Uglies (09.20.24)

 

There is no shortage of excuses that people come up with to justify hating one another. Political affiliation, race, class, gender, religion; all can lead to artificial divisions that make the world a worse place to live in. Uglies, a new Netflix original based on the bestselling young adult novel by Scott Westerfeld, presents a dystopian society in which peace is obtained by simply making everyone prettier via extreme cosmetic surgery. This incredibly naïve solution is not the primary reason for the lack of violence and strife in the pretty world of Uglies, as we inevitably find out that something more sinister is at play, but it does represent the biggest flaw in the film: Distilling complicated issues best left explored in novel format into the lowest common denominator.

I have never read Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series, but it’s hard to imagine it having less nuance than the film that is based on the first volume. Be yourself, true beauty comes from within… that’s about as deep as the lessons in Uglies gets (and the second point is slightly undermined by the fact that they hired the very pretty Joey King to be our main character, as Netflix, Hollywood, and other movie making hubs are apparently allergic to actual ugly people). The film could have offered something very interesting, like a discussion of how conforming to Euro-centric beauty standards eliminates individuality and cultural identity, or how damaging social media saturation can be to people in their formative years (an issue that was undoubtedly absent in the original novel, as it was originally published in 2005 before social media became ubiquitous). Nope, being yourself and recognizing the beauty within is about it. Uglies is one of those films that thinks it’s much smarter than it actually is, and the streamlining necessary to convert a book into a movie certainly doesn’t help.

I am harping about the deeper meaning of Uglies (or lack thereof) largely because there is not much else to it. Joey King does fine as the main character, although it is a bit off-putting when she and many of her fellow actors do the whole bubbly teenager thing, considering that most of them are around 25 in real life (not a new issue, I suppose, as adults have been playing teenagers since Danny corrupted that unfortunate Sandy girl). The CGI is often poor, the green screens apparent, and the flying skateboards ridiculous (as are silly phrases like “rusties” and “the Smoke” --I’m sure these were more acceptable on paper than in live-action, or maybe I’m just an old man who hates whimsy). As for the script, well… let’s just say I’ve seen more subtlety in a… not very subtle thing. I don’t know, I’m bad at similes and I don’t think this movie deserves a good one.

Full of missed shots and even more missed opportunities, Uglies is destined to fade into dystopian YA adaptation/bad Netflix original film obscurity. I, for one, have already forgotten it.

Uglies is now playing on Netflix

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September 20^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com

The Instigators (09.06.24)

 

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death, taxes, and me appreciating Matt Damon in everything he is in. Is it really any wonder that the cinematic U.S. constantly spends billions of dollars trying to retrieve him from places, whether it be in German-occupied France or Mars? Naturally I wanted to watch The Instigators for no other reason than to send good vibes Matt’s way if he was captured or something, but it turns out these vibes weren’t really needed—sure, he and Casey Affleck are in constant danger of getting arrested and killed in this comedy heist film, but the stakes feel ridiculously low because The Instigators never manages to make me care about anything that’s going on.

Sure, the characters share some perfunctory backstories with each other in one scene to explain why they want to rob Ron Perlman’s character. But this is all the audience gets; it wasn’t until I was an hour or so into the film that it even dawned on me that Affleck was supposed to be the loudmouth funny one and Damon was supposed to be the comically stoic one. Not even these broad archetypes were clear because the jokes just aren’t that funny. I did not connect to anyone on an emotional level because one scene is not enough to tell us who the characters are, and I did not care on a comedic level because the jokes aren’t amusing enough to keep me invested just by themselves. And if the main characters are one-dimensional then I don’t even know what the supporting characters are… according to Wikipedia zero-dimensional space is a thing and “a graphical illustration of a zero-dimensional space is a point,” but I’d argue that the perfect example of zero-dimensional space would instead be Perlman, Alfred Molina, Ving Rhames, and the rest of the exceptional supporting cast doing… whatever it is they do in this movie.

The banter between Damon and Affleck can only be described as “Bostonian,” and this back-and-forth occasionally provides energy in the otherwise boring and painfully lifeless story, even if it never reaches the level of laugh-out-loud funny. And although it’s nice to understand the entirety of a heist film for once (usually the genre shows an addiction to needless complexity), the story is almost too basic in its straightforwardness. There are no interesting twists, no unexpected reveals. We get from point A to point B on a mostly flat line, and by the end I just wanted to shrug and move onto something else.

The Instigators is not unwatchable with its talented cast (they do their best with what is given to them) and fast-ish pace (it might be boring and lifeless but at least it’s not  slow, boring and lifeless), but it is not something that showcases anything impressive either. If only we could have saved Matt from this mediocre script, but I guess you can’t win them all.

The Instigators is now available on Apple TV+.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September 6^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com

Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War (08.30.24)

 

Perhaps no other time in American history has been quite as romanticized at the Wild West era, and that is not surprising. Cowboys are cool; just ask my 200+ hours logged in Red Dead Redemption 2. Anybody who knows anything about the gunslingers of this bygone time of lawlessness and freedom knows the names Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, but they might not know the story that made them famous. Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is that story, and although the documentary itself has some issues it is nonetheless carried by its interesting subject matter and solid performances that make it respectable entertainment.

Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is a six-episode docudrama narrated by Ed Harris, and boy does it ever lean heavily on the “drama” part. The reenactments and interpretations of actual historical events are plentiful, often eclipsing the “docu” half made up of your usual historian talking heads and voiceovers, and most of the time these moments are quite effective at making the history easily digestible for everyone, although I do wish that it used more authentic visuals such as actual photographs of Tombstone and its famous residents. At other times these reenactments can be hilariously histrionic, turning what may otherwise be a legitimate retelling into a hodgepodge of Western film clichés where everyone walks side by side in slow motion while coolly smoking cigarettes and the delineation between good and evil is clear as day. Wyatt Earp may be a mostly faithful reconstruction, but there is no doubt that it is also a slightly sanitized and highly streamlined version. The Wyatt Earp here is a hero who has never done anything wrong rather than the actual human being that he was, and instead of being a dangerously unhinged and volatile drunk, Doc Holliday simply comes across as a rascal. The streamlining is necessary in its way, as there is only so much time to delve into minutia and nuance, but it bumps up against another issue: Sometimes it feels like the show is dumbing things down for its audience, a fact that is especially apparent with its overuse of onscreen text and insistence on repeating things more than once.

Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is entertaining despite these flaws. The aforementioned melodrama is more of a product of the writing and direction than it is of the acting, which is good but won’t win any awards. And although the reenactments are everywhere they never overstay their welcome as the story keeps chugging along, a fact that speaks to Wyatt Earp’s good pacing and editing. Overall, Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is an enjoyable documentary to watch simply because the story at its core is so interesting with its multiple shootouts, legal dramas, and connectivity to the larger story of the American frontier. It provides entertainment and it provides a solid, if basic, understanding of what went down at the OK Corral and beyond, which is enough, I reckon. Yee-haw and all that.

All six episodes of Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War are now available on Netflix.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 30^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

Alien: Romulus (08.23.24)

The titular beast from the Alien series is one of the most iconic movie monsters of all time, but as with everything, familiarity breeds—well, not exactly resentment in this case, but it does facilitate a definite diminishing return when it comes to scariness. And if nothing else, the five Alien films since the original have fostered familiarity. Alien: Romulus attempts to make H.R. Giger’s xenomorph scary again, and while much of the material seems recycled from what came before, I’m just happy that we finally have another Alien film that doesn’t blow chunks.

Directed by Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe and 2013’s Evil Dead), Alien: Romulus takes the series back to its roots of crew members on a spaceship being hunted down and slaughtered by freaky creatures after the previous two films attempted some pseudo-cerebral world-building that ground the franchise to a halt. The return to form is effective, as are most of the scares, but none of it feels original; in many ways Romulus feels like an amalgamation of all the series’ greatest hits, from overly familiar character archetypes to suspiciously similar sets to winkingly repeated lines. The freshest facet of the film is the relationship between siblings Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and Andy (David Jonsson), their sister-brother dynamic causing heightened anxiety because you really want them both to live, much like Ripley and Newt or Ripley and Jones the cat from previous films. Plot-wise things don’t really diverge from the familiar until the third act or so, at which point things finally feel new and surprising; there is one new addition to the Alien mythos here that is genuinely unsettling, and it’s just too bad that it took so long in the film to come along.

The acting in Romulus is quite good, particularly that of the two aforementioned siblings (Jonsson has a fascinating duel role of sorts, and I would not be surprised if the character of Rain catapulted Spaeny to stardom just like Ellen Ripley did for Sigourney Weaver over forty years ago), but the script these actors have to bring to life is noticeably poor in certain parts. The dialogue got an unintentional chuckle out of me a couple of times, with standouts such as one character responding to a terrible story by simply stating “that’s terrible” and another one frantically explaining, seemingly just for the audience’s sake, that elevators don’t work without gravity. I also think I missed an important line or two because of various accents and a lack of diction, particularly during a big exposition dump halfway through, but that’s okay. I still understood everything. It’s not like “alien kills people” is a difficult plot to follow.

The xenomorph is the perfect killing machine and doesn’t need to evolve, so maybe it’s not surprising that the franchise surrounding it has not evolved much either after all these years. Alien: Romulus may not reinvent the wheel, but it does do what it was made to do, and that is make people afraid of space again.

Alien: Romulus is now playing in theaters.

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 23rd, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/ 

Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 (08.09.24)

 

Like most nerds, I like Batman. Most people do, if one takes the shear amount of times the character has appeared in print and on the small and big screens as evidence of his popularity. But I’m kind of getting tired of Bruce Wayne and his rogues, if I’m being honest… after all, there’s only so many times one can watch a trust fund orphan dress up like a rodent and beat up mentally troubled people on the streets without getting a bit bored. Batman: Caped Crusader, a new animated show on Amazon Prime, is in many ways an exceptional Batman experience  that goes out of its way to offer something different. But despite this I still couldn’t shake the feeling that we have already seen all of this before.

Caped Crusader has a lot of the same DNA as the popular 90s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series, which makes sense, considering that DC’s animation maestro Bruce Timm is the mastermind behind both. The animation is very similar, as is the respect that the subject matter is treated with—it does not dumb things down, despite the fact that kids are among the target audience. They're both shows that adults can enjoy as well, particularly Caped Crusader, which is a bit more violent and considerably darker than its predecessor.

Caped Crusader does some cool things with the Batman mythos, reimagining some characters, genderbending others, and setting the whole thing against the backdrop of a vaguely 1940s era of Gotham City. The noir approach that Caped Crusader takes is appreciated, the serialized tales of crime and murder really leaning into the detective facet of Batman’s nature.

But at the end of the day, Batman: Caped Crusader is still the same old Batman stuff. Bruce is humorless and dour, Alfred is concerned and frustrated, Catwoman is sassy and flirtatious. Despite all of its attempts to be different Caped Crusader is still what we’ve seen over and over again since Bob Kane and Bill Finger created the character in the late 30s, and I wasn’t able to appreciate the craftsmanship of the show that much as a result. This is not a problem with the Caped Crusader as much as it is a direct result of media saturation. Why not do a Wonder Woman cartoon instead? Or maybe a lesser known DC comics character like Midnighter or Zatanna? There’s only so many times you can run back to the Batman well without the thing running dry. I don’t subscribe to the idea of super hero fatigue in the media; I think that as long as there is innovation the genre can be as long lived as action films or comedies. But man, Batman: Caped Crusader just exhausted me.

But it’s a great show! This is the Dark Knight at his best. But the fact is that we have so many examples of the character at his best that the sum of those feels lesser because of it.

Batman: Caped Crusader season 1 is now available on Amazon Prime.

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 9th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/ 

Deadpool & Wolverine (??.??.??)

Some actors and roles are just made for each other, and Ryan Reynolds and Marvel’s Deadpool are one such pair. Snarky, irreverent, and hilarious, the merc with a mouth was always a natural fit for Canada's second-best Ryan, so nerds everywhere rejoiced when it was announced that he would continue in the role even after FOX was bought by Disney and the fictional universe that his version of the character existed in was discontinued. Deadpool, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first permanent transplant, would get a third film, but this time it would take place in the world of Iron Man, Captain America, and other fan-favorite Avenging heroes.

Deadpool & Wolverine, a threequel that also sees the return of Hugh Jackman’s iconic version of the latter character, is less of an exciting look forward at what’s ahead for the MCU and more of a fun look back at what came before it. Strictly speaking, the film isn’t perfect; the simple plot on its face isn’t terribly interesting and has numerous holes, the villain is cool and excellently portrayed but only has the vaguest motivations, and there are some noticeable pacing issues that effect the momentum of the film. But I would be lying if I said that Deadpool & Wolverine didn’t also provide one of the most fun movie-going experiences for me in years.

From start to finish I was grinning like an idiot, enjoying every joke and every well-choreographed moment of ultra violence (D&W is the MCU’s very first R-rated film, and like its predecessors it thoroughly earns this rating) as the mercenary and the mutant slice their way through waves of bad guys as well as each other. The dramatic moments work as well, the writers and actors once again proving that they know what makes these characters so memorable and enduring—Deadpool isn’t just a live-action Loony Tune but a thoroughly messed-up and disturbed individual who hides behind humor and wants to be better, and Wolverine is the best there is at what he does but would rather be anyone else.

The MCU has always had the problem of alienating new viewers who don’t want to watch a few dozen films as homework to understand what is going on in the current film, and I’m sorry to say that Deadpool & Wolverine is, as a celebration of not only the MCU but also the FOX X-Men universe that came before it, probably the worst offender yet. Though I absolutely loved each and every reference and cameo (indeed, they proved to be the best part of my viewing experience), I can comfortably say that most of them will probably go over the heads of all but the most hardcore viewers. I can’t tell you if that is a deal-breaker or not, but I don’t think I would have had nearly as much fun watching Deadpool & Wolverine if I wasn’t already a MCU groupie in it for the long haul. It may not be a perfect movie, but it sure was fun!  

Deadpool & Wolverine is now playing in theaters. 

This review has not been published in the Keizertimes yet and may not be ever at this point, but here is the link anyway-  www.keizertimes.com/

Simone Biles Rising (??.??.??)

 

I don’t know if you noticed, but the year 2020 was really weird. One of the events where this was particularly apparent was the Tokyo Olympics, where athletes performed to empty bleachers and were required to put medals around their own necks if they were lucky enough to win. But even with these COVID oddities there was one particular moment that stood out—the moment when Simone Biles, arguably one of the best gymnasts of all time, decided to sit out most of her competitions after a handful of botched performances with little to no explanation why. At the time, absolutely everyone had an opinion on what had happened, and now, on the eve of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Biles herself is setting the record straight once and for all in Simone Biles Rising, a triumphant and inspiring documentary that sheds light on not only her own troubles but also the need for better mental health accommodations in the world of professional sports and beyond.

Simone Biles Rising is refreshingly candid as it delves into just what went down in Japan and what Biles has done since to take control of her mental and emotional wellbeing. Her problems are often so relatable and understandable that it is sometimes easy to forget that this is an international superstar we are talking about and not just some “normal” person with a regular 8-to-5 career. A lot of this comes down to Biles’ likeability as a person, and a lot of it has to do with the documentary crew never failing to ground the pomp and glamor of the Olympic stage with interview clips of those who know Biles best, such as her mother Nellie and her husband Jonathan Owens, whom she married in 2023 (and who played for the Packers, but I suppose I should forgive him now that he’s with Chicago). Somehow the documentary made it easy for me, a guy who has never done so much as a cartwheel, to see myself in and sympathize with her position.

Mental health has never been a priority in any competitive endeavor, and this is something that Simone Biles wants to see changed. Rising is a fascinating look behind the Olympic curtain and also a call for all those who are suffering from unresolved mental afflictions to seek out help when needed and to also know that they are not alone in their suffering. If Simone Biles can break down in front of the world and come back stronger, we all can.

Simone Biles Rising isn’t just an exploration of the past and present, but also a fun and exciting preview of what is to come. Biles will once again be competing in the Olympics this year in Paris, and I can’t wait to see how the true ending of this documentary plays out in real-time. Win or lose, Simone Biles will be going out on her own terms.

There are currently two episodes of Simone Biles Rising available on Netflix, with more coming in the fall.

 

This review has not been published in the Keizertimes yet and may not be ever at this point, but here is the link anyway-  www.keizertimes.com/