COOL RUNNINGS

 

MOVIE
The Flash
Director Andrés Muschietti
Reviewer Ray Chan

THE butterfly effect is literally a tale as old as time. Even the smallest change in history will lead to much larger and different consequences in the future.

    And in this movie, that’s where the troubles start for Barry Allen, who, as the Flash and a newly-minted member of the Justice League, has recently discovered he can travel back in time by moving faster than the speed of light.

    Barry epiphanises that he can use this new skill to help acquit his father of wrongful murder charges against his wife. The incident can be traced back to one can of tomatoes – if his mother hadn’t forgotten to buy them earlier that fateful day, his father would never have gone out to the grocery store, an intruder wouldn't have thought the house was empty, and his mother would never have been killed.

    Barry duly voyages to the past, planting the tomatoes in his mother's shopping cart so that different circumstances would prevail, thereby saving her life.

    The result is chaos, as the whole universe then starts to unravel.

    Barry ends up in a reality where he loses his powers, meets up with a doppelganger who he has to train to take up the Flash mantle, and finds out that there are no other metahumans around.

    There is a Batman though, although different to one that Barry knows. This version is the 1989 movie hero portrayed by Michael Keaton, who, now retired, is enticed to team up with the two Allens to help battle the arrival of the Kryptonian tyrant General Zod.

    Indeed, Keaton’s much-publicised return is an admirable and well-conceived callback for the fanboys and baby boomers who flocked to the film when it premiered more than three decades ago … a joyful resurrection embellished by the sight of the sleek Batmobile and the iconic Batwing silhouetted against the moon, all to the original Danny Elfman theme.

    With no Superman around in this world, a new hero emerges in the form of Kara Zor-El, the civilian name of Supergirl (although she is not referred to as such here). As she is also Kryptonian, she soaks in the super powers imbued by the Earth’s sun, and together with the Flashes, attempt to contain Zod and his armies.

    The interaction between the two Allens as they team up gives the picture a human, relatable edge missing from so many super-hero offerings in recent times, in particular Marvel misses like The Eternals and Ant-Man: Quantumania, where watchers are dragged through interminable inter-galactic or outworldly sequences.

    Miller gives his characters the perfect jittery, hyper-energetic quality expected from someone who views people in his surroundings moving at a snail’s space. And he’s not let down by the cast members, all of whom pull their weight with distinction.

    The flashpoint of the movie (pun intended) occurs when the heroes fail to bring down Zod despite a valiant effort, resulting in the sacrifice of one of them. Barry surmises he can once again go back in time again and again to try and reach a nexus where the villain is defeated.

    It’s at this juncture that viewers of a certain age, this reviewer included, will discover the production’s most riveting moment: trapped inside a multiverse, Barry witnesses variant versions of Earth created due to his meddling with time, some with heroes, some without. In a stroke of genius, to represent these divergent individuals, director Andrés Muschietti calls in a string of the different versions of various DC characters from throughout the years, from across stage, screen and television.

    Identifying the cameos is just half the fun: discovering some unexpected appearances is another source of joy, which will guarantee a return screening for many.

#universal #flashmovie #dccomics

FASHION STATEMENT

 

MOVIE
Mrs Harris Goes To Paris
Director Anthony Fabian
Reviewer Ray Chan

Here’s a sleeper that first hit the cinemas late last year and is now doing the rounds on Netflix, enabling those who missed it an opportunity to watch surely one of the most heartwarming productions of the past 12 months.
    Oscar nominee Lesley Manville stars as Ada Harris, a working class cleaning woman in the WWII era earning her keep maintaining the affluent abodes of London while her husband serves a tour of duty abroad.
    Her life is thrown a curve when she hears news of her husband’s death in action, whereupon she decides the time is right to cast caution to the wind and embark on a fresh challenge. She scrimps and saves from her tight budget to pursue her newfound dream of travelling to Paris to purchase a couture Christian Dior gown.
    Symbolically for her, the dress will usher in a new chapter, a reminder to the world that she still has a life to be lived.
    But as expected, nothing goes too smoothly at first. Once in the French capital, our everyday heroine is confronted with unexpected barriers of class and presumed taste, both in her interactions with the French upper crust and within the Dior fashion house.
    Yet her journey is one that brings out the kindness and goodness of almost everyone she encounters, each of them moved by her earnest enthusiasm and indefatigably warm heart.
    Filmmaker Anthony Fabian delivers a thoroughly agreeable endeavour that benefits from the superb efforts of Manville (looking every bit a cross between Betty White and Meryl Streep) and her various co-stars, as the performers’ uniformly charismatic work goes a long way towards perpetuating the movie’s compulsively watchable atmosphere – with the lead herself turning in a completely captivating and sympathetic performance that effectively anchors the proceedings from start to finish.
    And the Dior wardrobe on show is pretty spectacular. Models shapely and slender with velvet vestments, silken smocks, enchanting ensembles, and a range of elegant accoutrements jaunt up and down the catwalk, pulling in the viewer as much as a flabbergasted Ada sitting in the audience.
    Although the picture is admittedly a little padded-out and overlong in certain stretches, the midsection’s emphasis on affable, crowd-pleasing interludes goes a long way towards rendering such concerns moot – with the satisfying third act ensuring that the whole thing concludes on as positive and entertaining a note as one could’ve envisioned.
    With nary a word raised in anger throughout, the end result is a first-class piece of work that boasts plenty of attributes that are hard to dislike, creating a pleasant diversion from the plethora of films that seem to thrive on violence, cussing and assorted bits of sex and drugs and rock’n’roll.
    The book the movie is based on actually birthed a series that found Ada going to New York, Moscow, and even Parliament. The foundation is already there for Manville to have her own franchise.
    And after this joyous, not-as-syrupy-as-it-appears first trip, where Mrs. Harris goes, we must follow.

#mrsharrisgoestoparis

FAMILY AT THE FORE OF FANTASY

 

MOVIE
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Director John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein
Review Ray Chan

You don’t really need to know the rules of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons to grasp the concept of the movie.
    The tabletop battleplay franchise pioneered so many sword-and-sorcery imitators that it’s almost commonplace now for fantasy scenarios to feature dashing young warriors or Amazon-like women scurrying about finding treasure or rescuing prisoners in medieaval kingdoms.
    Honor Among Thieves hones in on Edgin (Chris Pine), a bard turned to a life of crime after the murder of his wife Zia by the Red Wizards of Thay, the most feared faction in the Realms, forcing him to raise his daughter Kira with the help of his friend, a barbarian named Holga (Michelle Rodriguez).
    After being captured while on a heist, Edgin and Holga spend a couple of years in prison, enabling their traitorous former crony Forge (Hugh Grant, playing the same sort of addled character he always does) to bring up Kira, whom he has developed an affection for.
    Finally escaping, the pair join forces with a sorcerer with confidence issues named Simon, a druid tiefling named Doric, and a paladin named Xenk Yendar as they aim to reunite with Kira.
    They also want to retrieve the Tablet of Resurrection, an artifact that can bring Edgin’s wife back to life.
    Forge, meanwhile, has allied with a powerful and vicious Red Wizard named Sofina, a role which actress Daisy Head hams up with as much malevolence as she can muster.
    With battles taking place amid castles, dragons and panoramic vistas, Honor Among Thieves tells its story with all the anticipated visual delights replete with comfortable tropes and structures expected of the feudal setting.
    The movie succeeds because it doesn't take itself too seriously, unlike, say, World of Warcraft. And it does seem to shine when it’s at its most ridiculously unpredictable and downright silly. Whether deliberate or spontaneous, and granted a couple of bits of witty dialogue, Pine exudes a comedic charm that is reminiscent of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, while perhaps not quite hitting the mark.
    What conveys the movie more is a solid, uplifting conclusion. While the party seems outmatched by Sofina’s abilities, they ultimately defeat her by working as a familial team and using their strengths, enabling the underdogs to pull off an unlikely victory, albeit at the expense of Holga, who suffers a fatal stab wound.
    With the tablet now acquired by Edgin, he is faced with making a difficult choice: use it to resurrect Zia and give Kira back her mother, or revive Holga, who had been a surrogate maternal presence as Kira grew up.

 

#dungeonsanddragons  #universal

GRIN AND BEAR IT

 

MOVIE
Cocaine Bear
Director Elizabeth Banks
Review Ray Chan

Just when you thought every conceivable genre has been covered in the movie industry – from comedy to horror, from romance to drama, from westerns to space shenanigans – comes along a film like Cocaine Bear, so refreshingly different that it could indeed have created a new classification of its own. Attenborough adventures on acid, perhaps.
    The titular character is a 220kg (impressively CGI-ed) American black bear that accidentally snorts cocaine, and ends up pummeling his paws onto every unexpecting human who it encounters, creating an aisle of evisceration and entrails.
    This sublimely ridiculous romp is based (very loosely) on a true event in which a bear was found dead in the forest after sniffing in too much of the happy dust.
    The film opens with a drug smuggler liberally tossing bricks of crack from the side of his plane over Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest. After losing his footing and knocking himself unconscious, he plummets to his death in the suburbs of Tennessee.
    As fate would have it, much of the coke is unintentionally discovered and ingested by the bear, prompting it on a murderous rampage while on the hunt for her next fix of the white stuff. 
    Caught in the carnivore’s sights are a whole lot of varied individuals: protective mother Sari, who’s ventured into the woods to find her school truant daughter, Dee Dee and her best friend Henry; Daveed and Eddie, who are on a mission to find the missing cocaine for Eddie’s drug kingpin father, Syd (played by the late Ray Liotta); detective Bob, who is investigating the runner’s mysterious death; and no-nonsense park ranger Liz and her wildlife inspector crush Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). 
    And that’s just for starters, with an array of other characters accidentally becoming victims of the bruin’s addled divergent demeanour, but who end up damaged, dissected or dead through one mishap after another. Indeed, prepare yourself for some of the most wildly imaginative and utterly ludicrous murders seen this year, especially one sublime sequence involving a speeding ambulance.
    But they’re just collateral to add to the body count. It’s evident that director Elizabeth Banks wants the audience to connect with the core group of characters she’s focusing on and it’s clear whose fate she wants viewers to give a damn about.
    At the end of the day, you’re here to see a gargantuan grizzly high on the white stuff rip up a dozen people with fitful abandon. Banks fully embraces the utter absurdity of the premise with fiendish fervour, doling out equal lashings of irreverent humour and gory violence, and creating a black comedy in the purest sense. 
    Cocaine Bear is entertaining with a capital E, absurd with a capital A, and farcical with a capital F. And, dammit with a capital D, if it isn’t one of the most deliciously enjoyable experiences inside a cinema this year.

#universal #cocainebear

FAT SUIT FAILS TO HARPOON FRASER

 

MOVIE
The Whale
Director Darren Aronofsky
Review Ray Chan

The Whale adapts a play by Samuel D. Hunter, about an excessively obese man coming to grips with his life after leaving his wife and daughter for a homosexual relationship, with the story taking place exclusively inside his home.
    In essence, the camera is stuck in front of actor Brendan Fraser, who is encased in bogus blubber that makes him appear to weigh near 300 kilograms, and we're even treated to scenes of him in various stages of undress. But while such a scenario works well on the stage, it feels almost claustrophobic in a movie setting. 
    Audiences will feel themselves sympathising with the character Charlie’s physical and psychological plight, while maintaining a morbid fascination for the mountain of a man who struggles to carry out simple activities such as getting up from the couch while still feasting on candy bars and chicken, well aware of the dangers posed to his health.
    A college writing professor, Charlie teaches his students online from behind the safety of a black square, too ashamed to reveal his true voluminous visage. His favourite novel is Moby Dick, the Herman Melville book also referred to as The Whale, an obvious metaphor for his external appearance.
    He describes the elusive mammal as he stands up, shirtless, and lumbers across the living room and toward the bedroom with a walker. "He thinks his life will be better if he can just kill this whale, but in reality, it won't help him at all. This book made me think about my own life," he says, slapping viewers head-on with symbolism as subtle as a piledriver.
    The movie unfolds over the course of a week, during which Charlie receives a series of visits  – from his friend and informal caretaker Liz, who also happens to be the sister of his former male lover Alan, who committed suicide from shame of the gay tryst; from Thomas, a young missionary who wants to rescue his soul; from his estranged teenage daughter Ellie, who is angry at her father’s desertion; and embittered ex-wife Mary.
    The most interesting exchange of dialogue takes place with Thomas, who insists that Charlie’s sins can be forgiven. Telling him that "I'm not interested in being saved", Charlie berates him for his unwanted proselytising, pointing out that there was nothing wrong with the true love that he and Alan shared.
    Ultimately, the film challenges us in important ways: when we see Charlie, do we look at the man or the body?
    There’s little doubt the movie ultimately works because of Fraser.
    While critics may argue that any character actor worth his salt could just as easily pull off the role, Fraser’s facial expressions, puppy eyes and welcoming and resonant voice give Charlie gravitas and strength as well as a certain effervescence, unencumbered by the weighty prosthetics and make-up.

#thewhale

DOLLED UP FOR DEATH

 

MOVIE
M3GAN
Director Gerard Johnstone
Review Ray Chan

After a car accident claims the lives of her parents, a young girl named Cady is looked after by her aunt Gemma, an accomplished robotics builder. 
    She takes on the guardianship role reluctantly, as it comes at a time when she is under duress with work at toy company Funki.
    Gemma needs to convince her boss that her follow-up to the first interactive toy she invented, Purrpetual Petz, is going to be one of the most advanced ever put on the market. But it’s not perfected yet and some glitches need to be addressed. 
    Cady’s arrival disrupts Gemma’s focus, speeding up the prototype process and avoiding thorough testing. The final product, resembling a life-like girl, is named M3GAN (short for Model 3 Generative Android), and is duly activated and ready to be Cady’s best friend. 
    Swiftly, it becomes clear that M3GAN is ready to go to any lengths to protect Cady from emotional or physical harm, even murder and violence. And there are plenty of offenders who pose potential threats. What transpires is a delightfully unhinged cautionary tale about technology taking the lead in parenting.
    From the onset, it’s clear that Cady’s well-being is in jeopardy because the people who are supposed to care for her – Gemma, her laboratory peers and her employer – are frankly more interested in profiteering from the mechanical mannequin rather than the orphan’s welfare. 
    Taking the time to actually listen and help Cady is initially seen as a burden, so Gemma uses M3GAN as a defacto babysitter and companion, a task it carries out with aplomb, even singing a Sia song as a lullaby.
    The campiness that shores up the movie is intentional and genuinely funny. Sad to say, audiences these days find more mirth in grisly scenes than revulsion.
    Aside from the script, there are several other factors that make the story work. 
    There are committed performances from everyone in the cast, especially Amie Donald, the young dancer behind M3GAN’s physical performance, which includes a maniacal trot on all fours and a pirouette routine that has become a viral sensation. The title character herself is a combination of Donald’s performance, animatronics, and puppeteering, as well as a vocal performance from Jenna Davis.
    M3GAN could have been a tad scarier, but it’s a fun ride nonetheless. Come for the promise of a killer android with Lady Penelope eyes, and stay for a fun time at the movies, complete with a musical number of two.
    Forget Chucky or Annabelle. There's a new horror doll in town and she's so much more fun to watch. By the end, you might wish M3GAN was your new bestie too.

#M3gan @UniversalpicsAU

BLOWING IT OUT OF THE WATER

 

MOVIE
Avatar: The Way of Water (3-D)
Director James Cameron
Review Ray Chan

It’s been so long since the first instalment that viewers could be forgiven for having trouble remembering anything about the parables on planetoid Pandora.
    So, a quick recap. In the year 2154, the celestial satellite – inhabited by blue-skinned, sapient humanoids that live in harmony with nature – is coveted by Earthlings whose own planet’s resources have been depleted.
    To explore Pandora’s box, genetically-matched human scientists use Na'vi-human hybrids called "avatars". Paraplegic marine Jake Scully (Sam Worthington) is one such recruit sent on a scouting mission but ends up driving his own race of invaders away, ultimately settling down and living happily as a Na’vi with his native wife and family. 
    A new threat duly arrives, as Pandora is threatened once again when the Earthmen return, with a much bigger army. Through Sully’s family (which includes an irritating human boy named Spider), we get a sense of the stakes and why the inhabitants revere a whale-like creature named the tulkan. 
    To keep out of harm’s way, they find shelter with the Metkayina reef people, whose physical features have adapted to their water wonderlands, and who are also leery of the “sky people”.
    Clocking in at three hours and 12 minutes in full, the story takes too long to get going, sure to cause impatient viewers to twitch in their seats. When it does, we realise it’s basically an extension of the first, with its overt themes of familial love and loss, along with impassioned indictments of military colonialism and climate destruction.
    But then we get the payoff. Where the movie really comes into its own is the ambitious animation used throughout, reaching almost preposterously realistic dimensions hitherto unseen. 
    The major part of the film takes place in the wet, with director Cameron using it as an excuse to show off the latest in visual effects wizardry as he satisfies his well-documented penchant for aquatic adventures.
    Of course, the 2009 movie had been one of the first in the industry to utilise 3-D effects. However, in the time since then, trends have changed so quickly that the technology now seems to have been regarded more ancient than avant-garde. 
    This sequel is shot in that same style, requiring the donning of visual-enhancing glasses that were once a requisite at theatres. And it’s so much worth it. Way of Water looks like a billion bucks. And certainly cost as much to produce.
    Right from the first dive into Pandora’s oceans, the lushly luminescent undersea settings and richly chromatic floras and faunas combine to sweep the audience away and immerse it in its vast and vivid, silky smooth water world, creating pure cinematic magic. 
    Cameron unleashes more than a decade of technological advancements on the viewer, resulting in possibly the most immersive film ever experienced, exploding with brilliant hues and fast-moving otherworldly images that rarely fail to dazzle the eyes for any lengthy stretch of this epic. 
    And the action, when it arrives, is thunderingly entertaining. On one side there is the Na’vi navy, astride majestic flying fish dragons, ululating and bristling with spears. On the other, the squad of Earth marines, plus a swaggering, dickish Australian seadog named Scoresby (Brendan Cowell, near-stealing the show with his salty jargon) and an armada of incredible military tech (scuttling crab-submarines, for example).
    What ensues is a sea battle for the ages, a blisteringly exciting meld of live-action elements and visuals, which boggles the brain in all their crystal-sharp, hyper-real resolution. 
    Many of the cast had been given special scuba training for the scenes, such as breath techniques. But given the calibre of the actors (including Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet and Michelle Yeoh), it is disappointing at how little opportunity is granted them to fully develop their respective characters. 
    There’s no doubt his production is ultimately more style than substance.
    Way of Water is a timely reminder of what cinema is capable of when it dares to dream big. And that means this is a sequel that truly deserves to be seen, not from the comfort of the couch, but on the biggest screen available. 
    If ever a movie were to be perfectly suited for virtual realities, this is it. Its success might even herald a comeback for those disposable 3-D specs. 

#avatarwayofwater

SANTA ON A SLAY RIDE

 

MOVIE
Violent Night
Director Tommy Wirkola
Review Ray Chan

If you know nothing about the movie, Violent Night sounds to be nothing more than just another lightweight comedy offering to cash in on the annual seasonal demand for yuletide yarns.
    But that really cannot be further from the truth. So far removed from a soppy Hallmark special, this gory, edgy, and sarcastic action flick deserves to be afforded instant cult classic status.
    The man in red is the central character, and we mean the real Father Christmas. Burnt out after having to deliver toys to kids every year, he prefers whisky instead of milk with his cookies, and finds that the magic is gone after so many years of the same old routine.
    Soured old Saint Nick eventually finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time when he visits a wealthy family’s compound on Christmas Eve, stuffing his face with cookies and milk while stumbling through like some thief in the night, only to be accidentally deserted by his herd of reindeer.
    Santa meets Trudy, a young girl in the wealthy Lightstone family, who fully believes in him and the spirit of Noel, even if the others in her family are spoiled and entitled. Her parents, Jason and Linda, are estranged and all Trudy wants is for them to be together again. Her grandmother Gertrude leads the clan with an iron fist, making her kids fight not only for her love but for a piece of their wealthy corporation.
    A gang of mercenaries duly breaks in and takes the Lightstones hostage. Armed with safecracking technology and an armoury of weapons, the bad guys plan to steal money stashed away in the family vaults.
    But there’s a Christmas cracker in the works. Well-planned as they are, the crooks don’t envisage coping with a cross Kriss Kringle in the house, who, with his sack of tricks and encouraged by Trudy, is ready to put up a fight to save the day. He’s got a naughty list full of bad guys and they’re all due for lumps of coal in their stockings.
    The screenplay, by Josh Miller and Patrick Casey, is a cheeky premise that works perfectly as a dark comedy, and director Tommy Wirkola successfully blends conventional festive movie clichés with straight-up action scenes.
    There are obvious homages to other holiday classics like Home Alone, which is executed perhaps even better than the original as Trudy gets the better of a couple of pursuers.
    While the supporting cast all have a natural talent for comedy, it truly is David Harbour who shines as bright as the Star of Bethlehem as he fully embraces the titular role.
    He’s what makes the movie such a pleasure to watch, as he delivers corny catchphrases in his dulcet drawl. And while he doesn’t look like the archetypal jolly fat man, he still exudes an avuncular aura in his bearish physique, albeit more of a grizzly than a teddy.
    The film earns its R-rating with plenty of bloody, creative kills that utilise everything from pointed decorations and tinsel to ice skates. And the film is replete with references to Christmas and puns aplenty (“Season’s beatings”). Even the names of the villains are on brand: the leader is named Scrooge, and some his minions are named Peppermint, Frosty, and Krampus.
    Slightly holding back the manic momentum is the Lightstone family’s squabbling. The members are so unlikeable that there’s no reason to care about them and the danger they’re in, even if it’s all meant to underline how pure of heart Trudy is compared to them.  Better are the moments when we learn more about Santa, his struggles with Mrs Claus, and Ragnarok-esque flashbacks to his past as a legendary Norse warrior.
    Violent Night is a hoot for the adults, but certainly not suited for the youngsters. It’s packed with wanton murder, naughty language, and grisly shenanigans that won’t appeal to everyone, and there is a questionable conclusion in which most of the loathsome victims appear to escape unpunished for their acts of dishonesty.
    This shouldn’t be the last we see of Harbour in this role. It’s a premise built for multiple sequels that could explore Santa’s dark past.
    Hopefully, they make these an annual tradition and give us all something fresh to look forward to amid the jaded seasonal offerings.

#violentnight #universal

A GAY OLD TIME

 

MOVIE

Bros

Director Nicholas Stoller, Bily Eichner
Review Ray Chan

Be prepared for a frantic start to this offering: the first 45 minutes or so of this rom-com are some of the funniest about same-sex shenanigans that this reviewer has seen. The one-liners, jokes and witty observations come so thick and fast that the audience barely has time to settle in with their popcorn and drinks before the guffaws begin.

    Set in New York City, the movie surrounds the aloof, neurotic and observant Bobby Leiber (Billy Eichner), the popular host of a podcast revered by the LGBQT+ community. 

    He perceptively questions why straights keep playing homosexuals in movies, and films that portray gay life as tragic, somewhat realising it’s a mirror of his own: a successful career paired with a lack of romantic interest. Until he meets his polar opposite, that is, the Adonis-like Aaron, a probate attorney who is also as jaded with his lot, desiring instead to be a chocolatier. 

    There is discord and harmony as the two men’s divergent personalities and backgrounds merge, and their bumps on the road to a coupledom will ring true for all kinds of audiences of every sexual proclivity.  

    Director/co-writer Nicholas Stoller adds in some outlandish elements while Eichner, as co-writer, mixes in enough queer humour and insight to please fans and educate others. 

    The ensemble cast is impressive and includes, rightfully so, members of the gay persuasion: Miss Lawrence, Dot-Marie Jones (TV’s Glee), TS Madison and Jim Rash as the habitually disrespected bi-sexual man, with the affable and larger-than-life Guy Branum shining as Bobby’s best friend. 

    At just under two hours, this love shack sags a little in the middle after its knee-slapping first half, but pulls itself together satisfactorily in the end. The film is frequently funny and well-observed in the way it presents a culture that knows it’s different than others and finds ways to apply that specificity on a universal level.

    Eichner is a very perceptive lunatic, the sort that often helm late-night TV talk shows. This hysterical production could be his calling card.

#brosmovie

CLAP FOR THE WOLFMAN

MOVIE
Werewolf by Night
Director Michael Giacchino
Review Ray Chan

Streaming services currently offer a whole new world of entertainment, enjoyed in the comfort of the home, and certainly that seems to be the direction increasingly taken by many studios.
   One of the best employers of this technology is Disney, leveraging it to best advantage, showcasing many series that would be deemed too unconventional and ultimately box-office risks for the big screen.
   Examples include the delightful She-Hulk and Captain Marvel, the grim Moon Knight, the Star Wars offshoots and practically everything with Kevin Feige’s stamp on it.
   The latest offering, Werewolf By Night, isn’t exactly episodic though, but a standalone film that doesn’t really fit into the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe.
   Written by Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron, and directed by composer Michael Giacchino — who also provides the music, naturally — Werewolf focuses solely on the world of this one character, in this one story: a self-contained adventure that deliberately riffs on the production values of a bygone era. 
   Shot in glorious retro black and white – with odd glimpses of colour to highlight various scenes – the movie reins in various characters from Marvel’s horror comics: Ulysses and Elsa Bloodstone, the Man-Thing, and the titular character, whose origin isn’t revealed. It’s a given assumption that the amusingly and fittingly named Jack Russell turns into a werewolf when the moon is up.
   Gael Garcia Bernal stars as the lycanthrope protagonist, a hunter of so-called monsters with more than 100 kills to his name. He is gathering with the crème de la crème of his peers to fight for the Bloodstone, an artifact that helps hunters in their quest to rid the world of the creatures. The irony of course is that Jack is one himself.
   He shows up in a dandy outfit with white paint on his face, a nod to his ancestors, he says to his cabal of hunters.
   Suave and stylish, he's not as obviously bloodthirsty as the others, who all have  a similar fashion nous, from a Kraven the Hunter facsimile with a Scottish accent to a Bowie-esque thin white duke. 
   But running for just 52 minutes, Werewolf doesn’t take the time to flesh out the assemblage, except for Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), who, despite being the rightful heiress to the gem, must fight for it like everyone because she was estranged from her father, the legendary monster hunter Ulysses, at the time of his death.
   And you know she means business, because unlike the other foppish fighters, she just wears a designer leather jacket and boots, a literal long cool woman in a black dress.
   Everything about Werewolf is a deliberate homage to the early days of Hollywood, from the aforementioned monochromatic cinematography and technicolor flourishes, to the prevalence of practical effects, irises and old-fashioned visual trickery, such as flashing flickers for the gory scenes to Jack’s hirsute transformation depicted in shadow form.
   Even Elsa’s mother Verussa carries off a Bride of Frankenstein vibe with white streaks through her hair. One could be forgiven for expecting to see a Marty Feldman-esque manservant, reprising a role from another horror parody, Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein.
   The appearance of Man-Thing will certainly delight Marvel comic aficionados. Originally created as a large, slow-moving, empathic, humanoid swamp critter living in the Florida Everglades, it bears the Bloodstone everyone wants and so becomes the target of the hunters.
   It’s a credit to the movie makers that they chose not to veer away from how the mossy mammoth appeared in the comics, with its lumbering vegetation-encrusted form, and branches and trunks on the face.
   They even refer to it simply as Ted, a reference to Theodore Sallis, the name of the scientist who became the floral freak after ingesting a serum.
   Jack and Elsa end up working together and prove tremendously enjoyable in their respective roles. Bernal plays Jack with a weariness that suggests his dual nature isn’t eroding his humanity so much as it is eroding his faith in it. And Donnelly’s Elsa shows that while she is hardened, she is not invulnerable, convincingly portraying the state of her fragile relationship with her father.
   The Disney+ stream offers the perfect place for Marvel to experiment a little with films like this, giving filmmakers like Giacchino, at the start of his directorial career, space to play with fun characters in weird narrative corners that don’t have to support larger stories. 
   Werewolf By Night is a refreshing combination of the silly and the strange into the MCU. A follow-up would definitely raise the thumbs from this reviewer, and it would be just fittingly off-kilter if Howard the Duck – a resident of the Man-Thing’s other-dimension home – were to make a cameo.

#Disney+  #WerewolfbyNight

IT CAME OUT OF THE SKY

 

MOVIE
Nope
Director Jordan Peele
Review Ray Chan

Jordan Peele's most acclaimed productions have a common characteristic: copious amounts of symbolism that just about demand a second or third viewing to enable one to make out all the subtle metaphors and what they could possibly mean.
    His latest offering, labelled as “sci-fi horror”, seems a lot more straightforward than his other films, and begs the question of whether we finally have a Peele screenplay that doesn’t require ambiguous allegorical introspection and confusing conspiracy concepts.
    In Nope, a giant entity resembling a spacecraft but also transforms into tidal tufts of tissue, chooses to harass a small, remote American town. These incidents always occur in the US, of course.
    Peele hides the antagonist, using the age-old trick of concealment to heighten suspense. The aerial predator lurks behind a static cloud in the sky, so we only catch glimpses of it as it terrorises a horse ranch and a small western theme park.
    The farm is run by OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and his feisty sister Em (Keke Palmer), while the park is the brainchild of former child star Ricky 'Jupe' Park (Steven Yeun). When debris starts falling from the skies and people and animals mysteriously disappear, OJ, Em and Jupe spot the UFO, and plan to take commercial advantage of it.
    Em and OJ invest in camera equipment to capture the extraterrestrial on video, hoping to cash in on the footage, and are joined by UFO enthusiast Angel Torres and professional cinematographer Antlers Holst. Jupe has more insidious plans, planning to feed horses to the alien while incorporating it as part of his rodeo show.
    How they go about this and what transpires form the gist of the story.
    Both OJ and Jupe are shown to experience personal tragedies: the former watching his father being killed by junk raining down from the blue, and the latter traumatised by a killer chimp on the set of a TV series in which he was a child star.
    Indeed, the sub-plot involving Jupe is perhaps the most horrific of the movie, and the reason for its inclusion is unclear.
    There is an initial lack of connectivity between Jupe’s experience on the sitcom called Gordy’s Home and events around the alien. In flashbacks, Peele shows how the show’s central character, a chimpanzee named Gordy, was startled by a series of popping balloons on set and viciously attacked several of his human co-stars.
    Jupe was unharmed but frozen with fear as the panicked primate maimed and mauled other people in front of him. And just as Gordy calms down and gently approaches the terrified child, the simian is shot, splattering blood everywhere.
    It’s odd how Jupe never expands on this history, indicating there may be deleted scenes left on the director’s cutting room floor. But it’s clear that events on the show left an indelible mark on him.
    In quiet moments, he stares into space and replays that trauma in his mind, while telling everyone he’s fine. He plays the past off lightly, showing visitors his Gordy’s Home memorabilia and complimenting the Saturday Night Live sketch about the chimp attacks, but Peele gives the audience a glimpse of the echoing chaos in his head, and shows how little it matches his serene surface.
    And if one were to look hard enough, maybe that is the underlying theme of the movie: how people cope with trials and tribulations in the face of unseen and unknown threats.
    Trauma is largely an internal process that everyone handles differently. In Nope, the laconic OJ keeps his problems to himself, joining a dangerous quest to document the UFO without discussing how he feels about it. Antlers, in trying to film the alien, charges out alone to seek personal glory that he doesn’t want to share with anyone else.
    But Jupe turns his into a one-sided relationship with an alien creature that doesn’t care about him and sees him only as a source of food. He’s so defined by a past tragedy that he walks right into a bigger one, making himself the film’s greatest victim.
    So back to that second paragraph. A straightforward movie? It’s safe to say that’s hardly the case. Trauma, tragedy and triumph: it’s not Peele’s best effort, but it does make one ponder, in the process doing nothing to lessen his stature as one of Hollywood’s rising stars. 
    As a matter of interest, round shapes seem to abound throughout. Old vinyl records, discarded coins, clocks, ornaments, trophies, horses trotting around on a longe line, a well, masks of aliens that are spherical with round eyes, Stetson hats, slurpee machines with rotating paddles, not to mention the initial appearance of the object up above which also looks like a giant eye. Do they represent the circles of life? It will probably take another four viewings to decipher.

#NOPE #universal