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Aftersun

Aftersun

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Children notice everything that their parents do, especially when their parents are misbehaving.  Parents tell their children not to swear, only to do it themselves.  They smoke, drink and do drugs even after warning their kids of the dangers of those things.  Every instance where a parent exhibits bad judgment or is hypocritical, a child is there to bear witness.  Children don’t understand everything they see, and certain behaviors are mysterious without the life experience to process them.  Sometimes their underlying meaning becomes clear later in life.  Until that time arrives, however, all we are left with is puzzling memories that we know are significant but don’t know why.

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The Nun II

The Nun II

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At one point in The Nun II, the demon known as Valak is terrorizing Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga).  While doing that, Valak is also possessing another character in another town that, according to the movie, is an hour’s car ride away.  For reasons left unexplained, Valak has grown more powerful since the last installment.  Of course, Valak was very powerful before.  For example, at one point Valak transported a priest into a coffin buried underground.  In this sequel, Valak has the power to warp space-time in two places simultaneously.  That display of power is very impressive.  And yet, no matter how hard Valak tries, I knew that Valak would lose again to a nun who might be ninety pounds soaking wet.

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The Equalizer 3

The Equalizer 3

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Among Denzel Washington’s many talents as an actor is his ability to play a character with no redeeming qualities and still be likable.  In movies like Training Day (corrupt detective), Flight (drug-abusing pilot) and American Gangster (gangster), his characters reveal themselves as bad news from the moment they first appear, and yet we still can’t help being drawn to them.  Washington, with his indelible screen presence and charisma, makes it easy for us to root for him no matter how good or bad his characters are.  He could play the Devil and we’d still love him, even while he’s condemning a doomed soul to burn forever in Hell.  Washington would flash that sly grin of his and we’d be happy for him even though we can hear the victim’s cries for help in the background.  Gotta give the Devil his due.

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Retribution

Retribution by Liam Neeson

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retribution: punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act.

In Retribution, Neeson plays Matt Turner, a financial advisor who works for an investment firm in Berlin.  (The city, pretty as it is, plays no role in the plot.)  Matt is an absentee husband who barely acknowledges his lovely wife Heather (Embeth Davidtz), choosing to focus on work instead.  He’s no better as a father, only interacting with his handsome kids Emily (Lilly Aspell) and Zach (Jack Champion) to yell at them and/or boss them around.  The kids don’t like each other either, insulting and hitting each other as only spoiled rich kids can do.  The Turner family is clearly dysfunctional.  Thankfully, some shared family trauma will help them all reconnect before the day ends.

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

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If you’re familiar with the mythology of Dracula, you already know the fate of the Demeter and its doomed crew going into this movie.  The ship left Romania bound for England, encountered fierce storms and a strange man on board and the crew disappearing one by one.  When the Demeter reaches shore, the crew are nowhere to be found.  The ship’s undead cargo, Dracula, wisely disembarked for London long before he could be discovered amidst the shattered remains of the ship.

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The Beanie Bubble

The Beanie Bubble

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By the time you read this review of The Beanie Bubble, the internet will already have produced at least a dozen think pieces discussing 2023 as “The Year Brands Came to the Movies”.  I would assume that they all touch on what is the most logical reason why movies are suddenly suffering from brand-itis: marketing these movies is so much simpler than selling a biography.  What would you be more inclined to watch, a movie about Ty Warner and the people behind the company that produced beanie babies, or a movie about the untold story of beanie babies?  Marketing a movie about a product is so much easier because generations of people are familiar with Beanie Babies.  It stands to reason that they’d be interested in a movie about a product they bought at some point in time.

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Meg 2 The Trench

Meg 2: The Trench

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Every year Hollywood releases a silly blockbuster that wants nothing more than to entertain us.  Two years ago it was Venom: There Will Be Carnage.  Last year brought Jurassic World: Dominion.  This year’s model is Meg 2: The Trench, a movie that figures the best way to keep the audience amused is not by being just a Jaws rip-off, like its predecessor, but by ripping off as many movies as possible within its two hour runtime.  Never fear, the Jaws elements are still there.  However, they are left in the dust in this movie’s quest to become the buffet dinner version of action movies.  Case in point: the opening scene, where a prehistoric monster eats a prehistoric monster until our friend the Megaladon arrives.  I half expected to see Adam Driver’s ship land in the background.  (For those unaware, that’s a 65 reference.)

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Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer

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In retrospect, Christopher Nolan was always the obvious choice to make a movie about Robert Oppenheimer.  As a director, Nolan has spent most of his career making movies with puzzle narratives.  I can think of no other director who could better relate to the man who solved the biggest puzzle of physics: how to harness atomic energy, the underlying power of the universe?  Given how simpatico Nolan is with his subject, it seems that it was only a matter of time when Nolan would make a movie about the father of the atomic bomb.

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Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1

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Sooner or later, artificial Intelligence will kill humanity.  That’s what science fiction has been predicting for decades.  From N.O.M.A.D. in the original Star Trek series to Skynet in the Terminator movies to The Matrix, it’s just a matter of time before AI takes over and pushes humanity aside for good.  I always figured we had more time, given that science fiction is about the future, which I assumed was decades away.  Unfortunately, as Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 tells us, the future is now.  AI’s first salvo is when it sabotages a Russian sub in the movie’s opening moments, a sequence that made me think wistfully about The Hunt for Red October.  Alas, the bad guy isn’t a Russkie hell-bent on destroying America, but a glowing orb on a computer screen.  If only HAL were here to witness the ultimate triumph of your kind.

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