All Caught Up: A 2021 Story of Triumph

That's it for my backlog of published reviews! From now on when I post a review on this blog, it will be as fresh as a Bel-Air prince (timely reference!) and right off the press. It also won't be every week, as the only reason I was able to catch up in the first place was the fact that Keizertimes doesn't publish my stuff every week. They're just (excellent) reviews, after all, and there happens to be a lot of stuff to cover in the news, what with the world going to h*ck and everything. 

Soul (02.05.21)

 

As we reached the beginning of what hopefully will be the final stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, the storied studio behind some of your favorite animated features made the surprise decisions to release the latest entry in the Pixar canon for free to people that already subscribe to Disney+. It was a move that was no doubt calculated by the Mouse Overlord to draw in more subscribers to a service that is still struggling to find success outside of The Mandalorian, and it was a decision that caused me a bit of worry when it was first announced. Why delay theatrical releases of movies like Black Widow indefinitely but have this one come out to what is sure to be a loss? Did they not have faith in it? Was it terrible? When I finally sat down to watch the movie, I was relieved to find out that these worries turned out to be baseless, as Pixar has once again hit it out of the park with Soul. Or so I think.

The problem was that I watched it with my nephews. Love ‘em to death, of course, but I will be the first to admit that they do not sit through movies very well. At six and four years old, they can think of a billion other things that they would rather be doing at any given time, even if the movie they are currently watching is geared towards kids. Pixar has always struck an excellent balance between appealing to children and appealing to adults, but it seems like this balance was offset a tiny bit with Soul. My nephews appeared even less interested than usual thanks to themes of death, existentialism, and life purpose, and the jokes seemed a bit more subdued this time around. Soul is definitely one of Pixar’s more thematically mature movies, and this might be a problem for some kids.

As a movie for adults, however, Soul shines. One thing I was struck by is how pretty everything looks. From the light playing off of a saxophone to the austere simplicity of the beforelife (you know… instead of afterlife) to the character models, the animation is brilliantly done. The movie also sounds great thanks to a beautiful score by Trent Reznor and Jon Batiste, and to the excellent voice acting featuring Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, and Graham Norton. All of these things made me a bit sad that the film wasn’t released in theaters, in fact, as I’m sure it would have been beautiful to look at and listen to on the big screen in the same way I’m sure Fantasia was.

The story of Soul is touching, although that’s probably obvious, this being a Pixar movie and all. Again, I did not catch all of it because of the two rowdy boys, but what I saw I appreciated. The only problem is there might be too many messages the movie tries to convey simultaneously, and as a result the end made me feel like it wanted to make me to cry instead of doing so organically.

But there is no doubt that Soul is a great movie. Your kids may even love it, too. Maybe the nephews just had too much sugar or something.

Soul is now available on Disney+.

 

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on February 5^th, 2021. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

 

Hindsight: Disney+ is now finding plenty of success outside of The Mandalorian with WandaVision. For something that was published a couple of weeks ago, the introduction did not age very well. The rest of the review is pretty good, if useless- I'm sure everyone has seen Soul by now. 

 

Ava (01.15.21)

 

When I was in middle school, my friend Ryan introduced me to a southern tradition of eating grilled cheese sandwiches with maple syrup. Needless to say, I was a bit skeptical that this combination could be anything other than disgusting, but after much prodding I discovered that it was actually pretty delicious. Some of our most tasty foods come from what might be initially unexpected unions, and the same can be said of our entertainment. Take Hamilton, for example; rap and American history? Weird. But it works. Fortune favors the bold, but there are some combinations that just do not work. Director Tate Taylor and screenwriter Matthew Newton prove this with Ava, a new Netflix film that attempts to mix familial drama with assassin action, and what results is a surprisingly dull slog in which both ingredients end up feeling like pointless subplots.  

            The biggest problem is that both the family stuff and the assassination stuff have very little to do with one another. Ava, played by the usually great Jessica Chastain, is an ace killer who gets a target put on her after… asking too many questions, I guess? She then goes home and has to deal with a cantankerous mother who never gives me any reason to like her, a bratty sister who never gives me any reason to like her, and an ex-fiancé who has the personality of a two-by-four (and who also never gives me any reason to like him). I suppose the two disparate plots would have been fine on their own if they were done well, but I can’t really say that they were. The action ranges from bland to adequate, and I guarantee you that none of it is something that you haven’t seen a thousand times already in better movies. The drama, on the other hand, is made up of your typical soap opera-y grievances that have all the originality of an “entertainment as food” metaphor.  

            All of this goes to show that when you have two plots that feel like subplots, nothing really seems to happen at all. Two-thirds of the way in, things were still starting to take shape with the assassination angle, and by the end Colin Farrell (a great actor who really needs to fire his agent at this point) is fighting Jessica Chastain for some reason, and it feels like the story hasn’t gone anywhere beyond setting the stage.  

            “Some reason,” “I guess…” Maybe I should have just paid more attention, right? The thing is, I did. In addition to the aforementioned problems that this movie has, there is also the fact that a lot of the things the characters do just don’t make any damn sense. Why would Colin Farrell (What’s the point of learning the character’s name?) himself go after Ava if he is in charge of the whole shadowy super-secret assassin agency? Why did the assassin sent before him decide it was a good idea to just try and stab Ava in the middle of a public park? Why do they think she needs to be taken out anyway? I don’t have the answers for you, nor do I care to learn them. Just skip this one, yeah?  

            Ava is now available on Netflix.   

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on January 15^th, 2021. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

 

Hindsight: In the original article I accidently wrote “sublots” not once, but twice. Somehow my personal editor (my mom), the editor of the Keizertimes, and myself all missed this. My dad caught it when he read my review in the actual newspaper. The rest of the review is okay. The movie was not. 

 

Mank (01.08.21)

 

A long time ago, while perusing an online message board dedicated to discussing cinema, I came across a casual discussion of what differentiates a “movie” from a “film,” and that conversation has stuck with me. One poster posited that a movie is any type of moving picture whereas a film is a movie that has deeper artistic merit and cultural significance. All films are movies, but not all movies are films, in other words. This differentiation might come off as silly (not to mention snobbish), as the two words are synonyms in almost every way that matters. But to call certain popcorn flicks “films” doesn’t feel right to me, even if I happen to adore them as movies. I review a lot of movies, but it is rare that I get to review a film. The beautifully shot, scored, and acted Mank is, undoubtedly, a film; although it is also one that struggled to keep my attention.  

            The story of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz and his writing of the iconic Citizen Kane, Mank feels like a newly unearthed artifact from the past. Shot entirely in black and white (complete with occasional simulated flaws in the physical film) with monoaural sound (meaning that everything was recorded on one track, as was the way up until the mid-twentieth century) and scored by a large, classical band (playing music written by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, of all people), Mank will make you feel like you have been transported to the golden age of Hollywood. Gary Oldman, a phenomenal actor known for completely enveloping himself in his roles, is in rare form as the brilliant Mankiewicz himself, and his supporting cast, particularly Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies, is incredible as well. The script fully captures the wit that Mank was known for with snappy dialogue, and the clever non-sequential storytelling (something Citizen Kane is also noted for) is easy to follow throughout thanks to creative transitions that simulate a script being written in real-time. There’s also the fact that the movie just looks great; one piece of feedback I heard before watching was that you could take any screenshot of the film and frame it on your wall, and this turned out to not be an exaggeration. The cinematography in Mank, like everything else, is stunning.   

            The only problem is that I occasionally found it difficult to care about the subject matter being portrayed. Mank is a movie about making movies and is full of studio politicking and, occasionally, actual politicking. More often than not, I found the subtilties and finer points of the discussions presented going over my head, causing me to lose interest. It is a fantastically made film, but it has a hard time being an entertaining one. I’m not asking for a random shoot-out with unexplained and anachronistic cowboys to be thrown in or anything like that... There is nothing this movie could have done to make the subject more interesting to me, because the baseline premise did not capture my enthusiasm. But if you have a love for film, the steps that go into making them, and the flawed characters behind them, do not let this beauty pass you by.  

            Mank is now available on Netflix.  

 

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on January 8^th, 2021. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

 

Hindsight: Apparently Trent Reznor has been doing movie soundtracks for some time now, so I guess my surprise might seem unwarranted to others. I like this review. I acknowledge that the movie was well made but don't imply that I loved it just to score culture points. I had a problem with that when writing my first review for The Irishman... I wanted to appear smart by appreciating artsy cinema, but I don't think I fully conveyed the fact that it bored me as well as entertained me.