MCU picks its
blonde Wonder Woman to fight
shapeshifters and Jude
Click the pic below to watch the TRAILER:
Tag: Scarlett Johansson
JOJO RABBIT (2019) movie review
REVIEW in HAIKU:
Waititi’s Hitler
Youth film laughs while the world breaks
Moral conundrum 
REVIEW:
A MUCH darker film than is advertised. I wasn’t going to see it. I’ve seen enough WWII films. Everyone knows that the Holocaust wasn’t funny.
Then the trailer suggested a playful new take from the Hitler youth side about a boy whose imaginary best friend is Adolf Hitler.
And it is playful and funny, so over the top it’s like satire. Until it isn’t. Until it gives up the game we are enjoying and slaps audiences with the weight and reality so hard and fast, you’re left reeling. I get it. War is ugly. But the set up and smash hurt too much.
Acclaimed director Taika Waititi must have known the rollercoaster he’d be sending people on, known that making a PG-13 film about a war isn’t possible.
It opens much like a Wes Anderson scene from Moonrise Kingdom, young scouts at camp with a bit of a bumbling scout master. Now switch scouts for Nazis and camp games to battle tactics. Boom and the games are up and the rest of the film is recovery time for the boy, then home with his mother and imaginary friend, Hitler, until he finds a young Jewish girl in his attic.
It’s violent and dark and makes us laugh. This is NOT a children’s film. I’m not certain what audience this was made for. But it’s brutally awakening, as it should be. It’s either a wickedly brilliant social commentary on the politics of present day, or it’s a cruel Jekyl & Hyde creating a humorous play within a hideous scenario. A perfect scene is the little boy who has scrounged through garbage cans for food scraps, sitting at a dinner table across from Adolf gorging himself on the feast of a unicorn head. It’s gruff and grim and cannot possibly be as happy as it looks. The payoff does not match the promise. And perhaps that’s the point.
RATING: C+ …it adds up= A for visuals and unique story, perhaps even for social commentary… F for fooling me into loving characters who were going to be killed in such an abrupt and unforgivable manner… I’m still not all right.
ISLE OF DOGS (2018) movie review
Wes Anderson rides again in his purest puppy parade to date.
While he famously kills a dog in each of his symmetrical dollhouse menagerie films, here in Isle of Dogs he attempts a mass rescue of dog-kind. Only one little hero pilot willingly risks his life to save his best pal Spot.
Wes puts his diorama-prone filmmaking to the test in this puppeted art film including every ounce of classic Andersonism fans have come to expect, though the tone is perhaps even more dry and stoic and the narrative arc less pronounced than his usual fare. Immersing in Japanese culture, Anderson allows for half or more than half of this film’s dialogue to be in Japanese without subtitles. It’s an adjustment at first, but we’ve come to expect nothing less from Wes.
And though he worked remotely on this project, he still filmed himself acting out the dog roles, controlled each element of visual story, and offered what can only be called his style to the production. He in his classic tweed suit lends even the mangey dogs living on “Trash Island” a level of posh austerity, a demure grace.
At times watching this felt like watching a Miyazaki film. Perhaps it’s the slower, continuous flow-through pacing or the neutral-toned setting. As it turns out, Miyazaki is just one of the artist influences that Anderson nods to. Also in the list are renowned filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and Charles Schultz of Peanuts cartoon fame.
Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Jeff Goldblume, Greta Gerwig, Bryan Cranston, Tilda Swinton, and of course Bill Murray are only a few of the voice talents behind the hand-painted hand-designed stop-motion characters.
Each one took around 16 weeks to make, with around a thousand interchangeable faces to pinpoint specific expressions within each of the 12 frames per second. It took 670 artists years to create this hour & 41 minute long film. An excellent interview with some of the Isle of Dogs animators can be read here.
Two scenes still stand out days later as potential for pop genius and eccentricity unmatched: the sushi scene in which audiences gain point of view from the eyes of a sushi chef as he slices and creates a box lunch, and the kidney transplant scene with a realistic overhead view within an operating room as a surgeon slices, removes, stiches up, and replaces a kidney. It’s surprising and yet fitting in the world as presented by Anderson.
HAIL, CAESAR! (2016) movie review
Hail, Caesar! is a delight. Set in the fifties at the height of musical movie madness, it was a time when Gene Kelly and favorite dance partner Fred Astaire tapped and swooned to golden tunes, when every woman wanted sharp-witted Clark Gable or leather-tanned Cary Grant to sweep them up, when the ladies of the hour were few but interchangeable unless they could stand out as dancers or swimmers. The silver screen was a small world full of dazzling stars with clean slates.
Here in Hail, an ensemble of A+ stars play one-dimensional dolts and hardline honeys clamping Clooney in with communists, sharing Fiennes’s finesse as a classic actor, making Tatum tap on tables, and showing Scarlett Jo flap her fins. It’s elegantly laced with narration following the work day of Josh Brolin, one heartfelt Hollywood Studio manager bent on doing what is right.
Three layers pervade the dialogue throughout the film: the existing value, despite obvious divisions, within religious beliefs, political biases, and movie making.
We follow the film producer who questions the merits of the industry and his work in it. Walking the ridgepole of his decision, he scoops in as handyman at the helm holding all things at the studio in harmony, fending off poparazzi wolves, endearingly all played by Tilda Swinton. 
We attend a premiere with a fresh faced all-western cowhand. He croons sincerely while the audience roars over slapstick sloshings. Division. Value?
Clooney’s character is held hostage by men claiming to be communist writers who feel they must buck the system and capsize the studio called the Capitol.
The film Hail, Caesar! is the film within the film showing a Roman guard gaining perspective for life and truth at the feet of the crucified Christ. An honest dialogue between four faiths ensues, speaking the blatant confusing disparities without preaching tolerance and without honoring one above another. The audience sits in, laughs, enjoys.
So, religion & politics, long-time taboo topics, are fair game for the Coens who even take stabs at their own art: filmmaking. Could it be that the Coen brothers, perhaps better known for writing and directing darker films like Fargo and No Country for Old Men, have made a picture for the picture’s sake? For fun? Poking fun at film has rarely been this delightful. Shakespeare did the same thing, sneering at all people groups, allowing for pure comedy to shine through, for people to laugh at each other, at themselves, at life. 
Hail the conquering Coens as they cart us along by chariot in this perfectly lovely philosophical journey dipped in sweet, aesthetic, syrupy comedy.
Would that it were so simple.
WE BOUGHT A ZOO (2011) movie review
Matt Damon proves the best sort of family man dealing with grief in this feel-good film, We Bought a Zoo. Despite the inane title and its cutsie repeat as mantra, this movie rolls along sweetly in so many ways. Relationships float into each other. Conflict is not the name of the game.
Jonsi’s music transports us. It’s euphoric. His long-building melodious tones feel like triumph, like a hug, like forgiveness in action. It almost feels like they tried to make this movie around the music. Sadly, the spoken words could not compare to the soundtrack. Two parallel trains…two separate destinations. The story felt conceptual rather than event-driven. Like a cooking show if we actually took the time to watch the chef chop and measure it all then wait calmly for the goodness to bake. This film takes time to bake, and Damon’s character is certainly full of goodness.
Handsome, gentle, sentimental, patient, consistent: the perfect man. Surreal? The daughter is precocious and perfect. The only miscast was perhaps the angsty artist son who was likeable but dull in the mix. Thomas Haden Church was a favorite. If only all of these sweet characters had been given believable lines and a memorable story plot.
Fortunately, Cameron Crowe is a master at filming awe and knowing glances. This is a comfort film with animals, but we know in the end…it is all about the people.
Splatter: on FILM 