Of The Dog. Some people can see a dog hiding within the curves, crevices, and shadows of the canyonside. Others can only see the mountain. Regardless of whether or not you can see the dog, it doesn’t change the fact that two people are just staring aimlessly at a mountain like madmen, searching for something that might not even be there.

Ironically enough, this plot point is the perfect metaphor for The Power Of The Dog itself. Like the old west, The Power Of The Dog possesses a lot of beauty, a lot of darkness, and a lot of danger burrowing beneath the sands of Montana. Just like the countryside, there’s a lot to appreciate with the sheer scale and scenery that we witness here. But stick around for too long, and it’ll eventually swallow you whole. That’s pretty much what happens with The Power Of The Dog: the main characters stare at the mountains for far too long, looking for deeper meaning in a place where there is none.

Based on a 1967 western novel by Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog follows two rancher brothers as they toil day and night taking care of their cattle and farm. The elder brother Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) is still mourning the loss of his mentor, Henry Bronco. His brother George (Jesse Plemons) marries a widow named Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and adopts her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil is a sordid, distrusting person who thinks Rose is only after George’s money. Rose is still grieving her former husband’s demise while battling an alcohol addiction. Things simmer like a soft boil until the tensions rise to the point of no return for the Burbank household.

Well, “tension” may not be the right word to use here. More like melodramatically prolonged stares and pauses that are so drawn out and overbearing that it makes after-school detention seem more interesting. When The Power Of The Dog opens up, it promises a dark, complex narrative filled with depth and deception — one where long-hidden secrets remained buried until one curious teenager brings them to light. This film… is not that. What we get instead is a long, dull, boring, flavorless experience that’s so bland and uninteresting that it makes unsalted crackers look exciting.

Oh sure, the film is perfectly functional. From a purely technical standpoint, I have no grievances with the film whatsoever. The costuming and production design is accurate and on-point to the era the film is portraying. The cinematography by Ari Wegner is lush and vivid and evokes a sense of loneliness and isolation. And while it is simple and bare-bones, the acoustic score by Jonny Greenwood carries on with an uneasy progression, with its strings plucking in an agitated manner as if Phil Burbank were playing them himself.

The actors also do a really good job with the roles they are given and are convincing in their portrayals of an unnerved family losing its sense of tranquility. Kirsten Dunst has a mesmerizing return to form after leaving the film industry for four years, playing a tortured, anguished character who is torn by her motherhood, her alcoholism, and her trauma she’s experienced since moving in with the Burbanks. Kodi Smit-McPhee plays an equally layered character with several shades, feeling warm and inviting in one beat and cold and calculating in another. And Benedict Cumberbatch masterfully plays the meanest bastard you’ve ever met, a man who will inflict great suffering on a family without hesitation but whose actions are contextualized through a great tragedy he experienced. Individually these characters are very interesting, and the cast realizes all of these roles to the best of their abilities.

The problem is the story they’re in is just not there. On paper, there’s an intricate and layered narrative hiding deep beneath The Power of the Dog’s muddy surface. But in execution, there’s no story at all — only characters that meander aimlessly from one point to another without any rhyme or reason, without any point or purpose, really without any sense of direction or destination. It isn’t merely the fact that The Power of the Dog is difficult to read. Quite the contrary — it is impossible to read. There is so much sleight of hand, so much implication, and so much interpretation that is required to understand this film that you would need to read the script while watching just to be able to follow what is even going on.

I say all this knowing that interpretation in and of itself is not a bad thing. Several films released from the past few years have required audiences to do the heavy lifting and were uniquely rewarding in their own way, whether it was Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life, Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, or Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman and The Revenant. Even David Lowery’s recent The Green Knight, which I still profess was an extremely polarizing film, at least had an intriguing point and a purpose that the film was driving toward. The Power of the Dog doesn’t even have that. It drops its 304-page novel right onto audiences’ backs, shrugs its shoulders, says “make of that whatever you will” and then leaves. That’s not good filmmaking. That isn’t even storytelling. That’s a cinematic Rorschach test it’s forcing audiences to take without even doing the decency of providing them with a clear picture.

This is why the mountains are the perfect metaphor for the public’s reaction to The Power of the Dog. Some will see the point that The Power of the Dog is trying to make and fall in love with it. Others won’t see anything at all and will be flabbergasted as to how so many people can be drooling all over it. So, which is it? Is there a dog or isn’t there? I have a better question: who cares?

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