Thor: Love and Thunder
I'm not a huge superhero movie person, and honestly, keeping up with Marvel is exhausting. I would have never seen Thor: Love and Thunder, if it wasn't for my friend who asked me and a bunch of other friends to see this movie with her for her birthday.
And you know what? It's wasn't bad.
The movie of course has a HUGE assist in director Taika Waititi, who is known for his excellent sense of humor and generous, optimistic outlook on life in his movies and TV shows. That humor and optimistic attitude are present in T:L&T which makes the film pretty enjoyable. It also has a good villain. Gorr, played by Christian Bale, loses his daughter after wandering in a desert, praying for rain. After his daughter dies, Gorr comes across an oasis where he meets his god, Rapu, who it turns out is a dismissive asshole and laughs at Gorr for thinking there will be an eternal reward for his loyalty. Driven into a rage, Gorr becomes the owner of the Necrosword--a sword that is capable of killing gods. Gorr then declares that he will kill all gods.
Dude, Gorr is rad as fuck! Of course, he must be stopped. Ugh. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) gathers a small team of superhumans and regular humans: King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi), and Thor's own ex-girlfriend, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman)--to go on a quest to seek the help of Zeus (Russell Crowe) and the other gods of Omnipotence City. But when Zeus and the others basically tell Thor to bugger off. Thor's group steals Zeus' lightning bolt and decide to stop Gorr themselves.
While they survive? Or will Gorr make it to Eternity will he will be granted one wish (and will presumably wish that all gods die)?
Are you following? Because I sure as fuck wasn't! Look, there's a lot going on here and having not seen any other Thor movies and barely any Marvel movies, I was basically shrugging my shoulders the whole time going "why not?". Luckily, the movie explains everything that's going on. Like, a character will say, "I'm sure Gorr won't make it to Eternity" and another character will say, "what's Eternity?" and then someone will explain what it is and why it will be bad if Gorr makes it there. So even the dum-dums like me can follow along.
Thor: Love and Thunder is very enjoyable even if you're not a Marvel fan. Chris Hemmy is hot, the movie is funny and pretty gay. There's a lot to love here.
Grade: B
***
Elvis
Baz Luhrmann's frenetic biopic of Elvis Presley is another movie I wouldn't have watched if it weren't for someone else--in this case, my dad. He and I went to see Elvis and it turned out not to be as bad as I was expecting. Though I love Moulin Rouge! and Romeo + Juliet, Baz's later movies started to go down in quality. His adaptation of The Great Gatsby is forgettable, at least to me (and miscast, in my opinion). His style of filmmaking often overshadows the substance of the film.
Sure enough, Elvis is...a lot. Baz uses so many quick cuts, it's enough to give someone a seizure. It's a lot of razzle dazzle, but not a lot of depth. Austin Butler is excellent as Presley and Tom Hanks is just...weird as Presley's leech of a manager, Col. Tom Parker. Despite being buried under about one hundred pounds of makeup, you just can't not see Hanks. At times, Elvis felt more like a parody of a musical biopic than a musical biopic itself, and Hanks as the mysteriously accented, villainous Parker didn't help matters.
Additionally, Elvis indulges in hero-worship. Whenever Presley makes a bad choice, it's someone else's fault (usually Parker's). His descent into drug use is Parker's doing, the fact that he was wooing Priscilla Beaulieu when she was 14 years old is not commented on, poor and unsatisfying career choices are, again, the product of Parker's manipulations. While some of this is understandable, it can't possibly be fully honest. The film suggests that Elvis was a victim, pushed to and fro by the poor choices and forceful decisions of those around him. And I just can't believe that's the whole story.
Overall, Elvis is not the worst movie ever. Again, Butler is excellent. The music is obviously great. But it's not one I'm going to be rewatching anytime soon.
Grade: B-
***
The Black Phone
I was going to skip this horror film, based on a short story by Joe Hill, because it involves a lot of child actors and I'm not crazy about movies and shows with a lot of kids. However, I kept hearing good things about the movie so I went ahead and saw it and was pleasantly surprised.
The Black Phone takes place in Denver in 1978. The film does not romanticize the late 70s at all. Kids walk to school by themselves. Refreshing, right? No helicopter parents in sight. Well...the kids also regularly beat the absolute shit out of each other. Bullies gang up on weak kids and beat them bloody. And it's not just kids beating up other kids. The main characters, Finney and Gwen Blake (Mason Thomas and Madeline McGraw, both very good child actors), suffer from the mood swings of their alcoholic single father, Terrence (Jeremy Davies). In one scene, Terrence beats Gwen with a belt as she screams and cries with such raw agony that it's enough the make yours guts get all twisted up. This is not a movie for people who can't stand to see children hurt or in danger.
If the stress of living in a world where bullies rule the playground wasn't enough, boys from the neighborhood regularly go missing. Someone known as "The Grabber" is snatching them, and authorities seem to be incompetent and unable to find clues beyond the remnants of black balloons left in locations where the boys were last seen.
Well, Finney is unlucky enough to be approached by The Grabber (Ethan Hawke, his face hidden behind a series of scary masks) and is snatched in broad daylight. He awakens to find himself in a soundproof basement with a disconnected black phone on the wall. As he waits and contemplates what his fate might be, he begins to receive calls from the ghosts of previous victims of The Grabber who give him clues as to how to escape and not fall prey to The Grabber's sick games. Will Finney be able to escape--or fight back--before The Grabber puts him in the ground with the rest of the lost boys?
There's a lot of implausible stuff in this movie, and I don't just mean ghosts calling on a disconnected phone. The Grabber's plans are somewhat messed up when his brother unexpectedly shows up to stay with him. But even with his brother living in the house, The Grabber still tries to play a game where he leaves the basement door unlocked and waits at the top of the stairs with a belt, prepared to beat the "naughty boy" when he comes up the stairs. Although Finney avoids this trap with the help of the ghosts, how would it be possible to beat a screaming child without your brother hearing? The supernatural stuff I can accept, because it's a partially supernatural horror story, but this plot hole with the brother is waaaay too big to be ignored.
But the acting in The Black Phone is so good and the suspense so...well, suspenseful...that I'm willing to overlook some silly shit. The Black Phone is nothing more than an entertaining horror movie (assuming you're entertained by children in danger, like me!), but that's all it needs to be.
Grade: B+
***
In the Heart of the Sea
Based on the book by Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea tells the story of the sinking of the whaling ship Essex in 1820. The tragedy of the Essex inspired Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick. In Nantucket in the first half of the 19th century, whaling was big business. Whale oil was used for lighting and men could make their fortunes by hunting the gentle giants. Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) is given a position as First Mate on Essex and is mad about it, as he was promised by the owners of the whaling company that he would be given the position of Captain. But that honor goes to George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), the son of a prominent family in Nantucket.
The two men clash immediately, especially when Pollard commands that the Essex sail right into a storm, rather than around it, mostly to make a point to Chase and also to "toughen up" the men. His decision nearly sinks the ship. After months at sea and only a few whale kills, the men stop at a port in Ecuador and hear some stories about "Offshore Grounds" 2,000 miles into the Pacific Ocean where whales are bountiful. But they're warned that an enormous white whale is responsible for killing whalers. This whale is described as "vengeful", suggesting that it is more than an animal--it is a monster.
The men sail 2,000 miles west of Ecudaor and, sure enough, discover plentiful whales in the unhunted grounds. And then they meet the big guy. The huge white whale destroys their ship, forcing them to use small life boats to sail to safety. The men are at sea for three months and end up resorting to cannibalism before they are rescued.
I watched In the Heart of the Sea on my not very big (and old af) TV. This is the kind of movie that you need to see on a big screen. It's a fine movie, but nothing I'm going to be thinking about or rewatching it. I'd rather watch a whale documentary.
Grade: B-
***
The Good Lord Bird
This miniseries based on the book by James McBride stars Ethan Hawke as John Brown, a fiery abolitionist and evangelical Christian whose religious convictions encouraged him to kill slave owners and also lead the raid of Harpers Ferry. Hey, I shit on Christians a lot, but sometimes they get it right!
McBride's book is based in factual events, but he created a fictional character--Henry "Onion" Shackleford (played by Joshua Caleb Johnson)--to serve as a witness to the nearly unbelievable events that led to the slave revolt at Harpers Ferry, which in turn led to the beginning of the American Civil War. Onion is the son of a slave whom Brown frees and brings along with him and his loose "army" of abolitionists on their adventures.
The Good Lord Bird is an interesting show because it's both really funny and deadly serious. Hawke gives the performance of his career as the wild-eyed, bushy-bearded John Brown who endlessly quotes the Bible and, when called insane, spits back that it is the United States that is, in fact, insane. It's easy to say that Brown was on the right side of history, looking back, however we are still fighting for Brown's ideals to this day and most of us will never fight 1/100th as much as Brown did.
If you've read the history books, you will know that Brown's raid failed. His men overtook the armory at Harpers Ferry, but since they only had a couple dozen men, they were easily overtaken by the United States marines. Brown was arrested, tried for treason, and hanged on December 2nd, 1859. The Good Lord Bird imagines a scene between Brown and Onion in Brown's jail cell the night before his execution which had me tearing up.
Frankly, I'm surprised there aren't more movies or shows about John Brown, a rare freedom fighter who didn't hesitate to put his life on the line for the freedom of others. Was John Brown insane? He must have been to some extent--how can someone show so little fear in the face of certain death? But as he points out in the series, in a country that sells human children for profit, perhaps he is "the sanest man you've ever met". I highly recommend this show, especially if you want a little fire put in your belly and a reminder that our bravery and our choices can long outlive us.
Grade: A
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