Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The last half-hour or so of Rogue One is sure to be the talk of the whole picture, and might even be remembered as one of the top moments in the Star Wars film canon. The audience is treated to a Rebel firefight from the ground-level vantage points of the people in it. In the sky above, X-Wing and TIE fighters engage in some of the franchise’s best dogfights since at least the snow battle in The Empire Strikes Back. Then, it pulls off its real, see-it-to-believe-it masterstroke, connecting directly into the original Star Wars (as in, practically tacking its last frame onto to that film’s first), complete with digital re-creations of old familiar faces (literally). It’s utterly ridiculous, but damn if it isn’t impressive. Just one little problem: getting to this final blowout is a slog through mediocrity.

This is a production trying to be too many things at once. It wants to be a gritty war movie, yet undercuts its own efforts with a lighter, sometimes comedic blockbuster approach to several scenes. The tone is also hindered by the inclusion of seemingly every possible in-joke and reference. It aims to expand the franchise lore, but dwells too much on filling in timeline blind spots and plot holes (the reason the original Death Star has such an obvious weak spot is revealed, for example) than new and interesting storytelling. It’s also rather cluttered with cameos that add nothing to the narrative. Even marquee star Forrest Whitaker seems only in the movie to connect it to the popular cartoon series (and like Bryan Cranston in director Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, is in it much less than we were led to believe).

Everyone remembers how the 1977 original revolved around the stolen Death Star plans. Well, Rogue One tells us how the Rebel Alliance got a hold of those plans. It was the work of a ragtag group of rebellious souls, led by the iconoclastic Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), whose military scientist father (Mads Mikkelsen) was kidnapped by the Empire and forced to design the battle station. But stealing the plans is no easy task, requiring a dangerous mission into an Imperial stronghold, in the same mold as so many World War II pictures featuring a colorful cast of characters.

Except, the characters here are all one-note, or no-note. There’s little appeal and even less depth or backstory to let us know what drives them, even by the slim standards of war ensemble genre films. About all they do is yell at each other spelling out the plot points, or go through the motions through speeches and scenes you’ve seen in other movies, including other Star Wars movies. Only Alan Tudyk as (ironically) a digitally-created droid displays any bit of personality, though still, C-3PO he ain’t. As for Ben Mendelsohn’s bad guy, he’s upstaged by the returning Grand Moff Tarkin, which wouldn’t be so embarrassing if it were the real Peter Cushing instead of a hologram. 

The Force Awakens was far from original in its environments and action sequences, but one could argue that’s because it was aiming to be a nostalgia fest. Rogue One has no excuse for it. All the new planets and sets are rather drab with dull colors, not to mention derivative of earlier Star Wars and countless other sci-fi movies. Even the grand finale’s location looks like it was filmed on a tropical resort, one where they barely even bothered to disguise the swimming areas. And for the first half or more, when there’s action, it’s mostly standard shaky cam and uninspired CGI.

The only part of the whole thing that looks like it was made with care and skill is the final act. It’s as if they came up with this ambitious sequence and worked backward from it. And they pulled it off wonderfully; I’ll reiterate that it’s a fun and exciting 30 minutes or so. But it might have been better off as a short film, rather than the climax of an otherwise thoroughly unexceptional work.

The Handmaiden

South Korea’s Park Chan-wook is probably best known to American audiences for making movies with brutality that would make Hollywood wince. That’s a vast oversimplification, as he’s far from a simple gory schlock-master. Intertwined with the sometimes extreme content in his work is deep, palpable emotion that’s as visceral on the viewer as the most shocking moments. This is perhaps best exemplified by 2003’s Oldboy, arguably his most famous picture. The film is quite violent and depraved, but emotionally shattering and moving in ways few pictures are. It’s one of the best movies of the 21^st century (the American remake, no so much). 

The Handmaiden reigns in the extremity to a degree (most, though not all, of it is implied or described rather than depicted). As a result, its passions burn even brighter, enrapturing the viewer and exhibiting a total control of their emotions that’s awesome. This is a great picture, at different times romantic, mysterious, disturbing, sorrowful, and sexy as hell.

The film adapts the Sarah Waters novel Fingersmith, changing the setting from Victorian England to Japanese-occupied Korea prior to World War II. The plot follows a young Korean thief (Kim Tae-ri) who becomes handmaiden to a shut-in Japanese heiress (Kim Min-hee), the niece of a cruel, perverted nobleman and rare book collector (Cho Jin-woong). Her employment is secretly part of a scheme to convince the heiress to marry a Korean conman posing a Japanese Count (Ha Jung-woo), so they can dump her in a mental asylum and steal her fortune. This plan is complicated, however, when a mutual attraction develops between lady and servant.

There’s much more to it, of course. The plotting has the definite construction of a thriller, presenting two side-by-side narratives covering the same events from different viewpoints. This approach sees story points or progression that would seem natural in a linear narrative become unexpected twists and revelations. Except, piecing together the jumbled storyline isn’t really the point.

Rather, this is an intense trek across the emotional spectrum. At different times, the film shifts from romantic to tragic, from desperate to uplifting. There’s even some sick humor thrown in to throw the viewer off. One truly doesn’t know what emotional peak or valley they’ll travel next, but feels every single one of them. It’s amazing work from the two lead actresses, letting the audience intimately know their feelings, yet detached and secretive enough to give no hint of what’s in store before it happens. And their chemistry is white-hot, but with a touching sweetness instead of steamy salaciousness.

This time, the not-safe-for-Hollywood material isn’t violence. This is a very sexual film, though consistent with Park’s direction, not just for the sake of meaningless titillation. There’s a deliberate repugnance to much of it, particularly in regards to the male characters’ tastes. The men in this story are awful people, viewing women as little more than instruments to fulfill their wants. This sharply contrasts with the impassioned moments between the two women, a stark bit of beauty in the otherwise ugly world they’ve known. The love scenes between the two aren’t so affecting because they’re graphic or incredibly sexy (though they certainly are), but because they’re an emotional release for the characters as well as the viewer.

Despite some of the off-putting subject matter, the film is absolutely beautiful, in both spirit and to look at with its gorgeous landscapes and period recreations of Korea and Japan. Particularly stunning is its cinematography, a mix of lush color and sinister (and moody) dark amplifying the feeling of any given scene. Aesthetic aside, though, it’s the picture’s raw emotional power that makes it such a fulfilling experience.

South Park season 20

**SPOILERS HEREIN**

Is it too soon to declare South Park’s adoption of season-long storytelling a failure?

We’re only three seasons into this experiment, and they only just (sorta) pulled it off successfully last year. I wouldn’t call this season a success, but it’s hard to write it off completely because great comedy and sharp satire has coexisted along with some really bad, sometimes painfully unfunny stuff since the show’s earliest days. Such is kind of the nature of the beast for a show produced in less than a week’s time. However, this season suggests that the show is much better-suited to a standalone episodic structure (and tonight’s episode title would seem to be an admission).

As a continuing narrative, it was a mess of ideas that never really gelled. A lot of them were just bad ideas. Cartman's dreams of going to Mars didn’t have much to say and weren’t very humorous. Neither was the riff on Colin Kaepernick or the subplot of Butters and and the boys’ inappropriate protest, both of which were left dangling. The election stuff was pretty bland (the show recovered well enough from having to make changes at the last minute due to the result, but it was apparent they were unprepared to tackle it). The commentary on women and comedy came off as way out-of-touch, like Matt Stone and Trey Parker were vaguely aware of the subject but didn’t know enough to say anything about it.

The member berries were a great idea, one of the show’s surreal allegories that’s close to brilliant. This device made commentary as astute as any the show has ever given us, exploring how nostalgia is like a drug that clouds our minds and holds us back. The show presented a smart slice of cultural criticism by positing that obsession with “sacred” stuff from one's childhood and the desire to return to a better bygone era that never really existed aren’t that far removed from one another.

But the most cutting plot, for me, was Kyle’s dad Gerald as the king of the Internet trolls. Think about it: The man attacks targets of all kinds simply to get a laugh. Despite having a following that insists his actions mean something, he's adamant that he does what he does only because it’s funny. But when the Danish anti-trolling program is revealed to be the biggest troll job of all, one that will hurt many people, suddenly he doesn’t think it’s so funny anymore.

One can see Gerald as a vessel for Parker and Stone. And though none of what they’ve done over the years amounts to abuse, their comic viewpoint has always been “screw everybody,” rarely taking any issue seriously and never above mining a laugh from it even if it’s something that shouldn’t be laughed about. But now, the world suddenly seems less friendly and less stable than before. This plotline almost seems like they’re apologizing for displaying this attitude for so many years, and for all the much meaner nihilistic trolls out there who’ve applied this approach to comedy to real life, and hold the show up as one of their edgy, un-P.C. inspirations.

A good idea, but it could have been a single episode, or at most a two-part episode. Same goes for any of the aforementioned ideas. And even if the bad ones still didn’t work by themselves, standalone episodes would have allowed the season to more easily move on from the bad. The late 90s and early aughts are considered the show's classic era; no one dwells on awful entries from that period like “Quest for Ratings” or “City on the Edge of Forever” because the show would reset every week.

At the end of the day, the show’s problems are more structural than of substance. In outlook and humor, it’s the same old South Park, funny (not quite as much as a decade or so ago, but still funny) and full of ideas (good and bad ones). Maybe it’s just the member berries talking, but rather than trying to tie them together into some bigger whole, the show would benefit by going back to tackling one issue at a time.

Bad Santa 2

2003’s Bad Santa was cringe comedy at its most cringeworthy, a “feel-bad” movie that not-so-facetiously embodied the term. Its humor lay in the vulgarity clashing with family-friendly holiday aesthetic, but it really landed because there was a real desperation underneath. For all the laughs (and there were plenty), the movie never let you forget that Billy Bob Thornton’s mall Santa thief was a pathetic alcoholic mess, and the not-all-there kid he befriends (Brett Kelly) a heartbreakingly sad case.

Thirteen years later, the envelope for R-rated comedy has been pushed further and further, to the point where little of what happens in the film would be truly shocking today. So, the belated sequel ups its game to keep up with the times. The dirty gags are grosser and more pronounced. The “horrible” jokes and un-P.C. barbs are more in-your-face about it. The raunchy sex, while showing little skin, is more explicit.

Only this time, it’s about as real as a pre-lit plastic tree. Thornton’s protagonist is practically a living cartoon, never really impaired by the gallons of booze he downs unless the joke calls for it. He, as well as his criminal co-conspirators (Tony Cox as his dwarf partner, Kathy Bates as his rotten mother), are less detestable human beings than an artificial sort of nasty for comedy’s sake.

As the film opens, life has not improved for drunken lowlife Willie Soke (Thornton) since last time. His mother and his recently-paroled ex-partner manage to lure him to Chicago to participate in their latest scheme: working as bell-ringing Santas for a charity in order to rob it during a concert on Christmas Eve. Willie’s reluctant at first (and that’s an understatement), but through planning the job and the spirit of the season, he starts to reconnect with his family, real or surrogate.

I’m not exactly kidding about that schmaltzy stuff. The original went very light on the sentiment, and what bit it had only highlighted the contrast with the dark and dirty. But this time, the film tries to sincerely squeeze some unironic holiday cheer into the mix, and presents the closest thing to a heartfelt ending a movie like this could possibly get. And it’s the fakest thing in the entire picture, which is really saying something in a movie where the main players are basically cartoon characters.

Phoniness aside, it’s mostly funny in a lowbrow cartoonish way. The cast plays off each other well and is visibly having a good time letting loose (especially Bates), even though the film's idea of “loose” isn’t that outrageous in 2016. The only exception is Kelly, who comes off like a Z-grade knockoff of Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover. His severe social ineptitude was hilarious (if a little painful) as a kid, but it’s just grating and a little uncomfortable (not in a funny way) from an adult. 

Bad Santa still endures as a demented December classic for a certain audience (I count myself among them). Bad Santa 2 is about as memorable and special as a chocolate Santa from a gas station. But, a chocolate Santa is still enjoyable enough while you're consuming it.

Doctor Strange

Its excellent Netflix output has so far been Marvel’s main avenue for expanding its horizons (mostly into darker, grown-up territory). The company’s film division has lately been mixing up its successful formula with new genres, however, and Doctor Strange is arguably the cinematic universe’s most ambitious feature yet.

Trippy stuff like alternate dimensions and the warping of time and reality are the film’s main attraction. Such subjects seem to always invite a self-serious, arguably pretentious approach, the picture and its makers practically preaching to the audience how smart and great they are. Doctor Strange needs no such sermonizing, tackling the material with a confidence so assured it's able to have a smarmy, joke-cracking attitude about the whole thing and not miss a beat. It would almost seem arrogant if the movie weren’t so much fun.

The film gives us a hero to match in Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), a master neurosurgeon with an ego that rivals Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. After a deadly car crash damages the nerves in his hands, he travels to Nepal to seek treatment at the mysterious site of Kamar-Taj. Upon his arrival, he finds a cabal of sorcerers led by the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) who conjure interdimensional energy to defend the world. Strange trains with his hosts and develops new powers and abilities, conveniently just when renegade sorcerers led by Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) seek to summon the evil force Dormammu from the Dark Dimension.

Yes, strange, indeed. Novice viewers or casual Marvel fans might not comprehend every bit of what’s going on, though the film navigates through the narrative with reasonable clarity. And frankly, the sights we see on that journey are much more engaging than understanding it completely, anyway. The combat through kaleidoscopic mazes of bending space and time are some of the coolest, most imaginative use of visual effects in some time. It’s also very funny, at least as quip-filled as Guardians of the Galaxy. And aside from the unfortunate whitewashing of Swinton’s character (sorry, but simply referring to her as “Celtic” does not rectify things), the movie boasts one of the bests casts of any single Marvel picture (as opposed to team-ups like The Avengers).

Above all, it’s different enough from other superhero fare that it feels fresh and enjoyable. It may ultimately be a lighter film than its trippy elements would suggest, less heavy than the character drama some of the Avengers have gone through recently. But in a genre that produces around a half-dozen films a year now, something that feels new and exciting (on top of being a blast visually and otherwise) is a rare gem.

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders

It’s always fun to revisit the old 1960s Batman from time to time, chuckling at its wackiness and at how far comic book adaptations have come. A new adventure starring that not-so-Dark Knight would have been a good time any year. But after the relentlessly broody Batman v Superman and the nastiness of The Killing Joke, Return of the Caped Crusaders is an especially welcome and refreshing palate cleanser.

The film even subtly addresses super serious versions of the character, with a storyline that sees Adam West’s boy scout Bat inexplicably turn bad. It’s amusing seeing what constitutes dark and gritty in this lighter continuity, and how even a tiny shred of Frank Miller-esque ruthlessness is such a rough fit in it. It also astutely highlights how its campier take isn’t that much sillier than going full-on grim and gritty just for the sake of it.

Also back are series alumni Burt Ward as Robin and Julie Newmar as Catwoman, while The Joker (Jeff Bergman), Penguin (William Salyers), and The Riddler (Wally Wingert) somewhat resemble their 60s counterparts. It’s a fairly typical absurd plot pitting the Dynamic Duo against their dastardly foes, albeit on a much larger scale than the TV show (animation doesn’t have the budget limits that 60s network fare had, I guess). The iconic theme and word graphics that follow each punch are there (the latter making for one of the best gags once adjusted for the eviler Batman), as are the comically perilous situations and ridiculous dei ex machina leading out of them. Also scattered about are tiny references that pop culture junkies can have fun trying to spot, including one or two that surprisingly snuck their way into a film as PG as it gets.

If there’s one complaint, it’s that it never quite arises to the laugh-a-minute zaniness of the show. And in a way, you can’t fault the movie for this; no matter how goofy things get, nothing is ever quite as absurd in animation as seeing it performed by live-action actors with a straight face and zero special effects. Also, some of the gags (particularly the famous recurring “spray can” for every situation, which is repeated a few times) play like winking directly at the audience. Such plot points were much more hilarious when the old show simply went with them like they weren’t totally laughable.

These are far from death blows, though. And considering the state of DC’s live action films, I’m willing to grade on a curve. Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders is a joyous, funny piece of work for Bat fans of all ages, and the first Batman film in a while that meets any of those criteria.

A announcement regarding "South Park" Season 20

Since beginning this blog, I have reviewed each new episode of South Park, usually within 24 hours of airing. However, for the new season starting tonight, I have decided to instead wait to review the season as a whole.

My reasons mostly have to do with the fact that over the last two seasons, the show has transitioned from standalone single-episode plots to season-long storytelling. I've found that series with a continuing narrative lend themselves better to reviews of a complete season than of individual episodes. Simply put, not every part is equal in its completeness or importance; for every "Full Measure" or "Ozymandias," there are bridge, filler, or loose end-tying episodes.

Also, my personal schedule this fall may present uncertainty about whether or not I'll be able to view and review the show on time each week. And for a show that's known for being nearly up-to-the-day in its timeliness, I feel that a late review, even a mere few days late, is already obsolete.

So, I'll be back with a full recap and review at the end of the season, and possibly with one at the halfway point. I'll also share my thoughts on each episode on Twitter when I watch them.

If that's not enough for you, well...

Kubo and the Two Strings

Kubo and the Two Strings is one of the most remarkable works of animation I’ve ever seen.

A general trait of stop-motion animation is that there’s a definite sense of, for lack of a better word, unreality about it. It may not be as realistic or mobile as computer animation, but rather than a flaw, this quality adds to the make-believe feeling of a stop-motion feature, be it the whimsical sense of humor that pervades Wallace and Gromit, or the fantastical aura of a fantasy film.

And then there’s Kubo, which the viewer could mistake for a computer-animated work if they didn’t know better. The picture is a feast of gorgeous sights, full of fantastic monsters, metamorphosing works of magic, and origami creations that form and come to life before our eyes, all on a canvas populated with characters as expressive and alive as any digital performance from Andy Serkis. All this would be impressive done with CGI, but as handmade stop-motion goes, it’s absolutely jaw-dropping.

The visual experience alone is enough, but the picture also offers a story to match. In it, the title character (Art Parkinson) is a boy who lives in ancient Japan with his mother (Charlize Theron), regaling stories of his samurai father’s exploits to the local villagers. But when his evil twin aunts (Rooney Mara) find and attempt to kidnap him, he’s forced to flee his home and find his father’s samurai armor, helmet, and sword to battle his evil grandfather the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes). Joining Kubo on his quest are a wise monkey (Theron) and a warrior beetle (Matthew McConaughey).

Though it may sound like a simple adventure tale, it takes some smart and original turns and shows a wide range of emotions, at different times funny, happy, sad, and tension-filled. Such feeling is bolstered by the animation, which finely tunes the mood of each scene. It’s fun in some, frightful in others, and melancholy at times in a way relatively little kid or even adult movies achieve. It’s a beautiful work in both spirit and aesthetic, both elements intertwining with one another perfectly throughout.

Even though CGI has mostly usurped stop-motion’s place in animated films, there’s still a quaint warmth about the medium, like something made by hand with love and care versus a mass-produced product. Well, there’s nothing quaint about Kubo, but it certainly has the feeling of something unique and special. This is truly a film for all ages, full of life, wonder, and action for kids, while also providing thoughtful ideas and well-developed characters that will appeal to adults. Whichever column the viewer falls under, this is not one to be missed.

War Dogs

War Dogs sees director Todd Phillips aiming for his The Big Short moment. Which is to say, a filmmaker known for comedies (as The Big Short’s director Adam McKay was) attempting to go serious with a piece about a timely and contentious issue, sold under the façade of a bro-tastic comedy. Peel away that shell, is there a similarly brilliant, fierily polemical piece of Oscar-worthy gold? No, but there is ample evidence that Phillips has a strong dramatic picture somewhere in him.

The subject is war, circa the second term of George W. Bush. After putting an end to those controversial no-bid contracts you might’ve heard about on the news at the time, the U.S. military started purchasing weapons and equipment from smaller outfitters. Meaning, the film posits, that they were willing to buy from any average Joe able to get their hands on guns. The movie tells the true story of two such Joes, struggling Miami twentysomething David Packouz (Miles Teller) and his sleazy childhood pal Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), who dove head-first into this market, making millions procuring weapons through methods ranging from shockingly legal to blatantly illegal.

The film is clearly shooting for an outrageous and blackly satirical take on a grim subject, something a prestige filmmaker like, say, Martin Scorsese would deliver (similarities to The Wolf of Wall Street beyond the casting of Hill abound). Well, Phillips frankly isn’t on that level yet. The small narrative and structural touches meant to convey sophistication and respectability are, in fact, elements mostly played out at this point (interspersed title cards, literally made up of lines of dialogue that are spoken aloud soon after, are freshmen-year-film-school unoriginal). The misadventures of the two leads onscreen also don’t seem quite as shocking as the film was probably going for, and aren’t as funny as anything in Phillips’ straight-up comedies. Though to be sure, there are moments that are amusing in a cringe-inducing way.

It’s when the film starts on the commentary that has me at a critical stalemate. There is a definite sincerity to the picture’s disgust with the world it depicts. But it’s decidedly underscored by a striking sense of naiveté. It’s as if the filmmakers, and by extension the film itself, can’t comprehend their subject and their anger at it enough to form the clear, unapologetic viewpoint required for an effective polemic. Then again, I’m not sure if this is a result of a poor grip on their outrage, or if it’s the point of the entire thing, that this world is so tangled and without sense that it’s hard to direct outrage in a single direction.

The latter possibility is reflected in Teller’s performance, a comparatively earnest one showing a mostly decent person lured into temptation (the real Packouz apparently supports the film, so his depiction is the rosier of the two). He’s mostly sympathetic, but there comes a point where the extent of the character’s blindness to the business he’s in mightily strains believability. Also, it’s funny how his conscience never asks the tough questions, and only kicks in when his girlfriend (an underused Ana de Armas) gets on his case. Hill (whose real-life counterpart is suing the filmmakers) is the much more convincing one simply because he’s got absolutely no sympathetic or redeeming qualities at all, and yet is very funny and a mesmerizing presence. His comedy chops are already known, but between War Dogs and The Wolf of Wall Street, Hollywood might have a new go-to guy for scumbag parts.

Sausage Party

A general rule in comedy seems to be that you can do things in animation you can’t do with real people. This is why, say, South Park frequently gets away with being politically incorrect to degrees that might get a real-world comedian in trouble, and vulgar in ways that would land a live-action product an NC-17. 

Sausage Party leans heavily on that assumption. With the P.C. heat being off of it by virtue of being a cartoon (one where the characters aren’t even human), the film goes for every easy joke. A Jewish bagel (Edward Norton) and a Middle-Eastern lavash (David Krumholtz) are bickering side characters, for example. There’s a liquor bottle (Bill Hader) depicted as a Native American shaman, and a Mexican-accented taco (Salma Hayek) who’s also a lesbian (if you can’t connect the dots here, the movie does for you). And Nick Kroll voices a feminine product who lives up to his name in every sense of the word.

None of these caricatures seem to be coming from a mean place; Seth Rogen and his usual gang of collaborators may be dirty, but one thing they are not is mean (with the sometimes-exception of Danny McBride, gloriously so). But many of the gags are so obvious, the physical embodiment of puns that make you groan a little. So are the sex jokes, taking every dirty lark about phallic-shaped food you remember from middle school lunch hour to its logical extreme.

It’s very juvenile stuff. It’s also pretty damn funny.

You could call it Toy Story with food. Only instead of simply adding R-rated jokes to the Pixar-esque premise of sentient objects, it cleverly examines some of the darker and more adult possibilities such a world might suggest. In this case, all the living products in a supermarket believe the shoppers are gods, and that being bought is being chosen to go to Heaven. This bubble is burst, however, when a traumatized returned honey mustard bottle (McBride) relates how this is all a lie. After hearing this, sausage Frank (Rogen) and his bun girlfriend Brenda (Kristen Wiig) travel across the store to find out the truth, while purchased sausage Barry (Michael Cera) sees it firsthand and tries to make his way back to the store to warn everybody.

Yes, a movie about foulmouthed hot dogs has some things to say about religion, although unless it meets the criteria for fulfilling one's antitheist confirmation bias, it’s probably a little too general to be called satire. Instead, the film is much more spot-on in its takedown of all the tropes of family animation, from the look and plot elements of a Pixar picture, to Disney-like musical numbers, to its caricatures aping the indelicate ethnic villains or comic relief in so much children’s entertainment. Also, with this cast, of course there's plenty of stoner humor, with some truly hilarious drug jokes worked inventively into the plot.

What can I say? Rogen and company have an undeniable charm about them, and it still shines through the faces of anthropomorphic edibles. As a genre parody and as just another excuse to spend 90 joyous minutes with these guys, Sausage Party is a treat.

Suicide Squad

I’m convinced that DC’s budding film universe is, in fact, a skewed, nightmarish alternate reality (an Elsewords universe, if you will). That would certainly explain why its version of Superman, who’s supposed to be the symbol of hope and righteousness, is instead a dour, mopey, hated figure, and why its Batman (Ben Affleck) is an obsessive, near-pathological zealot.

Through this lens, it makes sense that a movie starring the villains feels the most like a regular superhero story, and at least on that level, Suicide Squad is DC’s closest example to a comic book blockbuster done properly. It isn’t much greater than just average-level good, but give them a bit of credit: one picture at a time, they’re getting better, very slowly but surely.

The film takes place in the aftermath of the events of Batman v Superman. As preparation for the possibility of an evil superhuman threat, unscrupulous government official Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) proposes assembling a team of captured criminals with superpowers or otherwise exceptional abilities. The group consists of: sharpshooting assassin Deadshot (Will Smith), the Joker’s (Jared Leto) screw-loose lover Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), pyrokinetic ex-gangbanger El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), Aussie bank robber Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), reptilian Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and martial artist Katana (Karen Fukuhara), all under the command of Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). The team is put to the test when another of Waller’s captives, the witch Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), unleashes her powers upon a city.

The plotting is a big mess. It’s very evident the picture was hacked up and put back together into what was considered the leanest and most marketable final product. So, pieces of backstories and dangling subplots litter the narrative. But at the very least, all the different threads that are there coalesce around a single point, even if it’s as completely simple a storyline as “kill the bad guy." That’s more than can be said for Batman v Superman, which seemed like six or seven different movies playing at once.

The casting is something of a mixed bag. Davis is tremendous, evoking a stubborn, love-to-hate vibe in the audience that’s totally appropriate. And Smith is his usual fun, funny self. As for the rest of the bunch, they’re mostly without a moment in the spotlight to call their own, victims of an overstuffed product cut down to a more sellable feature length. A few (Croc and Katana, especially) even the film seems to forget they're there until it needs their abilities. The weakest points, though, are the antagonists. Delevinge is just not a very good bad guy, as soulless as any empty CGI creation, and Leto’s Joker fulfills all the fears detractors have voiced since his design was revealed. He comes off as little more than the most vanilla of gangster tropes, only one who’s also an annoyingly obsessive Dark Knight fanboy who insists on constantly (and badly) imitating Heath Ledger’s iconic look and voice.

But all eyes were on Robbie’s Harley Quinn heading into this movie (in more ways than one), and the results on the screen leave me a little torn. It’s undoubtedly a funny, compelling performance that suggests she could carry a movie. But the picture treats her rather shabbily, the camera following her body, alternately tight-clothed or barely clothed, with a leering eye. Also, it retains the problematic depiction of her abusive relationship with the Joker as oddly romantic. The depiction could use a lot of work, but it’s a credit to Robbie that she’s able to deliver in spite of the limiting and objectifying parameters the film gave her. 

Suicide Squad’s messiness extends beyond just the storytelling and character unevenness. The structure is like that of a trailer, with manic cutting, random music snippets, and frequent audience priming and buildup, for payoffs that are mostly either delayed or underwhelming. The tone varies between an intense action movie, smartass comedy, black comedy, sad tragedy, and even horror movie with little consistency. Yet, from this mess emerges one thing that has so far eluded the DC films: fun. Loud, dumb, garish, not particularly exceptional or memorable, but fun nonetheless. That alone shows that DC is improving, even if only by increments per picture. At this rate, they might give Marvel a run for its money sometime this century.

Batman: The Killing Joke

The legacy of Batman: The Killing Joke is a complicated one. The 1988 one-shot comic, written by the great Alan Moore before he swore off mainstream work, is controversial for being one of the most violent Batman stories, namely for the personal, sexual nature of its brutality towards the character Barbara Gordon. But it’s frankly that same brutality which makes its depiction of the Joker so unsparing and memorable, along with the haunting, fairly iconic artwork from Brian Bolland. It’s a story that needed an R rating to be translated to the screen the right way, even in animation.

The comic offers a possible origin of the Crown Prince of Crime in a series of flashbacks, while meditating on the hopeless, fatalistic dynamic between the Dark Knight and his greatest nemesis. The narrative for exploring that dynamic, however, involves the Joker committing some truly horrendous acts against Barbara, in a an elaborate plot to psychologically torture her father Commissioner Gordon. Criticism has been leveled against it for not just depicting violence against women, but depicting it solely as the impetus for the Batman-Joker storyline and then promptly moving on from it, despite the fact that Barbara is the victim of the comic’s most heinous suffering.

The film addresses Barbara's (voiced by Tara Strong) raw story deal in the most head-scratching way. It begins in her Batgirl days, with her on the trail of a mobster (Maury Sterling) who has a sick crush on her. The implication seems to be that giving her a blatantly sexist enemy to defeat somehow cancels out the trauma she receives later. That’s wrong-headed enough, but even worse is that the teacher-student dynamic between Batgirl and Batman (Kevin Conroy) is given a sexual tension, culminating in (seriously) a love scene that would be creepy (regular canon casts Bats as more of a parental figure) if it weren’t so laughable. These plot points add nothing but an air of sexism without even addressing what happens to Barbara in the Joker storyline. Or for that matter, anything in the Joker storyline; the first 20 minutes or so seem like a completely unrelated, unremarkable episode of the animated series tacked on to stretch the plot to feature length, only with a little more blood and swearing.

Minus that opening detour (and a happy mid-credits epilogue that defuses the horror about as much as the Ernest Hemingway quote at the end of Seven), however, you’ll find the greatest Killing Joke adaptation one could hope for. Bolland’s artwork comes to vivid, wicked life, retaining enough of the iconic look but changing things ever so slightly so as to burn the images onto the viewer’s brain anew. And Mark Hamill has never been better as the Joker, whom he makes possibly even more horrifying than the comic by bringing gleeful humor to the cruel proceedings. It is, like the comic, haunting, and horrifying.

It’s also, admittedly, just as problematic. In fact, its clumsy and misguided attempt to rectify things with the superfluous Batgirl drama, if anything, only creates more targets for its critics. Still, there’s no denying that a great adaptation of exactly what the comic is lies within this film.

Star Trek Beyond

A truth about Star Trek that holds for every incarnation: It’s good and bad. At its best, it’s capable of smart sci-fi, at different times cerebral and emotive. But the films as well as each individual series have also presented their share of frankly idiotic premises, forced and silly allegory, and flat-out bad stuff. And after two good movies, that truth is catching up with this rebooted series. Star Trek Beyond isn’t close to depths of, say, “Spock’s Brain” bad, but there is a noticeable leveling-off.

Instead of rebuilding continuity, this one returns to a standalone episodic structure that served the old films (mostly) well. But its plotting is as generic, bad-guy-of-the-week as it gets: While on their five-year exploration mission, the Enterprise crew travels into uncharted space in response to an alien distress call. Predictably, they come across a hostile enemy, get stranded and separated on a distant planet, and must race against time to stop an alien menace (Idris Elba) from unleashing an unspeakably destructive ancient weapon on the worlds of the Federation.

And, that’s about all there is to it. Oh, it looks good. There are some creative and uniquely designed environments and spaceships, which make for some exciting battles. But beyond the blockbuster flash, the film has nothing to say, none of the big, interesting ideas (even interestingly bad ones) that are the Trek brand. The closest thing to one is a last-minute twist, but it’s a twist so weak and inconsequential that the movie would have played little different if it were written out of the script.

Rather, director Justin Lin tries to apply his ensemble action-comedy formula he perfected with the Fast & Furious series. The results include admittedly good sequences (the initial attack on and boarding of the Enterprise in particular). But a dirt bike chase in the 23^rd century? It was already ridiculous when they did it with a dune buggy in the Next Generation crew’s kiss-off Nemesis. An even worse sin is making a Beastie Boys song into, quite literally, an integral plot device. Going gleefully silly and over-the-top and relishing in it works for a franchise built on car chases, but it just seems off for Star Trek. Way off.

Another thing that’s true of all Trek is that, like a starship, it’s only as good as its crew. This is why the original 1960s cast still ranks as the best, as they could do the good stuff but also ride out the bad as comedy, and sometimes even turn dreck into gold. This crew, while far from the icons their predecessors were, is pretty damn good, which is good news for Beyond. Pine makes a fun and solid Captain Kirk, if decidedly un-Shatner-like. Also, the cantankerous interplay of Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), the comedic heart of the series when the late Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley played the roles, is played to the fullest, giving the picture its best source of humor. The cast makes a completely average summer product eminently watchable, which is more than can be said about some of the lowest points this franchise has seen over 50 years.

Ghostbusters

This could have been just another reboot of an old Hollywood property like we’ve seen a million times (and as it turns out, a pretty good one). Instead, it’s awash in a nasty sort of anti-hype after being attacked at every step of its production and marketing, by coordinated online misogyny for recasting the leads as female, or by nominal adults who contend that remaking Ghostbusters with any new players besmirches a beloved piece of their childhood (which really just seems like a sad attempt to legitimize said misogyny).

This sad turn of events is subtly acknowledged by the film itself, with a few barbs in the screenplay whose real targets are quite obvious. Also, Neil Casey’s bad guy in some ways embodies the type of socially inept, woman-hating troll with delusions of sophistication and superiority, not unlike the hordes of forum-dwellers who decided they hated this picture as soon as they heard about it. It does not dwell on the subject, though, and instead bests its haters the right way by being a well-made, well-acted, frequently hilarious movie.

It’s a clean reboot this time, with no narrative connections to the first two films (though references and cameos abound). In it, Kristen Wiig plays a scientist who loses her prestigious professorship at Columbia after a book on the paranormal she co-authored years earlier resurfaces. Coincidently, while confronting her estranged collaborator (Melissa McCarthy) about the matter, an occult-obsessed loner (Casey) begins summoning spirits around Manhattan. So, the two scientists, along with an eccentric inventor (Kate McKinnon) and a subway worker (Leslie Jones) with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s paranormal history, begin a small operation hunting apparitions run amok.

Even with its high concept and (for the time) impressive special effects, the original Ghostbusters was more understated than people seem to remember. Much of the fun and charm was in simply watching some of the best comedy actors at the high point of their careers interact with each other in situations both normal and fantastical. This new version carries on this tradition, with most of the laughs coming from the four superbly funny leads playing off one another. And they’re not simply gender-swapped versions of the original four. Each character is funny in ways different from their 1984 counterpart, and their interactions are funny in different ways. Despite hitting some of the same plot beats, each set piece is also new and original, never a retread and always funny. And Chris Hemsworth is completely hysterical as their indescribably dimwitted male secretary.

If there’s one thing the original did decidedly better, it’s that it kept a leash on the special effects, using them in funny ways but never overusing them. This one goes a little crazy with them in the final act. One might call it a spoof of overblown, CGI-cluttered action sequences, but it plays a little too straight to cut it as good parody. Fortunately, though, the jokes and banter make it to the other side of the mayhem, and things get back on track quickly with some truly great one-liners in a film full of them.

This Ghostbusters is how a reboot should be done, taking a familiar premise and doing its own new things with it. The result is not only something that doesn’t feel immediately stale, but one of the most fun pieces of entertainment in a summer that’s so far been pretty underwhelming. And yeah, I’ll admit it: after all the unwarranted hate this one got, it feels good to say that.

Finding Dory

Aside from dominating the animated movie game for some time (though Disney’s other animation arm presented a strong challenge for the crown this year with the great Zootopia), Pixar has also been notable for very, very grown-up pathos in a handful of its features. There was the gaping fear of loss and obsolescence pervading Toy Story 3, or the heartbreaking first few minutes of Up. Apparently, many audiences also felt last year’s Inside Out was a bevy of emotions, though while I enjoyed the film, it didn’t quite get to me like it did for some.

As for Finding Dory…well, by and large, it’s the type of joyful, vibrantly animated delight one would expect from Pixar. But pieces of it tread towards strong, even dark emotional territory. The picture nearly gets there, too, before hitting the brakes at the last minute.

In the film, set not long after Finding Nemo, the amnesiac blue title fish (Ellen DeGeneres) starts to regain memories of her childhood and her parents (Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy). To find them, she and her clownfish friends Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence) travel across the ocean to an aquarium in California. Unfortunately, once there, Dory is caught, placed in a storage tank, and scheduled to be transferred across the country. While she enlists the help of the park’s residents in looking for her family, Nemo and Marlin hatch a rescue plan, no easy task on dry land.

Brooks is as on game as last time, if a little less comically cowardly, but it’s DeGeneres who carries the film, stepping up from comic relief to singular lead smoothly and effortlessly. Wisely, though, returning characters outside of the main cast are kept down to cameos or framing scenes, keeping things fresh with new faces and locations instead of treading the same waters. Each new scene and sequence is a fun and clever surprise, and every new player a funny addition, the standout being Ed O’Neill applying his perfected gruff deadpan to a broken, seen-it-all octopus. It all moves at a more urgent pace than Nemo due to time constraints laid out by the plot, but never seems too breathless or frantic like so much children’s entertainment.

It’s in the moments between the big, bold, fun stuff, however, that the film delivers arguably Pixar’s most potent emotion thus far. Flashbacks of the young Dory (Sloane Murray) lost and alone, unable to remember enough to even be helped, are devastating, and I’d imagine a little terrifying for younger viewers. In a series notable for its bright, lush colors, these scenes are darker, greyer, and muted, giving them a subtle intensity. And though there are still jokes at the expense of the title character’s short-term memory loss, its depiction is more sympathetic and reasonably realistic (aside from, you know, the fact that she’s a fish instead of a human). It’s often aggravating and dispiriting, but other times, it’s a challenge that feels rewarding to overcome. And yet, that positive feeling is mostly fleeting, for what it most often reveals is a sense that Dory’s quest will inevitably end in disappointment, lost on the innocently naïve fish but not the audience.

Things are ultimately wrapped up conveniently and nicely; toy with our feelings though they have, I don’t think Pixar (or the big mouse that owns them) is ready for a decidedly unhappy ending. And that works just fine, because the picture has so much else to enjoy. Still, after pushing the envelope for much of the movie, one wonders if Finding Dory would have worked as well (or better) if they had gone all the way. I think it would have.

Independence Day: Resurgence

1996’s Independence Day endures in the pop culture consciousness because everything about it was huge: the spaceships, the explosions, the spectacle, the special effects (the perfect moment in time where old-fashioned model-making met the dawn of CGI), and the personalities. Also, it’s just a complete blast, as fun today as it was 20 years ago (and for me personally, as enjoyable in adulthood as childhood).

How do you top something so big, and really, can it be topped? Independence Day: Resurgence doesn’t hold the answer to either question, not only falling far short of the first film’s legacy, but barely looking like the filmmakers even tried to live up to it. Unless, of course, they’re saving their better ideas for later; in spite of depicting a world where the last 20 years went very differently, one thing the movie couldn’t shake from our world is the blockbuster trend of always setting up for a potential franchise. 

Resurgence catches up with the world two decades after the invasion in the first film. All nations are united in peace. Using leftover alien technology, the planet’s militaries collaborated to create the interplanetary Earth Space Defense in case the invaders should return. What little good it does, because once the baddies show up, the ESD is overwhelmed, much of Earth is devastated, and humanity is once again pushed to the brink.

And it all seems so small. Despite an alien ship bigger than any we saw last time, the destruction-as-spectacle that’s director Roland Emmerich’s specialty feels uncharacteristically insubstantial. Only a single short sequence, in which a futuristic London is toppled by several continents’ worth of landmarks falling from the sky, is memorably impressive. The rest of the brick-and-mortar carnage and the aerial dogfights that follow aren’t exactly inadequate, but all seem rather contained and claustrophobic, something that can rarely be said of Emmerich’s work, good or bad.

That’s not the only failure where its predecessor succeeded. The underlying message of global brotherhood, already a tad cheesy in the first film (not to be unpatriotic, but no, President Bill Pullman’s famous speech is not up there in the American oratory canon), is so forced here. So is the characterization. Whereas the original placed the main characters in simple family units and left them to interact like normal, those in Resurgence lack any natural chemistry even in the easiest, most familiar of roles. Where main character deaths before aroused a sense of tragedy or heroic sacrifice, players new and old are expended without the slightest wisp of feeling, even in another major sacrifice scene (one wonders if the presence of Will Smith would have registered at all had he been included). Comic relief courtesy of Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, and Brent Spiner somewhat works, but also feels tacked-on instead of organic and spontaneous. And whereas simplicity worked best (“the aliens want to kill us and take our planet” was enough), the picture adds unnecessary and fairly ridiculous rules and hints of a greater mythology, blatantly planting seeds for multiple sequels.

The dogfights are passable, at least. Even though they’re decidedly less than his best work, it cannot be said that Emmerich doesn’t know how to direct an action sequence. That much makes Resurgence an average enough two hours indoors avoiding the hot summer weather. Then again, with Fourth of July weekend almost upon us, that time might be better spent catching the classic original on TV.

Money Monster

A note for screenwriters and directors: if your film is aiming to vent some righteous fury at the system, it helps if the vessel for doing so is compelling, charismatic, and heroic. Or at the very least, sympathetic.

Money Monster's vessel for that is regular working stiff Jack O'Connell, who, after losing his life savings, snaps and walks into the Manhattan TV studio of a Jim Cramer-esque financial pundit (George Clooney) with a gun and bomb. As the on-air hostage situation escalates into a worldwide media phenomenon, the show’s director (Julia Roberts) and production team attempt to uncover just why a company touted by the show, and in which the hostage-taker invested, sustained heavy losses.

 
So, it’s angling to be Dog Day Afternoon for the post-Great Recession, cable news era. But, sadly, O’Connell’s no Al Pacino. His desperate gunman ultimately says very little, and comes off as totally out of his depth. He doesn’t even manage a satisfying moment of putting Clooney in his place, or getting the audience to dislike him. And Clooney is really trying to be dislikable, playing to the hilt a caricature cocktail of Wall Street bro, showbiz prima donna, and gasbag pundit. But he acts circles around O’Connell when the two share the screen.

The writing is just as weak, unsubtle and eye roll-inducing even by movie standards of disbelief. When the action leaves the studio to the streets below, the implication is, of course, that this is a rare and unfamiliar event for Clooney’s rich loudmouth, walking amongst the regular people. Yet as obvious as that is, the film ultimately never says a thing about real financial crises of late. The impetus for the story's conflict is revealed as nothing more than generic Hollywood white collar bastardry.

The whole thing is also tonally askew. Moments of moralizing or that are supposed to be heartwarming directly follow moments of tragedy or tension, or at least are supposed to have tension. Jokes are thrown in at the most inappropriate times (a subplot involving a penile enhancer defuses the tension before it’s even really built). Other parts are funny, but seem like they weren’t intended to be funny.

At the very least, Clooney and Roberts are still pros, navigating the jarring shifts in tone and doing what they can in each scene. If nothing else, they give the whole thing a brisk momentum that keeps it from stalling into a total mess. Thanks to them, as well as said humor and overall technical competence, Money Monster could hold some entertainment value as a fun bit of unintended cheese. But as the important, timely message thriller it aspires to be, it’s not even close.

Captain America: Civil War

About the only thing wrong with Captain America: Civil War is the title. Cap’s (Chris Evans) name may be on the thing, and he certainly plays an integral part. But it’s more accurately an Avengers movie, and the strongest individual character arc belongs to Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.). And while the conflict between the characters is gripping, it’s not quite a war on the level of the Civil War comics. This is merely an observation, though, not a complaint, of which I have few.

The film literally namedrops The Empire Strikes Back, as perfect a blockbuster as there’s ever been. Sure, making funny pop culture references is a standard part of the Marvel formula, but it feels like the studio is slyly eliciting comparison to what’s likely the be-all and end-all of movies for many. And you know what? They’ve managed a film that can back up such an audacious claim. Yes, it’s that good.

The movie opens with an Avengers mission in Nigeria that accomplishes its objective, but results in the deaths of many civilians. This latest incident, on top of all the destruction in the previous films, leads the nations of the world to adopt an agreement that would put superheroes under government authority. Tony Stark, restless and guilt-stricken, supports the idea. Captain America, apprehensive that answering to the government could prevent them from saving people, opposes it. This difference of opinion comes to a head and sides are taken when the bombing of a diplomatic gathering is blamed on Cap’s childhood friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), formerly the assassin known as the Winter Soldier.

The Civil War comic event was a months-long conflagration spanning most of the Marvel universe, and was a rather one-sided affair (Stark’s faction acted rather super-villainous, some thought). Smartly, the film takes a different approach, paring the conflict down to a more intimate level and giving both sides compelling arguments and motivations, if not equal points. Despite the side-taking marketing angle (Team Cap or Team Iron Man), rooting interest in the viewer’s chosen team eventually diminishes, giving way to an aura of tragedy that the heroes are coming apart. And the villain (Daniel Brühl) is revealed to be a more thoughtful and sad figure, a nice counter to the (somewhat apt) criticism that Marvel’s baddies are mostly generic one-offs.

Fear not, action fans, for there’s still the big, satisfying slugfest with all the heroes (including a few new ones) we were promised. But it’s the smaller, closer, more personal fights that are truly affecting, so great is the underlying emotion and weight. Evans is still as much the moral rock as he’s ever been as the good captain, and Stan reveals a sad emptiness to his character. But this is inarguably Downey’s movie. This is the finest he’s even been in the series, his tortured soul barely being contained by his smart-aleck exterior. The clashes of character as well as fists add more fuel to the fire with every scene the three share. By the time the picture reaches peak climax, the effect is nearly as tragic, shattering and cathartic as a certain familial reveal in Empire. If Disney didn’t also own Star Wars, Marvel could tell The Force Awakens to eat its heart out, and would be totally justified.

The film also breaks new ground for the series in its structure. Remember how Age of Ultron was so stuffed that it seemed like it was bursting at the seams? Well, turns out Civil War is a bit of a continuation of that storyline, tying up loose ends, closing or moving along some arcs, and giving each new character a moment besides just introductions. What seemed like a narrative high wire act in one picture turns out to work splendidly over two, balancing many character arcs and subplots without becoming too busy or convoluted. It even finds room for whole new players and subplots, such as the strong debut storyline of Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther, or the new Spider-Man (Tom Holland) in what amounts to a preview for the coming Disney-Sony co-production starring the charater (it's enjoyable, but it's still pretty blatantly a preview). And it still works!

As a matter of fact, that leads me to the lone complaint I have. Civil War is the best Avengers movie and best Iron Man movie yet, and could be the best Captain America movie (though The Winter Soldier is still tough to beat). Not only does its unexpected and successful execution of a two-film narrative bode well for Infinity War, but the picture clearly plants seeds and leaves things to be resolved then and there.

And after all that, we have to wait two years to see it.

Green Room

Green Room is a slick, nasty little piece of work. That’s a compliment, I assure you, considering the genre and moral universe this film occupies. It is undoubtedly not for everyone, but for certain audiences—grindhouse horror fans, cult film connoisseurs, or any angry viewer looking to purge a little tenseness and bloodlust—this is a cinematic gold nugget, a movie to seek out and enjoy with a like-minded crowd.

The unfortunate protagonists of this horrific ride are The Ain’t Rights (Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, and Callum Turner), a punk rock outfit eking out a hand-to-mouth existence on the road. They've manage to land the worst gig imaginable: a dive venue and gathering place for a neo-Nazi gang in the backwoods of Oregon. The group’s performance goes off without much incident, until one member unwittingly witnesses a murder backstage. As a result, the band, along with a friend of the victim (Imogen Poots), are held hostage in the club’s green room, in a situation there appears to be no way out of. Well, no peaceful or pretty way, anyway.

There’s a rough-around-the-edges look to the production, befitting the punk rock element of the story and the unceasing tone equally. The violence is pretty stark (I’ll just say that dialogue specifically lists guns as out of the question, limiting the killing to messier means). Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier certainly gets the most out of the limited space in which the mayhem unfolds. At times, the enclosed eponymous room creates a claustrophobia so suffocating you almost feel like the tension’s going to burst, in a sense both figurative and inexplicably physical. In other scenes, cramped, dank hallways seem like paralyzing chasms, full of terrors unknown.

What’s most effective, though, is that despite choosing villains so simple to root against, the film doesn’t simply make them faceless cannon fodder (or sharp thing fodder in this case) or caricature. The antagonists all seem like real, bad dudes you could run into in real life, and are scarier for it (sometimes more so when you’re waiting for something to happen than when it’s happening). They’re so effective that one of the movie’s selling points, Patrick Stewart taking a villainous role, almost seems a little out of place, his mannered, more written and fleshed-out ringleader clashing with the rawly terrifying hoodlums in his service. That said, it is interesting to see the veteran lend his refined gravitas to a force of evil.

That character realism works both ways. The rockers being held prisoner are terrified as any normal person would be, which only ups the tension for the viewer. All attempts at movie heroism are swiftly, sometimes bloodily put in their place by the circumstances. And when the film employs one of those corny recurring dialogue motifs as a narrative thread, it’s rudely rebuffed, a finger in the eye of cliché that’s totally appropriate and totally punk. It even elicits a hearty laugh, all the more cathartic because such sentiment is so rare in a picture this unforgiving. 

Green Room is cheap thrills as art, like going out to an all-night dive to satisfy your midnight munchies and unexpectedly getting something close to gourmet. I’ll stress that it’s a dish with a very specific taste; in fact, I’d imagine on many a pallet it would go down like a shot of arsenic. Those with the taste and stomach for this sort of concoction (and you know if you are), on the other hand, will gobble it up.

Eye in the Sky

The use of military drones is paradoxical, to be sure. It’s made warfare simpler and more impersonal (or so you think; Eye in the Sky isn’t so sure about that). And yet, the morality and human cost of such operations, in the micro and the macro sense, are so tangled and complicated that it’s hard to comprehend how any person can make such a decision.

Gavin Hood’s film shows us how the process isn’t so easy. Its narrative is enclosed within a single mission, a terrorist surveillance operation in Kenya that turns into a potential threat. The audience witnesses the mission from every angle, from the agent staking things out on the ground (Barkhad Abdi), to the British colonel running the mission (Helen Mirren) and American drone pilots (Aaron Paul and Phoebe Fox) who are all thousands of miles away from the action (and each other), to the general (Alan Rickman) and pols in London and elsewhere squabbling over the legality and optics of it all. Also, the Kenyan civilians in the vicinity who don’t suspect a thing.

The movie’s not tense like a thriller might be, but agonizing. None of the major players are callous or bloodthirsty types so easy to condemn. The military officers and agents writhe over their actions and decisions right with the audience. The politicians, on the contrary, keep passing the buck further and further up the chain of command, and sometimes down it, to a degree that would be almost comical if the film weren’t so sober and dead serious. But this never comes off as political cowardice or incompetent decision-making; it’s out of a true reluctance to take innocent life with which one can strongly empathize. At some point, though, someone has to make a terrible decision no one feels good about. And yet, for all the time the viewer hopes for an unlikely happy ending, there are undeniably moments where they want the strike to be made. Literally from scene-to-scene, their opinion can change.

The debate presented on the issue consists mostly of the simple points you’ve probably heard in media soundbites. But while simplicity could have faulted a more ponderous and polemical production, here it serves the picture well in two ways. One is because the mission storyline has an immediacy that doesn’t allow for the long and hard debate that such an issue requires. Which could implicitly suggest that drone warfare is justified, or that it’s part of a repeating cycle in the War on Terror with an inertia too great to stop. Indeed, while the majority of the film focuses on the in-the-moment morality of drones, the conclusion says tiny but telling things about the larger picture.

The second way is that it leaves the viewer thinking about the issue, instead of wrapping things in a neat package that tells them how to think. And as a well-shot, well-acted, smart, and empathetic work, it’ll stick with them long enough that they will think about. That’s probably the highest praise you can give to an issue movie.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Well, I’ll give Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice this much: it’s better than director Zack Snyder’s preceding film Man of Steel (my dislike for which has grown since my initial reaction). And the distinction of making the worst Batman to ever hit the silver screen still probably belongs to Joel Schumacher. If that praise isn’t faint enough already, I’ll add that that’s strictly on a filmmaking level. As bad as Schumacher’s two gaudy, nipply incarnations were, there’s still arguably fun to be had watching them and laughing at their total goofiness. Fun is a quality mostly absent from Dawn of Justice, what bit there is mostly getting suffocated. Not by relentless darkness and grimness—despite its gloomy aesthetic and what you might have heard, it’s not as dark as Christopher Nolan’s recent take on the character (it even has some humorous quips that would have been out of place in the Nolanverse)—but by tedium.

Like too many blockbusters these days, the movie is less a full, proper narrative than a franchise primer. It’s no secret Warner Brothers wants to build a film universe with its DC characters to compete with Disney’s Marvel juggernaut. Instead of playing Marvel’s long game by building that universe through single-character films, however, Dawn of Justice attempts to instantly jump-start the DC franchise all by itself. Packaging that with the prospect of finally filming the big Batman-Superman fight from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns seems like little more than a transparent attempt to get butts in seats, and maybe steal a little thunder from Marvel before their characters turn on each other six weeks from now.

The film is set a year-and-a-half after the destruction of Metropolis in Man of Steel. Superman (Henry Cavill) is a figure of controversy over whether he’s a hero or a threat. An older, more unhinged Batman (Ben Affleck), whose alter-ego Bruce Wayne witnesses the Metropolis carnage in a prologue, is firmly in the latter camp. Billionaire Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), obsessed with destroying Superman for reasons unexplained, plays the two against each other, while also using Kryptonian technology to resurrect the deceased General Zod (Michael Shannon) as the monster Doomsday, just in case the Dark Knight fails to bring down the Last Son of Krypton.

Oh, there’s more than that. In an attempt to unilaterally build universe continuity, the film introduces so many conflicting storylines that it plays like the filmmakers badly stitched together scenes from several different movies. Some of which are pretty good in and of themselves (a few Batman sequences would have been awesome in a solo film if the material hadn’t been so thoroughly mined already), but none of them get a chance to go anywhere, and few of them intersect. There are also several attempts to relate what we’re seeing to the real world (the 9/11 imagery is, again, quite apparent), but in very simplistic ways that are empty beyond the surface level. There’s a lot of heavy-handed talk of hero roles and responsibility that goes past subtle meditation to self-important lecturing (and awkward insertions of Miller’s DKR dialogue). Even if you know the DC universe enough to not get completely confused, it’s rather boring. As for future film teasers, there’s literally a clip show of the rest of the Justice League instead of any attempt to tie them in naturally.

The whole cast is pretty stiff, but this at least suits Affleck’s portrayal of the Caped Crusader. Where everyone else merely slogs, he seethes. It’s a fresh and interesting take on the character, more realistically depicting Batman as obsessive, mentally unstable, and cruel instead of heroic. But like every other germ of an idea in this thing, there’s little time to explore this angle. Also, he conveniently has an abrupt change of heart late in the action, lest the Justice League get started on a less-than-sympathetic foot.

Cavill, on the other hand, still doesn’t seem like Superman at all. When the film has him doing classic Superman things, he looks disinterested and uncomfortable, and the mood is dour instead of hopeful. In fact, the ultimate outcome feels like an admission from Snyder that he doesn’t get the character and won’t even bother trying anymore.

Eisenberg’s Luthor lacks any clear motive or menace, an annoying retread of his Mark Zuckerberg portrayal with none of the sad, sympathetic depth and many times the self-satisfied superiority. Other supporting players, like so much else in the picture, aren’t given enough time to be anything besides functions to the plot. And Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is only worked in so her appearance during the finale isn’t completely out of nowhere. That said, placing her front and center in the final battle works. Well enough that the viewer briefly forgets her role here is little more than blatant advertising for her solo film next year.

In spite of all this, Dawn of Justice stands as a net improvement over Man of Steel. I can’t explain it. Maybe the bar was just really low. Maybe its problem is comprehension (it has potentially good ideas, just too many at once) instead of incompetence. Maybe it’s just that the action sequences aren’t as totally indecipherable and skull-shattering loud as Man of Steel’s. They’re still far from spectacular or out of the ordinary, but they seem enough like dumb fun after a slogging 90 minutes or so (even though the big fight between the two leads is ultimately underwhelming and secondary). Or maybe it’s just that while the film is indeed quite flawed, it’s averagely unexceptional, not the once-in-a-decade, franchise-killing kind of bad that it was christened by the Internet at every point in its production.

So, the DC film universe begins with a big, gaping yawn. But I suppose that’s better than loudly running the characters into the ground at the speed of sound. So….success?