2021 Movie Wrap-Up

Another year, another blog post. At this rate I'll hit hit 300 post celebration when I'm 82.

So the cinema did not, as people predicted, die during the ongoing pandemic. And it looks like we even got to see a few at their intended release date. Yay. Well let's dive in, shall we? We shall.

Mortal Kombat

It's funny to me that out of all the movies that could have gotten me back into the theater after the whole world turned toxic, it was this one. I don't care about the franchise in any of its forms, but I found myself strangely invested in the story here. I've always liked James Wan as a director, and he clearly knows what people want to see from an MK film. Not only does he follow through, he infuses the whole ridiculous concept with (dare I say?) dignity. Wan, you've got serious game. I'll be watching your career intently. Just please, for the love of God tell me keeping Amber Heard in the Aquaman sequel was beyond your control.

A Quiet Place Part II

I do enjoy horror films based around a kind of quirk, in this case keep quiet or die. But I find too many of them feel like a Tales From the Crypt episode with padding, and I get bored with padding. Quiet Place One had about 55 minutes of good stuff and 35 of padding. Part Two had kind of the reverse issue. Taken together and generously trimmed would have made for a truly memorable film. One film. As is? Well, whatever.

Cruella

I was going to skip this one, as Disney's live remakes are beginning to feel like this generation's direct to video sequels. But then people wouldn't shut up about it, and I was getting the movie withdrawal itch. Damn, it was good! I've always liked Emma Stone but this role made me realize how much I've underestimated her as an actress. Her Cruella is unapologetically in the grey area between anti-hero and anti-villain, and she refuses to be contained. She is electrifying. But the true star, and I have the guidance and passion of my wife to thank for being able to notice, is (currently) two time Oscar winning costume designer Jenny Beavan. I'm as non-fluent with fashion as I am with sports, but for two hours and fourteen minutes I totally got it.

Black Widow

To get this out of the way, as long as Scarlett Johansson keeps blindly lapdogging Woody Allen I'm not going to pay for movie tickets to see anything with her as the lead. On Disney Plus, it took me several tries to get through it because I just kept losing interest. As its own action movie I'd say it was good enough, perhaps a step above the Fast and Furious series (which is praise, but not much). As an MCU film it was nothing special. This movie needed to happen before Infinity War to mean anything, and it didn't.

Space Jam: A New Legacy

I covered this one in more detail already but the gist is Don Cheadle was the MVP in a movie with freaking Looney Tunes in it, so something fundamentally went wrong. At the time the biggest problem was the movie was an undisguised commercial for HBO Max. Several months have passed, and HBO Max is having much bigger problems. Warner Brothers is their primary contributor and they haven't had a hit this year. But I'm sure they'll learn from their mistakes and put together a really solid DCEU in just a couple of more reboots. Space Jam 2 exists. And for whatever it's worth, the original really wasn't that good either.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions

I've got good news and bad news, and both of them are that this sequel is more of the same thing. I liked the first one a lot, but I didn't like the ending because it felt like the filmmakers wrote themselves into an uninteresting corner. They get out of it by putting off that uninteresting corner until the end of this movie (again). I like the creative deadly rooms, and the new characters are as likable as the victims of the first movie. But where the franchise is trying to be Saw with less gore, more color, and a bit of hope, it's falling into Paranormal Activity syndrome where we've kind of figured out the rhythm already.

Free Guy

And just when I'd forgotten what not being a bitter, jaded Gen X-er felt like it's Ryan Reynolds to my rescue. Reynolds is a fellow Gen X-er, and he's mastered the schtick of trying really fucking hard to uphold the values Mr. Rogers instilled in him. An NPC in an MMORPG becomes self-aware (the direction we're going IRL BTW) and reminds real people what humanity actually is. Free Guy may not be the most original concept, but it does feel like a flower has bloomed in the wasteland hellscape we've been living in since fascism reared its ugly orange head six miserable years ago. Thank you Ryan, beauty CAN come out of ashes.

He's All That

It's listed on Wikipedia as a 2021 film so I'm going to talk about it. A gender-swapped remake of 1913's Pygmalion, or 1999's She's All That (for anyone under 108) it's as respectable a remake as it deserves to be. You've seen this move before even if you haven't; and if you haven't, go watch Not Another Teen Movie right this second! So not much to talk about except for wondering why cast Addison Rae? I get that Netflix is dabbling in the idea of social media stars transitioning into SAG roles, and I'm not opposed to it (Adam Conover is doing quite well) but nothing about Rae's performance reads as someone who nailed the audition. Anyway...

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Or SCATLOTTR for short. I really enjoyed this movie when I saw it. But that was a few months ago. Curiously, I haven't thought about it since. I mean, I'll give Marvel credit for actively pursuing diversity, if a bit slower than needed, but I really didn't connect with this one. I liked things about it; the romance-less male/female friendship, the complex villain, the...um...other stuff that happened. But I'm probably going to leave this one out of my week-long MCU marathon in 2028.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

This was another movie I didn't think I would get into and wound up being blown away by it. Knock-it-out-of-the-park performances from Jessica Chastain, Andrew Garfield, and Vincent D'Onofrio elevate what would probably have been an average television movie into a really engaging journey through the mind(s) of the superficially devout. Televangelism has always been a racket, but the film carefully lays its groundwork of how religion produces people who truly think they're doing the right thing. The movie doesn't judge the Bakker's, it just presents them. In the end the lesson is that passion will always get you going somewhere, and Tammy Faye had plenty of that. But without the wisdom to know where and why you're going, you're destined to end up in the wrong place.

No Time to Die

There was actually plenty of time to die. In fact, in the extended sequence of the heroes discussing going to the villain's base, why they're going to his base, followed by the scene of them GOING to the base, approximately fifteen hundred people in the world died. Here's the thing about the Daniel Craig era of James Bond films: NONE of them have kept me engaged through the third act. Craig is a great actor and I love what he's done with the character, but the films have forgotten that James Bond is fun. Timothy Dalton's Bond was as gritty as Craig's, but his (sadly mere) two films never left out that hint of silliness that made it all work. Not only does No Time to Die take itself too seriously, it has the Craig era's third act pace- For. The. Whole. Movie. The only time the film comes alive is the one scene that Ana de Armas is in. If the Broccoli estate has any interest in gender-swapping their franchise, spin off with her. This one sadly wasn't worth the wait.

Eternals

Ten years ago (wow.) my wife and I saw Drive, and The Smurfs in very close proximity to each other. Drive was a technically flawless film that left us feeling nothing. The Smurfs was ridiculous, but we came out of the theater talking about it, laughing, and generally feeling good about having shelled out the twenty bucks in tickets. I bring this up because I feel Eternals was a less-good movie than SCATLOTTR, but it left a much stronger impression on me. It raised questions about immortality, responsibility, immediate good versus grand scope good, and so on, and it wasn't afraid to not have the answers. Sadly it had some great ideas that didn't go anywhere, like the sentient deviant's point of view; but it HAD ideas. For me, a flawed movie that makes you feel something is better than a flawless one that leaves you indifferent. Oh, and for the record, Angelina Jolie made me tear up three times.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

It's nearly impossible to evaluate this movie on its own merits but I'm going to try. It was good, heartwarming, and imbalanced. The good: Mckenna Grace is a hell of an actress, the nostalgia works, and without getting heavy-handed the film celebrates neurodiversity. The heartwarming: there's a sense of closure to Egon Spengler's arc, as well as the wedge between Harold Ramis and Bill Murray that kept Ghostbusters 3 from ever happening. The imbalanced: Paul Rudd's talent is underused, Carrie Coon's talent is SORELY underused, J. K. Simmons is (for the first time in his career) needless, and the pacing is exactly what you get with Jason Reitman directing. If this franchise continues (and it will) it needs a balance between this movie and the 2016 reboot; substance and energy. There.

West Side Story

In his prime, Steven Spielberg had this magic touch of making you feel like he was sitting next to you in the theater. It's been such a damn while, but I finally felt that again. Just look at the way the musical is framed from its opening shot to every lavish dance number. Perhaps people felt that this was your grandparent's musical, and it kind of is but it's also kind of not. The tribalism and racism committed to the stage in 1957 has sadly not gone anywhere, and one could argue West Side Story has an even more timeless quality than that Shakespeare play about the dead couple (sorry: spoilers). Unfortunately the poignant qualities of the film, and the electric performances of so many of its new cast members (and cinema royalty Rita Moreno) get overshadowed by the lead actor's sexual assault allegation with a then-seventeen year old girl. On the one hand, it's encouraging that we're past the point where an audience will let a studio do damage control by sweeping such a story under the rug (which is what they tried to do), but on the other we're not past the point where studios try. Lessons are slow to learn.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

As of this writing, No Way Home is still number one at the box office, and deservedly so. It's not often a single film can provide closure to THREE different cinematic story arcs and still fit in as a prequel to a different character's sequel. I hesitate to say this about a film producer (as Hollywood produces some real monsters) but Kevin Feige just might be a genius. How this damn MCU juggernaut is still holding together at all after 27 films is a (no pun intended, no, seriously) marvel in and of itself. Most of what I could say about No Way Home has already been covered by everyone everywhere, but I want to point out three things. One, I didn't realize just how good we had it in the early 2000s with Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina's performances, but watching them together for the first time was jaw dropping. Two, the line (you know the one) has gone so far into the field of cliché I didn't think it was possible to deliver it as anything but a joke. DAMN Marisa Tomei, I'm still feeling it. And three, the big one. The whole of Marvel's Phase Four has been about healing; coincidentally timed considering the state of the world. But as anyone who's been on multiple medications can tell you, healing is an ugly process. It's not the life's lesson at the end of a Full House episode; it's a blow-up, a freak-out, and a humiliatingly bloody ugly public cry. A character like Spider-Man is notorious for hurting, for having a life that sucks, and for snatching a loss from every victory. When the film unites the three Peter Parkers, it could easily have gone for a couple of exchanged one-liners and segued into the climax. It doesn't. For once, slowing the pace in the third act works, letting all the Parkers just talk to each other. A shared pain, some encouragement, and a lot of mutual understanding. Spider-Man and his rogue's gallery has always been about tragedy, but maybe just this once it's also about recovery.

2022, it's your turn.