Tag Archives: action

Fast & Furious 9

Genre: Action

Director: Justin Lin

Screenplay: Daniel Casey & Justin Lin

Cast: Vin Diesel, Sung Kang, John Cena, Charlize Theron, Nathalie Emmanuel, Chris “Ludcaris” Bridges, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Thue Ersted Rasmussen

Running Length: 144 minutes

Synopsis: Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto is leading a quiet life off the grid with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and his son, little Brian, but they know that danger always lurks just over their peaceful horizon. This time, that threat will force Dom to confront the sins of his past if he’s going to save those he loves most. His crew joins together to stop a world-shattering plot led by the most skilled assassin and high-performance driver they’ve ever encountered: a man who also happens to be Dom’s forsaken brother, Jakob (John Cena).

Review: Given that there are 10 movies already in the Fast & Furious universe, it’s not rocket science (we’ll be getting back to this topic in a bit…) to figure out what you’re getting yourself into when you choose to watch something with Fast & Furious in its title. While Fast & Furious started as an undercover cop movie, it has long since departed its roots in reality, and has become what essentially is a superhero franchise. It’s now par for the course for the Fast films to feature extremely over-the-top action sequences, lead characters that can shrug off almost any fall from any distance, and for all laws of physics to be defied. It’s pure escapist, absurdist fun, but with F9 it seems like the franchise has finally outstayed its welcome.

Some of the biggest issues with F9 has to do with its length and pacing. It’s a bloated mess of a film, and for something that’s clearly popcorn entertainment, takes forever to get started, mired in unnecessary flashback after unnecessary flashback. While the films have always harped on the concept of family, in F9 the numerous throwaway, meaningless mentions of “family” almost turn the film into a parody, especially when logical fallacies abound – would someone who truly cares about family deign to leave their child alone, while both parents dive into danger with reckless abandon? If you suspect that your sibling had something to do with a loved one’s death, would it not make more sense to hash it out by talking about it, instead of assuming the worst of your sibling from the get-go?

One could argue that there’s just too much soap in this opera, and the seeming desire to make the film More Meaningful actually detracts from the viewing experience. It really doesn’t help that much of the cast aren’t here to display their acting chops (and rightly so), yet are forced into awkward scenes which would have been better left to actors with more thespian talent. And don’t even get me started on a scene where a key character is thrust into a life-or-death situation, and actually experiences a vision that somehow proffers up an alternative point of view of an event long past which is then accepted as truth. It’s almost as though we should expect F10 to feature some sort of Biblical-level revelation a la a burning bush or similar.

The action sequences have always been part of the draw of the Fast franchise, and while “peak Fast” was probably around Paul Walker’s last film (Fast & Furious 7 in 2015), there was generally enough action in every movie to satisfy fans of the genre. While being true-to-life has never been something that these scenes needed to adhere to, it feels like F9 has finally jumped the shark for the franchise, with some truly bizarre action setpieces that not only bends reality but breaks it entirely.

I’ve always subscribed to the notion that all a movie needs to do is to maintain an internal logic that works within the confines of the film’s universe, but unless Fast & Furious is now set in an alternate universe, it should at least try to respect the basic laws of physics – or acknowledge that they exist. The way the electromagnets work in the car chases are just so farfetched that it just feels stupid – it is almost like the producers decided that the audience is not going to care about logic at all as long as the action delivers the goods, but that is an excessively dim view of your target audience which I hope isn’t close to the truth. While Justin Lin is a veteran director of the franchise, here he does seem to succumb to the rapid-fire edits that are so prevalent these days, making some of the sequences rather confusing to follow.

And then there’s the space sequence – not really a spoiler if you’ve seen the trailer, but yes, the meme about Fast and Furious going to space actually happens in this movie. It’s so ridiculous and so far outside the bounds of reality that it once again feels like self-parody, and again begs the question of what ridiculous things they would need to do in the next installment to up the ante. If this is the trajectory that the films are taking, however, then I don’t feel like I really want or need to find out the answer.

Rating: * ½ (out of four stars)

Standard

Wonder Woman 1984

Genre: Sci-Fi, Action

Director: Patty Jenkins

Screenplay: Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns, Dave Callaham

Cast: Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen

Running Length:  151 minutes

Synopsis: Fast forward to the 1980s as Wonder Woman’s next big screen adventure finds her facing two all-new foes: Max Lord and The Cheetah.

Review: The year that Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) was initially slated to be released in would have made it a solid performer at the box office, but perhaps not quite reaching the heights of other superhero films that would have populated the release slate in the same year, like every year. Then COVID-19 happened, and essentially everything was thrown out the window (including theatrical release windows). Surprising as it may seem, WW84 is now poised to be the top dog of 2020 at the box office, and while the film’s release strategy is somewhat controversial, it’s undeniable that cinema audiences have been clamoring for a “real” blockbuster for what seems like forever, and WW84 scratches that itch. Sure, it’s a flawed movie that doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor, but in a year where the only other competing “superhero” is Harley Quinn, cinema audiences don’t exactly have the luxury of choice.

WW84 begins promisingly enough, with a beautifully choreographed and shot “Amazon Olympics” on Themyscira (reminiscent somewhat of the Quidditch matches in the Harry Potter films) where we observe the adolescent Diana Prince participate in. This sequence is magnificent on the big screen, and truly makes the case for why the cinematic experience should coexist with, and not be replaced by, streaming on smaller screens. The film then segues into the 80s, which starts off with a rather cute homage to the decade, cramming virtually every imaginable sight gag into ten minutes, then the film seems to move on, virtually never making any reference to the era thereafter. This plot whiplash occurs on several occasions throughout this rather (needlessly) long film, and if one wants to be critical, WW84 would really have done better with more judicious edits along the way.

It doesn’t help that for a film that no longer needs to spend too much time on the titular character’s backstory (amply covered in the preceding 2017 film, after all), WW84 seems to want to give even more weight to the Woman part of the equation, rather than the Wonder part. After a brief appearance at the start, Wonder Woman disappears into the fold for almost an hour while Diana Prince takes over. It’s not that the proceedings aren’t interesting – in fact, Gal Gadot probably does a better job in scenes where she’s not in her Wonder Woman getup – but this is a superhero action movie after all and audiences have somewhat different expectations. Perhaps it’s unavoidable, given that this is a female director handling one of the few notable female superheroes in both the DC and Marvel cinematic universes, but the weight of all this representation makes the film feel far heavier than it should, since the first Wonder Woman film stood out in the DCEU particularly because of the stark tonal contrast from the rest of the cinematic universe at the time.

It also doesn’t help that when there is already a perfectly adequate villain in the form of Kristen Wiig’s excellent turn as Barbara Minerva/Cheetah, that the decision was made to also have a second villain in the overly on-the-nose Donald Trump caricature of Max Lord (Pedro Pascal in a thankless role). This turns out to be the most problematic aspect of WW84, since the film has to contort itself into a logic-defying knot trying to escape the corner Max Lord’s machinations paints the plot into. It’s virtually impossible to discuss this further without going into spoiler territory, but suffice to say the entire last reel of WW84 just did not work for me, even more so than the denouement of the first film. It’s truly puzzling that a film so focused on empowering women seems fearful of empowering one of the women as the main villain, rather than a lame-duck oil tycoon with megalomaniacal inclinations.

Despite the lack of competition, WW84 occupies the unenviable position of being neither a great nor terrible movie. It still largely checks off the boxes that a superhero movie is expected to accomplish, but it’s simply not as assured as it should be. A thousand little niggles (and a few big ones) – occasionally dodgy CGI, poorly developed characters, a too readily bombastic score, and more – tarnishes the sheen of this Amazonian demi-goddess’s armor, and while WW84 could probably be the most critic-proof movie of the year, it will not stand the test of time and repeat viewings.

Rating: * * ½ (out of four stars)

P.S. Stay for the mid-credits sequence for a cheesy but fun cameo appearance.

Standard

Tenet

Genre: Action, Sci-Fi

Director: Christopher Nolan

Screenplay: Christopher Nolan

Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Himesh Patel, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, Martin Donovan

Running Length:  150 minutes

Synopsis: A secret agent embarks on a dangerous, time-bending mission to prevent the start of World War III.

Review: Tenet’s release into the time of the coronavirus makes it near impossible to judge the film purely on its own merits. After all, Christopher Nolan had lobbied hard for the film to be released in the hopes of bringing audiences back to brick and mortar cinemas, offering the first salvo in what is hopefully many more pieces of blockbuster content that they need. It’s a risky strategy, especially if Tenet turns out to not be the movie equivalent of an “unputdownable” book, where the cinematic experience is so transcendent that it simply needs to be seen (repeatedly) to be believed, and thus fulfilling the noble goal of offering a much-needed lifeline to the cinemas.

Fans of Nolan’s body of work will undoubtedly be familiar with this feeling, simply because he has managed to make the magic happen many times before, from Memento to Inception to Interstellar and the Dark Knight trilogy. Yet, as a fan myself, I will have to reluctantly say that Tenet just does not do the same for me and is unlikely to incite much desire for repeated viewings in the near future.

While the film is, as all Nolan films are wont to be, astounding in almost all technical aspects, it fails on one of the most important tenets (ahem) of cinema – to tell a story that audiences would actually understand and thus care about (at least, without requiring a Masters in Physics). His films are generally narratively dense and requires a significant amount of unpacking post-viewing, like Ariadne (the one in Greek mythology, not the one in Inception) they usually also offer a unifying thread that audiences can pick up on and follow out of the labyrinthine plot.

Tenet, however, is just a morass of confusing plot threads that are unsatisfactorily resolved (if at all), and a central conceit that is too difficult to visualize despite multiple characters engaging in lengthy exposition throughout the film’s 150-minute running time. There is no illuminating thread to find and grasp onto, even for those well-schooled in the Nolan-verse. It also doesn’t help that, inexplicably, the sound mixing in Tenet frequently drowns out character conversations with ambient sound effects and the booming soundtrack, which makes the dialogue extremely difficult to make out in multiple scenes without the help of subtitles.

While the film has the beats of a traditional espionage thriller or Bond film, essentially chasing a villain/MacGuffin all over the globe, Tenet also occupies a far more rarefied, cerebral space that really does it more harm than good. Because the concept of inversion is so difficult to grasp, all the visual (and true to Nolan’s modus operandi, more in-camera than post-produced) flourishes become difficult to parse and figure out, jarring audiences out of the moment just to attempt to make head or tail of what is transpiring. And yet I can assuredly say not many people would be fully cognizant of what is going on at any time, given how obtusely the entire film plays out.

Perhaps we should all heed an early piece of advice in the film, where the scientist played by Clémence Poésy tells John David Washington’s The Protagonist “don’t try to understand it, just feel it”. There are indeed several sequences which are thrilling to watch unfold, especially the action set-pieces – in particular an extended close-quarters combat scene which brings to mind the incredible corridor fight with Joseph Gordon Levitt in Inception – and there are moments where finally the charisma and thespian talents of Washington, Pattinson and Debicki take centrestage (together with their impeccable suits and outfits). It is also a beautifully shot film from start to end, lensed flawlessly by Hoyte van Hoytema and best experienced on the largest screens possible.  

It’s when one stops trying to make sense of the plot and simply view Tenet on a visceral level does it manage to entertain. Given the baggage of Nolan’s body of work and the serious tone adopted by the film (and its marketing), it almost seems like blasphemy to suggest such a superficial reading, but at least it delivers a true cinematic experience that would be hard to replicate anywhere else. And that is something that is sorely needed at this point, if only to remind audiences of the greatness of the medium, of what they could feel, of the sense of wonder, discovery and adventure while sitting in the darkness for a couple of hours.

Rating: * * * (out of four stars)

Standard

Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula

Genre: Horror, Action

Director: Yeon Sang-Ho

Screenplay: Yeon Sang-Ho, Joo-Suk Park, Yong-Jae Ryu

Cast: Gang Dong-Won, Lee Jung-Hyun, Kim Min-Jae, Koo Gyo-Hwan

Running Length:  115 minutes

Synopsis: Four years after South Korea’s total decimation in Train to Busan, the zombie thriller that captivated audiences worldwide, acclaimed director Yeon Sang-ho brings us Peninsula, the next nail-biting chapter in his post-apocalyptic world. Jung-seok (Gang Dong-Won), a soldier who previously escaped the diseased wasteland, relives the horror when assigned to a covert operation with two simple objectives: retrieve and survive. When his team unexpectedly stumbles upon survivors, their lives will depend on whether the best-or worst-of human nature prevails in the direst of circumstances.

Review: Well, 2020 has just been a pretty cancelled year so far, hasn’t it? Who would have known that cinemas in Singapore would be shut down for more than 3 months, and that the entire release slate of 2020 will be in shambles since. But!!! We are back (for now)!!! And aptly, the very first blockbuster to be released into the wild in Singapore is from the Train to Busan universe, about a killer zombie virus that has decimated South Korea. Talk about art imitating life. With the release schedule in the coming months looking increasingly desolate, it’s no surprise that cinema operators are all looking to Peninsula as a lifeline, and fortunately, I believe the movie will generate sufficient positive word of mouth to make it a good first salvo to bring audiences back to the cinemas. That is, if you’re willing to overlook the dismal final 20 minutes of the movie.

Eschewing the confined space of a train that made the first movie such a special, visceral thrill to watch, Peninsula instead is a much more standard offering in the zombie genre of films, situated in a post-apocalyptic landscape that is immediately familiar to anyone who has dipped their toes into the pool before. The film does offer up a number of excellent action set-pieces, and at its best is reminiscent of Mad Max: Fury Road, though with much of the action set at night instead of in the day. The CGI is a little spotty at times, and is particularly apparent in some big zombie scenes, where the zombies don’t actually have enough “heft”, and the physics of interaction with other real-world constructs (like cars and trucks) thus does not manage to convince. Peninsula ends up looking more like a video game at times because of this, which does pull one out of the thick of action.

While the subject matter of Peninsula may not be as escapist as usual (boo), these action sequences are a very good diversion and are suitably entertaining (more so for audiences that have been starved of big-screen content for months). Production design is also top notch, particularly an extended sequence set in a remodelled shopping mall, which contains a wealth of small details that shows off the amount of thought put into its look and design.

Where Peninsula really disappoints, however, is in its plotting. While no one is expecting a deep, labyrinthine plot for a survival horror film, Yeon Sang-Ho and his fellow screenwriters opt for the path of melodrama, shoehorning in character interactions and plot “twists” that mostly ring false, due to the excessive amount of emotional shorthand employed, particularly with a score that is a little too on-the-nose for its own good. While this is merely a mild annoyance for most of the film, Peninsula nearly becomes undone by its final reel in which believability is stretched past breaking point, just to accommodate a pretty ridiculous emotional beat that left me rolling my eyes in disdain. Not that this is new – the first Train to Busan movie suffered similarly near the end, but even then the film managed to hold up pretty well. Peninsula doesn’t fare as well, but the absence of any other major blockbusters on the horizon means it should enjoy a good long run at the cinema, warts and all.

Rating: * * * (out of four stars)

Standard

Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Genre: Action, Comedy

Director: Cathy Yan

Screenplay: Christina Hodson

Cast: Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ella Jay Basco, Ali Wong, Ewan McGregor

Running Length:  109 minutes

Synopsis: After splitting up with The Joker, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and three other female superheroes – Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez)- come together to save the life of a little girl, Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Bosco) from an evil crime lord.

Review: It was not difficult to tell that Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was the lone bright spot in the frankly rather disastrous Suicide Squad in 2016, and it was only natural for her to get a movie of her own, especially after the success that Warner Bros and DC saw with Wonder Woman. Best described as something along the lines of Deadpool meets John Wick meets Kill Bill, at its best Birds of Prey is a kinetic action film with great action choreography, topped by the excellent, mesmerizing performance of Margot Robbie (and to a lesser extent, Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s Black Canary). At its worst, the movie is a glorified mess, with a narrative structure that tries to be a little too smart for its own good; visuals, sound and music cranked all the way up to a migraine-inducing 11, and having a bunch of characters be nothing more than glorified plot devices while being onscreen.

Credit has to be given where it’s due, and Harley Quinn in her second outing has managed to cement her position as one of the most interesting characters in the (admittedly smallish) cast of characters thus far in the DCEU. Margot Robbie puts 110% into the role and absolutely nails all facets of Harley Quinn’s character, from the sadistic, psychotic, ass-kicking killer babe to the “girl next door” who’s looking for some kinship and bonding amongst birds of a similar feather. It’s a great, memorable character, and the expanded screen time that Robbie has been given for headlining this film pays off in spades.

Unfortunately, none of the other female characters manage to fare as well, and while the film is named Birds of Prey, nothing here suggests that the actual members of the Birds of Prey would be interesting enough to hold their own in a movie. It’s also rather disappointing that after the extended amount of time that was devoted in the film to putting the five female characters together in one room, the resultant denouement is such an underwhelming one, ending the film with an action sequence that is easily the least impressive of all the action scenes that preceded it. Also, the less that is said of the men in this film the better – Ewan McGregor and Chris Messina stick out like sore thumbs with their scenery chewing, and the whole campy angry white male shtick they adopt simply fails to take off entirely.

Christina Hodson makes some strange decisions with the screenplay, regularly breaking up the narrative timeline for no reason whatsoever, and while it sometimes works (Harley Quinn is mentally disturbed after all), there are other times where the movie feels very choppy and unfocused. There are some great scenes – Harley’s ode to the perfect egg sandwich almost rivals the iconic grilled cheese sandwich sequence in Chef, and an early fight scene where Harley beats out a bunch of mercenaries to rescue Cassandra Cain is hard-hitting in the best way possible. Yet, these are few and far between, and while there is enough to keep most audiences entertained, Birds of Prey feels too much like a chore to sit through for a good chunk of its runtime that it can’t earn an unequivocal recommendation.

Rating: * * (out of four stars)

Standard

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Genre: Action

Director: Jon Watts

Screenplay: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers

Cast: Tom Holland, Angourie Rice, Jacob Batalon, Cobie Smulders, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Samuel L. Jackson, Zendaya, Jake Gyllenhaal, Martin Starr                   

Running Length: 130 minutes

Synopsis: After the events of Avengers: Endgame, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and his friends go on summer vacation to Europe.

Review: Really, the only thing working against Spider-Man: Far From Home is the immediate preceding Spider-Man movie. No, not Homecoming, but Into the Spider-verse, which by every measure still ranks as the best Spider-Man movie made. Far From Home has also been positioned as the true concluding film of the MCU’s Phase 3, and after the very heavy-going Endgame, it feels like a (very welcome) palate cleanser, a light and breezy film that more accurately mirrors the comic universe which first birthed these movies.

It’s undeniable that in general, the stars of the MCU are not spring chickens anymore, and so from a financial standpoint, it makes perfect sense to start pivoting the heavy lifting to younger actors waiting in the wings. Far From Home is the first movie to officially do so, and Tom Holland (who’s actually already been in four MCU movies before this, despite being just 23 years old) proves once again that he’s the best actor to have physically donned Spidey’s suit. Unafraid to present himself as an awkward goofball onscreen, Holland has great comic timing and a genuine chemistry with Zendaya, and yet has enough thespian talent in him to carry the emotionally heavier scenes with great aplomb.

The key difference between the typical MCU movies and Far From Home is that, unlike most of the recent titles, Far From Home isn’t building towards a greater overarching narrative, but instead just focused on world-building in the Spider-Man universe. This frees the film from the “shackles” of being a cog in the wheel, while fleshing out the franchise’s key characters in a meaningful manner. That the screen time of Far From Home is almost even split down the middle between battling world-threatening villainy and a coming-of-age rom com is exactly why it works so well – it never loses sight of the “smaller” aspects of the Peter Parker/Spider-Man universe, which makes it much easier for audiences to identify with the central character and his friends.

Visual excellence is par for the course these days for superhero movies, but apart from the usual top-notch CG imagery, there are some very creative sequences in Far From Home that are worthy of special mention, in particular an extended scene where Spider-Man needs to battle his foe in the midst of some really mind-bending image trickery. Rarely would I recommend viewing a title in IMAX 3D, but this is certainly a film that makes a more compelling case to do so.

Also, the mid and end-credits codas (yes there are two this time, making up perhaps for the lack of one in Endgame) are actually important game-changing scenes that will likely see far-reaching impact in the Spider-Man films moving forward (and very possibly the Phase 4 movies in the MCU), and well worth sitting through the rather lengthy end credits crawl.

Rating: * * * (out of four stars)

 

 

Standard

Avengers: Endgame

Genre: Action

Director: Anthony and Joe Russo

Screenplay: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Brolin, Don Cheadle, Karen Gillan, Scarlett Johansson, Brie Larson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd (and many more)

Running Length: 181 minutes

Synopsis: Adrift in space with no food or water, Tony Stark sends a message to Pepper Potts as his oxygen supply starts to dwindle. Meanwhile, the remaining Avengers – Thor, Black Widow, Captain America and Bruce Banner – must figure out a way to bring back their vanquished allies for an epic showdown with Thanos – the evil demigod who decimated the planet and the universe.

While efforts have been made to keep the review as spoiler-free as possible, it’s impossible to calibrate what constitutes a spoiler to everyone. If you’re truly sensitive to any spoilers please do not proceed till you have watched the movie.

Review: And so it ends – an epic journey across 22 films, 11 years and a truly labyrinthine mass of superheroes, characters and plots culminates in what is undoubtedly THE event movie of the year (sorry, Star Wars). Of course this won’t be the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or possibly even The Avengers), but the Russo Brothers have crafted a film that truly feels like an end of an era, and what a sendoff it is.

While last year’s Infinity War felt incomplete, halting at a pivotal point where half the living things in universe turns to dust after Thanos uses the six Infinity Gems, Endgame does not have the same issue. And now, when the two films are viewed together, they finally give a complete picture of the showdown with Thanos, one that bears very real costs to the ones left fighting the good fight. As an added bonus, the fact that Thanos’ Decimation (aka the finger snap) had removed half the superhero roster is actually a good thing, simply because there are less characters to split the narrative over, which was one of the issues that plagued Infinity War.

One would also have expected that there would be even more action set pieces in Endgame, but the Russo Brothers actually buck that expectation, slowing things down and really taking time with the narrative to tie up some of the loose plot threads that have developed over the span of Marvel films. It’s a Herculean effort, but scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are largely successful. Did the show really need to run over three hours long? I would hazard to say not really, but given the nature of the film, every single character’s resolution needed to be included, with generous amounts of fan service thrown in, which in turn necessitates the extended running time. Fortunately, there are some very major plot developments that take place, especially in the final hour, that help to make the film feel shorter than it is.

While this is not the first franchise that set out to create a universe of its own, it can now be definitively said that there’s been no world-building that has come close to what Marvel has achieved in this franchise. The truly impressive thing about Endgame is how it manages to thread everything together, particularly in referencing events that takes place outside of the four “official” Avengers movies. Literally the entire MCU shows up in one form or another in Endgame, and even a casual viewer of the Marvel canon would likely find themselves feeling nostalgia over some characters or scenes referenced in the film. For dedicated fans of the Marvel universe, Endgame would probably trigger a desire to rewatch many of the films that came before it.

What truly makes Endgame stand out amongst the Marvel films is that it has a much stronger emotional core and heart than a typical superhero movie, and while there are some potentially tear-jerking moments, it’s also filled with levity and humor, something that’s necessary for a three-hour movie to not buckle under its own narrative weight. Surprisingly, Endgame is one of the funniest Marvel films to have been released in the past few years, and some scenes had me actually laughing out loud, no mean feat given the grave nature of much of the proceedings.

It’s no secret that the OG Marvel crew cannot feasibly carry the franchise to an indefinite end, given the nature of Hollywood contracts and options (and age), and Endgame likely spells the sidelining or end of the road for many of these characters moving forward. It has been clear for years that the mantle is being passed on to newer (and younger) players in the franchise, but it remains to be seen whether they would be able to keep the light of the MCU shining as brightly as before. And while I will not be revealing the fates of any of the superheroes in this review, suffice to say that there is a genuine sense of loss in bidding a proper farewell to these characters we have spent a decade with, something that I had not anticipated going into the movie, and well worth the price of entry on its own.

Rating: * * * ½ (out of four stars)

Standard

Shazam!

Genre: Action, Comedy

Director: David F. Sandberg

Screenplay: Henry Gayden

Cast: Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou, Grace Fulton, Ian Chen, Jovan Armand, Faithe Herman, Cooper Andrews, Marta Milans

Running Length: 132 minutes

Synopsis: We all have a superhero inside us, it just takes a bit of magic to bring it out. In Billy Batson’s (Asher Angel) case, by shouting out one word – SHAZAM! – this streetwise 14-year-old foster kid can turn into the adult Super Hero Shazam (Zachary Levi), courtesy of an ancient wizard. Still a kid at heart – inside a ripped, godlike body – Shazam revels in this adult version of himself by doing what any teen would do with superpowers: have fun with them! Can he fly? Does he have X-ray vision? Can he shoot lightning out of his hands? Can he skip his social studies test? Shazam sets out to test the limits of his abilities with the joyful recklessness of a child. But he’ll need to master these powers quickly in order to fight the deadly forces of evil controlled by Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong).

Review: It’s hard to feel any ill-will towards a movie like Shazam! – it is after all one of a very few superhero movies that truly embraces fun, uncynical humour, and wonderment, something that’s hard to find particularly in the DC Extended Universe. On a whole, superhero movies have become increasingly self-important and weighty (one need look no further than end April’s Avengers: Endgame and June’s Dark Phoenix for examples), but Shazam! makes no pretense of what it is – a lightweight and largely enjoyable romp – and it’s this awareness and the willingness to take the concept and really run with it, that makes Shazam stand out from the rest of the crop for 2019.

Much of the film’s charm comes directly from Zachary Levi’s high-energy performance, who is entirely believable as a wide-eyed teenager awkwardly trapped in a (super)man’s body, and recalls Tom Hanks in Big, which the film is obviously paying homage to (it even has a sequence that references an iconic scene in Big). On top of that, both teenage actors Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer (playing his disabled foster brother Freddy Freeman) share a great onscreen chemistry, and Grazer in particular also manages to steal the limelight in many scenes that he shares with Levi, no mean feat for sure. Together the trio turns the usually generic “superpower discovery phase” of an origins movie into a refreshing, laughter-filled segment. This is easily the most fun I’ve had in a superhero movie in quite some time, and unlike the higher-rated Deadpool 2, this is a film that the whole family can enjoy.

Where the film falters slightly is in its vanilla villain Dr Thaddeus Sivana, played mostly straight by Mark Strong, and the eventual showdown between Shazam and Sivana. These fall firmly into a been there, done that groove, and it is mildly disappointing that film ends up with a somewhat lackluster final reel, and in particular an 11thhour plot development is surprising but also doesn’t feel all that well thought-out.

It’s clear that Shazam! isn’t aiming to be on par with the “true” superhero films this year, and its release schedule (being bookended by two very big Marvel films) is indicative of Warner Bros’ strategy – comedy first, superhero film second. Shazam! is pretty much like its titular character, as while it doesn’t take itself all too seriously, can still pack a pretty decent punch.

Rating: * * * (out of four stars)

Standard

Captain Marvel

Genre: Action

Directors: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck

Screenplay: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, Geneva Robertson-Dworet

Cast: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Clark Gregg, Jude Law, Annette Bening

Running Length: 124 minutes

Synopsis: Set in the 1990s, Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel is an all-new adventure from a previously unseen period in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that follows the journey of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) as she becomes one of the universes most powerful heroes. While a galactic war between two alien races reaches Earth, Danvers finds herself and a small cadre of allies at the center of the maelstrom.

Review: It’s “only” taken 10 years and 20 films for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to finally produce a female-led superhero movie, but if you were hoping for Captain Marvel to do for female empowerment what Black Panther did for black representation, I would suggest you look elsewhere. There’s no denying that Captain Marvel does what a Marvel superhero movie typically sets out to do – it is an entertaining (if less than consequential) romp through the MCU via an origins story – but the marketing around the movie is positioning it as a positive beacon of female empowerment, which really quite overstates the case. 

When the directors of Captain Marvel were announced, it seemed like a pretty interesting decision – Boden and Fleck are more known for their indie films, and helming a big budget action movie may not make them the most intuitive choice. And honestly, this could be part of the reason why Captain Marvel comes across as a rather uneven movie. While the comedic beats are quite good (the regular jibes at 90s tech will be particularly amusing to anyone who’s actually lived through the era) and there’s an easygoing camaraderie amongst the cast (channeling a little bit of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies), the action sequences in the film are some of the most inadequately choreographed, muddied scenes in recent memory. In fact, even the money shots of spaceships engaging in battle feel like they belong more to a TV episode of Star Trek than a mega-budget movie like this one. 

It’s also unfortunate that while Brie Larson is a perfectly capable actress, the fact that she needs to spend almost half a movie in an amnesiac haze does her no favours. Carol Danvers is simply far less interesting as a character than she should be, and while there are occasional glimpses back to a time where she’s a livelier person, the supporting cast members like Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Lashana Lynch and even Annette Bening are actually far more engaging throughout the film. Special mention must be made of Goose, the super adorable orange tabby (played by four different cats!), who plays a pretty important role in the movie and manages to steal whatever scene he shows up in. (P.S. stay through the entire credits sequence for a cute but none-too-consequential second coda.)

The key drive of many female-led movies seem to be centred around the idea of “if men can do it, women can do it too”, and this is an old, tired trope we should already have moved away from years ago. Female empowerment in Captain Marvel literally refers to imbuing a woman with superhuman abilities that allow her to stand toe to toe with male counterparts, but how is that identifiable or teachable in any meaningful way? The solitary scene that bucks this typecasting is a collage where we see Carol Danvers literally standing up to adversity near the end of the film, but it’s too little, too late.

While this could potentially be asking too much of a superhero movie, coming off a high watermark year of 2018 (Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and even Ant Man & the Wasp had more convincing female empowerment on display), Captain Marvel feels more like a throwaway sidestep before April’s Avengers: Endgame (where Captain Marvel purported plays a pivotal role) comes around. The film is a perfunctory, middle of the pack Marvel film that does just enough to justify its existence, but is a retread of a path already frequently trod on by its MCU predecessors, rather than taking the mega-franchise in any new direction. 

Rating: * * ½ (out of four stars)

Standard

Bumblebee

Genre: Action

Director: Travis Knight

Screenplay: Christina Hodson

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., John Ortiz, Jason Drucker, Pamela Adlon, Stephen Schneider. Voices: Angela Bassett, Justin Theroux, Peter Cullen, Dylan O’Brien

Running Time: 114 minutes

Synopsis: On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns this is no ordinary, yellow VW bug.

Review: To be dreadfully honest, I had longgiven up on the Transformers franchise, with each succeeding movie getting more bloated and more unwatchable. When Bumblebee was announced, I had expected more of the same, except what the film turned out to be was a total surprise – not only is it a solidly entertaining action film, it is a very decent coming of age movie as well, actually managing to tug at my heartstrings every now and then. Though it took more than a decade, the Transformers franchise has finally birthed a genuinely good movie, and I believe something more along the lines of what Transformers (cartoon) fans had wanted all along. 

Much of Bumblebee’s success probably lies in the fact that Michael Bay had finally vacated the director’s chair for this pseudo prequel, and on top of that picking Travis Knight (of the excellent Kubo and the Two Strings) was a great choice. Perhaps due to his background in animation, and also not being as enamoured with big, meaningless explosions like Bay was, Knight slows down the pace and makes a film a quieter, more sedate affair, never allowing the robots, CG or mindless action take over the movie. Yes, there are still a number of big explosions and action sequences, but this is a film with heart first and foremost, rather than the other way round. 

In fact, Bumblebee plays out pretty much like a traditional boy-and-the-dog movie, except that the lead character is a girl and the dog is a little more advanced and badass than the usual puppy. The emotional beats are on point, and the 1987 setting also recalls the kindler, gentler movies of that era. The film boasts an excellent soundtrack and also has great attention to period detail, and anyone who’s lived through the 80s would definitely experience a fair bit of nostalgia as the film progresses. 

Bumblebee stands alone in the Transformers franchise because it has one thing that none of the previous films have – charm. Hailee Steinfeld is a strong actress and even when given a character like Charlie who really doesn’t have all that much dimensionality, she takes the material and runs well with it. Bumblebee is similarly likeable, and the fact that he has a personality (unlike 99% of the Transformers found in the franchise – yes the Decepticons in Bumblebee included) and a unique “voice” means that the audiences will be rooting for the two to succeed. 

Of course, the business end of Hasbro isn’t neglected, and for action fans, there’s more than enough (discernible!) rock ‘em sock ‘em sequences in the film, and the slightly bittersweet ending does set up the potential for other “prequel sequels” to follow this one. If they are in the same vein as Bumblebee, however, that really won’t be a bad thing at all.

Rating: * * * (out of four stars)

Standard