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Spring 2022 Movies
Jagged – A biography of Alanis Morrisette featuring a lot of archival footage, home movies and recent interviews with her. She…did not have an easy time of things, and we got amazing music from that, but she had to live it. (The internet claims that Glen Ballard, Morrisette’s longtime songwriting partner, was married to a woman for a while. Seeing his interview clips I have a very hard time believing that man is straight. Which may also be why Morrisette was so comfortable working with him, given the way most men in her life were treating her.) The phrase “shot out of the fame cannon” is a great takeaway from this.
Spider-Man: No Way Home – The need to have seen the earlier movies is pretty real, here. Granted, I saw them all and I was really happy to see Maguire and Garfield in the suits again, not to mention all the returning villains. Also, this is clearly the last Spider-Man movie they intend to have Holland headline, given that they broke all the toys so that no one else could play with them. Completely cut off from his entire supporting cast, Spider-Man is now only good for supporting roles in other films…or yet another reboot. Maybe Miles Morales and/or Spider-Gwen this time? (Jethrien noted that Holland is growing into his babyface and becoming less suited for the role, which is fair.) Spectacular for big Spider-Man fans and ongoing MCU fans; for anyone else I’d send them to watch Into the Spider-Verse instead.
…And then I got covid, so I decided to watch a lot of stupid movies in a row.
Eternals – One of the best Justice League AUs I’ve seen in a while. An alien god sends Superman, Wonder Woman, Indian Green Lantern, Steel, Martian Manhunter, Gypsy, gender-swapped Flash and Firestorm, and generic-strongman Gilgamesh to Earth 7000 years ago to destroy evil alien monsters; and they gradually discover the truth of both their origins and their mission. The whole thing has a Jack Kirby style to it; similar to Thor in the sense of “He wouldn’t have drawn this, but he’d think it was really cool.” Oh, wait, this was actually a Marvel movie that was supposed to fit into the MCU? Yeah, that part doesn’t work at all. The worldbuilding opens up a ton of giant plotholes and doesn’t mesh with the cosmology established in Thor or Moon Knight; or even the portrayal of Ego (a Celestial!) in Guardians 2. It’ll be interesting to see where they go from here, because they were clearly expecting a sequel but I’m going to guess they won’t get one and will have to shove the plot points into a bloated teamup movie down the line.
Wonder Woman 1984 – Wow, this movie has no goddamn idea what it’s trying to be. Is it a comedy? A dramatic superhero story? A romance? The 80s? Diana’s competence (including her people skills) is all over the map, the “Steve as fish out of water” doesn’t work at all, they can’t decide how sympathetic to make any of the villains. Cheetah wasn’t actually necessary for the movie and she muddled the message; she went off the rails in order to make the fight scenes work and really should have gotten some dénouement with Diana, but the movie was already too long. The overall synopsis feels like it should have worked, but the tone and the characters never really gel. It feels like the actors were filming scenes for half a dozen different movies at the same time, and couldn’t keep track of which they were in at any given point. If I had to guess, it’s that Patty Jenkins was left alone to make the first movie, but this one was designed, written, directed, and edited by a committee.
Red Notice – It’s a shame this wasn’t made during the era of NES movie tie-in games, because this would have made an excellent multi-genre NES action game. Plot-wise, it’s total fluff heist/action film, with the three leads taking turns being pretty and badass as they team up, betray each other, and team up again.
The Adam Project – Where the heck did they find this amazing mini-Ryan Reynolds? Like, the patter is perfect, you could really believe this kid was Reynolds at age 12. The plot is relatively standard timey-whimey action, but the emotional beats are solid and I’m a sucker for father-son reconciliation stories (which this turns out to be, in a complicated way). And yeah, the wisecracking is really that good.
Suicide For Beginners - I watched this specifically because my cousin is in it, but it’s also a horror/comedy film of the style I often enjoy, which was a nice bonus. It’s about a grievously incompetent man who kidnaps and attempts to murder the woman he had a crush on, but repeatedly fails on all fronts. (He eventually does manage to murder a lot of people but, spoiler, barely any members of the main cast.) Low-budget but it generally doesn’t feel cheap; the fact that it doesn’t take itself at all seriously is the main attraction.
Sonic the Hedgehog – I finally gave up on ARR wanting to watch this with me and just watched it. It’s the best attempt to make the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie for Sonic, completely ignoring any resemblance to actual video game (and comic, and cartoon) continuity in favor of “Hey, let’s make a movie with the blue fast guy!” The guy who plays Dewey on Ducktales is great as Sonic (Ben Schwartz, who also plays Leo in TMNT—he’s consistently the cartoon blue guy.) and Jim Carrey, who was paid to chew scenery, earned his keep. I think it’s aimed at people my age who owned a Genesis but never watched the Sonic cartoons and their children; nostalgia value plus hokey kid-friendly comedy. And it’s good enough at that, but I still have a bag of the Archie comics somewhere in the basement and a list of differences between the two cartoon continuities rattling around in my brain.
Spider-Man: No Way Home – The need to have seen the earlier movies is pretty real, here. Granted, I saw them all and I was really happy to see Maguire and Garfield in the suits again, not to mention all the returning villains. Also, this is clearly the last Spider-Man movie they intend to have Holland headline, given that they broke all the toys so that no one else could play with them. Completely cut off from his entire supporting cast, Spider-Man is now only good for supporting roles in other films…or yet another reboot. Maybe Miles Morales and/or Spider-Gwen this time? (Jethrien noted that Holland is growing into his babyface and becoming less suited for the role, which is fair.) Spectacular for big Spider-Man fans and ongoing MCU fans; for anyone else I’d send them to watch Into the Spider-Verse instead.
…And then I got covid, so I decided to watch a lot of stupid movies in a row.
Eternals – One of the best Justice League AUs I’ve seen in a while. An alien god sends Superman, Wonder Woman, Indian Green Lantern, Steel, Martian Manhunter, Gypsy, gender-swapped Flash and Firestorm, and generic-strongman Gilgamesh to Earth 7000 years ago to destroy evil alien monsters; and they gradually discover the truth of both their origins and their mission. The whole thing has a Jack Kirby style to it; similar to Thor in the sense of “He wouldn’t have drawn this, but he’d think it was really cool.” Oh, wait, this was actually a Marvel movie that was supposed to fit into the MCU? Yeah, that part doesn’t work at all. The worldbuilding opens up a ton of giant plotholes and doesn’t mesh with the cosmology established in Thor or Moon Knight; or even the portrayal of Ego (a Celestial!) in Guardians 2. It’ll be interesting to see where they go from here, because they were clearly expecting a sequel but I’m going to guess they won’t get one and will have to shove the plot points into a bloated teamup movie down the line.
Wonder Woman 1984 – Wow, this movie has no goddamn idea what it’s trying to be. Is it a comedy? A dramatic superhero story? A romance? The 80s? Diana’s competence (including her people skills) is all over the map, the “Steve as fish out of water” doesn’t work at all, they can’t decide how sympathetic to make any of the villains. Cheetah wasn’t actually necessary for the movie and she muddled the message; she went off the rails in order to make the fight scenes work and really should have gotten some dénouement with Diana, but the movie was already too long. The overall synopsis feels like it should have worked, but the tone and the characters never really gel. It feels like the actors were filming scenes for half a dozen different movies at the same time, and couldn’t keep track of which they were in at any given point. If I had to guess, it’s that Patty Jenkins was left alone to make the first movie, but this one was designed, written, directed, and edited by a committee.
Red Notice – It’s a shame this wasn’t made during the era of NES movie tie-in games, because this would have made an excellent multi-genre NES action game. Plot-wise, it’s total fluff heist/action film, with the three leads taking turns being pretty and badass as they team up, betray each other, and team up again.
The Adam Project – Where the heck did they find this amazing mini-Ryan Reynolds? Like, the patter is perfect, you could really believe this kid was Reynolds at age 12. The plot is relatively standard timey-whimey action, but the emotional beats are solid and I’m a sucker for father-son reconciliation stories (which this turns out to be, in a complicated way). And yeah, the wisecracking is really that good.
Suicide For Beginners - I watched this specifically because my cousin is in it, but it’s also a horror/comedy film of the style I often enjoy, which was a nice bonus. It’s about a grievously incompetent man who kidnaps and attempts to murder the woman he had a crush on, but repeatedly fails on all fronts. (He eventually does manage to murder a lot of people but, spoiler, barely any members of the main cast.) Low-budget but it generally doesn’t feel cheap; the fact that it doesn’t take itself at all seriously is the main attraction.
Sonic the Hedgehog – I finally gave up on ARR wanting to watch this with me and just watched it. It’s the best attempt to make the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie for Sonic, completely ignoring any resemblance to actual video game (and comic, and cartoon) continuity in favor of “Hey, let’s make a movie with the blue fast guy!” The guy who plays Dewey on Ducktales is great as Sonic (Ben Schwartz, who also plays Leo in TMNT—he’s consistently the cartoon blue guy.) and Jim Carrey, who was paid to chew scenery, earned his keep. I think it’s aimed at people my age who owned a Genesis but never watched the Sonic cartoons and their children; nostalgia value plus hokey kid-friendly comedy. And it’s good enough at that, but I still have a bag of the Archie comics somewhere in the basement and a list of differences between the two cartoon continuities rattling around in my brain.
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