The Disaster Artist

The interesting thing about this film, if viewed as a prequel to The Room, is that it almost retroactively makes the original film good.  Not in a "so bad it's good" way, but actually admirable.  You understand what Tommy Wiseau wanted to do.  The Room wasn't a pretentious film by a talented director who was patting himself on the back for his talent, which I really hate.  It's a sincere attempt by someone who convey life the way that he sees it.  Granted, Tommy's way of looking at life is incredibly strange, and he's like a Bizarro World character from the Superman comics, but it's sincere.  He funded the film himself, took a giant leap, and although he communicated his outlook on life incompetently, it's still a sincere look into the mind of someone who really wanted to reach out and show the world something about himself.  In that sense, The Room truly is unique among films and truly does deliver on what art really should be, a means for human beings to connect with each other and share our realities.

Wait, am I actually trying to say something sensible and coherent while talking about Tommy Wiseau?  And did I just call that movie good?  I really should double-check that fruit punch they served at the New Year's Eve party.

Going into this film, I wanted either one of two things from it.  The first satisfying option was that this would be a bad film, which would be fitting.  The second would be for it to be good, which would be ironic.  Anything in-between those two extremes wouldn't do.

Now as it happens, I am happy to report that it was good.  As in, really good.  Oscar-worthy good.  It's one of the best movies of the whole year, and is a fitting film to conclude my calendar with.

The specific Oscars that I hope that this gets nominated for are James Franco as Tommy Wiseau, Dave Franco for Best Supporting Actor because I'm honestly surprised at how his presence as Greg Sestero wasn't overshadowed by his brother's titular role, and Best Adapted Screenplay, because this real-life tale is so fascinating and unique in ways that are stranger than fiction — actually, so strange that it can never truly be adapted, but this movie does a heck of a job.

Unfortunately, most theatres aren't showing this masterpiece, and so I'll have recommend that people buy it as soon as it comes out on DVD, and also The Room.  Because how can you not get one without getting the other?  They complement each other so well.  It also doesn't matter which order in which you watch them, so if you don't feel like getting The Room, go ahead and watch this first.

And let me assure you, it is good.  My sister even watched this instead of STAR WARS.  It was a special time, and between her and me, this movie gets high marks.

Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

Time to review this movie without spoiling it; boy, this ought to be fun!

John Williams produced three memorable themes in the last one, but I can't think of anything that stood out this time, although I'm absolutely going to rewatch this, so we'll see.  But if I re-watch it several times and find nothing new that's iconic, that will honestly be very sad.  I'll be listening to the soundtrack on Spotify in-between now and my next viewing.

It's kind of like Episode V in that  the heroes are definitely up against a huge challenge and you can honestly believe at times that the bad guys are going to win.  On the other hand, in some ways this is the most like Flash Gordon than any other episode (and I'm not saying that this is a bad thing).

Holy cow, they did some things that I wasn't expecting them to do in the middle film of a trilogy.  And by the end, I'm going to be honest, I had absolutely no idea where they were going to go with the next movie.  As in truly, I can't even speculate.

In a lot of ways, the directing and story felt a lot different from a STAR WARS episode, perhaps even comparable to an anthology film like Rogue One.  Rian Johnson does several things with his editing that simply have never been done in any episodes prior.  It was really weird for me.  I think that other people are going to notice it, too, and there's definitely going to be people with passionate opinions on this.  Some will love it, some will hate it.  I'll just  point out that in the original saga, the middle films were where the directors usually got a bit more experimental.  In any case, this actually makes me glad that J.J. Abrams is directing the next one.  Interestingly, though, I will say that the closing shot of this film was far more classically STAR WARS than Episode VII's ending.

Final assessment: I had a really fun time, and I liked it.  I was going to watch it ten times, but now I think that I'll only watch it eight times.  It's not quite the quintessential big screen experience, but that's typical of the middle films, because they've always been my least favorite.  However, we'll see.  These movies have a special place in my sister's heart, since this is for her generation, and if she loves it, I'll probably watch it those extra two times just for her.  At the end of the day, she's what's important.

Justice League

Justice League stays true, for the most part, to what it advertised: a movie about five iconic superheroes who need little-to-no introduction getting together (right now, over me) in order to stop a villain who wasn't noteworthy enough to show up in the trailers, that may or may not have anything to do with Superman.  There has been several different marketing tools employed domestically across the world that both imply that he is in the film, and things that imply that he isn't, and a lot of it is fake and deliberately misleading in order to get people speculating.  So, out of respect to Warner Bros., I won't reveal whether or not Superman comes back or if they were gutsy enough to keep him dead.

With that in mind, what do you have?

Batman.  Everyone knows who this is. The only difference to this Batman that I think needs introduction is that his main schtick this time around doesn't seem to be his batty obsession with his dead parents, but a sense of guilt over Superman's death.  This is the first time that I've ever seen Batman depicted on film with friendship being a major part of his identity.

Wonder Woman.  Everyone's favorite character at this point.  The movie acknowledges some important parts from her origins movie earlier this year.

These two decide that they're going to start a team based off of cameos from previous films, consisting of the following three:

Aquaman: A bigger outsider than Batman ever was, and with a complicated backstory with Shakespearean family drama that's complicated enough that he's naturally the next one to get his own film.  He reminds me a bit of the brooding Superman from Man of Steel, but it does fit the character a little better.  However, he's the character who will probably endear people the least.

Cyborg: The most obscure  of these characters, but at the same time can be summed up in one sentence.  His father tried fusing him with alien technology to save his life, and now he's afraid of the technology that's taking over his body and possibly his mind.

The Flash: Barry Allen, everyone.  Probably the most famous superhero outside of the Big Three.  He says it as briefly as possible, that be got struck by lightning.  Now he's fast, can go into some alternate dimension, and has the Speed Force.  He doesn't have any friends, and it the most eager to join the Justice League.  It should be noted that he is responsible for all of the movie's best moments.

They must fight Steppenwolf, a cool-looking villain played by a Shakespearean actor who delivers his few lines very well.  He's of the  Marvel variety, a forgettable villain; however, I personally really enjoyed him, if only because I really enjoyed the actor's performance.  Steppenwolf's plan is to gather the Mother Boxes, an all-powerful force, and transform Earth into that red place that you saw in the trailers, which he would get away with if it wasn't for the Justice League.

That's it.  That's the film in a nutshell.  I think that it does a fairly decent job, and will keep people entertained.  It doesn't have the gravitas and level of excitement and payoff that The Avengers did five years ago, but I think that people will be more satisfied if they go in thinking of it as a pilot episode for a DC animated show, since it has about a similar feel.  There were certain moments that took me back to these kind of shows.  Even Steppenwolf, as underdeveloped as he was, reminded me of villains who show up in a pilot episode to get introduced as a larger series villain who will get  more development later.

I would also recommend this movie especially to people who haven't seen Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, on account of this film deciding to ignore major issues from them.  It's very clear that DC wants to do a course-correct and wishes that they never made the first two films the way that they did, meaning that they're not only changing tone, but they're changing characters to fit their beloved comic-book counterparts with no in-universe reason.

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Other pros and cons:

Great cinematography.  Everything directed by Zack Snyder looks gorgeous.  In fact, I don't say this too often, but it looks even richer in 3D.

Poor sound editing.  There were times when sound played an important part in storytelling, and it really should have been edited to make the film far more immersive.

The editing!  This is where most  people complain.  It's very obvious that there are quite a few deleted scenes, because the scenes that remain, especially in the beginning, don't directly flow into each other and interrupt the momentum that the film is trying to build up.  However, each scene on its own is pretty cool.  The other editing problem is in Warner Bros.'s mandate to keep the film under two hours, including the credits.  So the film feels like it's about an hour and a half long (hence why I compare it to their animated pilots), and that just wasn't  long enough to build up some important conflicts and play off of character chemistry.  I feel that the second act in particular could have had several extra scenes to help build up to several key character choices.  The inevitable extended cut of this movie will probably drastically improve on this.  However, it would have been nice to see all of these extra story on the big screen.

The music pleased me.  Greatly.  They distanced themselves from everything having to do with Hans Zimmer and embraced a lot of their more classical music that I hear from their television shows and their video games, and it took me to a nostalgic place.  You hear hints of the original Batman theme, and the original Superman theme, and Wonder Woman's theme gets a makeover so that instead of playing on an electric cello, she makes her entrance to trumpets, which I think takes her good theme and makes it great.  The best new piece of music easily belongs to the Flash.  It plays whenever he goes into speed mode, and I truly loved it.

The costumes were great.  The Flash once again gets my praise, because his costume is almost exactly what I always imagined that it would look like.

I will defend this film against comparisons to The Avengers, since most of the comparisons being made stem from similarities in the comics.  Steppenwolf is compared to Loki on the basis of them both having horned helmets, but they both had those in the comics.  The Parademons have been compared to the Chitauri, but the Parademons have been in the comics longer.  The Mother Boxes as a generic source of power has been compared to the Tesseract, but again, this is ancient comics stuff.  Most other comparisons after that come off as stretches, for me.  Like, the fact that Wonder Woman knows who Steppenwolf is, and Thor knows who Loki is.  Ahem, that's lame.

Anyway, I enjoyed it enough that for whatever reason I watched it twice on its own merits.  I like these characters especially and it's pretty awesome to finally see them depicted on film.  Especially the Flash.  Goodness, can't you tell that I liked everything with the Flash?

Thor: Ragnarok

People said that this was going to be a buddy cop film, but it really isn't.  I have no idea how people came up with that description.  I didn't even get that impression from the trailers, and now that I've seen the film, I can definitely say that it isn't that type of film.

People said that this was going to be a Planet Hulk film, but it really isn't.  There's not a lot of time spent exploring the world of gladiators so much as joking about it.  The world is still pretty cool, though.

People said that this had the most jokes out of any Marvel film, and I can't really verify that without painstakingly going back and taking a tally of every joke ever told in each Marvel film.  It could very well be, though, since there are a lot of jokes.

Previous films said that this was going to go a certain way and...yeah, here's where there was strait-up false advertising.  That post-credits scene from Doctor Strange was pulled out of context and gave me a very different impression of what sort of film this would be.  I also find myself having a reason for disliking Avengers: Age of Ultron because that one scene was unnecessary.

The actual trailers, I think, did much more to make people want to see this film than any easter-eggs from other films.  I think that most people are going to be satisfied.  It's funny, visually pleasing, has that techno music that  got everyone excited, has some decent action, and it has Thor, Loki, and the Hulk all in one movie, all with nice chemistry.  It's a recipe for success.

But this is where I admit that, for the most part, was disappointed with the film.  I'm not really sure if this is a sequel to the last Thor movie or the last Avengers movie.  As a means of capping off the Thor trilogy, I actually think that it's a bad film.  "What?" you say.  "You're calling this a bad film?"  Well no, not entirely.  It just doesn't really serve the Thor trilogy all that well.

For starters, there's Jane Foster, a.k.a. the beautiful Natalie Portman, a.k.a. the women I'd turn to the Dark Side, pledge my allegiance to a Satanic megalomaniac, and kill a thousand younglings for.  The first two films set her up, and I was curious to see where they would take her.  It turns out, she's not in this film.  All that buildup — nothing.  Perhaps she'll appear in some future film, but she most naturally belongs in the climax of Thor's personal story.  Without her, I don't feel like you had a complete story arc for Thor.

The storyline with Odin is also pretty underwhelming.  I just expected something far more satisfying, but it was hardly there and made almost no impact.  And then the villain arrives, and her arrival wasn't really built up to and didn't feel quite as foreboding as you'd expect.  Somehow, emo Cate Blanchett with awesome-thorn-helmet didn't make much of an impression.

Then there's the lack of a sense of finality.  When I said that this movie just as much of a sequel to the Avengers movies, it's more than that, because it's also a giant buildup to Avengers: Infinity War.  It not only feels like it picked up from where other films left off, but it also has no sense of finality, because it's clearly leading into future films.  So it neither caps off a trilogy, nor is it a standalone film.  I wish that it had, at least, felt like a definitive ending to Thor's story, but it didn't feel quite that way.

The humor was good, but I found that I actually didn't laugh too much at it.  There were times when it actually ruined moments that could have been legitimately epic, too, so it actually frustrated me.  There were moments that were simply designed to be epic, but they either didn't get enough time dedicated to them before cutting away, or the humor took away the awesomeness.  For example, the climax.  That could have been pretty amazing, but I actually didn't feel too invested, and though the visuals were pretty good, the subversive humor kept on reminding me that there was nothing really at stake, and I couldn't quite get invested in the action scenes as action scenes.  Ironically, I found myself more invested in the final fight in Wonder Woman.  The best action scene in the film is probably the one in the trailers, where Thor fights with Hulk (and wins, easily), which had the least humor in the film and simultaneously the best humor because it's the type of humor that gets you invested in the conflict.

There was one joke, though.  On one hand, it was a callback to everyone's favorite joke from The Avengers, but on the other hand, I also happen to think that it's one of the funniest jokes in the entire MCU.  But it's still pretty good.  I anticipated it, actually, and I laughed for an uncomfortably long time in the middle of the theater because of it.

As it happens, although I didn't feel the stakes, the stakes actually were real.  I've said that there are things that I didn't like, but what I did like, which I think that this did better than most Marvel movies, was that it made some serious decisions that ended up having permanent repercussions.  There are changes to the mythology that will carry over in to future films that will have a lasting effect on the landscape of the MCU, I'd argue even more than Civil War did.

At the end of the day, I'd say that the film is pretty funny and captures almost exactly what everybody either seems to love or hate about the MCU.  I'd personally have put less emphasis on the humor and more on the balls-to-the-wall creativity of the settings, but that's just me.  In order to get the most entertainment out of this film, you should go in expecting something that will do a great job of setting the stage for Avengers: Infinity War.  I'd recommend that everyone go see it — once.  Because it's such a middle film, I actually don't think that it's worth worth watching a second time until it comes out on DVD and you want to go on an MCU marathon.

Stranger Things 2

This is the reason why I've been singing Christmas carols early, in spite of people telling me that it's too early, because Halloween gave me a premature Christmas present.

Last year, the world witnessed the rise of a wonderful, rewatchable gem called Stranger Things, and because sometimes we can have nice things, we've been blessed with a sequel.  Is it as good as the original?  Heck yes.

My only real complaint is that it isn't quite as self-contained as the first, but otherwise, the show has not yet lost that freshness and special magic that makes it epic.  I can immediately tell you, this is as rewatchable as the first, and I think that this will go down as a classic.

On the note of self-containment: this has one more episode than the previous miniseries, and honestly, you can tell which episode is "the extra."  It doesn't necessarily feel shoe-horned in, because it does contribute to the plot of this season's story arc in relevant ways, but it's obvious that its main purpose is to set up for Stranger Things 3.

Otherwise, this does an excellent job of continuing the story, making callbacks when they're necessary, tying in with last year's story, introducing new characters, doing more with its old ones, and managing to expand on the mythology of the universe in a reasonable way that both ups the steaks and leaves the audience wondering just what sort of stranger things lurk around the upside down.

Only the Brave

There are three types of things that will get me to watch a film no matter what.  Miles Teller, because he blew me away in Whiplash and made me into a loyalist.  Jennifer Connelly, because shes still the most beautiful woman alive and has talent to boot.  And then there's...

Well, wait a minute.  I didn't watch Fantastic 4 or Winter's Tale, so scratch what I said about Teller and Connelly.  But anyway, I guess that's why I save the third point for last, since it's the best one.

Movies about American working-class people who are heroes simply for doing their job.  Basically, the last three films by Peter Berg.  In fact, I thought that this was a Peter Berg film.  For those who don't know, that's the person who directed Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day.  Does that paint a pretty clear picture of what sort of genre I'm talking about?

If you're into this particular subject matter, than you're going to be interested in this movie.  As a work of art, I don't think a whole lot of it.  Bear in mind, I went back and rewatched Blade Runner 2049 the weekend before this movie came out, so I had just been saturated with very high standards for filmmaking.  I'm also a bit disappointed now that I realize that the director for this movie, Joseph Kosinksi, directed TRON: Legacy and Oblivion, which means that he really does have exceptionally high artistic standards, and isn't quite like Spielberg, who could transfer those over from the action movies to his more serious non-fiction stories.

That's not saying that the film is poorly made or anything.  I'm just surprised that this comes from a director with a major eye for aesthetics, editing, and sound, and here you have a movie that feels pretty normal.  The part that probably surprises me the most is his editing, which I don't quite know how to explain, but it's just different and far more casual than in TRON: Legacy and Oblivion.

Does this film really need to be as artistic as a Spielbergian drama, though?  One must bear in mind that the movie mostly takes place in a small town in Arizona.  Perhaps if too much art were put into it, it would feel dramatized, and less intimately appreciative of the real-life individuals upon whom this story is based.  This movie honors the common man, and does so by being quite common.  I don't see this as being a major international movie, or even a major movie that brings America together, but a small community film meant for regular people who want to feel understood.

Speaking of which, Jeff Bridges, man.  I don't feel like this film will get any Oscar nominations, but if it does, it will be in Jeff.  He changes his face and expressions in such ways that change him and also make him ring completely true for me.  I grew up in a small town.  I live in a small town.  Let me just say that he completely channeled some of the local heroes of the small town community.  It was a great performance, and I truly loved it.  That, to me, was the best part of the entire movie.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that Jennifer Connelly was given more to do than just show up in a couple of scenes as Eric Marsh's wife.  They actually used some of her talent as an actress, which I appreciated.  Also, seeing her as a rancher wearing a cowgirl hat and denim clothes was pretty awesome.  How can a guy complain?

Anyway, as to the firefighters, perhaps one of my complaints is that I didn't feel like I was in a physically real fire department, and I didn't have the greatest understanding of what was going on during the forest fires.  A while back I wrote a review for Deepwater Horizon and how that film made me really convinced that I was in an industrial workplace, because I had worked in an industrial workplace before.  I was hoping to really come to a deep understanding of what it's like to be a firefighter, but the movie didn't make it completely real for me.  Emotionally, it made a lot of it real, but just as a person who's interested in seeing a movie that helps me understand a job really well, I didn't necessarily like I had a comprehensive education.  Perhaps that's a weird thing to want, of course.

But I'm sure that many people aren't considering watching this film based off of whether or not it's a training video on fire fighting with Mel Gibson levels of artistic immersion and James Cameron levels of obsessive-compulsive detail.  You're probably interested in how it depicts people.  If you know the real-life story, you'll understand why it puts more focus on Brendan McDonnough.  Naturally, the supervisor Eric Marsh is the deuteragonist, and overall, there's somewhat of an ensemble cast and a lot of emphasis on how firefighters sort of form a family unit.  The film also explores the themes of firefighters having to spend time away from their actual families quite a bit, and overall, the story is pretty good.  It's always a good thing when movies can spark discussion, and I personally hope that certain people can have fruitful conversations about family planning after watching this.  Once again, I think that people with community values will really appreciate this film.

Since I didn't know the true story, I didn't foresee how the movie would end.  There were certain things that made me think, "Okay, this the type of storyline that I'm going to get, where the characters will develop in this way and this is why they're emphasizing certain scenes and editing it this way," but it turns out that I was wrong.  It's not like the true events were presented as a major twist, either.  I just sort of had certain expectations based off of the film making language used for most of the movie and the type of story it seemed to get me invested in, so that I was preparing myself for one emotion and found myself having another.

If I were to rate this movie, I'd put it above one of those slightly cringeworthy, plotless movies like Courageous, underneath Oliver Stone's World Trade Center and Clint Eastwood's American Sniper, and right about the same level as Deepwater Horizon, just too give people an idea of where this falls quality-wise.  I will say, while not quite as immersive on a technical level as Deepwater Horizon, it did do a lot more to make create portraits of the firefighters that included meaningful details, such as what drove their relationships and what some of their personal desires were.

Overall, I appreciated it.  I like these kinds of films, and I do like seeing this kind of heroism and sense of community celebrated.

Miles Teller will also be appearing in another film of this genre, Thank You For Your Service, next weekend, on October 27, and I will be watching and reviewing that as well.

Blade Runner 2049

When did I watch the original?  Was it six years ago?  It's  been a while.  The main things that I remember were the cons of having little story or character investment, but the pro of having more atmosphere than the planet Jupiter.  So atmospheric.

Its sequel (and unofficially also the sequel to La La Land, if you think about it) manages to find a decent common-ground between the two.  I felt that it had more story, and most definitely more likable characters, while also having a ridiculous amount of atmosphere.  Denis Villeneuve packs this film with it.  While not quite as dark and as noir as the original, he still recognizes that what makes Blade Runner what it is is the emphasis on directing, and he makes sure to pack 2049 with all sorts of provocative cinematography, lighting, sets, sounds, and musical language.  The movie is a work of art.  Ridley Scott chose his successor well.

Some people will wonder why Marvel is accused of making factory-produced films, and movies like this prove the point that the accusers are making.  This  isn't factory-produced.  It relies strongly on a directorial vision to complete a picture that few directors can pull off.  I applaud it for that.  Part of me wants to watch it again because of that, and especially because of the cinematography and lighting.  Earlier this year, I praised Logan Noir for having the best cinematography, but now various other films have come out, and now it's hard for me to say if there is any clear front-runner in the Best Cinematography category.

The movie also does a better job than the original of getting people to think about technology, and it really sells this world to me.  The new types of artificial intelligence, the ways information is kept, and so forth.  It feels incredibly fleshed out.

As for the characters, let's just say that Gosling is much more likable than Deckard back in the day.  Deckard was simply an atrocious character who had no charm whatsoever, and his abusive romance with Rachael was cringeworthy.  I know that was the intention of Ridley Scott, but that didn't make it entertaining for me to watch.  I'm glad that we had a  good main character this time around, and an interesting supporting case, and that the pace of the film let us constantly feel that the characters were developing.

The story had me engaged.  At times it also surprised me.  It really was its own story and was pretty well put together, and it works incredibly well both as a stand-alone and as a sequel, naturally continuing the story of the original which should leave people satisfied while giving itself its own narrative language.  What the story is about, I can't really give that away.  Let's just say that the trailers don't give much away.

Some final thoughts: Jared Leto was awesome, but I wanted more of him.  There was also a scene with an old character who got the Grand Moff Tarkin treatment, at which I cringed, but fortunately that moment was incredibly brief.  Also, Edward James Olmos, whom I regard as one of the greats, makes a brief appearance, which in my mind was the best callback in the entire film, although that's not saying much since this film doesn't use too many "callback moments" that you often get in sequels.

Ultimately, if you really like artistic films, or are a fan of cinematography, or really like this genre, then you should check this out.  Regarding its rating, strong language is few and far between, and the main reason that it has its rating is because of strong sexual themes and imagery, which I would argue aren't entirely out of place due to the strong themes of sexuality within the story.  Don't watch this film if the nearly three-hour running time is a concern, although for me that extra hour really contributed toward it being a good film.  Finally, while the visuals will probably hold up pretty well on Blu-Ray, I do recommend watching this movie in theatres specifically for the sound quality.  Villeneuve makes very striking decisions with his music and sound editing that will likely be lost at home, but which reverberate in the cinemas.