Good or New Movies Review
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I watched Aquaman. It was okay.
Jason Momoa remains charming. He has great screen presence. And he looks like he's having a good time doing this superhero thing, which is at least a nice change from, to pick a name out of a hat, Henry Cavill.
There are some great visuals. A soul-crushing amount of work must have been expended on creating the undersea kingdoms and the "make people look like they're underwater" effects, and a good thing, too, because probably 75%+ of the movie's run time happens there.
But Aquaman has, to my way of thinking, three major flaws to go along with some little ones.
One is that it had the bad luck to come out less than a year after Black Panther, another movie about a man born heir to an isolated kingdom of amazing and wondrous technology, who has to overcome the machinations of an evil relative in order to become the leader he was always destined to be. And, unfortunately, Black Panther is the better movie. That in itself is not the kiss of death, because Black Panther was itself pretty darn good, but it doesn't help. And ... look, call me a humorless scold if you must, but "divine right of kings" movies set in the present day make my hackles rise. Do we really want to be telling people that superhuman power and rulership over millions comes from being born to the right parents?
Problem number two is that the movie is so stuffed full of exposition, and moves along at such a breakneck pace, that I really have no idea what the stakes are. Maybe this is not a problem for fans of the comic, but it's hard to empathize with anybody when everyone is mostly interchangeable. They tried to help me by casting a blond Aryan-looking fellow as the bad guy, so thanks for that, but there are still seven different undersea kingdoms and neither the fishtailed folk nor the crab people nor the Deep Ones nor, for that matter, the differences between the two mostly human-looking realms are explored enough for me to know what the heck. It's just exhausting trying to keep up with the prophecies and laws of Atlantis and rules of the universe and I guess what I'm saying here is that the movie would have benefited from focusing more tightly on a smaller portion of the underwater world rather than trying to show it all at once.
Problem number three is the schizophrenic tone. Is this a serious drama about the costs of broken-up families or a lighthearted rom-com? Is it Game of Thrones or Camelot? Aquaman can't make up its mind and wants to be all things to all people. Toward the end of the movie, thousands -- maybe tens of thousands -- of Atlanteans die in an elaborate CGI battle in which we don't really know who outnumbers who or what either side's capabilities are or much of anything about the people being attacked. And then good triumphs and the good guys make a couple of wisecracks and it's happily ever after. Pardon my language, but what the fuck? Are you trying to make us think your protagonists are careless self-absorbed narcissists? You just showed us the underwater Battle of the Somme and now it's back to smug one-liners! If even the people ruling Atlantis don't care about the vast numbers of lives lost, I can't really be arsed to care about them either, and that fatally undermines my ability to take what's happening seriously.
I'm making out like I hated this movie and I really didn't. Yes, it was overstuffed with so much CGI that it might as well have been an animated film, and yes, it was a little repetitive, and yes, my interest in comic-book action setpieces has been mostly exhausted by the past decade. But it's not bad. I'd rather watch Aquaman than, let's say, Dawn of Justice, or Man of Steel, because for all its faults at least it doesn't completely shit on the character it's trying to build up. If you aren't tired of superhero movies yet then this is a perfectly acceptable example of the genre. If you're looking for something beyond that, though, this ... isn't it.
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Bird Box. Netflix. A nice post apoc alien invasion with lines of A Quiet Place, a sprinkling of the Happening and a healthy dose of like Signs and some other classic psych horrors. Tomato gave it 66%, I quite enjoyed it, even when birds nesting in my eaves while I was watching at 1am and scared the shit out of me by squabbling and scratching at my window.
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@jibberthehut Watched that last night and really enjoyed it. I had only just recently watched A Quiet Place, which I also enjoyed, so it felt sort of like another spin-off of that but not in a bad way. Both movies are terrifying in their own ways and emotionally gripping. At least for me!
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@zobi It was very reminiscent of A Quiet Place. But like you said, in a good way. A nice solid movie I think.
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I saw the first trailer for "MIB International" and went through the five stages of grief.
Ultimately I landed on acceptance: The Fast and the Furious meets Goofy Aliens? Yeah, okay, that can work. I'm not holding any hope for it being any good, as the trailer can't decide if it wants to be "FatF" or "MiB 1", but it clearly wants people to think it's FatF but they can't get the characterization down.
That is, it's less charming than any of the FatF trailers, which is a crying shame because if MiB should have anything it's charm.
Its inexpertise is okay by me. This never got to be a beloved franchise, so if they go gonzo on it then this is one of the twenty directions it could go in. I liked the "delightful surprises around every corner" of the original, but it was so 80s that it would never fly today.
tl;dr: Will not watch. Do not feel betrayed.
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Finally saw Aquaman. All I can say is, wow! I thought it was fantastic. I think it's the first DC movie that can really hold it's own with the top tier Marvel movies. I could not have asked for much more from a comic book movie.
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@zombiegenesis said in Good or New Movies Review:
Finally saw Aquaman. All I can say is, wow! I thought it was fantastic. I think it's the first DC movie that can really hold it's own with the top tier Marvel movies. I could not have asked for much more from a comic book movie.
......Wonder Woman. FIGHT ME.
https://whatiswrongwith.me/Mia
There were never any good old days. They are today. They are tomorrow. It's a stupid thing we say, cursing tomorrow with sorrow. -- Gogol Bordello -
@aria Nah, not gonna fight ya. I'm glad you enjoyed the movie as much as you did. Personally, I thought the movie got a lot of credit just for not sucking. It was good, don't get me wrong, and I enjoyed it but if I were to rate it I'd put it at around a 7(which is pretty good, IMO). I just thought Aquaman was better but it fit my personal taste a lot more than WW did. For me, it was like Star Wars had a baby with Tron and it was raised by Flash Gordon. Wonder Woman was good enough, however, that when people say "I actually preferred WW over Aquaman," I get it. Suicide Squad is another story, however...
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@zombiegenesis said in Good or New Movies Review:
@aria Nah, not gonna fight ya. I'm glad you enjoyed the movie as much as you did. Personally, I thought the movie got a lot of credit just for not sucking. It was good, don't get me wrong, and I enjoyed it but if I were to rate it I'd put it at around a 7(which is pretty good, IMO). I just thought Aquaman was better but it fit my personal taste a lot more than WW did. For me, it was like Star Wars had a baby with Tron and it was raised by Flash Gordon. Wonder Woman was good enough, however, that when people say "I actually preferred WW over Aquaman," I get it. Suicide Squad is another story, however...
Suicide Squad just makes my heart hurt. It was AWFUL. Plus I also have a rampaging hateboner for Jared Leto, who is the next Bill Cosby. Every time I see him on screen, I just get angry, regardless of what movie he's in.
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I know I'm late to the Spiderverse party but holy shit it was so good and I am so happy about it.
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Five Second Review:
Aquaman
Good story, great effects, writing mediocre at best, abysmal continuity. Closest thing to a comic book I've seen in movie form. Loved it.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
I really liked it!
*As an aside, I did not like Wonder Woman. I was going to hear a story of female empowerment... and got a love story instead. Dislike so much.
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@zombiegenesis YES! I sat through Aquaman and was like "Man, it's like underwater tron....."
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@silverfox You're not alone. My housemate and I fight over this movie all the time. He thinks it was brilliant and wonderful and I'm over here grumbling about how the first female standalone movie turned into a 'love conquers all' love story.
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Three movies over the past 2 weeks.
Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse: Don't take it from me; take it from everyone else, please. This is probably the slickest, best-written Marvel movie all year -- yes, even better than Black Panther. It's certainly blacker than Black Panther: no kings, no majesty, just some poor kid getting caught up in the machinations of others. And it has a pulse-pumping soundtrack that is just shy of Kendrick Lamar's inspirational soundtrack.
Speaking of soundtracks --
Don't miss Bumblebee. This movie is what I expected back when Bay released the first of the new franchise's movies. While critics have alternately panned it as a "girl-and-horse" sort of movie, I don't get it -- I really don't. Hailee Steinfeld proves that she can actually act still (remember True Grit?) and Angela Bassett eats up every moment as Shatter. Plus, the soundtrack is breathtakingly middle-class Californian-American from the 80s, and really holds the movie together. You are not losing money if you're a Transformers fan, and who the hell doesn't like seeing Soundwave as, well, Soundwave?
And, on the topic of nostalgia, that brings me to Netflix's Watership Down.
I know that the critics hated the animation style. I know the critics poo-pooed the absence of graphic bunny violence. Yet everything about this 4-part series is exactly what you would hope from an adaptation of Adams' 1972 novel. To say that it's neither as creepy nor as sinister as Martin Rosen's 1978 animated film is simply wrong, as the violence and dread are palpable and brought to life in this new series, which is seen literally on the level of rabbits (some of it is 1st person).
Plus, the voices: James McAvoy. Nicholas Hoult. John Boyega. Ben Motherfucking Kingsley as General Woundwort. Not to mention Daniel Kaluuya, Taron Egerton, Rosamund Pike, and Peter Capaldi as a Scottish Kehaar. The critics seem to be a mix of CGI-elitists and toxic fans of what is likely the most under-appreciated criticism of modernity I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.
And, I swear, if you're not leaking lubricating fluid from your eyes at the end of each episode, you need to have your humanity/animality chip checked.
So, watch these folks. Seriously.
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@ganymede Watership is on my list. I was on the fence but I will give it a gander sooner rather than later!
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@ganymede
On Bumblebee, I saw Optimus Prime actually looking like himself in the trailer and I felt a giddy excitement about that. I have not had time to see Bumblebee yet, due to holidays, but I am looking forward to it.On Aquaman, my short short review:
Black Panther under water.
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@jaded said in Good or New Movies Review:
On Bumblebee, I saw Optimus Prime actually looking like himself in the trailer and I felt a giddy excitement about that. I have not had time to see Bumblebee yet, due to holidays, but I am looking forward to it.
Sure. There's also Shockwave:
And Starscream:
And, yes, Optimus Prime.
Add to that a good script and decent director, and it isn't a creative abortion. Imagine that.
Also, Arcee, Wheeljack, Cliffjumper --
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