DC LEAGUE OF SUPER PETS

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: C+
Animation: B

I suppose if you take your children, or your niece or your nephew, to see DC League of Super Pets, they will be suitably entertained, and you won’t hate the experience.

That’s about as close as I can get to heaping praise on this movie, which, even as an animated feature, embodies every cliché of comic book superhero movies developed over the past twenty years. It sticks to the formula, following the same story beats as nearly all of the rest of them, with a big, effects-laden climactic battle at the end, the fate of the world (or the city, or the galaxy, or the universe, take your pick) hanging in the balance. It has a few clever one-liners, most of which got burned through in the trailer. It wants you to think it has a sense of humor about itself, with self-referential meta humor, except that it’s all been done before ad nauseam, and ultimately it’s just another in a long line of cash grabs.

And League of Super Pets is very much in the “DC Cinematic Uniiverse,” the opening titles preceded by the glimpses of all the DC heroes in a graphic presentation long known to be part of their attempt at replicating Marvel’s runaway success. This movie doesn’t just feature Superman and his super dog, Krypto, but it features every quasi-human superhero member of the Justice League as a diversified ensemble supporting cast—each of them positioned to wind up with one of the “League of Super Pets” as their own pet.

To be fair, I did kind of enjoy this movie, for a while. Some of the humor, and a few of the animal-based puns (love Krypto’s dad, “Dog-El”), actually land. But, the shtick outlasts its welcome, and you feel all the exact same pieces of the “superhero story” clicking right into place. The truth is, DC League of Super Pets is just another superhero movie, just like countless others that came before it. Grafting the tropes onto domesticated animals doesn’t make it any more original.

If anything makes this movie watchable, it’s the voice talent, which is abundant: Dwayne Johnson as Krypto; Kevin Hart as Ace, the invulnerable dog; Vanessa Bayer as PB, the pig who can change her size; Diego Luna as Chip, the electrified squirrel; Natasha Lyonne as Merton, the speedy turtle; Kate McKinnon as Lulu, the villainous guinea pig; John Krasinski as Superman; Keanu Reeves as Batman; Marc Maron as Lex Luthor, of all people—his second major voice role in an animated feature this year (The Bad Guys isn’t exactly a classic either, but it’s a better movie)—and there are plenty more, in many cases recognizable voices in cameo parts. Every person voicing characters in this movie is clearly having a great time, and that alone makes it more fun to watch.

It’s still pretty forgettable once it’s over. DC League of Super Pets is fun while it lasts, but there’s nothing special about it. It’s just another movie that is almost literally paint-by-numbers and will disappear into the outer rims of the zeitgeist once opening weekend has passed.

Maybe if they’re cut enough you’ll be distracted from how stale it gets.

Overall: C+

CHIP 'N DALE: RESCUE RANGERS

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-
Animation: B

I went back and forth as to whether I would even review this movie, my reaction to it was so . . . lackluster. I daresay I was disappointed, but that’s not entirely the movie’s fault: I let people whose opinions I respect convince me to expect something far better than it was.

The common comparison is to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the groundbreaking film blending live action and animation in 1988, now a marvel also because of its unique blend of both Warner Brothers and Disney cartoon properties. Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is also packed with cultural references, not all of them Disney—but I didn’t notice any Warner Brothers cartoons.

I even heard someone call this movie a new “classic,” and that was really what finally cinched my decision to fire up Disney+ and watch it. A “classic,” this movie is not. If you want to see what a classic really is, just watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, right there on that same streamer. It’s a far, far superior film. Not only that, but it’s a period piece and it holds up: that film could have been released today and it still would have impressed.

Plus, it’s packed with both verbal and visual gags that are far quicker and far smarter than the ones peppered in Chip ‘n Dale. To be fair, the original Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers TV show that ran on the Disney Channel from 1989 to 1990 was not something I ever saw, and nostalgic fans of the show will likely delight in this film and how it trades on that nostalgia. I can understand that much, and appreciate the conceit in this film, in which the characters are the chipmunk actors who played Chip ‘n Dale in the TV show over thirty years ago, and are now a bit washed up. Chip (John Mulaney) works as an insurance agent (“Coercive Insurance” being one of my favorite subtle gags). Dale (Andy Samberg) is attending fan conventions to sign autographs—something that provides ample opportunity for the presence of many other kids’ programming character cameos.

Their friend and former coworker Monterey Jack (Eric Bana) finds himself kidnapped by a shady organization that alters cartoon characters for the purpose of overseas bootlegging, itself a running gag that runs kind of stale, and thus the estranged Chip and Dale reteam in order to attempt a real-life rescue.

It should be noted that the Chip and Dale characters speak with regular voices, not the high-pitched, sped-up voices of their “characters.” This film is filled with meta jokes about “making it” in Hollywood (or not), as well as the seedy side, and has some surprisingly adult jokes that little kids won’t understand: “Now he can’t have kids.” There’s a fun sequence on “Main Street” in which we discover the seedy underbelly of Hollywood toons, who push things like cheese as though they are drugs (Monterey Jack has a problem).

My main criticism is that not all of the gags land, and sometimes there is too much time spent between the gags for things like exposition or character development. I’m sorry to keep coming back to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but that film expertly blended all of those things with its clever humor, and often Chip ‘n Dale goes for easy rather than clever humor. Admittedly, it did get me to laugh out loud a few times.

The overall sense I got from Rescue Rangers, however, was one of a “direct to streamer” movie—and I mean of the sort that was typical before the pandemic. We now can get true quality films direct from streamers, but what Chip ‘n Dale is, is . . . fine. I can’t muster enough enthusiasm to think of it as something to get excited about, and that’s what disappoints me. I had hoped that, at the very least, I could tell people you don’t have to be familiar with the original Disney Channel show for this movie to come highly recommended. Instead, I think perhaps you do need to have seen the show. I have no connection to it, so, in spite of this movie’s many pop culture references, it just didn’t land the way I wanted it to.

At the very least, I will compliment the voice work: John Mulaney and Andy Samberg are great; as are the vast supporting cast of characters, including J.K. Simmons as the police “Captain Putty”; Will Arnett as “Sweet Pete,” an overweight, grown-up Peter Pan; and even Flula Borg as “DJ Herzogenaurach.” We also get Dennis Haysbert as Zipper; Seth Rogen as several characters; and Tim Robinson as “Ugly Sonic,” playing on a notorious internet controversy that no one knows about, and I am unconvinced will be as hilarious as intended for those who do.

Basically, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is entertaining enough, for something to watch at home with the family. It just fell short of what I wanted or expected.

Did I mention that Dale got “CGI” surgery? Hilarious!

Overall: B-

DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIIVERSE OF MADNESS

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+
Special Effects: B

There are people genuinely convinced that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a truly great film, and that makes me despair of humanity. Not because this movie is particularly bad, but because audiences are so conditioned by the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” that they can no longer distinguish between that which is quality cinema, and that which is average.

The thing is, this movie isn’t even all that great by MCU standards. I largely gave up on superhero movies over a decade ago, actively avoiding then for several years—because they were nearly all just like this one: rushing through expositional interludes between overly busy action sequences drenched in CGI that looked dated within a year, all in the service of the same story beats as the last film just like it, over and over again. But, over the past five or ten years, Marvel found better directors and better writers, and slowly but surely began to offer movies more worthy of regaining attention. This movie feels like a throwback to that earlier time.

The greatest disappointment about that is the fact that it was directed by the legendary Sam Raimi, of Army of Darkness (1992) fame, who directed the original Tobey MaGuire Spider-Man in 2002, and who has not directed a feature film in nine years (there’s nothing better to say about the equally mediocre Oz the Great and Powerful). It’s true that Multiverse of Madness gets better in its second half, and eventually it even gets genuinely weird, with quasi-horror elements that are only novel by MCU standards, but are still presented with recognizable Raimi flair. Alas, it doesn’t get sufficiently weird until at least three quarters of the way through, at which point it’s really too little, too late.

Multiverse of Madness comes up short by every measure. Even compared to other MCU movies, it’s not nearly as much quirky fun as Thor: Ragnarok (2017); it certainly has nothing of anywhere near as much substance to say as Black Panther (2018); it’s not even as interesting as the original Doctor Strange (2016). What it does do is rehash every concept imaginable, most of all the idea of a “multiverse,” something introduced brilliantly in the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, arguably the best year for Marvel) but which has already been revisited in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), a live action film that was better than anyone could have expected. But, here we are again, with fully expected diminishing returns.

And this Doctor Strange sequel is not helped at all by its very direct narrative ties to the Disney+ series WandaVision. I won’t say anyone who hasn’t seen the show will be lost in the plot here, but they’d certainly understand it a lot more having seen it. And what good does that do the movie itself? This is the twenty-eighth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all presented by a studio that increasingly expects its audiences not only to have seen but have remembered them all, plus increasing numbers of TV series. There comes a point when it’s just all too much, and that point arguably came and went a decade ago.

Elizabeth Olsen does a fairly impressive job as the villain, the Scarlet Witch, but it’s not as easy to recognize without having seen WandaVisison, which was itself, frankly, a bit overrated. Such is the case with a great majority of MCU films, with occasionally notable exceptions. Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character is . . . fine. The same could be said of the entire cast, none of who are given any room to breathe their performances in the overstuffed plot. This movie is 126 minutes long, almost “short” compared to many MCU movies, and too much is happening too quickly, whether it’s CGI spectacle action sequences or the rare quiet conversations between characters.

It just feels like a wildly missed opportunity, like a movie dictated by committee (it having only one writer notwithstanding; it should also be noted that this is Michael Waldron’s first feature film script), beholden to a multitude of strictures as part of the broader cinematic universe. That very much limits a filmmaker’s ability to put their own stamp on it—Chloé Zhao’s Eternals (2021) suffered from the same problem. If the studio could have loosened their evident grip, the uniquely dark and macabre Sam Raimi style could have permeated more than just the final quarter of the movie. With that alone, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would have been much improved.

To be fair, this particular movie was never going to be a masterpiece, no matter who wrote or directed it. It still had massively unrealized potential, and instead stuck with well-worn storytelling tropes that renders it the same shit in a different movie. I’d probably have enjoyed this exact same movie more had it been released seven or eight years ago, but time is not always kind to a decades-old franchise (consider what a challenge it has been for ages for anyone to make a truly great James Bond movie). Now, we’ve spent far too much time, year after year, with rushed storytelling wrapped in subpar special effects. Too few of these movies get any finessing, and are instead churned out as from an assembly line, all using a well worn template. Even well worn templates are tolerable if they can be given a novel enough spin, but Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is convinced it’s taking a huge swing without realizing it’s stepping up to bat when the game is already nearly over.

I’d tell you more about the plot but it was so forgettable I forgot it.

Overall: C+

THE ADAM PROJECT

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: C

Watching a Ryan Reynolds action comedy is like the cinematic equivalent of eating an off-brand Hostess cupcake: clearly inferior, but tasty enough in the absence of something better. This is a pretty consistent element of Reynolds’s career, although the quasi-novel thing about The Adam Project is the inspired casting of 11-year-old Walker Scobell as Reynolds’s scrawny, 12-year-old self. This is Scobell’s first acting role, and he nails the signature Reynolds snark, just a preteen version of it.

Indeed, The Adam Project would not have been nearly as fun as it is—and it’s arguably more fun than it deserves to be—of not for the many funny quips in the dialogue, particularly between Reynolds and Scobell. Conceptually, the script of this movie is utter garbage, but I found it relatively to overlook due to the fairly consistent laughs it got out of me.

It does have a bit of a “straight to video” vibe to it. I realize that’s now an outdated phrase, but people who remember what that meant will get what I mean better than if I just call it “straight to streaming,” which is what this is. The thing is, in the streaming age, even Oscar-worthy fare sometimes gets released on streamers at the same time as their theatrical release. This has occurred with everything from Dune to The Power of the Dog. The Adam Project is nowhere near in the same league as those films, nor does it try or even pretend to be. Still I was surprised to discover it did get its own limited theatical release: it’s actually playing at the Cinemark Lincoln Square Cinemas in Bellevue.

I wonder if it plays better in a theater? Perhaps it does. It doesn’t change the definitively low-rent special effects, or the wildly derivative science fiction concepts. The plot involves time travel, an idea always rife with problems no matter how it’s approached in film. And this script, with four credited writers, goes out of its way to make its characters discuss the dangers of breaking “the rules” of time travel, then they openly break them all.

So much for meeting yourself in the past being any kind of problem. Reynolds and Scobell both play the same character, Adam, with older Adam (42, apparently) crash-landing his plane from 2050 in the woods around his childhood home in 2022. When younger Adam meets the older one, there’s about five seconds of shock, and then in practically an instant they’re both just cool with being around each other, knowing who each other is, and getting on with the task of moving the plot forward.

Here’s a curiously convenient plot point: another time jump occurs, when both Adams take the plane back to 2018. (The plane is configured to his DNA signature but won’t let him fly when he’s injured; thus, he needs young Adam’s fingerprints.) This four year gap allows The Adam Project to have its Covid cake and eat it too: it can completely ignore the pandemic without presenting an alternate universe in which it never existed. For now, anyway: the way things are going right now, in March 2022, the maskless 2022 we see in the movie feels plausible. We’ll see how things are going in another six months.

When the time jumps back to 2018, Adam’s father comes into the picture, played by Mark Ruffalo. We see Adam’s mother, played by Jennifer Garner, in both 2022 and 2018. We get a brief glimpse of 8-year-old Adam in 2018 but only long enough to see him playing video games; this movie is evidently not all that interested in Adam at that age. Further convoluting things is Catherine Keener as the villain, Maya Sorian, whose future self has gone back in time to tell her younger self, Biff-in-Back-to-the-Future-style, how to become rich and then harness time travel technology and somehow wind up controlling it all in a deeply dystopian future that is only ever referred to vaguely. “We’ve seen The Terminator, right?” older Adam says to his younger self. “That’s 2050 on a good day.” With the exception of an opening sequence of his plane in space above Earth before the first time jump, that’s all the insight we get about that future.

Speaking of Back to the Future, The Adam Project is rife with references to it. There are also clear visual homages to the fern-covered forest floor seen in E.T.; the obligatory direct references to Star Wars; and clear influences from The Matrix. There really isn’t a single even remotely original idea in this movie. I still feel compelled to give the script credit because of its consistently funny and clever dialogue, which is always just entertaining enough.

There’s also a casual charm to the chemistry between Reynolds and Scobell, if not so much between Reynolds and Zoe Saldana, who plays his wife in a thanklessly small part. It’s also notable that Catherine Keener is usually excellent, at least when cast well, but she feels bizarrely shoehorned into this movie, and to say she’s phoning it in is putting it mildly. In other words, the performances are kind of all over the place, which means they even out to being just a bit better than fine.

I’m trying to imagine someone with genuine scientific knowledge trying to swallow this movie. They’d have to be exceptionally skilled at turning their brain off. I’m no scientist myself, but I’d like to bran a little that I can be quite good at turning my brain off. With a movie like this, it’s more important to relax into the mindless entertainment it is than to pick it apart pointlessly. If you want 2001: A Space Odyssey, go watch that movie. To The Adam Project’s credit, it knows what it is and makes no claims or promises otherwise. Which is to say, it’s a cut-rate action comedy released to a streamer that will fade into the algorithmic ether within a week or two. But for now, it’ll do.

Strap in … to your couch. With a blanket maybe.

Overall: B-

TURNING RED

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Animation: B

Turning Red is simultaneously about adolescent friendship and about mother-daughter relationships, and it handles both fantastically. The premise seems simple, in which a 13-year-old discovers she transforms into a giant red panda whenver she gets too emotionally excited, but it winds up being a great allegory for multiple shared experiences at once. There’s the idea of “harnessing your inner beast.” There’s acknowledging your “messy side.” There’s the literalness of the title, when an adolescent goes beet red with embarrassment. There’s even a brief sequence in which it effectively stands in as a symbol for when a girl has her period for the first time: “I’m a gross red monster!” One might thing I’m reaching with that one—except it literally happens when Mei’s mother, not yet understanding the true nature of the situation, is trying to offer her pads.

Things like this are surely why Turning Red is rated PG. It’s also the third Pixar movie to be released directly to Disney+, although it’s arguably the first not to be done out of necessity. That said, after having watched it, this film feels right for an at-home streamer. Perhaps we’ve just been spoiled by 27 years of Pixar Animation’s visual excellence, where in many cases the animation largely made up for somewhat waning story quality. Turning Red flips the script, so to speak, and offers animation that is . . . fine. It’s the story that truly elevates it, and makes for a wonderfully cozy, adorable, funny and moving at-home watch.

This movie happens to be the second Pixar film directed by a woman (the first was Brenda Chapman, though she co-directed Brave in 2012 with two men), the first to be solo directed by a woman, and the first to be directed by a woman of color. Domee Shi, who also co-wrote this delightful script, was born in China but grew up in Toronto, and having written largely based on her own family experience, thus provides the explanation for the film’s Toronto setting. Characters mention the city of Toronto regularly, and there are many establishing shots of the Toronto skyline, always with the CN Tower figuring prominently. I just found myself wishing those shots were rendered with a little more depth and personality; instead, they sometimes feel a little like a cartoon version of old movie matte painting backdrops.

Admittedly, this sort of thing was why it took a few minutes for me to really feel hooked into the story of Turning Red. The visual design of the characters themselves are a little “cartoonier” than normal for Pixar, and for the first several minutes we see the establishment of setting and the introduction of characters, particularly Meilin (voiced by 16-year-old newcomer Rosalie Chang) and her diverse group of three best friends (voiced by Ava Morse, Hyein Park and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). We see them quite pointedly and realistically acting like giddy, sometimes shrill, 13-year-old girls, and for a moment there I wondered if I would be able to tolerate this movie.

But, then we get introduced to Mei’s perfectionist mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), and we understand the central conflict of the story, which is a tension between Mei’s love for her mother and her love for her friends. Domee Shi and her two co-writers, Julia Cho and Sarah Streicher, write about these relationships exceedingly well, never painting anyone involved as inherently malicious. They are just people who make mistakes, who sometimes make misguided decisions in the service of the people they love.

By the time Meilin’s red panda is unleashed, Turning Red takes a quick turn, becoming equal parts entertaining and surprisingly layered, both with thematic meaning and cultural tradition. I love the diversity of both the characters and the voice cast here, not just for its own sake, but more importantly, because it accurately reflects the city in which it’s set: Toronto is one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world, more than half its residents belonging to a visible minority group, and just under half being immigrants born outside the country.

Mei’s family is well established, though, both her and her mother speaking with American accents; only Mei’s grandmother, Wu (voiced by Wai Ching Ho), speaks with a Chinese accent. Cantonese is regularly spoken, particularly when Grandma Wu arrived with reinforcements—both herself and other family members, presumably aunts, who have all at one point participated in a ritual that breaks the family spell of the red panda.

I also love how centered this story is on women and girls. Turning Red is written and directed by a woman, largely based on her childhood experience with several girl friends, and nearly the entire principal cast is girls or women. The most notable male character is Ming’s husband and Mei’s father, Jin (Orion Lee), and even he is written with more dimension than typically found with a part of that size. Which is to say, he doesn’t get a huge amount of screen time, but he is well woven into the fabric of the story.

The focus here, though, is on Mei’s relationship with the girls and the women in her life: her three best friends; her mother; her grandmother. The story even gets into how that mother-daughter relationship is informed by Ming’s relationship with her own mother—an idea relatable to a great many daughters and mothers, regardless of ethnic or cultural background. Were Turning Red made in an earlier cinematic era, most of the story would have revolved around Mei trying to keep her red panda spell a secret. Instead, Mei’s mother, her friends, and most of her classmates learn about it surprisingly early on. What follows is a struggle for Mei to control it, and her mother’s insistence that it needs to be locked away completely. There’s a lot to unpack here in terms of accepting ourselves—and our children—as who they really are, and not so much taming but learning to live with the beast within.

There is a climactic sequence in which an even more giant panda terrorizes a stadium during a boy-band concert, and it’s a little like a red panda version of Godzilla. If that were all it was, I might have rolled my eyes at it. But there is so much depth to this story, even a showy sequence like that works really well. Given Pixar Animation Studio’s increasingly spotty record in recent years, and the somewhat surprising choice to release straight to streaming, Turning Red exceeds expectations on nearly every level . . . except the animation itself. But, as with our relationships with our children and our parents, we can’t always expect perfection.

This is so embarrassing!

Overall: B+

SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: B+

I guess I have to admit that Marvel Studios has genuinely grown on me in recent years. Somehow, even with mostly the same template for story arc as every other movie before it, lately they’ve managed to offer superhero movies I actually find compelling. This took a bit for me, because I grew so tired of superhero movies in the early 2010s that I mostly blew them off for several years, only bothering with the truly exceptional ones like Black Panther or Thor: Ragnarok or Logan. Even the latter two of those three examples, I never bothered to see in theaters and only discovered their delights later on streamers. After being underwhelmed by the likes of Thor: The Dark World or Avengers: Age of Ultron (what a turd), I was mostly over it. There are better movies to see.

Even as Marvel pulled me back in a bit in more recent years, I never bothered to see Tom Holland’s previous two Spider-Man movies in theaters to review; Homecoming (2017) looked pretty blah to me, and when I finally watched it sometime last year on Disney+, it basically met that expectation. Only a few months ago I finally watched Far From Home (2019), which was a little better but had a seriously dopey villain in Jake Gyllenhaal’s “Mysterio”—a persistent problem in all three of the Spider-Man franchises, to be honest. Only Alfred Molena’s Doctor Octopus from 2004’s Spider-Man 2 has proved to be particularly memorable or easy to swallow.

Enter Spider-Man: No Way Home, which I must say, is worth the wait—and clearly owes its existence, at least in the form it has taken, to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, unquestionably the best Spider-Man movie ever made. I really don’t want to spoil anything, as this movie is absolutely best experienced coming in as cold as possible, with no knowledge of what’s coming—although I suppose it should still be said, you’ll have to have been familiar with not just the Tom Holland films, but all of the Spider-Man movies that came before, in order to appreciate it fully.

Granted, if you care at all about the MCU, you’d have to be living under a rock not to be exposed to any of the rumors long swirling around about this movie. Nevertheless, I will neither confirm nor deny any of it! I will only say that director Jon Watts (Cop Car) and co-writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers (both of whom wrote the previous two Spider-Man movies) offer some genuinely thrilling moments in this film. The audience laps it up, and it’s nice to be in a crowd where that’s happening not just in response to fan service, but to genuinely clever plotting.

Spider-Man: No Way Home may be my favorite Marvel movie that neither tries for overt comedy nor has anything to say about anything outside of its own very American world. Or, in this case, universe. Or universes. It’s still a world as presented within the confines of this film. What I mean to say is, this movie doesn’t go so much for nuance or social commentary (J.K. Simmons’s conspiracy theorist news anchor notwithstanding), but it does featured layered and impressively intricate writing, even if it does feel a bit rushed. Peter Parker’s meeting with Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange, who serves as a vital yet convenient plot device, feels a little too easy as the inciting event for the story here. This is where we get into the sorts of things that made me step away from superhero movies as long as I did, but in this case it’s a minor quibble; the rest of the movie makes up for it.

Because this movie never takes itself too seriously, but neither does it trivialize its own proceedings. It strikes the perfect balance there, and manages to be earnest in only the right places. I actually shed a couple of years near the end, making this the first Marvel movie ever to make me cry. And it was just an emotional goodbye scene. So, either Marvel producers have finally gotten their shit together, or I’m just getting old and soft. It could be both.

I should mention the special effects. There’s nothing groundbreaking happening onscreen in this movie, but at least for the most part it’s convincingly rendered. One of the things that turned me off of Avengers: Age of Ultron was how cartoony it looked, in CGI scenes meant to look real. By and large that doesn’t happen here, although there’s a few moments when the rendering of Spider-Man leaping through the air looks like a transparently CGI effect. Those moments are progressively fewer in these movies, though, and I appreciate that.

I watched Doctor Strange for the first time just last night, in anticipation of this movie, and although I’m glad I did, it’s not necessary to have any appreciation for No Way Home. It just provides context for a couple of details related to that character that might not make total sense in this movie otherwise, but it has no bearing on Spider-Man’s own story. The amount of detail and connected backstory at play in the MCU remains one of my primary complaints about it, and it really is true that if you have never seen the Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield films, the experience of this movie will be wildly different, and more of a challenge to appreciate.

If you have, however, Spider-Man: No Way Home ties things together in a way you never thought possible. And this is extraordinarily rare for me, especially for superhero movies, but my advice is to see this as soon as possible, so you can experience its surprises and delights without spoilers. I had a blast at this movie, and it’s been about 17 years since a Spider-Man movie did that for me.

Spider-Man protects Zendaya from her rabid fans.

Overall: B+

SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B

I spent several years actively avoiding superhero movies, which sometimes feel actively designed by Marvel Studios to be a punishment of sorts should you try to venture back into their “cinematic universe” without having seen everything. The thing is “everything” is a lot—and increasingly so as time goes on: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings marks the twenty-fifth MCU film since this universe they all share was created in 2008. It’s pretty tempting to say that’s just too many. Who has time for this shit?

Well, to be fair, these movies work a lot better when thy barely acknowledge the events of the other films, if at all. Thankfully, this is done sparingly in Shang-Chi; a single passing reference to Thanos snapping half the universe out of existence is easily missed if you’re not paying attention. On the other hand, it depends on how you look at it: Ben Kingsley returns for a supporting role here as Trevor Slattery, who was originally seen in 2013’s Iron Man 3, one of the least memorable of the MCU films. Do we need to go back and re-watch old MCU movies to “bone up” now? I would argue no: Kingsley’s part is delightful on its own terms here, even if you can’t quite remember where Slattery originated.

Shang-Chi has a lot of other stuff going for it, anyway. That’s the point I’m getting at, really: my disillusionment with superhero movies seems to be healing a bit, not because the genre is inherently great, but because filmmakers are finding ways to make them better. Instead of movie after movie just adhering to the same tired story arcs, writers and directors are expanding on them. And in the current “phase,” diversity is justifying itself by example. It’s not just one white guy after another anymore—we’re spreading across continents: Black Panther took us to Africa; Shang-Chi takes us to Asia (specifically China). All we need now is a Marvel movie about a Latino superhero with deep familial roots somewhere in South America. Or better yet, an Indigenous superhero.

Of course, much like Black Panther to Black audiences, what Shang-Chi is likely to represent to Asian audiences should probably not be underestimated. Until now, the only high-profile mainstream film in which all of the leads were Asian was Crazy Rich Asians (which, incidentally, came out the same year as Black Panther). A lot of unfair representative responsibility and criticism was heaped on that film, for that very reason. Well, guess what? Now we have Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and it being of a completely different genre notwithstanding, it is an objectively better film.

Okay, sure, Shang-Chi does still get a little bogged down in its climactic battle sequence, far too busy and far too reliant on barely visually comprehensible CGI. (Once again, I find myself noticing flaws in the computer animation, certain that these visuals will look dated within the decade. There remains something to be said for practical effects, or at least practical effects well integrated with CGI touchups.) This movie also literally moves into another dimension, featuring an action sequence on the streets of San Francisco early on, only to later move to Macao and then to another dimension and then never returning. We find ourselves in a world with magical creatures, bat-like demon creatures, and dragons. It lends an air of the traditional fantasy genre, almost more so than the superhero genre. I suppose it’s a kind of mythology either way.

And I am at a disadvantage here, being so little versed in Chinese mythology and folklore. To what degree are the magical creatures we see here authentic to those sources? Black Panther had been famous for its authentically African-influenced design; one would hope Shang-Chi would have similarly authentically Asian influences. A giant dragon that appears in the third act, as well as some truly fantastic and adorably rendered giant Chinese lions, all look very much like what you would typically see in Chinese New Year celebrations. The giant demon soul-sucker, though … that one, I have no idea.

As you might imagine, Shang-Chi features several martial-arts-heavy battle sequences, which bear a passing resemblance to the battles from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and other films of its ilk. This is clearly not an accident, and these scenes are very well choreographed. In fact, they are consistently very exciting, much more so than, for instance, a runaway bus on the hills of San Francisco. And because the title character (played with just the right amount of charisma by Simu Liu) and his sister Xu Xialing (Meng'er Zhang) are the children of both a power-hungry man who has used the magical Ten Rings to live over a thousand years, and a woman from a village in another dimension accessed via a magical forest, their physics-defying movements don’t especially pose a problem.

The story details here are indeed fairly complex, and its team of script writers does an unusually skilled job of weaving them into the plot in a fairly organic way, not to mention presenting an origin story without it feeling like one. We even get Awkwafina as Katy, Shang-Chi’s longtime friend and comic sidekick. In retrospect she doesn’t ever prove to be vital to the story at all, but her presence is always fun. At least this time, as opposed to Raya and the Last Dragon, she is well cast and has good chemistry with her cast mates.

In any event, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is great fun from start to finish, in a way that actually makes me look forward to seeing more movies like it. After I spent several years actively resenting superhero films, that’s saying a lot.

It’s not as confused as they look!

Overall: B+

THE SUICIDE SQUAD

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

I cannot deny it: The Suicide Squad exceeded my expectations. To be fair, that was not a difficult task, after the 2016 film Suicide Squad was so roundly panned by critics, combined with underperforming at the box office (if you want to call $300 million at the box office “underperforming”). I never even bothered to see that other film, as by all accounts it was a waste of time—disliked by critics and fans alike—but evidently it doesn’t matter, as The Suicide Squad can easily be considered a reboot, even though it’s all of five years later. This film does have two actor carry-overs from the previous one, though: Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn (now her third time portraying the character); and Viola Davis as specialist Amanda Waller, the woman who tasks the titular squad with what often turn out to be literal suicide missions.

Such is the case with the opening sequence of The Suicide Squad, which turns out to be quite the effective bait an switch. I won’t spoil anything more, except to say that with one major exception, the “squad” we get introduced to is very much a cheeky distraction. This proves from the start that James Gunn, who previously directed and co-wrote the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, was a great choice for this film, infusing it with the cleverly twisted humor it needed, at just the right amount. I might even say The Suicide Squad is by some measure better than both the Guardians films, as though they served as practice for hitting his stride here. This movie is one of the few truly creatively successful DC movies on all levels, silly in all the right ways and never being self-serious. This is a movie that understands how ridiculous it is.

And that, my friends, is how you make a good superhero movie. The editing and pacing are unusually well done, with a plot that unfolds in a way that keeps the story that stands on its own and, although the climactic sequence is still typically large in scale, it avoids the cliché of being about battling a global, intergalactic or universal threat. I mean, okay, there is a giant alien starfish that serves as a sort of acid trip version of Godzilla, and obviously that has global implications. But, the focus of the story remains local—on the fictional island of Corto Maltese, as it happens, a fun shoutout to the original 1989 Batman film (and previously in original Batman comics).

Gunn reportedly made the deliberate decision to use lesser-known supervillains to make up “The Suicide Squad,” another choice that only enhances the experience of this movie, without the distractions of Batman or even mentions of The Joker. In addition to Harley Quinn, Idris Elba as Bloodsport; John Cena as Peacemaker; Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag; David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man; Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2; and even Sylvester Stallone as the voce of the impressively CGI rendered King Shark, all make up a nice group of messy criminal misfits, granted time out of prison in order to pull off jobs others can’t do—and in some cases actually die trying.

I mean, a lot of people die in this movie. In one sequence, a well choreographed attack takes place in which the Squad winds up dispatching numerous people in all sorts of creative ways, almost as a competition, only to discover they had mistaken the wrong people for their enemies. This gets blithely gleaned over, but whatever; The Suicide Squad never pretends to have a solid moral core. It’s an exaggerated cartoon, its hyperviolence something in the school of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies. You’ll see a lot of blood and dismemberment. A quasi-humanoid shark picks up live people and eats them.

And, somehow . . . it’s delightful. I had a great fun watching this movie. The humor lands consistently, and there are no lulls in the narrative, no point that you might find yourself checking the time. It also has better CGI than it really could have gotten away with, just thanks to its smart script and winning performances—there’s a man-weasel character (called . . . Weasel) that is both disturbing to look at, and rendered with memorably intricate detail. I don’t know how dated the visuals of this film might look in ten years, but right now it’s far better than a lot of other effects-heavy contemporary films. Overall, The Suicide Squad is just a fun hang, with plenty of laughs and a uniquely compelling story, thanks in large part to its twisted silliness.

A bunch of dork criminals will win you over.

Overall: B+

BLACK WIDOW

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+

There’s something easily confusing for casual watchers of Marvel movies, when it comes to Black Widow. This movie is set after the events of Captain America: Civil War, which came out in 2016, and effectively sets Black Widow in 2016. That’s at least a couple of years before the events of Avengers: Infinity War, and seven years before the ultimate fate of the Black Widow character revealed in Avengers: Endgame. Just to spice things up a little, let’s throw in the fact that Endgame was released in 2019 but set in 2023; Black Widow is released in 2021 after an originally scheduled 2020 release due to a real-life pandemic; and the fact that although this is the first feature film dedicated to Black Widow, even though it’s the eighth MCU movie in which the character appears (ninth if you count another movie’s mid-credits sequence).

If you weren’t confused before, maybe you are now? I’ve only managed this level of understanding thanks to a couple of podcasts and a bit of online research. I maintain, however, that a movie should make itself clear without the need for extracurricular research, and nothing in the actual content of Black Widow makes this setting in the timeline clear—at least not to anyone without a photographic memory of the entire MCU timeline. The way I see it, this is a strike against both Black Widow and the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Luckily, Black Widow still has a lot going for it. Namely, that it mostly works as a self-contained film, in that if you don’t even know it’s part of this far larger “cinematic universe,” that makes the movie arguably less confusing. Even more importantly, it’s just a lot of fun.

This is now the fourth superhero movie in recent years that focuses on a woman superhero, which is still a small enough number that it invites deeply unfair comparisons. Personally, I liked all the others about as well as any of the others, for different reasons in each case which averaged out to about the same quality of blockbuster cinema: the original Wonder Woman (2017) exceeded expectations before devolving into the same climactic battle with a bland villain we’ve seen in countless of these movies; Captain Marvel (2019) was fun but largely forgettable, save for a truly delightful alien cat; and although Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) was met with derision both wide and deep, I thought it was fine.

With the exceptions of a few threads among those three films that could be singled out as moving things forward in a positive way, particularly for representation of women in film, they also have something else in common: an undercurrent of mediocrity. Theres a key difference on this front with Black Widow that I love: it’s not just about one woman as the main character, nor is it just packed with badass women supporting characters who serve the story of the main hero. Black Widow is all of those things at once, and I can think of no other superhero movie that can claim the same.

I just love how prominently women play into every level of plotting in this movie. The central story revolves around the sisterly relationship between Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow) and Yelena, two trained assassins who learned at a young age that they were not really sisters and were just part of an artificially constructed American family of Russian spies. The quasi-sisters are played by (as we all know) Scarlett Johansson and the incomparable Florence Pugh. Pugh sits surprisingly comfortably in the blockbuster action role, after a series of memorable parts in often disturbing dramas. Honestly, given the changing nature of movie making in America, my greatest hope for Pugh is that she takes this large paycheck parts so that she can continue turning incredible dramatic performances in smaller budget films and still make a living.

The parents in the aforementioned Russian family are played by David Harbour and Rachel Weisz, both of whom play prominently in the story here, Harbour being a Russian “super soldier” largely regarded as that nation’s counterpart to Captain America. Whether they are meant to be seen as villainous or heroic, or at what point they cross over from one to the other, is a little muddled, but as with any movie like this, don’t think about it too much and you’ll be fine. For Harbour’s part, his performance is by far the hammiest in the entire film, and seems to be a bit polarizing among audiences. I actually found it entertaining.

There is also some clarity needed when it comes to “the villain” of Black Widow. Technically, it’s Ray Winstone as Dreykov, a Russian mastermind who has developed an army of exclusively young women assassins who are victims of his chemical brain alteration that allows for mind control. A lot of this stuff is both ridiculous and very James Bond, but that doesn’t distract from how fun the movie is. Anyway, the villain effectively is actually yet another woman, with the unfortunately hokey nameof “Taskmaster” (Olga Kurylenko). She is Dreykov’s prized pupil of mind control, programmed to learn the fighting style of anyone she fights.

As such, Black Widow’s two main heroes are women; their most challenging adversary is. woman; they are aided by a complicated but equally heroic mother figure (along with an exceptionally strong father figure, yay gender equality!); and several scenes feature a large group of mind-controlled woman assassins. The latter group is generally and predictably easily dispatched, but the point is this: where most blockbuster movies feature just a few key female characters—even if they are the protagonists—with the entire rest of the significant parts rounded out by men, Black Widow completely flips that script.

And maybe audiences are finally getting used to this idea? Both the original Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were pointless victims of insane amounts of sexist backlash, and I haven’t seen anything like that in response to Black Widow. Presumably this is due to a host of factors, not least of which is the fact that audiences have been seeing Black Widow as a supporting character in other MCU movies already for a decade. The difference is that Black Widow really leans in with its casting of women (to be fair, the only women of color are among the mind controlled assassins, and none of them get any real lines, let alone anything even remotely like character development—but, one step at a time, I guess), and for once, it seems to be working with audiences.

Of course, none of that would be making much difference if the movie did not work on its own merits, and it does. Black Widow is far from perfect, it had multiple scenes of such jaw dropping implausibility that I literally rolled my eyes, and it puts Black Widow herself through so much turmoil that one has to wonder how any Avengers get any rest at all, even when they’re supposedly “taking a break.” The villain is once again obsessed with megalomaniacal goals of world domination, something I tired of long ago and is usually a reason for me to skip superhero movies. Except, I like to get tickets to movies that focus on women and minorities so I can add to the audience size and help prove that such movies do have an audience. In this case, it absolutely proved worth it, mostly thanks to a dazzling cast with real, across-the-board onscreen chemistry with each other.

Sister Act Redux

Overall: B+

CRUELLA

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-
Special Effects: C+

If you’re a skeptic but open to giving Cruella a chance, you may find yourself a bit more entertained than expected. I certainly did. The irony is that, even for what limited vision this movie has, it really could have been a lot better. Shaving about 30 minutes off its insane 134-minute run time probably would have done the trick alone.

This is, effectively, a kids’ movie, is it not? If it isn’t, then I don’t know who the hell it was made for—maybe boomers still nostalgic for the original 1961 Disney animated feature One Hundred and One Dalmatians. I never saw the 1996 live action film 101 Dalmatians or its 2000 sequel 2002 Dalmatians, but I can find no indication of any ties between this film and those, aside from Glenn Close executive-producing here. I couldn’t even tell you precisely why I went ahead and saw this one when I actively avoided those other live action films; they all got fairly mixed reviews, after all—except Cruella remains by a fair distance the best-reviewed of the three.

To be honest, the deciding factor was probably rather simple: options. We we living in normal, pre-pandemic times, there’s little doubt there would be many other new releases to choose from this weekend that held far greater interest to me. As it happens, this was the third film I’ve gone to see in a theater since returning to theaters, and there literally was no other better option.

I’m happy to say I don’t regret it, at least. I had heard this film had great costume designs, and to be sure, on that front, Cruella absolutely does not disappoint. The gowns worn both by Emma Stone as the title character, and Emma Thompson as her nemesis, The Baroness, are consistently fabulous. The same goes for the production design, all of which is better appreciated on a large movie screen.

Another point in this movie’s favor is the casting, as Emma Stone nicely fills the role of a young woman we freely empathize with even though we fully understand she will eventually become a psychopath who literally wants to skin Dalmatian dogs in order to make a coat. This never actually happens in Cruella, be assured, although there is a sequence in which she’s convinced other characters she had—and, let’s be honest, that’s sociopathic enough.

The real draw of Cruella, however, is Emma Thompson, who gets to wear the best costumes and infuses those incredible gowns with just the right amount of villainous attitude. Furthermore, her Baroness has murderous intentions for far more than dogs (in fact, here she’s the one with Dalmations, who are the only beings she seems to offer any real love or compassion) and she makes even later-life Cruella look like a saint in comparison.

Side note on the Dalmatians: in many of their scenes, they are CGI rendered, and it’s distracting enough to take you out of the movie, because they never look quite real. This issue is by no means limited to the dogs, though. Almost every clear visual effects shot is rendered as though whoever worked on it decided its audience would be too young (or too stupid?) to notice. We regularly see far better visual effects work on cable or streaming TV series, so this is a bizarrely preventable flaw for a blockbuster motion picture to have.

Rounding out the supporting cast are Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser as Cruella’s henchmen Jasper and Horace, respectively. Hauser, for his part, joins Emma Stone as principal actors here who are Americans playing British, which is an interesting, it not unnecessary, choice. Surely they could have found plenty of rotund British actors (not to mention plenty of young British actors who could have been cast in the title role) who fit the part perfectly—but, to Hauser’s credit, he’s surprisingly good at the Cockney accent, and as a result some viewers might even miss that that’s the same guy from I, Tonya and BlacKKKlansman.

Jasper and Horace serve as plot devices here for Cruella to learn “the true value of friendship,” which brings us back to who the audience for this movie is. Once you realize Cruella is rated PG-13 (almost certainly due to the aforementioned allusions to, if not outright animal cruelty, then certainly intentions to it—and also straight up human murder), it can’t be for genuine children. The “Disney” wholesomeness otherwise incongruously thrown in here would suggest that it is, but I can only conclude it’s meant for . . . teenagers? How many teenagers today would actually think this IP from the sixties is actually cool, anyway?

This is a movie that clearly can’t decide exactly what it wants to be. And the thing is, this “Battle of the Emmas” could have been part of a far better movie with basically the same concept but not relying on decades-old, pre-existing IP. Many of these live action remakes and origin stories of old Disney animated features work better than expected, but never surpass or even come close to equalling the originals. Apparently, and unfortunately, recycling the same shit over and over is the only way studios seem to be able to rake in the box office profits anymore.

In other words, there’s a ton of unrealized potential here, between the story and the actors. Does no one even think about the objective impracticality of turning Dalmatians into fur coats? Sure, the spots are cool looking, but Dalmatians are short-haired dogs; a fur coat is meant to be not just posh but lush, and maybe warm? In other words, I just wish I could have seen a great, clever movie with Emma Stone and Emma Thompson as viciously sparring fashion designers. (Another side note: Cruella never offers any explanation for her succeeding at creating a public rivalry with The Baroness, beyond mere publicity stunts. No one in this movie ever questions: where does Creulla create, design, manufacture, or sell her clothes? I suppose here I’m just getting nitpicky. It’s my job!)

Cruella is a potentially good idea, limited by the constraints of being a prequel none of us ever needed. I have to admit, though, that even within those limitations, and especially thanks to delicious performances, it’s still a good time.

No Dalmatians were harmed in the making of this coat … because they’re all CGI anyway.