Never has it felt so painfully obvious that actors are talking past one another in front of a green screen in Atlanta. Quantumania’s dialogue is extremely clunky, and it comes off very your-turn, my-turn sitcomic. When characters aren’t forcing out stilted lines, the Quantum Realm, a simultaneously overcooked and undercooked CGI mess, completely washes out any interesting set pieces.

For the rest of the review, head over to the Martin City Telegraph’s site.

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Bullet Train comes from director David Leitch, who’s quickly established himself as a go-to candidate for big, splashy action comedies (his last two films being Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw and Deadpool 2). Bullet Train is certainly better than Hobbs & Shaw, but Leitch’s schtick, and specifically his jokey, wink-wink tone, is showing signs of diminishing returns.

That tone simply feels off when pasted over the background of Bullet Train’s incredible amount of violence and chaos. To use two of Leitch’s prior entries, John Wick (as an uncredited director) and Deadpool 2, as more successful exemplary ends of the spectrum, a hyper violent action movie can go one of two ways.

It can go the John Wick route and take itself extremely seriously, which produces an intense thrill ride that complements technical action. Or it can go the Deadpool 2 route and take itself incredibly un-seriously, which produces a fun romp where everyone involved, including the audience, revels in the sheer ridiculosity of it all.

Bullet Train split the baby. Through its quippy dialogue and banter, it tells its audience that this is all just a big joke. But through its action sequences, some of which are quite brutal, it shows that it takes itself seriously. It’s really tough for a film to have recurring Thomas the Tank Engine gags and also throw a small child off a building and into the ICU, and Bullet Train doesn’t pull it off.

The tonal misfires don’t sink the film completely, thanks largely to a stellar cast that’s clearly having a good time. There are so many talented actors involved (including a surprise cameo or two), and they all know exactly what movie they’re in, even if the script doesn’t. Frustratingly, that script frequently doesn’t give the performances room to breathe.

That shows up more obviously with a couple characters (most notably, those played by Zazie Beetz and Bad Bunny), who make flashy entrances and unceremonious departures within what feels like 60 seconds of screen time. But it also shows up in the main cast, starting at the top. This is billed as a Brad Pitt vehicle, but you wouldn’t know that just watching the film.

He blends into the ensemble, and we get as much (and maybe more) time with Tangerine and Lemon (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry) than Ladybug (Pitt). Those other performances are truly fun, but this is Brad Pitt in an action comedy, and it feels like the filmmakers didn’t take advantage of that.

These types of films often fall into two camps: less is more, and more is more. Restraint, and exuberance. Both can work in the right hands; Bullet Train falls into the latter, but its ver- sion of “more” washes everything out, which led to a forgettable, if still passably entertaining, product.

This review originally appeared in the August 17, 2022, edition of the Martin City Telegraph.

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The film is Ron Howard’s feature length, cinematic attempt to tell the harrowing true tale of the boys’ soccer team that found themselves trapped for 18 days deep within northern Thailand’s Tham Luang cave system. The early, unexpected, and sudden arrival of monsoon flooding in June 2018 confined the team within the caves’ deep recesses, and, unbelievably, an international team of rescue divers, military personnel, government officials, and thousands of civilian volunteers managed to get all 12 boys, and their coach, out alive.

Truly, it’s an incredible story, especially due to the sheer complexity of the rescue operation. Yet there’s the rub; Thirteen Lives tries to both explain the rescue’s intricacies and meaningfully introduce characters across the varied and abundant rescue team, and there’s just not enough room to effectively do both.

Rick Stanton (Viggo Mortensen)and John Volanthen (Colin Farrell), British, world-renowned rescue divers, are our ostensible heroes, and the pair of actors do an admirable job with what real estate the film gives. But there isn’t much to give because Thirteen Lives tries to include characters from all participating groups, including the Thai government, amateur international divers, local Thai farmers, the boys’ families, and the Thai Navy SEALs. Yes, all these groups are important to the real-life story, but this isn’t a New York Times article. Having that many characters in whom we’re supposed to emotionally invest within a two-hour film is just disorienting, and it leads to moments like a Thai Navy SEAL’s death midway through the rescue falling flat.

And because the film tries desperately to spread itself out among so many character moments, its explanation of the rescue’s mechanics also falls short. The actual methods through which it makes its attempt are fine, as diagrams and title cards effectively keep track of internal cave pathways and the rescue’s timing. However, there isn’t enough space to really dig into what’s happening, and much of the nitty-gritty details about the rescue end up yadda-yadda’d.

A specific example that illustrates the point is the character treatment of the boys at the story’s heart. The film opens with the boys and their coach as they fin- ish up practice and excitedly stop by the cave before heading home for one of their fellow member’s birthday party, Sponge-Bob cake and all. We see them enter the cave, but then the film doesn’t return to them, even once, for more than an hour of runtime, until Stanton and Volanthen discover them alive.

The choice’s point is to create dramatic tension as to whether the boys are still alive as the rescuers struggle to reach them, but that tension is a fallacy. This only happened a couple years ago, and the boys’ survival was the number one reason it became such an international phenomenon. Not to mention Thirteen Lives is marketed as an inspirational affair, and I highly doubt anyone who queues up the movie thinks the titular “thirteen lives” aren’t going to make it. A depiction of the boys’ mindset within their dark, desolate situation should have been a major draw, yet the film almost actively runs away from it, seemingly to keep the answers away from an audience who’s already seen the test.

The story is the story, and that, along with Howard’s signature (if bland) Hollywood polish create something that’s perfectly watchable. But it’s unwillingness to sacrifice anything whole cloth results in a very thin product that’s better told elsewhere.

This review originally appeared in the August 3, 2022, edition of the Martin City Telegraph.

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Love and Thunder recenters the franchise on the relationship between Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) after the two drifted apart amidst universe-saving efforts and world-renowned scientific breakthroughs. Presumably scarred by the precipitous decline in her Star Wars prequel character’s agency, Portman left the role back in 2013 after she sensed Foster had devolved into little more than Thor’s love interest. 

It’s clear why she came back, and there’s something comforting about seeing Thor and Jane together again, now with a full and rewarding character arc for Jane. She wields the power of Thor this time around, but it’s not just a fan-servicey “what if Jane held the hammer?” device. Instead, becoming the Mighty Thor is a coping mechanism for tragedy that’s befallen Jane’s life, and seeing her work through those complicated emotions, recapture her relationship with Thor, and accept her fate is certainly effective.

Unfortunately, that effectiveness highlights a big problem: the God of Thunder feels underdeveloped. Ostensibly, his arc is supposed to show him learning that love is worth experiencing, even with the pain and loss it inevitably brings. He starts off in the appropriate place (as a pretentious jerk who pretends that “meditating” once or twice means he’s enlightened), and he ends the right place (rewarding love is back in his life), but that endpoint feels completely undeserved. 

Plenty of characters around him, especially Valkyrie (played again by the always-charming Tessa Thompson), call out his repression and glaring lack of self-awareness, but the story doesn’t give much reason to think Thor truly develops, save for the closing scenes that tell us that’s the case. Hemsworth is winning as always in the role, but the lack of depth kneecaps the final product.

For the rest of the review, head over to the Martin City Telegraph’s site here.

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Well, that fictional movie’s marketing team must have had one hell of a budget, because Lightyear offers little explanation as to why Andy so memorably dived headfirst into Buzz Lightyear mania.   

The opening caption’s retrospective failure is especially glaring given Top Gun: Maverick’s brilliant use of the same technique less than a month ago. Where Maverick’s caption immediately locks audiences into a specific, tangible atmosphere, Lightyear’s caption highlights the biggest questions on moviegoers’ minds: what is this, and why do I care?

Lightyear is ostensibly intended as a big-hearted space adventure starring Buzz Lightyear (voiced by a capably gallant Chris Evans) as he discovers that it’s a lot easier to accomplish a mission when you stop being so hard on yourself and trust your friends for help. Great premise, but Lightyear’s execution results in a frustrating failure to launch.

For the rest of the review, head over to the Martin City Telegraph’s site here.

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Not today indeed. Maverick ostensibly delivers the line to defend navy fighter pilots like himself, but the line applies just as much to bigtime, original blockbusters and bona fide movie stars. With Maverick, Cruise backs up that bravado and near single-handedly warps his audience back to a simpler, action-packed time when movies, and stars like Cruise, defined entertainment. Well, at least for the summer. 

Right from its opening aircraft carrier credit sequence set to the familiar, synth-boosted sounds of “Danger Zone,” Maverick is absolutely exhilarating. It’s easy to get fatigued hearing Cruise and his fans speak so frequently, and so enthusiastically, about his near-insane commitment to stunt performance and authenticity. But when you see the results, the substance behind the bluster becomes crystal clear. 

The air stunts in this film are the best that have ever been put to screen, period. Whether its Maverick pushing the limits of an experimental stealth plane and blurring the lines between air travel and space travel, or dogfighting drills set over the rocky terrain outside Miramar, there’s an electricity and palpability that could only have come from practical stunt work. These are real planes with specially commissioned cameras strapped directly to the fuselage, and (upon Cruise’s insistence), what we see is what the cast experienced, G forces and all. 

Yet the exhilaration and tangibility that kind of stunt work produces is nothing new. The 80s were chock full of movies that delivered those sensations, with Top Gun as a prime example. Maverick doesn’t rise above pure nostalgic spectacle because of how far it pushes its stunts or the extreme scenarios in which it places its characters. Instead, it pushes past its spiritual predecessors through a focus not only on its fireworks, but also on the connective tissue that gets us from Point A to stunning Point B. 

Where the original Top Gun suffers mightily from awkward placeholding scenes between its high-flying set pieces, Maverick embraces those moments to give the story real emotional weight. The performances further highlight those story choices, most notably Miles Teller’s reserved-yet-warm performance as Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw.

The climactic final forty minutes that cap off the film’s stunt extravaganza are instantly iconic, sure. But as time goes on, I’m willing to bet scenes such as Rooster banging out “Great Balls of Fire,” the same performance his late father so often delivered with aplomb, as Maverick sadly looks on; a touching reunion between Iceman and Maverick as Ice deals with the same disease Val Kilmer battles off screen; and touching moments of understanding between Maverick and Jennifer Connelly’s Penny, will stick with audiences just as long. 

It’s also refreshing to see a much more diverse cast this time around, albeit with a plot that still relies heavily on a couple white guys who would rather pull 10 G’s on a near-suicide mission than go to therapy. And while it still fails the Bechdel test (at least one conversation between two women about something other than a man), Phoenix and Penny at least get plenty of cool stuff to do, and that’s a marked, if still wanting, improvement. 

There are plenty of moments in Maverick that border on absurdity. But in this film, rationality is often sacrificed at the altar of intentional extravagance. That’s what blockbusters are for, and Cruise and Co. delivered a great one.

This review originally appeared in the June 8, 2022, print edition of the Martin City Telegraph.

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Eggers approaches his films like an historian, and not just in the way some filmmakers claim to do through lip service on the press circuit. It’s evident in The Northman’s sheer authenticity, which oozes out of every corner of every frame. One doesn’t need intimate familiarity with the details of Gesta Danorum (the 12^th-century Danish historical text from which Eggers and Icelandic poet Sjón adapted the film) to feel it. It’s the same feel that’s present in Eggers’ prior films, The Witch and The Lighthouse, and it grabs its audience by the throat and fully submerges them in tangible worlds.

The authenticity plays out directly through intricate production design, but it’s more deeply shown through Eggers’ storytelling choices. For example, in what has become a staple of his work, there’s a fascinating interplay between straightforward (yet impeccably accurate) period work and the story’s more fantastical elements. 

Every time the film starts to lean into pure depictions of fantasy and Viking mythology, it reels backward into grounded reality, which makes the audience question whether what they’re seeing is real, or whether the sequences are brought on through delirious visions or religious fervor. It echoes the way human historical accounts turn fact to legend, and legend to myth, exactly as Danish legend holds up real-life Viking warrior-kings as demigods. 

Layering on historical context and paying homage to the source material could have easily derailed the story with density, but the film smartly keeps the plot’s driving force very simple. Viking Prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) seeks vengeance for his uncle Fjölnir’s (Claes Bang) traitorous murder of Amleth’s father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), and seeks to rescue his mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), from Fjölnir’s clutches. And that’s pretty much it.  

Sure, some of the details may get lost along the way, but extraneous complexities here and there aren’t that important when the characters’ motivations are so sharp and understandable. It helps immensely when all the main characters are introduced basically within the first five minutes, save for Anya Taylor-Joy’s Olga, who’s still introduced in the first act. 

It also helps when the cast and director are so clearly on the same page, and Eggers continues to showcase an excellent eye for casting, most notably in Skarsgård’s physicality and reserved determinism and Taylor-Joy’s soft ethereality and cunning demeanor. 

But that unabashed slant toward authenticity leads directly to two characteristics that some people just won’t be able to stomach. Most glaringly, this film is extremely violent. It’s not constant, but when it arrives, it does so without shying away from (presumably) historically accurate brutality. This results in thrilling action set pieces worthy of their Viking origins, but it comes with eviscerations, beheadings, and bashings galore. 

The film also gets pretty strange, pretty quickly. It’s not quite at the weird level of Willem Dafoe’s wide-eyed, barnacle-laden mermaid in The Lighthouse, but it sure approaches it, most often in wild scenes of animalistic role play from men channeling animal spirits to unleash the signature ferocity of Viking berserkers. 

The Northman confirms that nobody executes a vision like Eggers right now, and it’s thrilling to see that execution expanded to such an epic scope. Inevitably, that specific vision will turn a chunk of the audience away, but the technical execution on display is undeniable.

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Sonic works (at least on a baseline competency level) where almost every other video game movie franchise fails because of its charming, kinetic central character. Despite the super speed and accompanying energy blasts, Sonic (Ben Schwartz, reprising his role) is just a kid bouncing off the metaphorical walls as much as he is the literal ones, eating chili dogs and trashing the house while his parents are on vacation. 

Sure, it doesn’t reach the intrinsic charm and relatability of a Spider-Man, an obvious inspiration. But in fairness, it’s much harder to connect with an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog from outer space than a teenager from Queens. 

However, Sonic’s electric chemistry with his audience can only go so far, and the film loses itself in a bid to expand its scope. 2020’s Sonic the Hedgehog told a tight, simple story about Sonic trying to find a home and Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik trying to capture and control Sonic’s power. 

In contrast, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 throws in a quest to find a legendary artifact of universal power, a cavalcade of new characters (most notably, classic playable characters Knuckles the Echidna (Idris Elba) and Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey)), and backstory for Sonic and the newcomers. It’s a lot, and it leads to a ton of plot without much substance. 

The film’s unshy about telling you what its themes are (importance of friends and family, responsibility that comes with power), but entire sequences go by that don’t touch on those central pillars at all. The scenes are technically well done in a vacuum, especially the action sequences, but without a connection to the film’s themes, they mostly feel thin and make the runtime feel all of two hours. 

For example, there’s an entire wedding subplot that seems to only exist to place Sonic and friends within a stone’s throw of the next plot point, and it soaks up a ton of oxygen for something that doesn’t really advance anything. It’s hard not to wish that subplot was completely scratched in favor of more character moments from Sonic’s foil Knuckles and his admirer Tails, who are both genuinely engaging when the film gives them space to show out. 

Flaws and a binary good-or-bad discussion aside, the film is competent enough to give Sonic fans exactly what they want. And apparently, there are a lot of them. Anecdotally, in the screening I attended, there were several rows of dedicated Sonic fans delightfully squealing throughout, especially after a mid-credits scene that teased a looming Sonic foe. Frankly, I didn’t know this niche existed in such a real way, but it speaks to why a third Sonic movie is already greenlit. 

And you know what? That’s great! Like many of us, I’m not a big Sonic-Head (or whatever they call themselves), but I count myself among several other dedicated fan bases, and those fan bases take plenty of joy from seeing their favorite characters come to life on the big screen. There are people out there who absolutely adore Sonic and his team of super friends, and now they’ve got their own sustained movie franchise. Sometimes, that’s just as valid a reason as any for a film to exist.

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On paper, this film sounds so fun. The pitch meeting probably went something like this: let’s do Raiders of the Lost Ark but make it a rom-com featuring two charismatic stars, say Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. Let’s throw in Daniel Radcliffe hamming it up as the villain and a cheeky Brad Pitt cameo for good measure. Excellent! Cut, print, check the gate. 

There’s also great character work built into the premise: Loretta Sage (Bullock), is a linguist/scholar-turned-adventure romance novelist who detests her own work, and, five years after her archeologist husband died, struggles to churn out what she considers ‘schlock.’ This feeling is personified in Alan (Tatum), her novels’ cover model who outwardly bathes in the glow of his fans’ adoration while inwardly longing for Loretta’s validation. 

The set-up is good, too: After the release of Loretta’s newest book, The Lost City of D, Abigail Fairfax (Radcliffe), an eccentric billionaire with a penchant for ancient collectibles, kidnaps Loretta and whisks her away to a remote island. As it so happens, as a plot point in her book, Loretta decoded an ancient cuneiform language, and Fairfax believes she is the only one who can lead him to the island’s long-lost treasure. Meanwhile, Alan sets off to save her, hoping to prove he’s just as valuable as his fictional counterpart, and hijinks ensue. 

Disappointingly, the script took all these wonderful elements and produced what must come close to the worst possible outcome.

For the rest of the review, which originally ran in the March 30, 2022, print edition of The Martin City Telegraph, head over to Telegraph’s site.

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The film picks up with Batman (Robert Pattinson) about two years into his vigilantism. He’s already established a working relationship with Detective James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) and prowls Gotham’s streets at night, instilling fear in the city’s street-level criminals. After a very-online serial killer (Paul Dano) starts picking off high profile targets, Batman sinks into Gotham’s underground to find answers, which leads to a web of corruption and a reckoning for both Gotham and its self-professed savior. 

This is definitively the most faithful cinematic portrayal of Batman. Sure, people get caught up in the utility belt, and the Batmobile, and the punch-em-ups. But Batman is the world’s greatest detective, not the world’s greatest puncher or the world’s greatest tinkerer (although he does both exceptionally well). Batman’s real superpower is to put the puzzle pieces together where no one else can, and The Batman is an unapologetic showcase of that fundamental trait.  

To get there, the film plays as a straight-up, linear noir, fitting given Batman originally debuted in May 1939’sDetective Comics #27 to capitalize on burgeoning, stylized Hollywood crime stories. Film noir takes a character with a moral or ethical code (usually a detective or private eye, but not always), pulls them out of their routine, and drops them into a mystery within a morass of cynicality, darkness, and corruption. Sound familiar? That’s where Batman’s grittiness comes from, and it’s an essential element from which all other Batman tropes flow.

Fascinatingly, the film is unabashedly about Batman, not Bruce Wayne. It’s a risky choice, but it pays off. Most Batman adaptations can’t resist throwing in a few scenes with flashy cars and supermodels to play up the Bruce Wayne playboy millionaire side. The dual personality narrative is an easy, digestible through-line, and it’s hard to fault creators for leaning into it. But The Batman actively avoids such a literal representation of that dichotomy, not only by hiding Bruce behind the cowl and a heavy dose of eye black for almost its entire runtime, but also with Pattinson’s portrayal. 

This is where we talk about Pattinson, who’s absolutely brilliant. His physicality is off the charts, and not only in the fight scenes. His actions are cold, brutal, and calculated, and he stalks around crime scenes, rooftops, and fire escapes with clear intentionality. What’s just under the surface stands out, too. He’s stoic, but in a way that belies an underlying turmoil and simmering anger. The Batman identity and all its trappings is an easy device through which Bruce both buries and viscerally expels his trauma, and Pattinson gets that across superbly. 

The supporting cast deserves recognition, too, especially Zoë Kravitz’s aloof, confident Selina Kyle and Paul Dano’s disturbed, unhinged Riddler. The characters fluidly move around and interact with Pattison’s Batman, in a way that both allows them to individually shine and complement their totemic lead.

The characterization doesn’t stop at the humans, either. Fans of New York movies love to preach about NYC’s value as a character. This film clearly took that sentiment and ran with it. Gotham City is often said to mimic New York, but a film has never so directly and effectively coopted the darker sides of its real-life counterpart. Sometimes this is literal (“Gotham” Square Garden, the Empire State building), but more often it reveals itself in Gotham’s breathing fabric. It’s a sprawling, dangerous place filled to the brim with corruption and decay, and The Batman’s Gotham City tangibly oozes that in spades. 

As perfectly as it nails the Bat and his surroundings, The Batman has its flaws. The noir is great, but at times it teeters on the brink of parody, most often in Batman’s drawn-out monologues and some of Pattinson’s solo scenes. For example, there’s a scene in which Bruce sits in the Batcave and removes his eye black to the backdrop of Nirvana’s “Something in the Way.” We quickly find out that the song’s not a needle drop on the film’s soundtrack but is instead actually playing through the Batcave speakers. Bruce is overtly ‘in his feelings’ like this a lot, and when paired with heavy-handed dialogue like “I’m vengeance” (yes, we know), it comes across as too much.  

Surprisingly, the much-maligned three-hour runtime didn’t feel too long, but the film does suffer from a ‘too many endings’ problem through its final stretch. This includes a scene with the Riddler and a certain cellmate of his. That scene particularly felt out of place and unnecessary, at least as anything other than a tease for the next installment, and it was disappointing in a film with such clear vision and direction elsewhere.

But mostly, The Batman is everything Batman fans, and indeed movie fans, could want and more, and it’s instantly iconic in a way few films are.

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