Movie Reviews - 2019 posts

WARNING: SPOILERS

The only interesting thing about “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” is its stupidity. That’s what kept me hanging around: How stupid could it get? Answer: Really stupid. Godzilla and Monster Zero may be gigantic, but the stupidity of this movie is even more gigantic. It fills the screen. It’s so vast you can’t see from one end to the next. It roars.

Remember how in the 2014 “Godzilla” movie, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s character kept winding up in the thick of things? Like he was in Japan and the monsters were there, and then he went to Hawaii and the monsters were there. In the desert of the American Southwest? Yep. All the way to San Francisco, where his wife and kid were fighting for survival, and where Godzilla finally defeated the other monsters, the MUTOs, and then disappeared beneath the surf with a hiss. One of my favorite parts—because it’s so stupid—is the news coverage, particularly the most far-sighted chyron in the history of television. It doesn’t read: “Holy shit! Dinosaurs are alive and destroying our cities!” It anticipates the title of the sequel: “King of the Monsters: Savoir of Our City?” It anoints and cheers on a giant, fire-breathing lizard.

Remember all that? Well, Aaron Taylor-Johnson isn’t in this one.

Instead, we get a different family to foreground all the monster battles. Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga) is a kind of scientist, or techie, or something, while her husband, Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) ... um ... takes nature photos? And gets really angry at people who are trying to help? The two have a daughter, Madison, played by Millie Bobby Brown, who’s cashing the check she wrote for her good work in “Stranger Things.” Oh, Millie. Surely there were better banks.

Our lizard overlord
“King of the Monsters” opens with the Russell family’s flashbacks to San Francisco 2014, where they lost a son. Five years later, no one’s gotten over it. At one point, Dr. Russell, the angry male version, explains it all to Dr. Graham (Sally Hawkins), in one of the thinnest bits of exposition rendered on film:

About three years ago, we went back home to Boston. Tried to put the pieces back together. Emma dealt with it by doubling down on saving the world. And I started drinking.

Ah. So that’s why you were taking nature photos of wolves devouring a deer in Colorado. That’s where alcoholism always leads.

As for that “saving the world” thing mom doubled down on? Apparently she created a small device, dubbed ORCA, that can communicate with and/or control the monsters. We see her beta-test the thing as Mothra emerges from its pupa stage in a military-scientific outpost in Yunnan, China. She doesn’t even set it up beforehand, just barges into the enclosure and turns it on and starts fiddling with dials—while Mothra, who’s already killed several dudes, is like 20 feet away. But it works; Mothra is calmed. Then a paramilitary group barges in and starts killing more dudes. They kidnap Dr. Russell, her daughter, and the ORCA.

That’s when the good guys pick up angry Dr. Russell in a field in Colorado. So he can get on screen and not help.

You see, despite that five-year-old chyron welcoming our lizard overlord, we haven’t agreed on what to do in a world with monsters. Destroy them? Communicate and coexist with them? There are also those who think we’re the problem and the monsters the solution. That paramilitary group? They’re “eco-terrorists,” led by Alan Jonah, played by Charles Dance, who also played Tywin Lannister in “Game of Thrones.” This is their credo:

Our world is changing. The mass extinction we feared has already begun. And we are the cause. We are the infection. But like all living organisms, the earth unleashed a fever to fight this infection: Its original and rightful rulers—the Titans.

A few things. First, isn’t it amazing how so-called liberal Hollywood can talk about global warming without once mentioning global warming? To top it off, they make environmentalists the villains in all this? And the leader of this eco movement is supposedly Tywin Lannister—who would never give a rat's ass about anyone but himself?

He’s not the one making the above speech, by the way. That’s Emma. Yeah, she wasn’t kidnapped. She’s the bad guy—or in league with the bad guys. It’s our early, nonsensical reveal. You’d think a woman who lost her son to monsters wouldn’t think monsters were the solution to anything, let alone not-global warming, but nobody raises this point with her. They raise other, more personal points:

Mark: You are out of your goddamn mind! First, you put our daughter’s life in danger and now you get to decide the fate of the world. That’s rich, Emma!

That’s rich. It’s like they’re arguing about who flirted with whom at a cocktail party.

Since tentpoles movies are all about the roller-coaster ride, it’s time to zip around the globe some more. First Antarctica, where Emma frees Monster Zero, a giant three-headed dragon encased in ice. Except, oops, it’s not really a Titan. It’s an alien. (From Planet X, yo.) And it kicks Godzilla’s ass. Then Emma awakens Rodan from a volcano in Mexico, and there’s more battles, but the U.S. military uses an oxygen-depriving bomb to stop and/or kill the beasts. It works—on everyone but Monster Zero (he’s an alien), so he’s now the ruler, and awakens all the other Titans to, I guess, take over the world.  Meanwhile, Godzilla nurses his wounds. At this point, in fights with Zero, Godzilla's 0-2. Not exactly “king.”

The final battle is in Boston. That’s where Madison turns on mom (“You’re a monster”) and steals the ORCA, and goes to Fenway Park (of course) to ... what is she doing again? Calming the Titans? Because she winds up attracting them. To Boston. Brilliant.

And all of this awakens in mom the need to finally do the right thing. Like just when Madison can’t run anymore, Mom pulls up in a military vehicle and shouts “Get in!” That idiocy. The movie, directed by Michael Dougherty (“Krampus”), who also wrote a lot of it, wants us to care about the Russells, but how can we? Mom causes the death of probably millions because she thinks giant lizards and moths are wiser than we are. Dad fulminates against any course of action, while Daughter acts too late and then destroys Fenway Park. Those are our heroes.

Ancient Chinese secret
Gotta say: The cast is great but the casting is horrendous. It’s casting as shorthand. Everyone is who you think they are. “West Wing” dude says sardonic shit while drinking coffee, “Silicon Valley” tech dude stammers awkwardly, “Game of Thrones” dude is cuttingly brutal. Ice Cube’s son scowls and stands his ground, as does the bald black chick. They protect us. As does the “Hamilton” dude who stays in the background—as he did in “A Star is Born.” We learn nothing about these characters because there’s nothing to learn. They’re plug-ins.

Ken Watanabe, repping Japan, Godzilla’s original hunting grounds, spends the movie advocating for him. Zhang Ziyi, repping China, Warner Bros.’ box-office hunting grounds, spends the movie ... Yeah, what is her role? And isn’t it roles plural? Yes. She’s both Dr. Ilene Chen and Dr. Ling Chen. At one point she says she, or they, are third-generation Monarch. Meaning her/their parents/grandparents were involved in this international scientific project around the time of, oh, the virulently anti-western, anti-intellectual Cultural Revolution. Thanks for the history lesson. 

I do like it that when Mark talks up slaying dragons, Chen dismisses it as a western concept: “In the East, they are sacred: divine creatures who brought wisdom, strength. Even redemption.” OK, so her dialogue could’ve been better. No Chinese person says “In the east.” It’s fucking 中国. And why not talk up the dragon being the luckiest of the zodiac signs, or dragon dances and boat races, or how Bruce Lee’s Chinese name is 小龍, (Small Dragon), and Jackie Chan’s is 龍, (Dragon)? Have fun with it.

At least that conversation isn’t as soul-crushingly stupid as when Dr. Serizawa imparts his wisdom to Coach Taylor:

Dr. Serizawa: There are some things beyond our understanding, Mark. We must accept them and learn from them. Because these moments of crisis are also potential moments of faith. A time when we either come together or fall apart. Nature always has a way of balancing itself. The only question is: What part will we play?

Mark (impressed): Did you just make that up?

Dr. Serizawa: No. I read it in a fortune cookie once.

[Pause]

Dr. Serizawa: A really long fortune cookie.

The wisdom is bad enough—bland nothingness—but the fortune cookie reference? I can’t even unpack that. Why would his character say it? And why would a modern international movie have him say it? It’s like a line out of a 1970s commercial. “Ancient Chinese secret...” And does the movie not know he’s Japanese rather than Chinese, or does the movie think we don’t know this? Or does he assume Mark doesn't know? I’d love to hear if anyone at Warner Bros. suggested taking out this line. I’d love to hear what argument kept it in. 

This is Warner's second attempt to create a universe in the manner of the hugely successful MCU. The first included the most famous superheroes in the world—Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman—and they fucked it up. They gave the keys to Zack Snyder and he brought back pure idiocy. Now they’re trying to create a “Monsterverse” with King Kong, Godzilla, and the lesser Japanese monsters. They’re fucking this up, too.

The only improvement with any of it was the slight uptick in “Kong”’s worldwide numbers. Otherwise, it's down down down. We’re getting less interested as the movies are getting worse. Hey, maybe there’s a correlation.

WARNING: SPOILERS 

Most everyone has already pointed out the “Superbad” similarities. A heavy bossy high schooler (Beanie Feldstein, the sister of Jonah Hill), and her thin shy friend (Kaitlyn Dever, apparently unrelated to Michael Cera), try to find the party on the night before high school graduation. Along the way, they get into and out of trouble, lose and find love, get drunk, fight, make-up, and say good-bye. It’s raunchy, funny and surprisingly sweet.

It also made me feel old. Like: way, way old.

So they have unisex bathrooms in high school now? Or is that just in So Cal? Or is that just in So Cal in the movies? And why is the teacher, Ms. Fine (Jessica Williams, late of “The Daily Show”), hanging around the edges of the party? She’s not going to party with them, is she? Wait, she’s not going to sleep with that student, is she? With no repercussions? In the #MeToo age? Wow. Reverse the genders and see how well that bit plays.

I was also wary of how close the camera got to some of those young bodies. Maybe that’s just the female gaze of first-time director Olivia Wilde. Or maybe I’m old. Like: way, way old.

A brassy Tracy Flick
I like this aspect of “Booksmart”: You think the problem will be ostracism but it turns out to be something much more universal: heartbreak.

In the beginning, the filmmakers—Wilde, and screenwriters Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins (“Trophy Wife”)—set it up so there’s jocks here, skateboarders there, techies and burnouts, along with our two heroes, Molly and Amy (Feldstein and Deaver), as the brainiacs who, ssshh, got into Ivy League schools. Except it turns out the other kids did, too. Like all of them. Again, is this specific to So Cal? Or does Lori Laughlin have that many kids?

But this knowledge—that her laser focus on her studies didn’t take her any further than the doofuses that partied all the time—is like an epiphany for Molly, senior class president, and she turns that laser focus into making sure they get in their share of partying before graduation the next day. She’s like a brassy Tracy Flick cramming for a final—but with partying.

The party to go to is Nick’s (Mason Gooding), the cutest of the jocks, and VEEP to Molly’s class president, but they don’t know his address. Trying to find it is the driving force for much of the movie. They wind up: 1) at the empty boat party of rich kid Jared (Skyler Gisondo); 2) at a murder mystery party hosted by gay, theatrical classmates George and Alan (Noah Galvin, Austin Crute, standouts); 3) tripping and hallucinating after drug-laced strawberries kick in; and finally 4) hijacking the pizza-delivery dude for Nick’s address. Then they call Ms. Fine to drive them there.

I assumed once there they wouldn’t exactly be welcomed by the various cliques, but they are. By everyone. It’s nice. But it makes you wonder what the conflict will be.

Turns out: heartbreak.

Amy has a thing for skateboarding girl Ryan (skateboarder Victoria Ruesga), who digs her, too, and makes her sing at the karaoke portion of the party; but then Ryan winds up snogging in the shallow end of the pool with Nick, Molly’s 11th-hour crush. Amy is crushed, but when she tries to leave the party, Molly stops her. And rather than explain what happened, Amy suddenly brings up everything that’s been bubbling below the surface of their probably lifelong relationship: How Molly is so controlling, and how Amy needs to get away from her, and no, she’s not just going to Botswana for the summer but for a year, because she needs to breathe; then she runs, distraught, into the bathroom.

At this point, “Booksmart” becomes a bit conventional. What happens in the movies when you don’t get the one you want? Someone else, generally shockingly good-looking, turns up. See: Minka Kelly as Autumn in “(500) Days of Summer” or Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle in “Midnight in Paris.” Here, Amy is surprised in the bathroom by the ultracool and aptly named Hope (Diana Silvers), who looks like a model. In fact, she’s played by a model. She’s played by a woman whose upper lip puts most lower lips to shame. And Amy winds up mashing on that upper lip. Such is the way: If Summer is gone, Autumn shows up; if you’re feeling hopeless, here’s Hope. 

Such is the way of Hollywood anyway. The rest of us pay full price.

You are all a video-taking generation
I like that Molly and Amy don’t reunite that night. Everyone is separated, and Amy gets arrested, and Molly has a moment with a girl (Molly Gordon), nicknamed Triple A, who’s known for giving handjobs/blowjobs in cars. Thus the nickname. And With Triple A, Molly learns an important lesson. No, not that the rumors aren’t true. They are. Triple A likes giving handjobs/blowjobs in cars. She just doesn’t like the nickname.

The reunion occurs the next morning when Molly bails Amy out of jail, and they race to make the graduation ceremony, where Molly, as class prez, has to give a speech; and the speech she’s written isn’t the speech she gives, of course, because she’s learned so much the previous evening about blah blah blah. Yeah, that speech is actually a disappointing part of the movie. So are the so-called 1% (Jared and Gigi, played by Billie Lourd), who were just too over-the-top for me. I didn’t buy them, or care about them.

But I laughed. A lot. And I like the movie’s by-the-way inclusiveness—like it weren’t no big thing. As I was watching, it even made me feel good about this generation. They were putting divisiveness behind us and forging a newer, better, cleaner path. Good for them.

Then we got the big Molly-Amy breakup scene. They’re yelling at each other in the middle of the party, and in front of all the other kids, who stop what they’re doing and listen. You wonder if anyone is going to try to break it up. Nope. In the background, somewhat blurry, you see one light, then another, and then another.

Me: Are the other kids ... filming this?

A second later: Yes. Yes, they are.

Pause.

Yeah, OK, you guys are fucked up, too.  

WARNING: SPOILERS

The Chinese title is more direct (《别告诉他》or “Don’t Tell Her”), which is a little ironic since the point of the movie is a particularly Chinese lack of directness; of keeping an unpleasant truth from a beloved family member.

I’ve encountered this before, by the way. Not just in Taiwan when I lived there (1988-90) but in film. There’s a 1989 Jackie Chan movie called “Mr. Canton and Lady Rose,” in which several friendly gangsters get involved in an elaborate scheme to pass off a poor flower lady as a rich Cantonese woman for the benefit of her daughter's rich, prospective in-laws. I kept waiting for the in-laws to find out, and for everyone to find out how it didn’t matter since we’re all the same, blah blah blah, as it would be in a Hollywood movie. Except the in-laws never find out; the subterfuge is never revealed. Because in China, Face is more important than Truth.

The attempt to keep the truth hidden in Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell” is more personal. 

三个月？
Early on, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), the grandmother of a large, extended brood, is talking on the phone to her granddaughter Billi (Awkwafina), who lives in New York, while Nai Nai is visiting her doctor in Changchun in northern China. She’s having tests to see if the spots on her lungs are what the doctors fear. And they are: She has cancer. But the doctors don’t tell her; they tell her younger sister, (Lu Hong), who tells everyone else in the family. That’s the Chinese way. They keep it hidden; they don’t want Nai Nai to know she only has months to live. 

Instead, the family moves up the wedding of grandson Haohao (Chen Han) to his Japanese girlfriend, Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara), so they all have an excuse to descend on Changchun and say their last goodbyes without actually saying goodbye.

What I love? In that moment before the CAT scan, both Billi and Nai Nai are doing exactly what the family will do for the rest of the movie. Nai Nai pretends she’s at home rather than the hospital, since, one assumes, she doesn’t want to worry Billi. At the same time, she tells Billi to wear a cap in New York (because it’s cold) and no earrings (because they’ll steal them right off you, necessitating surgery), and Billi says she’s wearing a cap (when he isn’t), and isn’t wearing earrings (when she is).

Oh, and the Guggenheim that Billi, a would-be writer, is up for? She doesn’t get it but pretends it’s still pending.

The tension for most of the movie is whether Billi, who’s lived in New York since she was 6 and is more Westernized than the rest of the family, will be the one to drop the bomb. Her parents are so worried about this they don’t invite her along. She shows up on her own—as the family is sitting down to dinner.

Much of the movie revolves around food and conversation and cultural differences. Billi’s mom, Jian (Diana Lin), gets into it with a Chinese in-law, who, though she’s sending her son to America to study, brags about how easy it is to become a millionaire in China. The family visits Nai Nai’s husband’s grave, bringing him food, and participating in the ritual burning of paper items in the shape of, for example, smart phones and TV sets, which he will then get to use in the afterlife. (I used to see such burnings all the time in Taipei.) Nai Nai argues over whether lobster or crab will be served at the wedding. She argues that three months is too short a courtship for Haohao and Aiko, and might start tongues wagging. Why don’t they tell everyone six months? How about a year?  

Awkwafina is the big name here, as well as Tzi Ma who plays her father (he’s been in everything from “Rush Hour” to “The Arrival” to “VEEP”), but it’s first-timer Zhao as Nai Nai who steals the show. She’s feisty (doing her morning taichi exercises with loud hais to dispel evil spirits) and a little mean (calling Aoki stupid because the girl doesn’t speak Chinese) but she never seems mean. She just seems set in her ways and protective of her clan. Something about her feels so authentic.

Probably because she is. “The Farewell” is based on a true story, or, as the movie tells us, “an actual lie.” Writer-director LuLu Wang went through the same experience with her own Nai Nai a few years ago. The twist, which we find out in the end, is that her real Nai Nai is still alive. It’s six years later, and we get footage of her doing tai chi. Even better, she never found out about the cancer. She still doesn’t know. One wonders if the Chinese don’t have something with this “not knowing you’re going to die” thing. It’s like Wile E. Coyote staying in midair as along as he doesn’t know he’s in midair; it’s the knowledge that makes him fall.

再见
Thoughts on the birds? A bird lands in Billi’s apartment in New York, and then in her hotel room in Changchun; she stares in silence at both. Then at the end, weighed down with the knowledge of Nai Nai’s impending death—Awkwafina is slouched like a teenager for half the movie—she suddenly takes up Nai Nai’s spirit-dispensing shout on the streets of New York and the birds goes flying into the air.

So are the birds the evil spirits? Or are they the trapped thing inside Billi? For that matter, does the fictional Nai Nai live simply because the real one did/does? One assumes, but we never really find out. 

Bigger point: go. 去看看巴。This is a small gem of a movie that is funny, heartfelt, poignant. The cultural absurdities are specifically Chinese but the family absurdities are wholly universal. I love the final scene in China: Billi in the cab with her parents being taken to the airport, and watching her Nai Nai through the rear window waving and getting smaller and smaller. That’s all of us, eventually.

WARNING: SPOILERS

Chekhov was right: A guy talking about jumping in front of a bullet in the first act will jump in front of a bullet in the third.

And he’ll do this even if, in that first act, the mere idea of it is dismissed by a veteran cop. “You know how fast a bullet travels?” Vic Manning (Dave Bautista) asks his Uber driver, Stu (Kumail Nanjiani), who’s broached the subject out of nowhere. “I guess I didn’t really think that through,” Stu replies in that halting, “Gee, I guess I’m not that smart after all” tone Nanjiani has perfected. Great scene. I laughed.

Then they have to get all Chekhov on us. Stu jumps in front of a bullet to save Vic’s superhot daughter, Nicole (Natalie Morales), and ... we can see where this is going. You see, Stu is also coming to realize that the woman he’s had a crush on for years, Becca (Betty Gilpin of “GLOW”), isn't worth it. And a man breaking up with the wrong girl in the first act will find the right girl in the third. That's a Hollywood rather than a Chekhovian principle.

Everyone’s a douche
I laughed a lot during “Stuber” and don’t recommend it. The idea is fine—a cop who’d just had lasik eye surgery relying on his Uber driver to get him from place to place in LA to take down the bad guys—and the casting is fantastic. Nanjiani is my man, while Bautista, who plays Drax in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, is that rare musclebound WWE guy with good comic timing.

Despite this, the movie keeps failing. And flailing. I’d watch scenes and think, “Yeesh, this is not working at all.” They’d go on too long, the timing would be off, the dialogue or language or violence would be too over-the-top. Sometimes over-the-top works, sometimes it just feels desperate. Here, it mostly felt desperate.

With a plot this contrived, you really need to make it make sense. Why does Stu stick around besides passivity and politeness? Why does Vic keep putting Stu and others in danger besides blind dedication to the job? The filmmakers make it too complicated—something we have to revisit every 10 minutes. Stu says he’s finally leaving (to go schtup the wrong girl); Vic says no, or makes a threat. Often the threat involves giving Stu a one-star rating. This works until it doesn’t. And of course, in the third act, when he’s finally allowed to go, he spots the clue that necessitates a return to save the day. 

All the clichés are here:

• The diabolical and seemingly indestructible villain (Iko Uwais)
• The sympathetic police chief who’s really a diabolical mole for the bad guys (Mira Sorvino)
• The dad who doesn’t have time for his daughter

Everyone’s a douche. Stu works days at a sporting goods store managed by the douchebag son of the owner (Jimmy Tatro), and he’s the one who gives Stu his nickname and the movie its title: Stu + Uber = Stuber. Ha ha, yeah no. He’s stupid, it’s stupid, and yet they made it the title of the movie. The movie’s a douche, too.

One star
Who do we blame for this hot mess? It was written by Tripper Clancy, whose credits are few and unreleased (“Four Against the Bank," “Hot Dog”), and it was directed by Michael Dowse, who’s mostly done Canada-related comedies: “Fubar,” “Goon,” “Fubar: Balls to the Wall.” Not a winning combo. 

The editing didn’t help. Afterwards, I assumed it was two hours and told my wife, “They really should’ve edited it down to like 90 minutes.” It’s 93 minutes.

Kumail, choose better next time. One star.

WARNING: SPOILERS

Marvel Studios isn’t wasting time, is it? Two months ago, “Avengers: Endgame” ended the saga that began with “Iron Man” in 2008, and now they’re already positioning the new Iron Man, the spectacular Spider-Man, (Tom Holland), while suggesting the beginning of a new saga. Time is money, after all, and poor Marvel/Disney only has all of it.

Not only is much of “Spider-Man: Far from Home” about the dilemma of replacing Tony Stark on the world or cinematic stage, but the mid-credits sequence is a callback to the ending of the original “Iron Man,” with its shocking rock ‘n’ roll line: “I am Iron Man.” This one ends with, whoa!, the return of J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, now bald, and broadcasting to the world that “Spider-Man is .... [static] ... [more static] .... Peter Parker!”

Yes, a little different. Instead of tooting his own horn, which is the Tony Stark way, Peter is shamefully outed, which is the Peter Parker way. But the effect on us is the same. Just as we’re winding down, the movie gooses us. Wow! What happens NEXT? We suddenly anticipate the sequel. We may even watch this one again to sate ourselves in the meantime. Which is entirely the point.

As for the end-credits sequence? Not a fan.

Not smart?
Overall, I liked “Far from Home” well enough. Not as much as “Homecoming” but enough.

OK, it could’ve been better.

It’s the opposite of “Homecoming.” There, Peter did everything he could to prove himself worthy of being an Avenger. Here, he runs from the role. There, he wanted to be Spider-Man; here, he just wants to be Peter. I guess being dead five years might do that to a soul.

Hey, I just realized it’s also a little similar to Tobey’s second Spidey. Pete runs from being Spider-Man in order to enjoy life as Peter Parker with friends and MJ (Zendaya); then he has to return to being Spider-Man in order to protect his friends and MJ; then MJ discovers who he is. The details are different; but if you pull back, it’s similar.

JJJ aside, the world probably would’ve found out sooner or later that Pete was Spidey simply because he’s not doing a very good job of hiding it. I get “face time” for actors but good god he’s unmasked a lot here: on the rooftops of Venice, in a tavern in Prague, on a bridge in London—which all eyes and cameras in the world are on because of the destruction Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) has caused. Not to mention at the beginning of the film, backstage at a fundraising gig hosted by ... who? Oh, right, Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). Really, Pete? No distance there? Plus right before the JJJ reveal, he takes MJ for a spin around NYC as Spidey. What happened to keeping loved ones at a distance because Spidey will always have enemies? Not smart.

That’s actually a question the movie unintentionally raises: Is Peter Parker ... not smart? Constantly unmasking is just part of it. He also trusts Mysterio with the most powerful weapon mankind has created—Tony Stark’s glasses—which Tony, RIP, entrusted to him. First, yeah, stupid move, Tony. Second, Pete, buddy, I get that you want to give MJ the dahlia pendant on the top of the Eiffel Tower, and don’t have time to save the world, which includes you, MJ, the dahlia pendant and the Eiffel Tower. But to just give it up to a guy you met like the day before? Give it to Happy (Jon Favreau). Give it to Nick (Samuel L. Jackson). It’s even more infuriating for Spidey fans because we know Mysterio is the villain. And yet there you are, like a doofus, unmasked in front of him and all customers in this pub in Prague, and handing him the one thing your mentor and idol left you after he saved half the universe.

That pub scene may have bugged me the most. After Mysterio and Spidey (as Night Monkey, but obviously Spidey) “defeat” the fire monster, they have a drink together in a Prague tavern—sans masks. And no one stops to congratulate them? Slap them on the back? Buy them a beer? 

Pete: I’m 16, I’m not allowed to drink.
Prague dude: Maybe in America. But here all 16-year-olds drink, particularly ones who save our city!
Everyone: Yay!

Plus there’s a dude in like lederhoesen or some shit? I thought that whole scene seemed off before it was revealed to be a Mysterio illusion. And Spidey senses none of it? Not even with his Spidey sense? For something he finally uses to defeat Mysterio—and jokingly referred to as the “Peter tingle” here—it’s on vacation for most of the movie. It’s always a little frustrating dealing with a superhero who doesn’t want to be a superhero until it’s almost too late. Cf., “Superman II,” “Spider-Man 2,” Superman in “Batman v. Superman.” It’s a theme of second movies. Look for Spidey to “turn evil” in the next one.

Mysterio is handled well. I don’t remember the raison d’etre of the original, or if he had one, but here, the 2.0 version, he’s a Stark underling who felt he never got the credit he deserved; so he uses some combo of tech and drones to create elemental disasters he “saves” people from. Essentially Marvel Studios turns him into a kind of Silicon Valley CEO, barking orders at tech underlings to keep the illusion going. By the end, you despise him. You also understand his power. Illusion is a tough thing to overcome. Just look at all the fools listening to JJJ/FOX News.

Power/responsbility/Etc.
In the end, Spidey gets it all back—glasses, respect, etc.. He also gets MJ, who knows Pete is Spidey but likes him for being Pete. Awww. That said, I don’t sense much chemistry between the two actors—Zendaya and Holland—who supposedly like each other in non-camera life. Maybe it’s a generational thing. This MJ has too hard a shell for me. Love is about vulnerability, and between the two Pete has 95% of it.

Gyllenhaal is excellent—at first, charming, then super annoying—while Martin Starr (“Silicon Valley”) has fun as a hapless teacher buffetted by events.

But the end-credits reveal left me cold. Both Nick Fury and Maria Hill (Colbie Smulders) are Skrulls? Let me ask the Ira Gershwin question: How long has this been going on? We see him hanging on a simulated beach on a Skrull spaceship, then reluctantly going back to work. One theory has Fury being played by a Skrull before even “Avengers: Infinity War,” which means he was dipping toes while Thanos snapped out half the universe? Nice work ethic, asshole. And, hey, where’s the real Maria Hill anyway? We just see the real Nick. If we’re talking face time, good god, give me Smulders.

Anyway, not a fan of all that, but I am excited for the return of JJJ and his fake news. The MCU could make it a great commentary on Fox and Rush and Sinclair and all that bullshit. With its billions, Disney certainly has the power to do it. It probably won’t, which is a shame. I read somewhere that with great power comes great responsibility; but that was written a long time ago, in a Marvel far, far away.

WARNING: SPOILERS 

When I first became aware of the radio, of rock ‘n’ roll as a current thing, it was about 1973, I was 10, and Elton John reigned supreme. He was what the cool older kids of maybe 14 or 16 listened to. They had his albums with the odd titles: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.” Except ... I’ve already screwed up the chronology, haven’t I? “Captain Fantastic” wasn’t released until 1975, which is when I became a regular radio listener, every Sunday night writing down the top 40 songs in the nation along with Casey Kasum like it mattered. I did that for about a year.

So no, I guess I never really learned Elton’s discography or history—not like with the Beatles. I was a completist with the Beatles but as a kid I owned just one Elton album: “Elton John’s Greatest Hits.” I wanted to be the Beatles—or Paul—but never Elton. Feather boas and glitter and those crazy glasses? Who wears glasses? Nerds. Who wants to be a nerd?

It’s astonishing that he was ever a rock star, really. Rock stars were lithe, sexual beasts with long hair who went crazy on guitars and microphones and drums. Elton was a vaguely pudgy, balding dude in glasses and feather boa tinkling on piano keys. But there he was. Everywhere. Even—it was rumored—wearing 10-foot-tall platform shoes in the movie “Tommy.” (Bigger kids saw “Tommy.”)

There were rumors about Elton but not necessarily those rumors. It was more: “Bennie and the Jets” is about drugs, doofus, don’t you know anything? I also misheard the lyrics: “She’s got electric boobs/Her ma has, too.” Homosexuality just wasn’t talked about much back then. It was just a playground insult, or something you might see on an episode of “Barney Miller.” Besides, how could Elton be gay? He was obsessed with electric boobs.

The way he broke in the U.S. also had its own weird path. He didn’t get big in Britain and then ride that wave across the Atlantic. He didn’t keep playing bigger and bigger venues until he wowed us all on American TV. Instead, it was some club in LA. He started there.

Suck-sess
Interesting thing about not knowing Elton’s chronology: “Rocketman” doesn’t know it, either. Or it doesn’t care about it. In fact, it doesn’t care more than I don’t know.

The movie is essentially a jukebox musical, a biopic told via music videos, so it uses what it wants when it wants. The first song he sings at The Troubadour, for example, is “Crocodile Rock,” which is like three years early. Worse, after that show, he meets superhunky John Reid (Richard Madden of “Game of Thrones”), there’ a flurry of headlines about Elton’s success, then he’s back in a London studio recording “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” with Kiki Dee. Reid shows up there, and they become lovers, and Reid becomes his manager, setting himself up to be the villain of the piece. But to me it was like: Wait, the Troubadour in 1970 was the beginning, and “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” in 1977 was near the end—Elton’s last big hit before the MTV-era comeback—so what about the rest? When he reigned supreme? I get jukebox musical; I get truncate as you need; but if you lose too much chronology, you lose the thread and the story.

I also don’t get why music biopics don’t ride the crest of the wave longer. That’s the fascinating part, but here it’s just dealt with in a flurry of headlines. He wows at the Troubadour and then he’s selling 4% of songs worldwide. Give me the steps in between. I’m sure tons of performers wowed at the Troubadour and were never heard from again.

And what do writer Lee Hall (“Billy Elliott,” “War Horse”) and director Dexter Fletcher (“Eddie the Eagle,” “Bohemian Rhapsody”) focus on instead? The dullest story there is: addiction. Booze, drugs, sex—anything to fill the void where love should be. (Cue: “I Want Love.”) The void is interesting, the addiction isn’t. It’s always a long slow fall, and the only question is if there’s a bottom.

Maybe all post-rock ‘n’ roll success is dull. Here’s what biopics tend to give us:

• Addiction
• Overwork
• Abuse
• Band tensions/breakups

“Rocketman” has all of it. Elton is addicted to drugs and booze, he’s overworked by John Reid, at one point he’s slapped by John Reid (which supposedly didn’t happen), and he and songwriting partner Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) suffer tensions and break up. Success never looked so sucky.

You know the real disconnect? The movie is about Elton’s life as represented by his songs ...  yet it’s Bernie who writes the lyrics. We see Bernie writing the lyrics. So how do Bernie’s lyrics correlate to Elton’s life? I guess I’m asking. Because sometimes they do. Look at “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” Lyrics by Bernie but they describe a moment in 1968 when Elton tried to commit suicide because he felt trapped by his engagement to Linda Woodrow, whom he didn’t love, and by society’s expectations of who he was supposed to be. So he tried to asphyxiate himself in a gas oven. The “someone” who saved him is bandmate Long John Baldry, from whom Elton took his rock surname—the John Lennon bit in the movie is fiction. Meanwhile, the relationship with Woodrow in the movie is treated comically—clothes chucked out from a second-floor window as if he were a 1950s husband. You wouldn’t suspect he nearly killed himself because of her.

According to the movie, their songrwiting partnership went like this: Bernie wrote the lyrics independently, and Elton read them at the piano and, bam, came up with music on the spot. C’mon. Let’s dig into it. Who’s Daniel? Who was the young man in the 22nd row? Whose farm metaphor keeps popping up in every other song? Is “Rocket Man” a takeoff on Bowie’s “Space Oddity” or is it how Elton felt skyrocketing to fame, with the line “I’m not the man they think I am at home” an obvious allusion to his homosexuality? If so, how was this communicated to Bernie? I wanted more of that in the movie.

And do they really suggest the line is “I miss the earth so much/I miss my life?” To be PC? Watching, I felt a little like Alvy Singer. “You heard, right? It’s wife. I’m not crazy here.”

That said ...
I thought Taron Egerton fucking nailed it. New respect. “Robin Hood” is now forgiven. It’s a shame last year’s Oscar went to an actor playing a ’70s Brit pop star managed by John Reid and directed by Fletcher because there’s no way they’re going to go there two years in a row, yet Egerton is the more deserving. He sings, for one, and his transformation is more spot on. At times I wondered if they were showing us clips of the real Elton. Just look at that LA concert when he comes out in the glitter Dodger uniform—the way Egerton stands, poses, etc. Perfect.

You know who else I liked? Kit Connor, the preteen Elton who winds up at the Royal Academy of Music and then plays early rock ‘n’ roll at honky tonks with his swept-up red-haired pompadour. He was the first one to get to me. Maybe because he reminded me a bit of my nephew at that age. Or maybe that’s the age when true vulnerability shows.

New respect for Bryce Dallas Howard, too, playing his mom, Sheila. “Jurassic World: Forbidden Kingdom” is now forgiven. (Kidding. Nothing forgives it.) I couldn’t figure out who the actress was for the longest time. I assumed British; she’s that good. Howard should play disdainful more, too.

I’d still recommend the movie. If I was on “Sneak Previews,” my thumb would be a titch above 90 degrees. But I keep thinking of all they missed. The Beatles conquering America in 1964—meaning rock ‘n’ roll could travel westward, too: What impact did that have on a 16-year-old Elton? How about AIDS and the work he did there? Singing at Lady Di’s funeral and rewriting “Candle in the Wind” and turning it into the biggest single ever? The movie pretends that in the early 1980s Elton pushed away the baggage (addiction, Reid) and stormed back with “I’m Still Standing”; but rehab was in the early ’90s, Reid managed him until ’98, and “I’m Still Standing” only reached No. 12 on the U.S. charts. There’s a better story here. 

WARNING: SPOILERS

I learned a lot. But enough?

I‘ll start with the superficial: I had no idea Mikhail Gorbachev was so good-looking as a young man. In photos from the ’40s and ‘50s, he seems almost movie-star handsome. At the least, a B-actor in underrated noirs for Warner Bros. He would’ve given Sterlling Hayden a run for his money. 

An endless chain of catastrophes
I didn’t know he was from the provinces, or the story about his rise: how he didn’t really achieve national attention until the late 1970s. The doc also made me flash back to Ronald Reagan’s incredible good fortune of coming into office as a slate of Soviet general secretaries were dying. We were used to the opposite. Brezhnev came into power in Oct. 1964 and ruled until his death in Nov. 1982—so through the presidencies of LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan. Five presidents. We kept changing, they stayed the same. Then suddenly they kept changing and we stayed the same. During Reagan’s first five years in office, three General Secretaries took the dirt nap: Brezhnev in ’82, Andropov in ’84 and  Chernenko in March 1985. I’d completely forgotten about Chernenko, to be honest, which makes me think of this line from “Doonesbury”: “Do you realize I have absolutely no memory of the Ford years?” Chernenko was the Soviet’s Ford.

I think all of this helped Reagan. How could it not? It was like he was slaying enemies. He stood tall, they dropped. 

Director Werner Herzog has fun with this—trotting out the funeral march again and again, as if he’s reveling in the deaths of these Soviet leaders who divided his country for so long. It’s kid-in-the-back-row stuff—and works. The audience at the Seattle International Film Festival roared.

This is a different kind of Herzog, by the way. You know those mock motivational posters that include nihilistic quotes from Herzog? “I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony but chaos, hostility and murder” or “Human life is part of an endless chain of catastrophes, the demise of the dinosaurs being just one of these events.” Yeah, we don’t see that Herzog. It’s not just that he isn’t a nihilist, he’s a fan, and unabashed. He brings Gorby gifts: sugar-free chocolate from London. I think he even tells Gorbachev he loves him. For what he did. Or didn’t do.

That’s the tragedy, or maybe the tragic irony, of Gorbachev. He set in motion glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”), which led to rebellions against the Soviet Empire, which he could’ve ended with a word. He didn’t. He began a movement that swept him away. He felt the Soviet Union needed greater democracy and it led to Putin, who managed to undermine the world’s great democracy—us.

I’d forgotten about the putsch, too. Gorbachev and his wife Raisa were on vacation in Crimea when eight older members of the CCCP tried to seize power. They claimed Gorbachev was ill but he taped a message for the world that got out. People protested, Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia, took advantage, and afterwards Gorbachev seemed a diminished figure. He misread the Soviet satellites. He underestimated nationalism. Or maybe he thought the Soviet was the nationalism. 

Does Herzog’s Gorby-love get in the way of the story? I don’t think we get enough into his post-Soviet life, while his interviews aren’t particularly enlightening and a little dissonant. They’re speaking different languages—Gorby Russian, Herzog English—and Gorbachev will finish a story with his face expectant of the payoff from the listener; then he’ll have to hold that position awkwardly for a while until his words are translated. I assume Herzog likes this awkwardness. It’s part of an endless chain of catastrophes. 

Gestures
Gorbachev is heavier now, and slower, and I don’t think he’s long for this world. He’s probably grateful. The love of his life, Raisa, died in 1999, shortly before Putin took power. He wants to join her. In either the afterlife or oblivion.

Some of the most powerful moments from the doc are actually from another doc, “Gorbachev. After Empire” by Vitaliy Manskiy, which shows the tears Gorbachev shed at Raisa’s funeral, as well as the man himself puttering around the yard, putting lids on trash cans, in 2000 or 2001. The man who could’ve kept the Cold War going with a word or gesture. He’s not appreciated enough for not saying that word or making that gesture.

WARNING: SPOILERS

I can’t remember the last time I was as angry at a movie character as I was at Francois Ferrand (Martin Swabey), the husband of Alice, while watching Josephine Mackeras’ feature film directorial debut, “Alice,” at the Seattle International Film Festival last weekend. I was almost shouting at the screen. Anyone who knows me knows this is aberrant behavior. It’s the opposite of how I want to act.

Give the movie credit that I cared this much. But is it also a problem with the script? The character got me so angry not only because he was awful but because our title character acted so stupidly. 

A terrible fix
Alice (Emile Piponnier) is the wife of Francois, and, as the movie begins, a bit of a nonentity. She’s ultra polite. Ironically, given what she becomes, she’s just a girl who can’t say no. At least that’s what her husband, a lit professor and would-be novelist, tells her before a dinner party she’s prepping, after one of the party guests says she can’t bring the wine and would Alice do it for her? Alice says yes. She can't say no. 

She also can’t say no to her husband. When he arrives home, she asks him to get their son, Jules, out of her hair so she can prep the meal, and instead, he and the boy hover over her. Some of it is cute—he pretends the chocolate is the detritus of fairy tale monsters, etc.—but it’s definitely not helpful, and in retrospect pretty creepy.

The next day she’s buying items at a pharmacy when her credit card is denied. So is her backup. She can’t withdraw money from the ATM and her husband is not picking up. Eventually she goes to the bank inn person and a bank rep spills all:

• For the past year or two, her husband has been withdrawing their savings, and there's nothing left
• He hasn’t paid their mortgage in that time
• The bank is about to foreclose on their home—didn’t you get the notices?

And still hubby isn’t picking up. What begins as polite pleas ends in angry shouting and phone-throwing. After she figures out his computer password, she learns the problem: He’s been spending their money, including the €90,000 her father left her, including all that mortgage money, on high-end hookers.

Me in the audience: Wait, that much money? Is that even possible? I expected another shoe to drop, but that was the shoe. 

Going in, I knew the movie was about a woman in dire circumstances who becomes a hooker and winds up enjoying the power/control of the profession. What works is her path. It's believable. Initially she's merely investigating how much her husband paid for the service. But because she’s tall, thin, and with a girl-next-door face, she gets the gig she didn’t even know she was auditioning for. And because it pays €1,000 or so a throw, and because she immediately owes €7,000+ or she and her son will lose their home, she takes it.

What are the customers like? No one’s horrible; most are tentative; all are men. She starts shy and bumbling but soon gets the hang of it. Her mentor in all of this, and soon her best friend, is Lisa (Chloe Boreham), a tough ex-pat from New Zealand. She tells Alice the ritual: change into something sexy, offer a back massage, soon they’ll turn over, then finish it with the usual protection. Easy peasy.

That we are.

Yes, one dude is a little creepy but he’s creepy internally. He’s working out his own deep issues, but he’s never harmful to Alice.

Watching, I assumed two things. I thought the bank manager, to whom she was paying off the mortgage, would wind up a customer and know where the money came from. Nope. I also imagined that once she got her life in order again after the chaos her husband caused, he would return to cause more chaos. That happens, but it happens much, much sooner than I expected.

Oughter say nix
One day he's just there, back in the apartment, seemingly contrite, with a thin shin of sweat on his pale skin, and taking but really absolving himself of all responsibility. Where was he? At a friend’s. What does he want? To get back together with Alice. What does Alice want? A babysitter.

She’s no “Belle de Jour”—and, yes, someone needs to write an essay comparing the films—because she’ll do it at all hours, at a moment’s notice. In other words, she’s still the girl who can’t say no, but this time for money, and her friends, such as they are, are no help with last-minute babysitting. That’s how Francois worms his way back into her life. She needs a sitter.

Question: Does she think she’ll get away with it? That he’ll accept those terms? That he won’t try for more? How dumb is she? Because of course he finds out what she’s doing, is both turned on and repulsed, demands she stop, then essentially blackmails her: Let me back into your life or I’ll take Jules from you. A last-minute reveal that goes nowhere: The high-end hooker he used most was Lisa.

How does she fight back? She pretends to go along with it, then poisons his meal and chops him up into little bits and puts them out with the compost, where they’re mistaken for worms.

Kidding. She pretends to go along with it, then she and Lisa take everything, including Jules, and move to New Zealand. This dovetails with earlier conversations about Alice wanting to feel the earth beneath her feet, etc., but it leaves questions. I thought she got into hooking to help save her apartment? So did she? Or did she merely stave off the foreclosure for a few weeks/months at exorbitant rates? I mean, once Francois fucked up everything in the beginning, couldn’t she and Jules have simply moved somewhere else and started anew? Without the hooking? So doesn’t the end undercut the entirety of the movie?

“Alice” is winning awards on the festival circuit, and it’s fine for a first feature, but it’s not all that. 

WARNING: SPOILERS 

“Frances Ferguson” is the type of movie that gets buzz during a film festival but none afterwards.

It’s a deadpan indie comedy about a woman in a dead-end town with an obvious character defect, and the point of the movie eventually becomes overcoming that defect. But it’s not funny enough or clever enough; and the defect is part of the reason for the buzz: She’s deadpan, unengaged, unfeeling. For a certain type of moviegoer, deadpan is almost a political/sociological stance—a proper response to a corrupt world—but to me it’s the sad, adolescent cousin of cool. I want to say: Move on; grow up.

Writer-director Bob Byington seems destined to make these kinds of things: people who aren’t engaging with the world realizing maybe they should engage with the world. Cf., “Somebody Up There Likes Me” and “7 Chinese Bros.”

Merde
Frances (Kaley Wheless) lives in Point Bluff, Nebraska with a loser husband, Nick (Byington staple Keith Poulson, hair perpetually dangling over one eye), and a 4-year old daughter, Parfait, with a learning disability. She and Nick are uncommunicative. The first time we see him, he’s sitting in their car, parked on a side street, masturbating. It lets us know they’re no longer having sex, etc., but to me it raises this point: Who the hell does this? Is there no locked bathroom? No closet he can use?

Do we ever find out his job, by the way? His career? Anything other than this sad fact? She, anyway, is a substitute teacher at the local high school. We see her nervous before taking over a French class, trying to remember what little French she knows, before being informed that it’s actually a biology class. “Merde,” she mutters. Good bit.

It’s in this biology class that she first contemplates the act that propels the rest of the movie—having sex with a hunky student, Jake (Jake French). Because she’s bored? Self-destructive? Because it’s a biology class? She’s certainly no pro at having an affair. Here’s where she tells her student to meet her in this small town where everyone knows everyone:

• at a grocery store, while she’s shopping with her husband
• at a laundromat, where she wears her old cheerleading outfit
• at a motel

That’s where she’s busted. Is this what she wanted? She’s not saying and neither is the narrator, Nick Offerman, master of the deadpan delivery. She’s sentenced to prison, divorces her husband via online dispute resolution, is paroled, goes through therapy, meets good, bad and ugly people, and begins, maybe, to come out of her shell. That’s the movie. It ends arbitrarily—during a date with Martin Starr, Gilfoyle from “Silicon Valley.” (Yes, this thing is like a deadpan Hall of Fame.)

Why does she maybe begin to come out of her shell? My friend Vinny thought she realized how much her mother screwed her up, and she doesn’t want to do the same to her daughter. Except her mother doesn’t seem that horrible. Frances actually seems worse.

The last time
I saw it at the Seattle International Film Festival, and there was a Q&A afterwards with the star, Wheless, and Byington. One filmgoer asked about a recurring device in the narration: Whenever a character is about to leave the movie, Offerman tells us so: “This is the last time you’ll see Nick.” “This is the last time you’ll see Jake.”

I liked this bit a lot, and Byington talked about how it grew organically: from one character, to the others, to, finally, and why not, Frances. These are the movie’s last words: “This is the last time you’ll see Frances.”

Byington said he hoped moviegoers would feel a little sad at hearing this line; at seeing her go. Trouble was, I wasn’t. I was a bit surprised—because of the arbitrariness of the end—but sad? No. There wasn’t enough there there. The movie is called “Frances Ferguson” but I never knew Frances Ferguson; I just knew the stare and the stance.

WARNING: SPOILERS

Bummer. I was rooting for this one.

It’s not like I didn’t enjoy the songs, or the enthusiasm, or the pride I felt that this 1980s Pakistani-British kid and his Sikh friend were bonkers for this very American icon and his very American songs. And it’s not like I didn’t flash back to my own period of Brucedom (1982-87), back when, really, all I wanted in life was to be able to make someone as happy as Bruce made me during, say, “Jersey Girl,” the B-side to “Cover Me.” Which I didn’t even know wasn’t a Springsteen song! It was Tom Waits! How did I not know that? I guess because the internet hadn’t been invented yet.

But I totally flashed back to all that—to waiting in line outside Dayton’s on a cold spring morning to get Springsteen concert tickets for the first leg of his “Born in the U.S.A.” tour, and seeing not one but two shows, including the filming of the “Dancing in the Dark” video with the then-unknown Courtney Cox. I thought of my friend Stu, who wanted to be Freehold, NJ in South Minneapolis, and Dave and Pete, senior year of high school, playing “Thunder Road” on the tapedeck in Dave’s car, and rolling down the windows in unison when Bruce sings “Roll down the windows and let the wind blow back your hair,” which I, in the back seat, thought looked so, so cool.

I flashed to all of this. But man is this a bad movie.

Madman drummers bummers
It begins with real issues (assimilation/first gen conflicts; racism and xenophobia in reactionary times) and gets saccharine and unbelievable fast. Half the movie feels like an exuberant music video, with words printed on the screen; the other half feels like something from the Lifetime channel.

Javed (Viveik Kaira) is a first-gen Pakistani kid growing up in the 1980s in Luton, England, with his mom, two sisters, a gregarious but strict dad, and not many friends. OK, so he’s still got childhood friend Matt, but Matt grows up to be a kind of spoiled, working class kid with poncy hair and make-up. He wants to be Duran Duran. Plus he’s played by Dean-Charles Chapman, who played the younger brother of Joffrey in “Game of Thrones.” I spent half the movie trying to figure out who he was and why he bugged me so.  

As Javed begins senior year of high school, we see a series of problems he needs to deal with:

• Girls
• Dad
• National Front fucks in Thatcher’s England

The last is the most immediate. Coming home from school, he sees a skinhead spraypainting “PAKIS OUT,” or some such, on a neighbor’s garage. The skinhead stares him down, intimidates him, follows him back to the cul-de-sac where he lives. We expect more from this but it never arrives. We expect Javed to have to stand up to them, or one of them, but he doesn’t. That feels true anyway—it's easy to avoid fights: I know—but the issue isn’t really confronted. When NF fucks attack the father during the sister’s wedding, for example, Javed is off buying Springsteen concert tickets. So he feels guilty, right? Who knows? Because then Dad gets angry and tears up the concert tickets. Then Javed flies to America against his father’s wishes because he won an essay contest. He and his friend take pictures in all the Bruce spots. Wooooo! Then he returns, there’s a facile reconciliation with the father, but do we hear from the racists again? They just kind of fade away. Which, we've found out recently, racists never do. 

Of the three dilemmas, girls turns out to be the easiest. Maybe because he’s a good writer or something, with a teacher, Ms. Clay (Hayley Atwell), forever pushing him to “find his own voice,” and who keeps entering his essays into contests that he keeps winning, and because of all of this, maybe, he wins over Eliza, the cute, feisty classmate he’s long had a crush on. (Eliza, by the way, is played by Nell Williams, who played the young Cersei in a throwback episode of “Game of Thrones.” Which means, in another world, his girlfriend gave birth to his best friend. Awkward.) But what do we know about Eliza? Anything? She’s just a prize.

Is it odd that in the U.K. in the fall of 1987 Springsteen is considered your dad’s rock ‘n’ roll? A bit. He was still charting and putting out platinum records in the U.K. Is it odd that Javed somehow got through junior high and high school in the 1980s without even hearing of him? Yes. Then he runs into a Sikh dude, Roops (Aaron Phagura), who lays some tapes on him, “The River” and “Darkness,” and who tells him, “Bruce is a direct line to all that’s true in this shitty world.” Javed is doubtful. He knows us? But once he plays him, Bruce takes over his life. He talks about him, writes about him, dresses like him, posters his walls with his posters, sings his songs, quotes his songs. It’s a bit much, to be honest.

I like that the lyrics are put on screen—that the words matter. I didn’t like how it became a music video; I didn’t like that the enthusiasm for the songs outstripped the movie’s logic. In one scene, Javed and Roops break into the school’s DJ station and put on “Born to Run,” to the consternation of the Pet Shop Boys-loving kid who runs it, and it blasts throughout the school. But their enthusiasm takes them outside the school, where ... they’re still singing the song? Are there speakers outside, too? Is this a Bollywood movie? Same at Saturday market. Javed is listening to a song (“Thunder Road”?), then he sees Eliza and begins singing it to her; then he’s joined by Matt’s dad (Rob Brydon in wig), and soon the whole Saturday market is singing it.

What’s the appeal of Springsteen anyway? In a broad sense, I think it’s twofold:

1. The sense of being trapped
2. The need to get out

That’s why he appeals to high schoolers. Springsteen mythologized the dissolute nothingness of high school and its aftermaths, paling around with Spanish Johnny, Hazy Davy and Bad Scooter, and going after girls like Rosy, Wendy, and of course Mary. Bruce mythologized breaking free: “It’s town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win,” etc. He made this small life seem big and poetic. But getting out wasn’t an answer in itself, and eventually his working-class characters couldn’t even get the jobs they were running from. Springsteen’s songs began as poetry about youthful possibilities, and ended as prose about the dead ends of adulthood.

Above all there’s a yearning—generally for something that once existed or never will.

Indians in the summer
There’s some of this in the movie, but it’s a shame writer-director Gurinder Chadha (“Bend It Like Beckham”) didn’t underline how Bruce’s songs help push Javed toward Eliza (for the romance of it) and away from his father (because he’s the reason Javed feels trapped).

The father, Malik (Kulvinder Ghir), may be the movie’s biggest problem. He’s over-the-top in a way that’s uninteresting. He snatches Javed’s wages, forbids him going to parties, discourages his writing, doesn’t want him to go to a distinguished university since it’ll be away from the family. Then he wonders why he isn’t happy. The reconciliation, for both, is that Javed moves forward, and away, but doesn’t forget his family. As if that were ever a thing.

I didn’t even get to the elderly white neighbor who shows up periodically to give Javed a thumbs up.

“Blinded By the Light” is based on a true story but never feels true. It always feels like feel-good fantasy. It’s exactly what Springsteen’s music wasn’t.

WARNING: SPOILERS

“Monos” (“Monkeys”) is a beautifully shot movie about human ugliness. It’s about the thin veneer.

I like that there are no politics in it. You have the government fighting the Organization—the rebels living in the mountains and jungle. What does the government stand for? Who knows. How about the Organization? Got me. Both are just fighting. World without end.

Which is why, I suppose, our team of eight young rebels winds up betraying the Organization. Put your team in the jungle without an overarching ideology and their ideology becomes the law of the jungle. It becomes about survival—not against the government, who can’t reach them, but against you, who can.

Blind
The kids start out blind, playing a blindfolded game of futbol in the mountains, in order to, one assumes, attune their senses as well as their sense of teamwork. One assumes a lot in this, by the way, since writer-director Alejandro Landes doesn’t give us much or any exposition. We never find out anything about the eight kids, for example, beyond their code names and personalities. Where are they from? Why did they get involved? Were they kidnapped? Do they have family?

Or take Doctora (Julianne Nicholson). We first see her with the girls, Lady (Karen Quintero) and Swede (Laura Castrillon), by a mountain lake, with Swede insisting on braiding her hair. Doctora is older, and Anglo, and slightly off, and after a time we assume she’s a hostage, but it’s only by and by that we know this with any certainty.

Was she always there? Even during the blindfolded futbol game? It certainly adds to the world without end quality. There’s always a government, always being defied by rebels, who always have a hostage.

What we do see introduced to the group is a cow. Messenger (Wilson Salazar), an indigenous dwarf who shows up periodically as the Organization’s voice, presents it to the group with this caveat: It’s borrowed from a sympathetic farmer and must be returned to him after hostilities are over; if it isn’t, they will pay.

They pay. The morning after celebrating the wedding of the team’s tall, handsome leader, Wolf (Julian Giraldo), to Lady, the boys wake up late and shoot off their machine guns. A stray bullet from Perro (Paul Cubides), kills the cow. Distraught, Wolf kills himself, and Bigfoot (Moises Arias) takes defacto and then sanctioned control of the team, rallying it and protecting it with this lie: It was Wolf who killed the cow. Why not? Wolf is already dead, Perro gets off, the team continues. But the lie is the snake in the garden; if it was ever a garden.

We knew Bigfoot was trouble from the get-go. His eyes burned with anger, there was a slyness in his manner, a jealousy and need in his soul. Watching, I was thinking, “He looks like a scarier version of that American actor who was in ‘Kings of Summer’ and ‘Ender’s Game’ a few years ago.” Turns out it’s him. One wonders how his Colombian accent was. Or are they even in Colombia? Either way, he is by far the most veteran actor among the kids. For the rest, save Swede/Castrillon, this is their debut. 

Gummy bears
The movie never stops being tense in the way that “Lord of the Flies” never stops being tense. We wonder how low everyone will sink.

It’s a bit that but it’s more an internal collapse—the team eating itself. Suspicions and jealousies mount. The smallest, Smurf (Deiby Rueda), isn’t paying attention and lets Doctora escape. By this time they’re in the jungle and she has a tough time of it, and anyway since the camera follows her we assume she’ll be recaptured. She is. Messenger shows up again, and during a group confessional, a kind of struggle session, secrets spill out. Some are petty (“Lady only sleeps with powerful men”), but they keep getting worse until it’s revealed that Perro killed the cow and Bigfoot orchestrated the cover-up. Taken by boat back to Organization HQ, Bigfoot shoots Messenger in the back and returns for revenge against his betrayers. In the chaos, Doctora kills Swede and escapes, as does Rambo (Sofia Buenaventura), who looks a bit like a girl because he is. Was he supposed to be a girl? Or trans?

One of my favorite moments: Rambo holes up with a family living on the edge of the forest but with all the amenities—house, electricity, TV—and on television they’re watching a report/documentary about Beethoven. “Ah, civilization,” I thought. Then it quickly becomes about the mass production of gummy bears. “Right. Civilization,” I thought.

We get some gorgeous shots in “Monos,” but do we learn much about humanity that we don’t already know? The descent isn’t particularly interesting to me; it’s the natural way. The true interest, the true struggle, is in the ascent.

WARNING: SPOILERS

Marc Maron is the best part of Lynn Shelton’s “Sword of Trust.” Maybe because his exasperation with people and the times mirrors mine. He’s past the point of caring but not quite. “The fuck is this?” he says at one point, unable to believe idiots believe in the things they do. He spoke for me.

The idiot things people believe in 2019 gets us back to the Philip Roth dilemma: How do you make credible American culture when the culture always outdoes the best efforts of our imaginations? When the culture itself is a satire? Roth complained that no novelist, for example could’ve dreamed up Richard Nixon, and he complained about this ... in 1962. Imagine if he could’ve seen ahead a dozen years. Imagine if he could’ve seen ahead to Reagan and Rush and W. and Alex Jones. And of course President Donald.   

So how do you do it? How do you create an American reality that seems both absurd and credible?

Shelton and co-writer Michael Patrick O’Brien (SNL”) do it by saying there’s a fringe group that believes the South actually won the Civil War.

You think about that for a second and go, “Yeah, that feels about right.” It feels so right that when you get home you go online to check that it’s not actually a thing. 

The Wiz
The story is pretty simple. Maron plays Mel, who runs a two-bit pawnshop in a lazy stretch of Birmingham, Ala., with a conspiracy-minded assistant, Nathaniel (Jon Bass of unfortunately “Baywatch”), helping, or mostly not, by his side.

Meanwhile, Cynthia (Jillian Bell) has just lost her father and assumes she’ll get his house, but, oops, the bank is taking that. The only thing for her is an old Civil War sword, which she and her partner, Mary (Michaela Watkins), try to sell at Mel’s pawnshop.

This particular sword plays heavy in the conspiracy theory that the South actually won the Civil War. The sword was there at the surrender of the North, or something, in 1881, and so suddenly there’s a bunch of loons descending on Mel’s pawnshop.

Just writing that makes me think the movie should’ve been funnier. Maybe with a bigger budget? As is, the loonish descent is just two lousy stickup men, and the guy who played “The Wiz” on that episode of “Seinfeld” (Toby Huss). Here, he’s Hog Jaws, repping an interested buyer.

The movie goes wrong in a couple of ways:

• How much was improv? Parts felt that way, and those parts weren’t funny. Nathaniel’s whole “Flat Earth” society bit was just ... nothing
• I didn’t buy that anyone in it lived in Alabama. Not Maron from Jersey, Not Bass from Texas, not Watkins from NY or Bell from Vegas. It was filmed in Birmingham but I didn’t feel Alabama at all. (Caveat: I’ve never been to Alabama.)
• Hog Jaws says his buyer won’t visit their pawn shop; they have to get in the back of a van, like an unmarked police van, and meet him at his estate. And they go.

One, it’s a horrible negotiating move: You travel all that way, you kinda want to make the deal.  More important: He’s nuts. He believes the South won the Civil War. You could die. Who’s taking that risk? These people.

Toy Room
Anyway, it turns out that the buyer, Kingpin (Dan Bakkedahl of “VEEP”) doesn’t believe in alt South history anyway. Hog Jaws does, and when he overhears he pulls a gun on Kingpin. But others get the drop on him and he’s taken to the “Toy Room,” which is a supercreepy name straight out of “Pulp Fiction.” We never see it; thank god. Our heroes get out alive and with $40k.

There’s a subplot, too, about Mel being in love with an addict, played by Shelton. The movie ends on a grace note.

In the end, it feels too improv, too indie. But if you like Maron, go. He’s the show.

WARNING: SPOILERS 

I MEAN IT: SPOILERS

First the good news: Spider-Man, Black Panther, Dr. Strange, Scarlet Witch, Falcon, Nick Fury, and most of the Guardians of the Galaxy aren’t dead.

Now the bad: Both Iron Man and Black Widow are. Captain America is an old man, Hulk is diminished, and Thor is fat. Marvel giveth, Marvel taketh and Marvel girtheth. And they did it with a snap of their CGI fingers.

We all knew the others weren’t dead, of course. The question after “Infinity War” was never “Will they come back?” but “How will they come back?” How will Marvel do this without making it seem like a cheat? Like, you know, an entire season of “Dallas” being a dream?

Everyone had theories. From my review of “Infinity War”:

One solution is for one of our heroes to steal the glove with all the infinity stones, then reverse everything—either through time, or, you know, just willing it. Poof. Everyone’s back. 

And that's what they do. After Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) rescues a CGI-emaciated Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) from his powerless spaceship, and he berates Captain America (Chris Evans) for no good reason, the Avengers fly to Planet Thanos, find him scarred and limping, and cut off his gloved hand with the infinity stones in it. Ha! Except there are no infinity stones in it. He’s destroyed them. He brags about fate—that he is inevitable. Which is when Thor cuts off his head.

We’re about 20 minutes into the three-hour movie.

I like what the writers (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) and the directors (Anthony and Joe Russo), do next. We get a shot of New York City and the beginning of a title graphic: It says “FIVE” and it just hangs on the left side of the screen and we wonder; Days? Months? They let it linger for a beat or two, and we’re thinking, no, not that.

Yes, that.  

FIVE YEARS LATER

I was immediately intrigued. Wow, what now? How do they fix this? How do they bring everyone back from the dead without making it seem like a cheat? Like, you know, Superman turning back time to bring Lois back from the dead?

Um yeah. About that.

The dispirited ‘20s
So what happens if you lose half of all living things in the universe? I imagine there’d be some job openings. Also the stock market would drop and companies wouldn’t make their quarterly earnings reports. I doubt Thanos took any of this into consideration.

But would the world turn into a kind of dispirited, global ghost town as the movie suggests? We get a camera pan over CitiField; it’s crumbling from disuse. Because? Right now there are about 7.5 billion in the world and if you halved that it would be 3.75 billion, which would take us to 1972 population levels. Kids might not believe this, but we had Major League Baseball in 1972.

(Hey, not for nothing, but did Derek Jeter crumble into ash? Or Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell? What if the Avengers had worked with Thanos rather than against him? “The first thousand names on the list are deal breakers, Thanos; those dudes have to go.” “OK.”)

As for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in dispirited 2023?

• Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) has taken over Nick Fury’s role and has various supers reporting in from policing the world—in this case, Mexico’s drug cartels (everything old is new again).
• Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who lost his wife and three kids, poof, has become an assassin—killing bad guys for the revenge of it.
• Steve Rogers/Cap is the opposite—a gentle guidance counselor for the bereft, urging people to look forward, using his recovery from 70 years in ice as an example.
• Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) has figured out a way to become both himself and Hulk: He’s now giant, green and cerebral.
• Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is the opposite—he’s gotten stupid. He’s drowning his pain in booze in an Asgardian village in Norway and has totally gone to pot: big beard, big gut. At one point Tony calls him “Lebowski.” He’s comic relief.
• And Tony? He and Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) have a kid—a girl. His scenes with her are charming, and make me want Robert Downey Jr. to take on more serious roles. No offense, true believers.

Life might’ve continued like that, without any “Spider-Man: Far from Home” or “Black Panther 2,” if not for a rat.

One business that has done well in the post-Thanos era is the storage business. Apparently everyone’s hoping everyone will come back. In one such storage locker in San Francisco, a rat steps onto a panel of the machine Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyke (Evangeline Lilly) used to make Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) “go quantum,” or whatever the hell it was, in the final scenes of “Ant-Man & The Wasp”—before they, too, were Thanosed out of existence, leaving him stuck there. The rat inadvertently sets him free. He returns to a world in which he’s among the missing—assumed to be dead. He finds his daughter. She’s now like 17. He looks the same, which is so Paul Rudd.

Indeed, because he was in the quantum realm, those five years to him were like five hours. And he thinks that’s the key to trying to reverse all this: bending/going back in time via “Pym particles.” The writers have fun pulling out the “time machine” pop-cultural references—from “Star Trek” to “Back to the Future” to “Hot Tub Time Machine”—but no one mentions “Superman: The Movie,” which is a shame. That’s basically what they’re doing but on a bigger scale, and with this caveat: They want to bring all six infinity stones to their time, put them in a Tony Stark-created glove, bring everyone back to life with a snap of the fingers, and then return the stones to their original spot so time can continue unimpeded to the moment when they in fact do this. Otherwise they won’t do this because the continuum will be disrupted.

This basically allows our MCU heroes to revisit MCU movies:

• Cap, Iron Man and Hulk visit the end of “Marvel’s The Avengers,” where Cap battles Cap (shades of Captain Americas #153-156!) and Hulk battles The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) from “Doctor Strange”
• Thor and Rocket (voice: Bradley Cooper) return to “Thor: The Dark World”
• Black Widow and Hawkeye travel to the planet where you have to sacrifice something you love to get the stone. Like Thanos sacrificed Gamora in “Infinity War”; here, Black Widow sacrifices herself
• War Machine and Nebula (Don Cheadle and Karen Gillan) go to the beginning of “Guardians of the Galaxy” with Starlord dancing to Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love”

We get a smart reboot of the elevator scene from “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (one of my fave MCU movies), and some fun stuff with 2012 Hulk and the elevator, but Cap and Iron Man lose one the stones to Loki; so they use their remaining Pym particles to get back to a 1970 army base, which is secretly S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, where they hope to steal: 1) the infinity stone they know is there, and 2) more Pym particles with which to return to 2023.

There, Tony runs into his dad (a CGI-youthenized John Slattery), which continues the movie’s theme: lineage; parentage. That’s throughout the time travel. Thor has a heart-to-heart with his mom (Rene Russo) on the day she dies, as Tony does with his dad on the day Tony is born, as does, I suppose, Nebula, whose 2014 incarnation can access the memories of her 2023 self—meaning Thanos is able to see his dreams realized, and plots to stop them being undone. So instead of 2023 Nebula returning with War Machine, it’s the 2014 version, who is still loyal to her father. And after Hulk puts on the Stark-created infinity gauntlet and brings everyone back to life (the ones Thanos thanosed out of existence), 2014 Nebula uses the time portal to transport 2014 Thanos, and his ship, and his army of slithering minions, into the present to fight the remaining Avengers—initially, Thor, Cap and Iron Man—Hulk being incapacitated from using the infinity gauntlet.

Cap was always a favorite of mine from 1970s comic-collecting days, and he gets some great moments here. At one point, he wields both his shield and Mjolnir. (How? A nearby nerd told me after the movie it was implied he was worthy in “Ultron” when he budges it a bit.) He gives Thanos his best battle, nearly finishing him, but instead winds up busted, bruised, bloodied and carrying a shattered shield. Which leads to his greatest moment: rising slowly, ready to continue the hopeless fight—which becomes less hopeless when Doctor Strange teleports the rest of the Avengers—alive!—to their location. Let the battle royale begin!

Or to use the ’70s Marvel comic-cover locution: Let begin the battle royale!

Except the true battle is for the infinity gauntlet, which becomes like a hot potato or fumbled football—forever kicked forward and back. Bad Nebula has it, then Ant-Man, then ... I lost track. Nobody puts it on. Maybe they saw what it did to Hulk? Besides, it had served its purpose. What else could it do?

It could finally end the battle with Thanos by ending Thanos. And who better to end it than the guy who began it all for us back in 2008? Iron Man, the superhero whose true power is being quicker and wittier than everyone around him. Remember “Avengers”?

Loki: I have an army.
Tony: We have a Hulk.

We get similar wordplay here. Thanos puts the gauntlet on, declares “I am ... inevitable” and snaps his fingers triumphantly. Except nothing. Because Tony reveals he’s got the gems on his gauntlet; and he declares—in a callback to the famous last line of “Iron Man”—“I am ... Iron Man,” and snaps his fingers. And there goes Thanos’ army and his subordinates—into dust. The last to go is Thanos himself. Inevitably.

How Marvel Studios is like Tony Stark
Then it’s a taste of ashes for us, too: It was all too much, and Tony dies. Back in April 2008, the month “Iron Man” premiered, I did a piece for MSNBC called “Top 5: Superhero Casting” and went with Christopher Reeve, Toby Maguire, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Douglas Fairbanks. Not bad. But another era. It’s a much tougher list to make now but even with all the extra competition Downey Jr. might top it. No one is quicker verbally. It’s why Tony gets away with so much. By the time you unpack everything he’s said he’s somewhere else. 

There’s a need for the MCU to move on, so I guess this is the right call. But some part of me feels we didn’t get enough Iron Man vs. Captain America. It’s not just the clash of personalities; they represent the two halves of America: its ideal (democracy/Cap) and its messy reality (capitalism/Iron Man). It felt like more could be said with this dichotomy—things that might help explain us to us.

We also lose Cap. He returns the infinity stones to their previous locations (to not disrupt the timeline), then stays in the past to be with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). To disrupt the timeline? Seems like a weird call. So instead of Steve Rogers returning via the “time machine” he does it the old-fashioned way—as an old man sitting on a nearby bench. He’s got his shield with him and gives it to Sam/Falcon (Anthony Mackie), who will, one hopes, become the new Captain America in a new Captain America movie. Hopefully they have the balls to do it right. Don't ignore race and racism: reflect the outrage of a segment of the country that Captain America is now black. Should be easy. Just read all the alt-right vitriolic comments on the MCU’s various social media feeds. Turn those guys into the villains they are. 

More resolutions: Thor lets Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) become ruler of Asgard, Norway, then joins the Guardians of the Galaxy—or the Asgardians of the Galaxy, as he calls them. At Tony’s funeral, there’s a sweet scene with Tony's daughter, Morgan (Alexandra Rabe), and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau, director of “Iron Man”), talking cheeseburgers, another call-back to “Iron Man.” Man, they do this stuff so well.

But did they pull it off? Here’s the thing: If you’d told me beforehand the resolution, involving time travel and sci-fi bullshit, I would’ve been disappointed. But Marvel Studios is like Tony Stark: They get away with a lot because they’re quick-witted, charming, and ultimately heartwarming. By the time you unpack everything they’re doing (wait, shouldn’t Cap, Iron Man and Thor be able to take down an ungloved Thanos?), they’re doing something else.

I was occasionally bored. Dividing the Avengers into teams meant there were teams I was inevitably less interested in. Black Widow and Hawkeye? Plus why send them to that far-off planet that always reminds me of the Bridgekeeper scene from “Monty Python & the Holy Grail”? How did they get stuck with that one? Wouldn’t one super/one skilled be a better model? Instead, three supers get NYC 2012 and two skilleds are sent to a far-off planet. Not smart. 

Other questions remain. Like: What year is it? 2023? If so, why are all of Spidey’s high school friends the same age they were in 2018? Did they all wind up being thanosed? And why didn’t Captain Marvel just put on the infinity glove? Isn’t she part infinity stone herself? And, hey, did we ever get 2023 Nebula back?

Overall, though, for three hours I was entertained and even moved. Afterwards, for much of the day, I felt a little sad, like I’d lost something. I don’t know if this means Tony, Steve and Natasha, or if it means this part of the MCU, which is forever done. I don’t know where they go from here; I just hope the continuity continues.

WARNING: SPOILERS

A great idea doesn’t necessarily make a great movie. David S. Goyer realized that if someone with Superman’s powers suddenly showed up on earth, people would freak and governments and militaries would marshal their forces. Then Zack Snyder turned it into “Man of Steel,” and “Batman v. Superman.” Damn.

The great idea here is that when Billy Batson turns into Captain Marvel, he may change appearance, voice, powers, but he doesn’t change personality or knowledge; he stays who he is: a 14 year-old boy. So it’s like Superman + the Tom Hanks movie “Big.” I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how they pitched it. Best part? They didn’t blow it. They kept Zack Snyder away.

The “Big”/“Superman” thing was obvious from the first trailer, so I expected it, and expected to be entertained by it; and I was, mostly. It’s a little dumber than I thought, but it’s fun enough.

What I didn’t expect? The metaphor about the Democratic Party.

Worst job recruiter ever
Initially I was confused. We’re on a car ride to grandma’s house in 1974? With Lex Luthor’s dad (John Glover)? And the kid playing with a Magic 8 ball in the backseat being bullied by his father and older brother—is that supposed to be our Captain Marvel/Shazam? So is this thing set in ’74—around the same time as the Saturday morning live-action TV show—or is that our villain? Except with that timeline, Mark Strong would have to be my age—born in 1963—and ... oh, he is. Kudos, Mark. You look great for our age.

When the fortunes in the Magic 8 ball turn into squiggly symbols, the car crackles with energy, ice forms on the windows, and the kid, Thaddeus (Ethan Pugiotto), is transported alone to “the Rock of Eternity,” which is like an interdimensional cavern. There, an ancient wizard with a long white beard and staff (Djimon Hounsou) tells him he’s searching for a new superpowered champion to help the world. The champion must be “pure of heart.” A former champion, not pure of heart, went bad and released the seven deadly sins into the world. Oddly, those sins are still in the cavern, encased in whispering statues along the walls. So they’re both in the world and trapped in the Rock of Eternity? OK.  

Anyway, the kid fails the test (he reaches for an energy ball, which is a no-no or something), he’s transported back to Dad’s car, becomes histrionic and causes an accident which leaves asshole dad paralyzed for life. That’s our cold open. And we haven’t met our lead yet.

Billy Batson, a gosh-gee newsboy in the original comics, a twentysomething radio operator in the 1941 live-action serial, and a long-haired Tiger-Beat teen in the 1974 TV series, is, here, a young, pretty-eyed punk (Asher Angel of Disney channel’s “Andi Mack”). He suckers a pair of Philly cops so he can get into their patrol car and look up the address of the woman he thinks is his biological mom. He has a long list of possibilities in his notebook and she’s the only one not crossed out. Turns out she’s black. Then the cops arrive and bust his head open for suckering them. Kidding. It’s jokes and kid gloves. You know Philly cops. But he winds up in another foster home.

This one is about as nice as you can get—a big ramshackle house run by the Vazqueses: Victor (Cooper Andrews), portly, jovial, philosophical, and Rosa (Marta Milans), who looks like a harried Angelina Jolie. The kids include:

• Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer of “Me, Myself and I”), a white, supertalkative, superhero-obsessed teen with a crutch
• Faithe (Darla Dudley of “This Is Us”), a supertalkative and superneedy black girl who dispenses hugs like a priest dispenses wafers at the Eucharist
• Eugene (Ian Chen of “Fresh Off the Boat”), a Chinese-American gamer/hacker
• Pedro (Jovan Armand), portly and reticent
• Mary (Grace Fulton), the eldest, getting ready for college

If I’d been thinking, I would’ve realized where this was going—particularly with Freddy and Mary—but I’m kind of glad I wasn’t. Once it arrived, it was a joy.

This foster family is large, loud and big-hearted but Billy keeps his distance. He’s got a foot out the door already. At school, Fawcett Central High—for Fawcett Comics, the publisher of Shazam in the 1940s—there are bullies, of course, and they pick on Freddy, of course, and so Billy has to stand up for him since he can’t for himself. Then the bullies give chase. Billy escapes to a subway, flips them off from behind closed doors, settles in; then the subway speeds up, the other passengers disappear, and the stops take on those squiggly symbols we’d seen in the Magic 8 ball. When the doors open, Billy’s in the “Rock of Eternity.” Good bit? He glances back at the subway map to check the stop.

Before all this, by the way, young Thaddeus (now a glowering Mark Strong), had set up a research institute investigating incidents like his from ’74—the hieroglyphics, the transportation, the wizard, the offer of power, the test, the failure—which has happened to dozens of people around the world. When the symbols are finally captured on video, Thaddeus figures out the pattern: the seven symbols that need to be repeated seven times to open the gateway. That’s what he does. He returns, pushes the old wizard aside, absorbs the seven deadly sins, and accumulates vast power to wreak havoc on the world. To be sure, we mostly see him wreaking havoc on his father’s company. He tosses the older brother out the window, unleashes the seven deadly sins to kill board members in horrible ways, and saves Greed to tear his father apart limb from limb. Oddly, he doesn’t stay to watch it. You’d think after nearly a half-century of hatred and resentment, he might.

So with the seven deadly sins gone from the Rock of Eternity, is that why Billy passes the test? Because there is no test? So why was he chosen then? He’s not exactly pure of heart. Why isn’t Faithe chosen? Or Mary? Or Victor Vasquez for god’s sake? Maybe there was an answer and I missed it.

This is the part where I got whiffs of the Democratic party. Old man Shazam has spent at least 45 years searching for a replacement, a champion, to take over; and he’s interviewed dozens, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands, and none of them passed his purity test. Meanwhile, evil gathered.

But forget the metaphor. How much of a fuck-up is this Shazam? He keeps picking people who can’t pass the test, and probably fucks them over for life; and one of them becomes so incensed, and obsessed, he becomes a supervillain. And he seemed like a decent kid at the start! That’s some shitty program.

Anyway, I assume that’s why Billy Batson, who isn’t exactly pure of heart, gets the gig. At this point, they needed to pick somebody. And he says “Shazam!” and turns into what would be called Captain Marvel (Zachary Levi in a padded suit) but for copyright issues with Marvel Inc. That actually leads to a good bit, as he and Freddy, but mostly Freddy, try to come up with different names for him: Captain Thunder, Captain Sparklefingers, Thundercrack, Mr. Philadelphia, Zaptain America, Sir Zaps-a-Lot.

I anticipated this being my favorite part of the movie and it was. Among the antics he and Freddy get into:

• testing CM’s superpowers
• buying beer
• sipping beer and spitting it out
• buying tons of candy instead
• going to a “Gentleman’s Club”—CM at least

He stops crooks at a convenience store, then rescues an attractive woman from a purse-snatching. Except he pisses her off by calling her an “old lady” and she’s already maced the purse-snatcher. He wasn’t needed. Another good bit.

Along with “Big,” some of it reminded me of “Greatest American Hero,” the short-lived but often-funny superhero show of the early’80s, starring William Katt as a schoolteacher who is given a superhero suit but loses the instruction book: He’s forever flying into walls and things. He’s the George of the Jungle of the city. Similarly, Shazam doesn’t really know what he can do or how to do it. Takes him forever to figure out flying. But as they’re testing all he can (and can’t) do, Freddy video-records it and uploads onto YouTube, where it gets tons of hits. The true source of 21st-century power. Question, though: Couldn’t anyone with skillz trace the videos back to Freddy? And thus his family? Not exactly smart. 

Foster Family: the new FF
Eventually the fun ends when Thaddeus, now Dr. Sivana, the longtime Captain Marvel villain, shows up, envious that another champion was chosen. I’m curious what he’d been doing after the boardroom. Does he have a plan? World domination or anything? Does he and the 7 Deadlies just want to wreak havoc? It’s electing Trump, isn’t it? I bet it’s electing Trump.

Sivana makes quick work of Shazam, who is new to his powers, and just a kid, after all. I like this part. Superpowers don’t a superhero make. Just because you’re super doesn’t mean you’re brave. Billy/Shazam flees, and it takes his foster family being threatened before he begins to fight back against someone whose powers seem greater than this. Oh, and in the process, he finds his real biological mom, who’s an awful person. His real family is the foster family, and they turn into—of course—the Marvel family: Freddie becomes Captain Marvel Jr. (if he could be so named), Mary is Mary Marvel. Etc. Each has one of Shazam’s powers.

I liked that. I like the “family you create” motif, which is very Hollywood. Even so, that, along with the mid-credits sequence introducing Mister Mind, who is, after all, a fucking caterpillar, reminded me that C.C. Beck’s world was always kind of stupid. (Mouse over the poster for an example.) Tawny Tiger? Captain Marvel’s shortie cape and his Brezhnev eyebrows? Holy Moley? Superman gets “Man of Steel” and “Man of Tomorrow,” Batman gets “Caped Crusader,” and the best nickname Beck can come up with is “The Big Red Cheese”? Even as a kid I thought Shazam comics were dumb. They were dumb by the standards of Golden Age comics, let alone the Mighty Marvel Age I was living in.

So congratulations to screenwriter Henry Gayden (“Earth to Echo”), director David F. Sandberg (“Lights Out”), and the cast and the casting director. DC is finally turning it around. Before, they had great source material and turned it into crap; now, they have crap source material (Wonder Woman, Shazam!), and are turning it into something, if not great, at least fun and palatable.

Don’t envy them Mister Mind, though. 

WARNING: SPOILERS

The most searing part of the movie for me was the beginning, when wild mustangs in the western U.S., living their life, are rounded up by the feds as part of population control. Helicopters and jeeps drive them toward fences that funnel them into pens and eventually horse trailers. They buck, rear, cry out. At prisons, they’ll be broken and sold at auction—usually to the police. If they can’t be broken, or if no one buys them, they’ll be put to death.

First-time director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre gives us the mustangs’ perspective throughout: from freedom to inexplicably not; from a natural life to a process that’s mechanized. There’s an inexpressible horror to it. The proper reaction to it is the cries of animals.

Then it just becomes about us again.

Second second chance
Going in, I assumed “The Mustang” took place in the Himalayan steppes. The poster screwed me up. That orange jumpsuit looked like red Tibetan robes to me, while Matthias Schoenaerts’ shaved head made him look monk-like. Plus I missed the blurred fence in front. Plus I’m too stupid to know mustangs are endemic to North America.

Schoenaerts’ character, Roman Coleman, is as solitary as a monk, he just exudes no sense of peace. The opposite. He moves through prison like he hasn’t taken a breath in 12 years. He’s the bomb waiting to go off. So not exactly what you’d expect from a horse trainer.

I also assumed he would find himself, and a gentler, more patient nature, with the horses. There’s some of that, but the movie’s conceit mostly goes another way. It’s in the tagline: “Untamed Souls. Kindred Spirits.” Both Roman and his horse, Marquis (mispronounced “Marcus”), are untamable, and I guess the horse recognizes a kindred spirit; so even after Roman, frustrated by other matters, punches the horse in the chest, the horse forgives him. Days later, he nuzzles him. I didn’t buy it.

There are three main settings/storylines:

• Outside with the horse program, run by Myles (Bruce Dern)
• Visits with Roman’s daughter, Martha (Gideon Adlon)
• Encounters with his cellmate, Dan (Josh Stewart)

The horse program is rehabilitation and purpose. The visits with the daughter, in conjunction with group therapy (led by Connie Britton), are about coming to terms with past crimes. They’re confession and the possibility of redemption. In the cramped cell with Dan lies the potential for future crimes.

Since Roman works outside with the horses, he has access to ketamine, an anesthetic which can be used to get high; and Dan blackmails Roman to get it by threatening Martha. He says he knows where she lives, he has people on the outside, etc. He must be connected since Roman goes along with it even though it looks like he could take Dan out with one punch. Roman has already spied his happy-go-lucky horse mentor, Henry (Jason Mitchell of “Mudbound”), coating extra T-shirts with ketamine and wearing them inside, and Roman does the same.

The problem with the movie is the disconnect between these storylines. After the blackmail threat, for example, Martha arrives for a visit. One assumes Roman’s going to warn her about Dan. No. He wants to finally open up about his crime—turning Martha’s mother into a vegetable. The confession is painful for him (he looks wrecked afterward) but there’s no redemption (Martha doesn’t forgive him), and, worse, the threat from Dan goes unmentioned. Shouldn’t that be his main concern? His daughter's safety? Rather than his own redemption?

Then Dan kills Henry—slitting his throat in the yard. Was Henry smuggling for a rival? Was it simple racism? We never find out. But in retaliation, in their cell, Roman chokes Dan. To death? Who knows? And if Dan is connected, are there repercussions from a gang? Got me. At the least, we assume there will be repercussions with the horse program. That privilege will be taken away from Roman, and he won’t be able to show Marquis at auction, and maybe Marquis will be put to death. That’s the trade-off.

But there’s no trade-off because there are no repercussions. Roman participates in the auction as planned. It’s the second second-chance he’s been given—the first was after he punched Marquis—and he still blows it. He keeps scanning the crowd to see if Martha shows up. He’s not focusing on the task, which is Marquis; he’s seeking redemption rather than responsibility. For a time, though, he gets away with it. The horse is spirited but falls into line; then a helicopter spooks Marquis, and Roman is thrown and dragged and winds up with a concussion. Because of that, the horse program is shut down and Marquis will be put down. So Roman sets Marquis free. He sends him back into the wild west. 

In the end, looking out through the small slot of his solitary window, Roman sees the horse on the other side of the barb wire fence. I assume this visitation is in his mind’s eye. Otherwise, it’s dumb. 

Oh, right. He also gets some forgiveness in a letter from Martha. Like we give a shit.

Best supporting actor
It’s a shame. There are good moments. I liked the group-therapy scene when the men talk about how much time lapsed between the thought and the crime. (For most, it’s barely a second.) I liked the horse-training team riding across the plains in their DOC jumpsuits. (It suggests a great western/prison break flick that might be made.) I liked the scene where Marquis keeps turning his backside to Roman—shunning him. (That horse is a helluva actor.)

But the movie, which was developed through Robert Redford’s Sundance labs, combines the gritty with the unrealistic—all the stuff above that I don’t buy—and it’s a bad mix. 

Worse, the longer the movie progressed, the less I liked our lead. Roman is on a path to redemption, which can be long and tortured, but he keeps lunging after forgiveness rather than owning up to responsibility. He becomes less of a man. That’s not any path to redemption I'd like to take.