Reviewing the 4 Movies I Watched In February 2023
I spent a lot of time working, going to breweries, and camping in the last 3 weeks, rarely finding myself before a screen bigger than my phone. I did catch up on some shows that I will talk about in a different post; for now, here’s the 4 movies I saw:
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
The Last Crusade made me appreciate how Temple of Doom is like an art film in the most accessible way—because this one tells an actual story. It has a lot of James Bond in its blood, what with the first Bond actor, Sean Connery, playing the delightful role of Indie’s dad. Its characters are more complex and rational than in the previous film—easier to watch, but not necessarily better or more memorable. It sparks conversation about the value of what style of filmmaking is used in each movie (of which I still think Raiders of the Lost Arc is easily the best.) Every sequel to the original Indiana Jones, which was already perfect in-and-of itself as the ‘ultimate’ pulp movie, has felt like it sprung from the question of “how do we justify doing another one of these(?),” rather than from the desire to make a perfect version of something—which only the first film could ever have been able to have done.
Score: 28/40
Louis CK: Back to the Garden (2023)
Louie apologizes for how hard it must be to consider yourself a fan of him after his being cancelled for sexual misconduct. I think the story of what Louie was cancelled for is hilarious. It’s not a good look, no. I laugh with and at plenty of people that I don’t think I’d necessarily enjoy being around or think I’d tell other people to hang out with in a context outside seeing them do the most likable thing of which they are capable. Louis CK is willing to say things that I probably wouldn’t say in almost any company—and which also made me laugh hysterically. I’m glad that someone is willing to say the funniest thing they can think of, no matter how utterly fucked of a thought it might have been to have in the first place. I’d rather someone else thought it before I did so I can just laugh at it.
Score: 35/40 - Recommended!!
X-Men: First Class (2011)
I’d always heard that this and its sequel were great films, and I was surprised by how much I actually loved this as a fan of X-Men through mostly the first live-action film and, later, watching the first 2 seasons of the 90s cartoon. I haven’t read more than one graphic novel’s worth of the comics, so I can’t comment on what could’ve been done or whatever, but the tragic bromance of Magneto and Xavier feels so natural and right in this film that it legitimately made me care about those two characters a lot more than I ever had before. The rivalry has always hung overhead of the entire conflict in the heart of X-Men, but it’s rare that those two characters come to the forefront of storylines, and actually carry the key dramatic moments of a story. Giving them such a well-done backstory radiates through our understanding of these men for the entire rest of the franchise. We can still believe that these guys become Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen someday, because those two real men have a real-life bromance just like the characters in this movie. It just works on every level.
My biggest complaint about this film is that it asks us to try and care about too many characters, and only really wins in a few cases. There is one death of a character we’ve barely met, and I was surprised that more of the barely-developed ones weren’t picked off in the final battle—although I hear that the sequel opens with some of them already dead. On the one hand, this film is already unbelievably packed with content, edited tightly in a way that I honestly wished some scenes went on a little bit longer, even though I know I would have had less fun with a too-long film and less overall content than is crammed in here. Some of the montage sequences are really incredibly well-done. I thought Mystique and Beast’s stories presented a strong commentary on body dysmorphia and self-acceptance, even if there wasn’t much to those characters outside of that conflict. There were many likable performances, such as a Nazi Kevin Bacon, but Michael Fassbender really stole the show for me bringing a complex intensity to Magneto that sold the validity of the whole thing to X-Men canon.
Score: 37/40 - Recommended!!
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Look, I never thought I’d see the day that I was one of the internet’s biggest Marvel apologists, but I can’t understand the critical distaste for this film. I’ve heard a lot of vague complaints about the acting or the designs, or just for the plot of the film being relatively generic to the formula of Marvel movies—which is stuff that I can’t imagine anyone that likes these movies sincerely actually giving a shit about. I was not the biggest fan of the first two Ant-Man films—the first one was too mixed up between its two obviously different filmmaker’s styles, and the second one had weak villain writing in spite of cool action scenes and character beats. For me, Ant-Man became awesome when he was a core Avenger during Endgame (still my favorite entry in the entire MCU) and Paul Rudd got to act his ass off and make me cry when he was reunited with his now-adult daughter Cassie. (Whose actress has been swapped out between that movie and this one, and now she’s Misty from Detective Pikachu).
I have a few issues with this movie. Even though I feel exactly the opposite as Cosmonaut Variety Hour, in that I thought Misty and Paul Rudd had great chemistry together, I still thought she wasn’t amazing all of the time. I was a lot more bothered by Michelle Pfeifer, who just doesn’t look or act like the person who would have done all of the things that her character is supposed to have done, and never really sounds sure of herself when giving the silly amount of expository dialog that her character has to, being the only one of the good guys who is familiar with the Quantum Realm. Paul Rudd is fantastic and full of conviction, and the scene where he has to become ants with a whole bunch of himself is the moment that finally convinced me of how “ant-man” makes sense as a superhero concept. Of course, the OG ant-man shows him up to excellent effect in the finale, and his wife saves his ass too, because this film is about FAMILY even more so than all of the other recent Marvel movies.
But of course, I have to give a whole paragraph over just to Jonathan Majors. I’d never heard of this dude at all until the second half of the final episode of Loki, in which he became the most memorable part of a show I was already totally in love with. Kang the Conqueror is an incredible villain almost entirely because of how convincing Majors can be as all these differently-insane versions of the character. The guy we met in Loki was almost as much the trickster-controller that Loki himself had been, and was ended by the Loki who less-resembles him. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been so quick to dispatch the sad, serious, and wrathfully angry Kang of Quantumania. In a film full of hilarious one-liners, funny actors and goofy sci-fi, Kang manages to bring a real feeling of threat and intensity to the heart of the film, and it still comes very close to crossing into the darker realms we’ve seen some of the other Marvel properties go to. What this film sets us up for in the most lighthearted way, is potentially the darkest era of Marvel storytelling to date. I hope so, anyways.
Score: 36/40 - Recommended!!