Our Flag Means Death Season 1 (04.08.22)

 

We have a tendency to heavily romanticize the Golden Age of Piracy, and this is not a new phenomenon by any means. For proof of this, look no further than Stede Bonnet, the gentleman pirate and contemporary of other such legends as Blackbeard and Benjamin Hornigold. A lot of people say they want to be a pirate, but to Bonnet this was more than just idle chatter; this relatively wealthy Barbadian landowner ditched his family, bought a big ‘ol boat, and decided that he was going to live the life of a swashbuckler, despite the fact that he knew nothing about sailing. Sounds like one of those stories that’s too fantastical to be true, and also one that is ripe for comedy. Our Flag Means Death takes a stab at the humor inherent in the situation, and after a very rocky start it mostly succeeds with bringing the laughs while saying something at the same time. 

            Created by David Jenkins and executive produced by superstar Taika Waititi, Our Flag Means Death takes two or three episodes before it really gets going and becomes something other than an occasionally funny chore. Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) stars as Bonnet, and you’d be right in assuming that his being on a project with fellow Kiwi Waititi results in a whole lot of that silly type of humor that New Zealanders are increasingly famous for. Darby’s supporting cast is entertaining and capable, but it is not until Waititi joins him on screen as Blackbeard himself in the fourth episode that things actually get interesting. Laughs exist before then, but they don’t come as frequently as I would have liked or expected for the creative team in question, and even after that they are not ever-present. Our Flag is funny, yes, but it also has a moral or two to explore as well.   

            Bonnet’s story as portrayed on the small screen has, of course, some giant liberties taken with it, but it is surprisingly accurate when it comes a lot of the basics. He did indeed sail with Blackbeard, for instance, who took the clueless aristocrat under his wing, and he did actually pay his crew a salary and was eventually pressed into being a privateer. The showrunners use this story to explore the deeper theme of societal pressures, whether it be gender-, sexual orientation-, race-, or class-based, and it is nice to watch a comedy that actually has something to say instead of feeling the need to be “on” all of the time. Our Flag is also accurate when it comes to salty language, which parents should know about beforehand, and the violence can be quite intense as well, if over-the-top and a bit cartoony.  

            The production values are decent if not fantastic, having that “made for TV” feel without looking bad. The script is good, the characters likeable, and there is definitely more good in Our Flag Means Death than bad. Just be patient waiting for Blackbeard to show up. It might be worth it.  

            Our Flag Means Death season 1 is now available on HBO Max.  

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on April 8th, 2022. Visit at http:keizertimes.com/

The Adam Project (03.18.22)

 

More is not always better, especially when it comes to movies. Bruce the Jaws shark looks fake? Show him to the audience less. Your protagonist is going through some heartbreak? Show that on their face-- don’t have them say “hey, guess what, I am going through some heartbreak” and then launch into an explanation of why. In the same vein I find it a bit tiring how almost every action movie ever has grandiose stakes that usually include saving nothing less than humanity itself. The Adam Project is, partially, yet another example of this eye-rolling cliché, but I can forgive it because the smaller, more personal moments that it also features work quite well, as does the comedy and action itself.  

            The Adam Project is one of those time-travel movies, and as such it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you stop to think about it for even a moment. I certainly didn’t. As soon as Ryan Reynolds started to say something even remotely timey-wimey my brain shut off and I looked at my phone. I don’t think I really missed much, though; the saving-the-world-through-time-travel plot was mostly secondary, instead serving as the backdrop of the smaller story of a family learning to heal after great tragedy. Newcomer Walter Scobell plays the twelve-year-old Adam, who is visited by his future self (Reynolds), and the resulting duo is highly entertaining. Not only is Scobell a dead-ringer for a younger Ryan Reynolds, but he also nails the same comedic timing and snarky cleverness that made his older counterpart famous (I’m still not entirely convinced Ryan Reynolds exists and isn’t just Deadpool in disguise). The supporting cast is also impressive, featuring big names such as Jennifer Garner as the mom, Zoe Saldana as the wife, and Mark Ruffalo as the dad, and the brief runtime of 1 hour and 46 minutes means that nobody overstays their welcome.  

            The fight choreography is also well done, and the coolness of all the bouts is greatly boosted by the licensed tunes that kick in every time the fists start to fly (how Netflix could afford to license a Led Zeppelin song when the band members are notoriously picky over which movies they are featured in, I have no idea). This is the only good part of the soundtrack, unfortunately, as the original tracks are all highly unoriginal and generic. Speaking of highly unoriginal and generic, the futuristic tech showcased in the film, as well as the overall look, is that of your typical sci-fi fare with little to differentiate it from the myriad of other movies of the same ilk. Compounding the blandness is poor CGI, which I guess is to be expected and subsequently forgiven for a streaming original. The bad guys are also kind of just there to be bad guys. You don’t need to know or care why.  

            Overall I enjoyed The Adam Project. Sweet, funny, and exciting, it is the perfect example of small scale being the right scale. 

            The Adam Project is now available on Netflix.   

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on March 18th, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

The Batman 03.11.22)

 

When the Comics Code Authority was established in the 1950s to appease those who thought the funny books were corrupting the minds of children with questionable themes, inherently dark characters like Batman entered an era of lighthearted camp. It was not until the 1980s that Batman would permanently reclaim his throne as the prototypical dark-and-troubled king of angst, despite LEGO and George Clooney-with-bat-nipples iterations. Before now, the darkest version of Batman to ever glide onto the silver screen was in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, a series that helped elevate comic book movies to more “serious” cinema. But just when I thought the Caped Crusader couldn’t get any darker, Warner Brothers decided to double down with The Batman, an extremely well-made, intense film that, much like a black hole, does not let a single photon of light escape its inky depths.  

            Directed by Matt Reeves and led by Robert Pattinson’s almost uncomfortably unhinged, brilliantly subtle, and undoubtedly Kurt Cobain-inspired rendition of the titular hero, The Batman is not for the faint of heart. There is no comic relief to be found, the violence is regularly even more brutal than The Dark Knight at its bloodiest (it is still, somehow, PG-13), and the mystery at the center of it all demands your full attention and brainpower for the entire 176-minute runtime if you expect to understand everything that’s happening. If these things don’t turn you off you will find The Batman to be a fantastic watch. The supporting cast, which includes Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Jeffrey Wright as Jim Gordon, and Paul Dano as the startlingly creepy Riddler, is perfectly cast and act the heck out of a script that is sharp if not always compelling. Some of it feels like a horror movie (who imagined the Batmobile could be so scary?), some of it feels like a David Fincher-esque psychological thriller in the vein of Se7en or Zodiac, and none of it is what I would describe as “fun.” The Batman is not a movie you want to see if you want to escape the horribleness of the real world and watch a superhero bam, smash, and pow their way through a colorful rogues gallery for a few hours. “Colorful” is the very last word I would use to describe The Batman-- black, dark red, and various shades of gray seem to be the only colors that exist in this version of Gotham City.  

            This limited and dreary color pallet is one of a few nitpicks I had that kept The Batman from reaching loftier heights in my estimation. I had other issues as well, such as the soundtrack, which is overly bombastic, far too intrusive, and has a fixation on a certain two-note refrain that will drive you absolutely insane by the time it is played for the millionth time, as well as the script’s occasional dip into melodrama and self-importance (some of Batman’s brooding voiceovers come uncomfortably close to self-parody at some points). Yet despite these flaws, The Batman is a thrilling, well-crafted film that is well worth your time if you don’t mind your movies having a whole lot of dark and not a lot of fun.  

            The Batman is now available exclusively in theaters.  

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on March 11^th, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

Marry Me (02.25.22)

 

Most boy-meets-girl romcoms follow the same basic structure: two people meet, slowly fall in love, have a misunderstanding that forces them apart, and then get back together at the end just in time for the credits. It’s a tried-and-true formula that has been shown to work over and over again, and this uniformity necessitates that new releases in the subgenre have narrative hooks in order to set them apart from their brethren. What if the meeting happened because a famous pop star decides on a whim to marry a random guy in the audience to spite her unfaithful and equally famous betrothed, for instance? This is the hook of Marry Me, a Peacock original that has very few unique things to offer other than its bonkers premise.

            Based on a graphic novel by the same name (yes, really), Marry Me has romance, a small dash of comedy, and very little originality. There’s really not much more to the story than I described already, and the film leans heavily on the aforementioned hook as well as the likeability of its leads, Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, to make up for it. As Lopez plays a pop star (not too much of a stretch, is it), there are a few original songs that pad things out as well, some decent (the ballad she writes for Wilson’s character) and some a bit more irritating (the titular track, which they will not let you forget). The inevitable conflict that breaks up the string of fuzzy falling-in-love scenes also feels a bit manufactured and isn’t super convincing, as if the filmmakers were not only fully aware of the basic boy-meets-girl romcom structure but were also determined to follow it to the letter. Or maybe they just realized that they were already three-fourths of the way through the film and hadn’t introduced any actual conflict yet.

            I never really laughed out loud during Marry Me, which is a bit disappointing for a romantic comedy, and I can’t for the life of me see what would have attracted either of the stars to the script other than the chance to have a few kissing scenes with Jennifer Lopez or Owen Wilson. To its credit, the script does try really hard to be memorable and profound, constantly requiring Lopez (and occasionally Wilson) to drop what the writers probably thought were insightful one-liners about everything from self-reliance to the benefits of social media, but the juggling of all of these themes leads to a few balls being dropped along the way.

            Marry Me isn’t a bad film. The warm and fuzzy scenes feel warm and fuzzy, the characters are likeable enough (shout-out to Sarah Silverman as the best friend character, who I have not mentioned yet), and any eyerolls are solidly contained to the ludicrous proposal moment early on. It just doesn’t do much of anything special and is easily forgettable as a result. If you need some comfort food in the form of a movie you might as well watch something that fills you up a little longer.  

            Marry Me is now available on Peacock.

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on February 25th, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

The Book of Boba Fett (02.18.22)

 

If there is one thing that the highly fickle and fragmented Star Wars fandom can agree on, it’s that the only thing good to come out of 1978’s infamous Star Wars Holiday Special was the mysterious bounty hunter known as Boba Fett (and arguably Mark Hamill’s Carol Brady haircut). The cold-blooded killer’s screentime after this coke-fueled and bizarre debut was minimal, having just a few lines in the original Star Wars trilogy before being unceremoniously thrown into a sarlacc pit, but his staying power (and ability to sell toys) was undeniable. It would take over forty years since his introduction to get his own spinoff, however, and that spinoff is the sometimes boring, sometimes awesome, sometimes unfocused Book of Boba Fett, a Disney+ original/spinoff of The Mandalorian.  

            Sixty-one-year-old Temuera Morrison stars as the roughly 41-year-old Boba Fett after previously playing his father/clone template Jango (as well as other clones) in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Along for the ride is Ming-Na Wen, reprising her roll as master assassin Fennec Shand from The Mandalorian, as well as a couple of new characters that you probably won’t care about and a few that will only be familiar if you’re a fan of the Star Wars comics and animated series (one from the latter I was particularly jazzed about, but that would be a spoiler). There’s not too much to the story: After the events of Return of the Jedi Boba slowly gets his groove back, decides he wants to retire from bounty hunting and become a crime boss but comes into conflict with a rival syndicate, and western standoffs and sci-fi explosions ensue. The first four episodes or so are rather boring, relying far too much on flashbacks to pad the barebones “present-day” storyline, which mostly consists of talking and posturing, and the action varies greatly in quality as well. There isn’t really an excuse for this latter complaint because while the lead is 61, he also plays a character that wears a helmet and could therefore be played by a stuntman for a good deal of the time (the same is true of Wen, who is supposedly 58 but must have an aging portrait sitting in her attic ala Dorian Gray or Paul Rudd). To be fair, the action is not all underwhelming, just inconsistent (as the awesome train scene will attest), and in episode five things finally start to pick up instead of merely chugging along.  

            The only problem? The titular character is completely absent in one of those three final episodes, is barely in another, and has to share focus in the third. It is when The Book of Boba Fett is no longer about Boba Fett that the series gets really good, which is a downright shame considering how long he has waited to get his own spinoff. These last episodes are not awesome because they are furthering Boba’s story, but because they are furthering other stories in the Star Wars galaxy. This alone makes The Book of Boba Fett worth watching, but it would have been nice to have these stories told elsewhere to tighten the focus of the show. Boba deserves better.  

            Also, there is no book. The title is a lie.  

            All seven episodes of The Book of Boba Fett are now available on Disney+. 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on February 18th, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

The Tender Bar (02.04.22)

 

            I like to think that I have lived a fairly interesting life so far, but I am under no illusions that anyone would ever care to read a book or watch a movie about it. It’s a good life and it’s my own, but it just doesn’t have a narrative that would compel or interest anyone with the possible exception of my closest friends and family. Biographies need to have a little something special to them if they are going to entertain, and it certainly doesn’t hurt if the subject is a larger-than-life figure that everyone knows. The Tender Bar is a fairly well made (if not mind-blowing) film about the life of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist J.R. Moehringer that is mildly interesting in the first half, a slog in the second, and ultimately has very little of interest to say.   

            Directed by George Clooney, The Tender Bar (a pretentious and awkward name that I absolutely despise) is, in a word, adequate. The cinematography is fine (with the exception of a goofy-looking zoom-in here or there), the acting is fine (Ben Affleck as Uncle Charlie is the clear standout), and the script is, you guessed it, fine. The first third of the film that focuses on a younger Moehringer (played by Daniel Ranieri) with occasional jumps to Tye Sheridan’s version of the character a few years later is interesting enough with its themes of fatherhood and family, giving the proceedings a nostalgic feel despite the commonplace tropes of the story. But when the narrative moves completely over to Sheridan the pacing slows to a nasty crawl that is not alleviated by anything we as an audience have not seen thousands of times before. Sheridan’s version of Moehringer goes to college, meets a girl, falls in love, experiences heartbreak, doubt, all that fun stuff. He gets a job but doesn’t get the job he wanted, finally confronts his father, blah blah blah. Not helping matters is the fact that Affleck, the best part of the film, is mostly thrust into the background at this point and that Sheridan shows the emotional range of a particularly stoic cardboard box.   

            And somehow, The Tender Bar just kept going and going. I was stunned when I learned that the entire film clocked in at only 104 minutes, as it felt like at least 180. Could this have been improved by tighter editing and more succinct scriptwriting? Perhaps. But honestly I think the true culprit was the fact that Moehringer’s story isn’t that unique. Countless protagonists in literature have daddy issues. Everyone doubts themselves and everyone gets rejected by people they love and jobs they want. And instead of giving the audience the “oh, this guy is just like me, how relatable,” feeling The Tender Bar instead comes off as someone telling a story that they think is fascinating and unique when it just isn’t. When it comes to being a piece of entertainment, The Tender Bar doesn’t really justify its existence, I am sad to say.   

            The Tender Bar (ugh… that name…) is now available on Amazon Prime. 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on February 4th, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/

Encanto (01.21.22)

 

            It might sound a bit oxymoronic, but ask any wizard, witch, or Istar and they will tell you that magic needs to follow a certain set of rules. What these rules are varies from work to work, but the underlying principle should stay the same: perform a certain action, expect a certain reaction. When this doesn’t happen, the illusion of a fictional world being possible is shattered and the real force holding that universe together can be seen behind the cracks—narrative necessity. Disney’s Encanto lacks a “why” for most of its fantastical narrative of events, leaving one to question the internal logic of the magic, but it is a predictably fun animated feature from the House of Mouse despite this lack of clear cause-and-effect. 

            Encanto is the story of a more literal magical house and the spectacularly gifted Madrigal family that lives within. When the magic of the miracle starts to fade, it falls to the only non-superpowered family member, the quirky Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz of Brooklyn Nine-Nine fame) to save it. The only problem is that the why of anything is never clearly explained in this movie. Why was the magic fading? What actions cause the resolution of the film to happen? Does Mirabel actually do anything to save it, or is she just along for the ride? Maybe I’m missing something, but this movie left me confused as to what exactly the plot was. You don’t need to explain the magic, but maybe tell me why certain things happen.  

            Perhaps the house and the magic are there to simply act as an allegory for the themes the movie explores, such as acceptance of others as they are, being more than the gifts you’ve been blessed with, etc. These themes were welcome and supplement what might have been an otherwise underwhelming plot. Helping matters are the lively soundtrack written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the beautiful animation, and an endearing cast of characters. It is a large cast, too, with a great number of main characters that are nonetheless expertly juggled so everyone has a chance to shine and maybe even evolve a bit.  

            Less welcome are a couple of elements that made it feel like Disney was sometimes going through a checklist of expectations and dutifully crossing things off. There are a couple of quirky animal sidekicks that really only exist to sell a plushy or two at the Disney Store, for instance, and if you could only see the ending coming a mile away I would call you incredibly nearsighted. But that’s okay. If some of this movie was created by a committee, it’s a committee that clearly knows what it is doing at this point.  

            Despite its flaws, Encanto is another home run by the folks at Walt Disney Studios. Did you expect anything less?  

            Encanto is now available on Disney+.  

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on January 21^st, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/