Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (12.30.22)

 

              Rian Johnson is a guy who is on record as saying he loves to subvert expectations.

This filmmaking quirk resulted in mixed reactions when it came to his Star Wars outing, The Last Jedi, but when this same tactic was used in his original murder mystery Knives Out, the result was universally beloved. Turns out that people still love a good old-fashioned whodunit, and subverting basic story expectations is a great way to keep them fresh in our modern world. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is another wickedly good time that may be a tiny bit more straightforward than its predecessor but still manages to keep us guessing nearly every minute of its runtime.

High praise indeed, but as was often the case the first time I watched the original Knives Out, Glass Onion also occasionally bored and frustrated me when it was unclear what exactly the movie was supposed to be. This cinematic duo might just be the only two murder mysteries in existence that are more enjoyable on repeat viewings when you already know what is going on, but that’s not to say that Glass Onion still wasn’t mostly highly entertaining at first watch. It’s one of those movies that requires your full attention, especially when Daniel Craig is babbling away in that Foghorn Leghorn accent of his (I still can’t tell if his accent is bad or if it's just weird to hear it coming out of James Bond’s mouth). Save for Craig, the ensemble cast is all new and includes such talents as Edward Norton, Kathryn Hahn, Kate Hudson, and Dave Bautista, and once again the collection of interesting and dryly humorous characters that Johnson has whipped up is what keeps the Knives Out sequel engaging. Are they likeable? Mostly no, as was the case in the original, but you’ll have fun watching them.

If I have any complaints other than the few moments between twists that left the purpose of the movie in question, it would be that the ending was not at all satisfying. It left me feeling a bit depressed, despite the fact that it was clearly supposed to feel emotionally triumphant. In addition to this, there were some bizarre red herrings that went completely unexplained; misdirects are fine and expected in tales such as these, but I don’t like it when they don’t make sense in their own way or fit into the overall narrative. Also, did we need all the pandemic/lockdown stuff? It was a key part of our reality, sure, but it didn’t have any purpose in Glass Onion’s story and just left me feeling bummed out that such things weren’t even escapable in fiction. And why tie the narrative to such a specific time period when the story could have taken place any time in the early twenty-first century?

But these things pale in comparison to Glass Onion’s sharp writing, character work, and overall interesting plot. In this way Rian Johnson did not subvert expectations at all... he gave me exactly what I wanted. 

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is now available on Netflix.

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on December 30^th, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

Avatar: The Way of Water (12.23.22)

 

The year was 2009, Avatar was a massive hit, and I had no idea why. How was this good-but-not-great Pocahontas riff doing so well, breaking box office records left and right? I didn’t have to ask this question too many times before I realized my mistake—I had seen James Cameron's sci-fi epic in 2D, when the spectacle of the 3D was half the experience. I didn’t love the story, but the story was not the point. This is a sentiment that also perfectly encapsulates the long-awaited sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, which has a serviceable enough plot that is greatly overshadowed by its technical achievements, stunning 3D, and gorgeous visuals.

Having learned my lesson, I coughed up the extra few dollars to see Way of Water in 3D, and I am very glad I did. The world of Pandora is stunning and vibrant, and this time we even get to go along with James Cameron to his happy place—the ocean. A lot of the self-indulgent “look how cool we can make stuff look!” moments could have been cut, true, and Way of Water might have had better pacing and a more reasonable run time because of it, but things just looked so cool that I really didn’t mind.

The story and characters themselves are by no means bad in and of themselves, of course. There is as nice message about family at the core of the proceedings, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t completely invested in Jake Sully and his blue kitty cat family by the time the exciting climax (which features the most badass space whale of all time) came along. The other messages are more of the same—humans are terrible to nature, nature always wins in the end, etc.—but that's fine. Once again, it is not the point. I’m just glad that Way of Water not once mentioned “Unobtanium,” because it turns out I can take the world of Pandora much more seriously without that silly word floating around in the back of my head.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also give a shout out to the excellent acting, particularly by Zoe Saldana and her ever-haunting and sorrowful wails and Sigourney Weaver, who plays a teenage Smurf so convincingly that I had no idea it was her until the end credits. The entire cast, both returning and new, help bring Pandora to life just as much as the special effects. I’m looking at you, badass space whale.

Avatar: The Way of Water is not so much a film as it is an experience. You would be doing yourself a disservice if you saw it in theaters in 2D, a disservice only dwarfed by waiting to see it on the small screen. If the inevitable third movie finally hits that sweet spot of having a plot equal to the visual feast, the Avatar franchise might just become unstoppable.

Avatar: The Way of Water is now available in theaters. 

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on December 23^rd, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

On the Count of Three (12.16.22)

 

Black comedies can be quite difficult to do well when they’re about a subject that is normally off limits where joking is concerned. You make things too funny and things can be disrespectful; you make things too heavy and, well… that’s not a black comedy, that’s just a tragedy with an ice breaker here and there. There have been a few films that I have seen over the years that I was not even aware were considered black comedies until I looked them up on Wikipedia long after the fact, and I am never sure if this is because the ratio was off or if I just wasn’t dialed into the humor for whatever reason. On the Count of Three has a good deal of this unevenness, but it has even more moments where the balance is pretty darn good.  

First premiering at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and finally hitting Hulu in 2022 as a “Hulu Original,” On the Count of Three is a story of two very depressed friends who decide to commit suicide together, but not until after they have one last day unfettered by the promise of consequences to come. The directorial debut of comedian Jerrod Carmichael (who also stars as Val), On the Count of Three starts out grim. Going into this movie blind as I did, I had no idea that it was intended to be a black comedy for the first thirty minutes or so as Val and his best friend Kevin (played by Christopher Abbott) discuss very heavy subjects like suicidal depression, bullying, and broken homes, and any dark humor that was attempted had a tendency to make things more sad than anything else. I could see that this little indie film was going to be one of those rough but hopefully worth-it stories, but just when I thought I had figured out what On the Count of Three was, a scene came along that was genuinely funny in that dark kind of way. From then until the penultimate scene, the drama (which is very well done, by the way) hits that nice balance with the chuckles. Usually black comedy/drama films shoo out the clowns at the end of the film, but On the Count of Three makes the additional weird choice of not inviting the clowns in until we are halfway done already.  

Despite this unevenness of tone between halves, On the Count of Three works pretty well, mostly because it never treats mental illness, the idea of suicide, or the characters themselves as a joke. The acting is exceptional (especially in the case of the two leads), the direction and cinematography are very well done, and the soundtrack hits that sweet spot that only indie films are usually capable of hitting. On the Count of Three is a tragedy about what life and mental illness can do to people, but it also has a deeper message of friendship and putting others first that I greatly appreciated.  

On the Count of Three is now available on Hulu. 

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on December 16^th, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

Disenchanted (12.09.22)

 

               Disney+ may have been operating for a few years now, but I must admit that I’m still not entirely sold on the overall value of the platform. With the exception of The Mandalorian and maybe a Marvel show or two, I still can’t shake the feeling that the service is just a place for Disney to dump the content deemed unworthy of a big screen release so they don’t have to write those productions off completely. Despite this suspicion, I still decided to give Disenchanted a shot because of how wonderful I found its precursor to be. I gotta say, if nothing else they nailed the title, because disenchanted is exactly how I feel after watching this drab and ennui-inducing sequel.

One thing I do appreciate about Disenchanted is that it at least tries to do something different rather than simply rehashing the story of Enchanted with slight variations. It does not attempt to do the fish-out-of-water thing that the first film did, but the charm of this idea was a big part of why Enchanted was such a success. Disenchanted doesn’t have anything in it that comes even close to replacing that charm. Amy Adams, who is back as the doe-eyed Giselle, gets to show a different side of her character that is fun to watch, and James Marsden is just as goofy and charming as he was in the first film in the (regrettably) few scenes that he is in, but any uniqueness and cleverness that was present in Enchanted is missing here and what we’re left with is a cliché-storm that, unlike Enchanted, is played straight without any irony, whether they’re fairytale cliches or bratty teenagers growing up cliches. The script is flat and the story is as thin as my patience to get to the end of this movie, but somehow it keeps dragging on and on regardless.

One of the biggest factors contributing to the excessive length is the sheer amount of musical numbers that Disenchanted has, none of which are memorable or enjoyable (well, the villain vs. villain song isn’t all bad). This is, frankly, shocking, as the legendary Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz are behind the soundtrack in what is undeniably their most lackluster effort to date. Instead of having three or four great songs like Enchanted did, Disenchanted just throws a whole bunch of trash at your ears hoping that something will stick, and not even the great Idina Menzel is spared from the bad songwriting (but at least she does get to sing... It’s still baffling to me that the people who created Enchanted somehow thought it was a good idea to cast her and then cut all of her songs). If you were to fast forward through all of the musical numbers you would not miss a thing, and what you’d be left with is a boring forty-odd minute story that would feel more at home on the Disney Channel than on a serious streaming service.

Skip Disenchanted and rewatch Enchanted instead. There’s no magic to be found here.

Disenchanted is now available on Disney+.

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on December 9^th, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

Spirited (12.02.22)

 

If given the choice between being haunted by ghosts to fix my character defects and having the life of a Who child endangered for the same purpose, I’d pick endangering the Who child every time. Ghosts are scary, especially that Christmas Yet-to-Come guy with his accusatory pointing. The ghosts in Spirited aren’t that bad, though. In fact, they can be downright pleasant (including Christmas Yet-to-Come—Tracy Morgan's voice will do that). Downright pleasant is a good way to describe the entire Spirited film, in fact, even if the words “overlong” and “meandering” also apply.

People have been adapting Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol since Dickens himself tweaked the prose for public book readings, and I don’t think they’ll ever stop. It is, by every definition, a classic. So how does one keep the story fresh? By turning it into a musical starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds, of course! Because guess what? It turns out that these two can actually sing and dance pretty decently, whether through the subtlest of auto tunes or just being unfairly gifted compared to the rest of us, and their comedic chemistry is just as fun to watch as you’d expect. The musical numbers in Spirited, written by the same team that created Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman, is where the film shines the brightest, from the clever lyrics and catchy tunes to the exceptional choreography. And keep in mind that Spirited is indeed a full-fledged musical-- we're not just talking a song here and there. I may be a Scrooge that welcomes Who children falling off mountains and generally avoids most musicals, but even I enjoyed Spirited in these moments.

When the actual plot really starts to get underway and the songs become slightly less frequent, this joy does dim a bit, however. The story of Spirited, which focuses on Ferrell’s Christmas Present character just as much as it does Reynold's miserly Scrooge stand-in, is a bit over-stuffed and meandering. There is a long stretch or two where things kind of stall and the film can’t decide who the main character should be any more than the actual characters can. At these points I almost forgot Spirited was a musical, up until another song came around and kicked the energy up into high gear once more. There is no reason for this film to be as long as it is or for the moral to become apparent so late in the game.

But when Spirited is good, it is very good. Both leads seem to have checked their comedic egos at the door, because neither one of them is overtly silly to the point of stealing the show and both of them allow nice moments to be nice and worthwhile lessons to land without the caveat of an unnecessary joke afterwards. Overall Spirited is a fantastic way to kick off this year’s Christmas season, and these particular ghosts are welcome at my place any day.

Spirited is now available on Apple TV+.

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on December 2nd, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/