curlymst3000 Reviews

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

A kingdom (and a movie) lost without its leader

[6/10 · 17 November 2022]

Chadwick Boseman's death was so sad and sudden, and I still shed a tear when thinking about it, especially as he embodied a character, King T'Challa: The Black Panther, that meant so much to so many. Marvel and director Ryan Coogler made the prudent decision not to recast him in order to honor his memory and legacy. Rest in power, King.

In the immediacy of tragedy, removing T'Challa as a character made sense. Unfortunately, one can't help but feel when watching Wakanda Forever that the lack of his presence brought not just the titular kingdom into turmoil, but the movie itself as well. A mistake by the powers-that-be in the long run. This movie is a rudderless ship that no one in the cast is strong enough to anchor. Disjointed, multiple storylines and characters that seem extraneous and unnecessary (Agent Ross with Director de Fontaine and and Riri/Ironheart in particular) stretch the movie into an unwarranted runtime. The central conflict between Wakanda and Namor's (Tenoch Huerta is far and away the most compelling and charismatic part of the movie, but doesn't get enough screentime--typical of the MCU's antagonists lately) forces is undercooked and lost amidst the mismatched ideas of how to carry the story forward.

Ultimately, it befalls Shuri to assume the mantle of Black Panther, but frankly Letitia Wright is not a enough performer to do so, and her arc is rather odd and disingenuous leading to the moment that trailers spoiled months ago.

The Many Saints of Newark (2021)

Falsely advertised and relentlessly dull

[5/10 · 12 October 2021]

Who made Tony Soprano? The tagline of the film that bills itself as "A Sopranos Story" feels like an afterthought. This is not the Tony Soprano origin tale that it was advertised as, it just happens to be a movie in which young Tony Soprano happens to be in some scenes. One of the many reasons why this film is a complete mess. David Chase couldn't commit to make it a straight Sopranos prequel, but focuses on a battle of wills and wits between Italian and Black gangsters in Newark with some familiar names and faces thrown in. By the end we're hardly left with an answer to the question of who made Tony Soprano. Just a kid who admired his uncle (who was an incompetent crime boss that couldn't possibly have inspired the Tony that we know in the show), had violent impulses, but still doesn't seem anywhere near on the road to mob boss. Some good performances from James Gandolfini's son, Michael, Alessandro Nivola, and Ray Liotta. But a movie with zero spark and storytelling so non-compelling that you'll be so tempted to hit the Back button on your HBO Max app and just scroll over to some of your favorite Sopranos episodes instead. You'd be better off.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

A trilogy that shouldn't have been

[5/10 · 12 June 2020]

Since Peter Jackson's highly anticipated, yet underwhelming, return to Middle-Earth in 2012 with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, many devout fans have given Peter Jackson the benefit of a very substantial doubt that he could still churn out an outstanding Tolkien film, myself included. But with Bilbo's swan song here, that hope is sadly extinguished, like the glory and splendor of the town of Dale.

The Battle of the Five Armies suffers from that which plagued The Hobbit trilogy since the beginning: bloated excess and a complete lack of focus. How Jackson and Warner Bros. justified stretching Tolkien's breeziest, most accessible text into three movies will forever escape me.

The film opens where The Desolation of Smaug should have closed, had Jackson shown just a hint of economy with this trilogy, as that silver-tongued dragon lays waste to Laketown and subsequently falls to the arrow of Bard the Bowman. Bilbo, our supposedly titular hero, is yet again sidelined in favor of Thorin and his merry band. This is surely Jackson's biggest folly throughout this trilogy. Too often it has felt that we are watching The Dwarf instead of The Hobbit. Martin Freeman was never given the chance to truly come into his own as Bilbo Baggins, though he hardly be faulted for that. He gave the character everything that he could, and in the few instances where he has been allowed to shine, Freeman knocks it out of the park.

The eponymous battle also disappoints. It does not nearly match the action, bravura, or emotional stakes raised by, say, the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in Return of the King or Balin's Tomb in Fellowship of the Ring. Instead we are presented with something that looks more appropriate as a video game cutscene as thousands of faceless Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Orcs slam into each other. Yet Jackson eschews much of the climactic battle in favor of one-on-one fisticuffs between Thorin and his CG Orc nemesis, Azog, as well as the inexplicably shoehorned Legolas in an overwrought, physics-defying deathmatch that spawns more eye-rolling. We never get the impression that there is much at stake, nor the understanding that Elf, Dwarf, and Man put aside petty squabbles and greed to unite against a greater enemy, a point that Tolkien so beautifully delivered.

In the end, I just did not care about what happened to these characters. I wanted to love these films, as I loved The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Gone are the days, it seems, in which Peter Jackson was wholly invested in bringing Middle-Earth to vivid life. Here he has fallen prey to the George Lucas effect. I longed for the gorgeous aerial shots and locations in New Zealand as opposed to endless over-polished glistening greenscreen cinematography. I miss the outstanding prosthetics and make-up that have been forsaken for CGI. For my part, there is no soul in this Hobbit, and the end result begs the question: If Guillermo del Toro had stayed in the director's chair, what would he have done differently?

Mr. Right (I) (2015)

Tone-deaf. Did we see the same movie?

[3/10 · 9 June 2020]

I am flabbergasted by the plethora of reviews praising the comedy and storytelling (it actually contains neither) of this travesty. Were they paid off? This wasn't given a real theatrical release and it's plain to see why. How Sam Rockwell, Anna Kendrick, and Tim Roth were coaxed into this mess will forever be a mystery. Universal probably gave it to Netflix for free, begging to clear it off the shelf of movies not meant to see the light of day. Max Landis, even before the MeToo movement that came knocking on his door, was on borrowed time as a benefactor of industry nepotism and scarcely a shred of talent. This movie's script proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Just a tone-deaf mess that falls flat on its face in every single scene.