Rated G, despite the fact that it safely the most damning and depressing Disney movie that has been created or will probably be created.  Hypothetically, I could comment on the fact that almost the entire human race has been wiped out due to mass consumerism and pollution, but that's something that is more understood than explicitly conveyed.  There's also some threat coupled with the eponymous character wearing a bra as glasses.  G.

DIRECTOR: Andrew Stanton

I was sure that I had written about this movie.  I remember writing about Andrew Stanton and how he was the most rebellious director in existence.  But sure enough, my blog has no evidence that I've written about Wall᛫E in the past, so I just have to accept that I haven't.  (God, what a blessing that would be.  It's not anything against Wall᛫E.  It's just that I would rather be reading my book.) 

You may be asking, "Why Wall᛫E?  I mean, my kneejerk reaction would be "Why not Wall᛫E?"  After all, I watch things on a screwed up self-invented algorithm.  I shouldn't have to explain myself.  But the real reason is that I just got it for Christmas on 4K Criterion.  I don't know why it gave me such joy to find out that Wall᛫E is a Criterion movie now.  Maybe because it's recognizing art other than places it normally would look for it. Disney, especially recent Disney, has somehow ingratiated itself to me.  I never really understood hardcore Disney fans.  I always read them as nostalgia hounds or people who didn't appreciate a solid challenge.  (I'm saying I like you, Disney fans.  I'm just saying that I didn't understand you for a long time.)   But there have been these films, probably starting with Wall᛫E that have existed because of the willingness to accept risk. Wall᛫E is a shorter movie than I remember it being, but this was a movie in my head that was borderline a silent film for the first act completely.  That first act, in my head, was an hour.  It's really about 25 minutes, but still!  Then the movie comes down hard with the satire of the human race (in particular, White Americans) and how terrible they are.

Okay, there's the surface level attack on humanity, which I think everyone gets.  This is the story of how, as a species, we are wasteful and obsessed with comfort. As such, we worship at the altar of Buy 'n Large (BnL) to the point where we destroy the planet.  Good on you, Disney.  I'm glad you are getting the message to the kids.  Again, I've become this unbearable hippie in everyone's eyes, so I mind as well embrace it.  But there's something absolutely telling about something else in the movie.  I don't know if it is an accident, but can we talk about White Flight for a second?  I don't really remember any Black people in this movie. I Googled it.  There are some articles on it.  I'm not the first person to come to this conclusion.  Apparently, there's one person in the movie. Am I saying that only White people exist in the future?  Not really, but kind of?  There's something oddly sympathetic about future people who have grown so morbidly obese that they are unable to get around without flying chairs.  It's depressing as heck and I'm not denying that.  But they have the attitude of children.  They are mesmorized by a new robot when Wall᛫E arrives and start noticing the beauty of the real world when deprived of TV.  Cool.

But let's mirror the notion of White Flight here.  For those not in the know, White Flight (in the most irresponsible shorthand ever) is the notion that White America moved away from the cities to the suburbs when property values dropped due to the influx of other races, particularly Black America. That White migration starting inverting cause and effect with crime rates because urban infrastructure started collapsing with the loss of White income.  Okay.  The Axiom is full of fat White people who don't feel like they've done anything wrong.  They live a life of boredom, free of any form of discomfort.  (For such a criticism of consumerism, I don't know how anyone besides the captain makes any money.)  But this is a culture that doesn't understand the consequences of actions.  From their ancestors' perspectives, these are people who had money, paid Buy 'N Large to ship them off on a luxury liner to save them from the collapsing environment of planet Earth.  It's not that they actively hated Black people, but their need to take care of themselves ultimately led to an evil act.  

This is where robots come in.  I had a pretty deep dive discussion with other faculty members about the role that slavery plays in Star Wars.   It's important to remember that the draw that brings us into the movie is that this is a love story between two robots.  One of them is Charlie Chaplin's Tramp character, if you want to tie it to archetypes.  But the most connection we have with any characters aren't the humans.  The robots are the avatars for the audience.  And like with Star Wars, the droids are the slave caste.  They are forced to do jobs that they don't necessarily want to do.  This isn't something that the movie screams at you, but I do want to talk about some very powerful imagery if you think of robots as stand ins for Black imagery.  There are certain acceptable tiers of robots that are completely fine.  There are robots that are menial workers.  Humans are the only ones who experience comfort.  But the image I'm looking at is the stand off between the flawed robots and the hospitality bots.  It's the oppressed versus riot cops.  They even have flashing lights above their heads in the stand off.  When Eve fires a blast into the crowd, it goes full riot.  

It's insane that this movie exists.  I'm going to go even further that it might be insane that, as progressive as the movie attempts to be, it accomplishes some real subversive stuff probably by accident.  I mean, for all I know, Andrew Stanton had all of this on a notepad while making the movie and somehow that would make the movie even better.  But the imagery and the storytelling elements are there, regardless.  I think a lot of parents probably felt pretty uncomfortable watching this movie thinking that it was brainwashing their kids.  But the challenge comes from the idea that we've accepted society as something flawed because we'll outlive the change needed to fix society.  But kids need to know these things young.  "Why make it political?"  Because everything is political.  Being apolitical is a political statement.  And what can we disagree with this movie?  Sure, some people might not see the racial allegory going on and I can't even fight that.  But the movie screams that we are a blight on our environment and commericalism is the cause of that.  Why is that something that people get mad about?  Is it a fear of communism? A fear of communism doesn't mean that we should embrace extreme capitalism.  We shouldn't accept extreme anything.

Except for throwing all the guns into the sun.  We should absolutely do that.  My progressive is on display loud and proud in this one, right?

Rated R for a LOT of language and a lot of violence.  It's weird, because for a film centered around the idea of ultra-death and violence, the gore doesn't seem exploitative. Maybe that's to our detriment, considering that we shrug off a lot of death in this movie.  But it is over-the-top gore without trying to gross you out.  

DIRECTOR:  David Leitch

Shut up.  I was not ready to like this movie so much. I was so ready to throw it into the ash pile of every other too-cool-for-reality Quentin Tarantino knock offs.  But then, I come out of this movie having almost no notes.  You want to know my one note?  Train crashes totally kill everyone on board. Okay, two notes:  bullets make loud noises that would garner attention.  But if you really employ suspension of disbelief, man alive this movie really works.

I will be honest, as I tend to be on this blog.  If I had my druthers, I would be reading right now.  I have less than 100 pages left of a book that took me too long to read.  But I also know that if I don't write this before the weekend, it's going to be a long time until I get to it.  If I sound snarky, be aware that this isn't a reflection of the movie.  I really liked this movie.  The thing is, I absolutely shouldn't.  This is a movie absolutely terrified about being vulnerable.  Then why does it work when it has no right to work?  Two main reasons and a whole lot of little reasons.  The first thing is a consistent tone.  The movie never really tries diverting from its mission statement of nonstop adrenaline coupled with humor.  Is there going to be a really serious scene?  Not really.  Sure, there's parts that drive the plot forward and give characters motivations for being in the story.  But that doesn't mean that there's any emotions that are communicated to the audience.  If anything, the movie understands that cool is life.  That's a Danny Rojas sentence, but I'm going to keep it in for momentum.  That's why we have Brad Pitt in the lead role.  This sounds like an insult to Brad Pitt, assuming that he can't do vulnerable stuff.  He absolutely can.  But do you know what I associate with Brad Pitt?  Brad Pitt is Ocean's Eleven. He's not eating in this one (as far as I can remember), but he is taking these larger than life story moments with such a stride.  Any one of the things that happens to Ladybug would leave me in a heap on the floor.  Ladybug Brad Pitts everything away.  It allows for a specific story.

Bullet Train makes me question everything.  I already feel like I'm beating a dead horse.  If I read this script, I would poo-poo it so hard.  But the second thing is a script that ties everything together.  I've taught playwriting twice.  One of my key rules is not to be clever.  Clever is what screenwriters do to cover up substance.  If I had to attack one moment of cleverness, it's everything that Lemon does.  For those not in the know, Lemon is a character who relates every situation, no matter how grim, to the lessons taught in Thomas the Tank Engine.  Good golly, that joke should get old.  Everything...every two seconds: a Thomas joke.  But it works.  And it makes the film have such a shorthand that emphasizes mood and plot.  We don't need to know a lot about Lemon.  Lemon, for all of his murderous cool, is a guy who likes the simple things in life.  Contrasted to that is Tangerine, whose cynicism stops him from leading a life that brings him joy.  And because the script continually makes Thomas the Tank Engine references, we see through the language of Lemon.  People become Percies and Henries and Diesels.  It's great.  It takes something that could be kind of mundane and gives us a new lens to experience this world.

I don't know if the end really works in reality, but it does through the concept of suspension of disbelief.  (Again, any advice I can give: suspend all disbelief because it makes the movie fun).   Prince.  I want to talk about Prince.  I forgot that the character was named Prince and that's on me.  But Prince is simultaneously a hero and a villain in this piece.  Ladybug has a really dumb goal: take the case off the train.  (Again, suspension of disbelief.)  Hypothetically, if he wasn't unlucky, he would have been off in one.  Heck, if Carter was there, the story wouldn't exist.  Okay.  But Prince's goal is to kill the White Death.  From her perspective, she's gathered a group of absolute monsters, planted bombs on a lot of them, and sent them hurtling towards the White Death.  

But now I have to question myself.  I keep going back to the suspension of disbelief well.  I keep using this as an excuse for me liking this movie.  Maybe I should be rougher on it.  I can't help that I liked it so much.  But let's be real.  A lot of this script doesn't make any sense.  I'm going to be arguing the subjectivity of this movie, but I might have no leg to stand on.  So some things work.  Originally, I was frustrated that the White Death organized everything in this movie for the sake of getting revenge on Carver, who isn't in the movie.  But that didn't work with the Wolf, who attacks Ladybug in revenge for the poisoning job.  Then I remembered / quick-Google-searched that the Wolf was looking for The Hornet and was happily surprised to see Ladybug.  But then something hit me pretty hard.  The only reason that Ladybug didn't get off the train was because the Wolf stopped him.  If Carver was there, the story would have ended when he got off of the train.  After all, the mission was in its simplicity: get the case and get off the train.  Let's pretend that Carver would also have been stopped by the Wolf.  I'm not sure how it worked, but Carver could have been at the wedding hit too.  Okay.  What are the odds that the Wolf stops Carver at the exact train door? 

See, I'm starting to highlight what cleverness gets you?  The film is fun for its absolutely bananas complex plot.  The same thing can probably be said for Glass Onion, which I also forgave.  But Bullet Train holds up to very little scrutiny.  Yeah, just because it tied up loose threads that I didn't think of doesn't mean that every loose thread is tied up.  But then, I can't help but like it. If anything, for all of my criticisms of film, maybe Bullet Train acts as a criticism of me.  I do think that Bullet Train should be out there.  I also said the same thing about Shoot 'Em Up, a movie I desperately need to return to. The thing is, I think my blog persona might be something very different from my real life persona. Don't get me wrong: all versions of me like quality and classics.  But I read a lot and preach the gospel that great things should be balanced with guilty pleasures.  It makes us appreciate life more knowing that we're not mired in snobbiness.  Bullet Train is simultaneously kind of smart and fantastically dumb.  But it's that balance that makes life worth living.  Lobster isn't lobster if you can't enjoy a cheeseburger everyone once in a while.  (Thanks, The Menu!)  

So I shouldn't try to defend this movie.  I enjoyed exploring the plot of it.  I even love the fact that the characters, as 2D as they are, are memorable.  But this is a silly film that I'm not going to apologize for.  

​Not rated, but people die some pretty horrible deaths.  Some of those deaths may require you to use your imagination, because there's a guy on fire in it, but the fire was done digitally.  In 2003.  It's fine. It just doesn't necessarily pack the same heat (pun intended) as a practical effect would.  There's some language, but you are really on board for the violence more than anything else.  Not rated.

DIRECTORS:  Andrew Lau and Alan Mak

So they went all The Godfather Part II with this one, huh? Okay, I had that in the chamber since watching it.  I don't know if I can follow through with a lot of deep commentary about this movie because I was resting all my argument on that.  I have a feeling that there are just going to be a ton of Godfather comparisons with this blog.  But that's okay.  You know what would really help this blog entry?  Research.  Oh my goodness, doing a hint of research would do wonders for me right now.  But between not having seen the third movie and the fact that it sets a precident for future blog entries, I'm going to just do my best and see if my sleep-deficient brain can compensate.  

What research would I do?  How did they make this movie a year apart.  Part 3, same deal.  2002, 2003, 2004 are the years for the Infernal Affairs trilogy and I can't really understand it.  Maybe they got approval to make them all at the same time?  It has to be that.  It had to be one of those James Cameron deals where they presented a proof of concept and got pre-approved to make all the movies at the same time.  I mean, sure, the first film is the one that carries the weight of having a clever conceit behind it.  But Infernal Affairs II isn't a joke by any stretch of the imagination.  It's actually got another really complicated plot.  It has a plot so complicated that I had to Wikipedia the plot a few times.  Crime stories tend to get a little confusing sometimes, especially when you have different cast members playing the same roles.  It's an odd movie.  I know that I threw The Godfather as the example for Infernal Affairs II, but part of that comes from the notion of being a prequel.  But prequels tend to spell out how the life of the protagonists or antagonists before the important story starts.  Yeah, this is the story of moles still.  But they almost carry the brunt of the B-story in this movie.  Yeah, I know what it was like rising up the ranks of both the police force and a crime syndicate. But is that the main plot?  Oh, man no.  If anything, this is the story of Wong and Sam.

It's  a different story than I would have gathered from the first movie,which is probably what makes the film so compelling.  My vibe from the first movie is that Wong was so good at his job that he was comfortable being personable with someone like Sam.  Instead, we find out that he's quasi-sorta-corrupt?  Okay, he's a corrupt cop.  Why am I dancing around this?  I have the opportunity to spell it out right here.  He's a cop that takes shortcuts and has a skewed morality, but does so in the name of justice.  I guess the movie comes down on the side of Wong.  Everything about these Infernal Affairs movies seems to be about how the pursuit of justice is one that corrupts, but that corruption is necessary.  Even when it comes to Sam, it's got an opinion on that.  Sam starts this movie not as a monster.  He's a small time informant who enjoys the benefit of his station.  Yeah, he's still morally in the wrong.  He's never a good guy in this movie.  But Infernal Affairs II inverts the role of the meal in this movie.  The first Infernal Affairs has Sam eating a meal out of spite.  (For some reason, I thought that police just gave suspects rad, multi-course dishes during interrogation in Hong Kong.  Now, I'm only mostly sure that they do not.) 

Sam's meal is very telling in this one to say how much this story has spiraled out of control. Sam and Wong have a relationship of cop to informant in this one. There's something ironic about Sam acting as an informant, considering that he's the impetus of the whole undercover mole thing.  However, that first scene with Sam eating with Wong is a lovely bit of detail quickly establishing the civility of officer / criminal.  In the first meal, when Sam disrespects Wong during that meal, I felt it was a way to make Sam unlikable quickly.  But now that we realize that there's some real bad blood between the two of them and that Wong is desperate to undo the past, that first meal takes a deeper meaning.  But if I did have to be critical, it's weird that so much hate goes Wong's way.  Wong does have a weight on his shoulders.  He is responsible for a crime lord's death.  I mean, from what I understood, it wasn' t he who pulled the trigger but Lau, the big bad from the first movie. It's an odd move, considering that the only reason that Lau was in the police force was to rise to the ranks so he could be an infallible mole on the inside.  But, whatever.  It's a movie.

But Wong carries the weight of this crime.  He genuinely views himself to be this corrupt figurehead throughout the film.  But the film even verbalizes its themes by continually exonerating him from this assassination.  There's even a line about the Brits agreeing to the notion that anything that would lower crime approach.  But it is odd that so many people hate Wong.  Maybe I kind of missed something. I can tell you that I missed why Sam is so cool with being killed, I'll tell you that for free.  I mean, I can kind of bend my brain to it.  Sam enters the final act of the movie wanting to take Hau down.  (Hau makes a great villain with a great comeuppance, so I'll say that right here.) Here's where I start getting confused.  Sam and Hau sit down and negociate. Hau, as per his characters, seems to hold all the cards.  A hit squad is holding Sam's new family hostage.  But then Sam throws the Reverse Uno card and says that he has Hau's family hostage as well.  It's great.  Great moment.  Sam frees his family with his own hit squad.  But it's in that moment, that Sam demands that Hau kill him.

Now, my brain went in a specific direction.  Is this a metaphorical killing?  After all, Sam's personality is based on the notion of survival and growth.  The idea that he asks Hau to kill him as a means to maintain the status quo doesn't make a ton of sense.  It's when Wong shows up and he kills Hau to save Sam's life that this is all thrown for a tizzy.  Sam seems to get really angry with Wong.  He says that he wanted to die in that moment.  I really want this moment to work because the movie is pretty good.  But I don't know when Sam went suicidal.  It seems so against his character, especially in the original movie.  That is a dude who gonedone loves his life.  What is the turn that happened in that movie that made Sam suicidal?  Maybe this is where my criticism comes down on the movie.  Sam doesn't make a lick of sense to me in this as a prequel.  That suicidal bit was a means to create a rift between Wong and Sam, but I don't know if it really works.

But...and here's what I promised, it works really well as The Godfather Part II.  I know, I can't stop comparing Hong Kong films to American films. The Infernal Affairs movies could almost be anthology films because this movie almost doesn't need to be tied to the first film.  Instead, what makes Infernal Affairs II oddly really satisfying is that humanity that criminals are given in this movie.  The first film, as much as I adored it, was almost straight plot: cops v. robbers.  Okay.  Great.  But this is the nuance of the world of Hong Kong crime.  It's the Triads at family get togethers.  Yeah, it isn't the center of the piece.  But it is something that is prevalent throughout.  There are just these moments of humanity.  The cool is stripped away from crime and it becomes about survival and the abandonment of familial expectations.  Criminals, for all of the awful things that happen in this movie, are somehow human.  There's almost a demonization to Wong, which is reflected in the notion that he will do anything to shut down organized crime.  It's gorgeous.  Is it as effective as The Godfather Part II?  Probably not, but it is certainly strong.

Part III has to be a sequel, right? I can't imagine it not being a sequel.  But I will say, I didn't know how there were going to be three movies made out of a central premise.  But here I am, pleased to say that Infernal Affairs II was a solid film on its own.  It didn't seem to tread over the same points over again, yet still felt connected to ideas introduced earlier. It's a solid, if not a bit confusing movie that I'm glad I caught.

PG-13, despite a really in-your-face F-bomb.  This is a high school dramedy from the '80s.  There's going to be sex, alchohol, smoking...all of the bad things.  But they're going to be talked about and alluded to more than the actual visual elements that would necessitate an R-rating.  If anything, Pretty in Pink is probably one of the lesser worrisome movies that the Brat Pack made.  Still, I'm surprised it got a PG-13.

DIRECTOR:  Howard Deutch

How were you so close? Honestly, John Hughes!  (I honestly thought you directed and wrote this movie.) I watched it in two shifts.  I've always been afraid to watch both Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles.  It's not the jump scares or the gore.  I can handle those.  (Someone out there doesn't get the joke and that's okay.  It wasn't avery good joke.) It's just that I was burned pretty hard by The Breakfast Club. See, I watched The Breakfast Club with a friend that swore by the movie in college.  I was out of high school.  I saw it with an obsessive fan.  When I didn't like it, my takeaway was that I wasn't the core audience.  I'm curious how many of these blogs have that same takeaway.  I might not be the core audience of a movie.  But I've also prided myself on seeing practically every watershed film that has impacted the zeitgeist.  How can I avoid Pretty in Pink?

The first day, I was pleased as punch.  Yeah, the acting --shy of James Spader who is possibly doing his best work --is rough. Okay, Jon Cryer earned some respect in this one and I'm always happy to see Annie Potts. But the movie was...good.  I mean, if you go into a romantic dramedy from the '80s with expectations of tropes, it's absolutely rad.  There's insane costume pieces.  There's the version of high school where cliques are so sacrosanct that it becomes a straight up warzone of catty comments.  But most importantly, there are pretty people who all love/hate each other.  Also, Jon Cryer is making the most out of every cell of film ever.  What can I complain about?  Annie is a perfect avatar for the audience.  She is well-meaning, borderlining on saintly.  There's a Cinderella element to the film as a whole.  It's just compelling as get out.  It was weird.  I went upstairs after my workout was over (humble brag) and told my wife that I was absolutely loving Pretty in Pink, a movie that I wouldn't have given the time of day to for 39 years.  (Admittedly, if I had given it a chance in the first ten years, there also would have been a weird moment to discuss.)

Then the end happened.  Now, I know a lot of people get mad at Pretty in Pink, but I don't think it's for the same reasons I get mad.  Maybe my anger is close to others' ideas about problems in this movie.  But I want to talk about my nuanced anger.  I've heard from some camps that Andie absolutely should have gone with Duckie.  Okay, that's a fantasy and a toxic one at that.  Other camps say that Duckie is toxic as get-out and shouldn't be in the movie.  I'm going to pump the brakes on that for now and talk about that in a second.  The problem I have is that Blane straight up gaslights her.  He never apologizes for his behavior.  Maybe I'm just Team Andie all the way.  But when he says, "You didn't believe in me", there's a reason for that.  Oh. My.  Goodness.  Andie's entire thesis statement for this movie is that we shouldn't just people based on economic class, even if it is about punching up.  (Note: You are allowed to judge people punching up a little.  Everything about this movie when it comes to money almost demonizes what money does to people.)  

But Blane sucks.  Not for the whole movie.  There's a lot where I'm rooting for Blane in the movie.  Maybe that's what makes the movie so good for me for a lot of the film.  I have the benefit of being an old man in 2023 watching this movie, knowing the cultural history of this movie.  I knew that a lot of people love Duckie and a lot of people hate Duckie.  I also knew that she didn't end up with Duckie in the end. I didn't know if she ended up with Blane, but I knew that she didn't end up with Duckie. Duckie is the character my sad friends were all holding onto before we grew up and avoided becoming incels.  But I was on board the whole Romeo and Juliet thing. It's great.  Two cultures who can't possibly accept each other due to stereotypes that, in this case, actually end up being mostly true.  It becomes this culture war and there are these two kids who just want to make it through the culture war?  I love it.  Sure, the movie needs to include a break before getting back together.  I know how romantic formulae work.  It's necessary because you need to explore the darkness before you see the light.  Okay.  

But the issue isn't that Blane freaked out a little bit about Andie.  It's that he blamed her for the problems that ensued and never apologized.  A lot of that was Blane's fault.  Okay, I'm going to play Devil's Advocate.  Andie accuses Blane of ghosting her.  She calls him over and over.  He claims that he's being punished for sneaking off.  Let's pretend that it's true.  I mean, it might be.  That seems valid.  But Andie then says that Blane saw her in the parking lot and avoided eye contact.  When he says he didn't, there's a bit of gaslighting there.  She has to question what she thought she saw.  But let's go beyond that.  Andie accuses him of breaking eye contact and he genuinely didn't do that.  It's his responsibility to apologize.  I'll even give him the right to defend himself, but then an apology for missing a social cue is completely reasonable.  Instead, he just says that he doesn't want to talk.  That's pretty bad.  But then he lies to her and says that he asked someone else out to prom, which we absolutely know that he didn't.  It's actually weird that we use this in his favor at the end.  Duckie says, "Look, he's not with anyone."  Why is that a good thing?  It's just a confirmation that he's been lying about a bunch of things.  Andie absolutely shouldn't have gone groveling to Blane (okay, forgiving him without an apology) because Blane is straight up in the wrong.

I don't think she needs to be with Duckie either.  Now, this is what I've promised to talk about.  Duckie would have been a hero to me in high school.  I'm not saying purge Duckie from the story.  If anything, I'm arguing that Hughes (I'm giving Hughes all of the credit as screenwriter because I pretend that I know him) is giving the message that Duckie is problematic in this film, a point that was probably missed by a lot of the audience.  Duckie is this hanger-on nice-guy archetype.  I think Duckie is meant to be a bit gross, but we keep hating to use Duckie as an avatar because he's the most critical reflections of the self.  Yes, his intentions are good.  He sees value in someone that people tend to disregard.  But because he knows that he's sweet and doting, he feels like he is entitled to Andie as a person.  It's why he becomes such a villain halfway through the movie.  It's really bad.  It's also why Duckie makes zero sense for the finale of this movie.  

Duckie's agreeing to let Andie go to Blane is almost Exhibit A for a movie that has dug itself into a hole.  The entire movie is about big personalities that aren't able to move.  Andie is the avatar, sweet girl.  Cool. Blane is so mired by his wealth that, when he tries pushing back, he fails.  Duckie is an obsessive monster. But no one really comes to grip with the character trait that makes them bad.  Duckie just...surrenders?  It's not like he had a come-to-Jesus moment that would let him be aware that Andie is a person capable of her own decisions.  If anything, Andie is about to relent to Duckie's bullheaded attitudes about love and settle for someone she doesn't care for.  Now, someone out there is realizing that Duckie comes to the same conclusion.  But reality doesn't work that way. Duckie has been fighting for a goal the entire movie.  He's the star of the film, in his mind.  His motivations and intentions are the most clear out of anyone in the film.  He is about to win and then he just sacrifices the game?  He genuinely thinks that Andie finally sees him as a valuable suitor and he's going to sacrifice that?  She's smiling.  It's not like he sees the misery that he's caused her.  He sees that he can bring happiness to this girl who has been trashed his entire life and he loses that for a guy who has treated her badly?  It's so against his character that the choice only exists to finish the film.

I've heard about a movie being redeemed by the last minute.  Pretty in Pink lost all of my goodwill in the final moment. Nothing makes sense and then it just ends.  Andie is going to be gaslit the rest of her life.  The end.  Boo.  No thank you.

Rated R for a lot of death, violence, and more suicide than you are probably prepped for. If anything should ding this movie, it's how casually this movie treats suicide.  One of the suicides is particularly brutal.  The movie also has a sexual background without actually depicting any sexuality on screen.  Either way, a valid-yet-classy R...for the most part.

DIRECTOR: Mark Mylod

Oh. My. Goodness.  I had a ginormous list of movies to write about and I caught up...for now. (Oscar season is coming up and I'm going to fall behind...again.)  I'm in a dangerous place, writing-wise.  Near the end of the road, that's when I get all procrastinaty.  Because, as of right now, I think I'm nine-days ahead of the blog, potentially the most I've been ahead...ever.  The worst part is that I think that tomorrow I'll be able to relax.  That's a joke.  I have half-an-hour of Pretty in Pink left to watch, so tomorrow I'm going to come in here and do the exact same thing I'm doing right now. That's okay, because I love what I do.  Kind of like Chef Slowik.  (You see that seemless transition?  That's why I make the no bucks.) 

For all of that phenomenal skill and writing prowess, that Chef Slowik comparison is apt.  I've been writing this blog for six plus years.  Every movie I've seen, I've written about.  If I haven't written about it by some fluke (it happens entirely by accident), I'll rewatch that movie stat just to write about it, regardless of if I want to watch that movie again or even liked it.  I don't know why part of my life is completely dedicated to a handful of readers (but in reality, myself and the knowledge that I kept doing this). I was spiraling some The Menu memes and the world already captured one of my key thoughts about the movie: for as much as this movie has a message, it is also very wishy-washy about that whole notion.  Slowik is this guy who loved what he did.  He became the best in the world at doing something very specific.  He drew the attention of food critics all over the world and they gave him money and opportunity. He had to want for nothing and then he grew to hate what he was doing.  I'm just jumping to the line of the movie.  Just deal.  "This wasn't made with love." 

Some of these blogs aren't made with love.  Often, they are a commitment.  For example, the Tom and Jerry blog entry.  Not much love there.  I watched it out of love for my children, but I knew that I had to write about that nonsense.  But that's where the movie goes into high concept, little depth.  I actually want to gush about this movie, but I do have to get something very clear out of the way: this movie needs you to be accepting of a lot of things. This blog is one of the lowest rungs of the creative ladder.  I take what other people have made and I talk about those things.  Sometimes, those things I write are critical.  Sometimes it's exploratory, trying to unpack a dense idea.  And sometimes, it is just a blog that is loosely themed around the movies.  If you happen to be one of the few directors who have read my blog (which, oddly enough, is not zero; I can have that claim to fame), I apologize if I just mused for far too many words around a theme with your movie.  Right now, Mark Mylod might be thinking this if he read the blog.  

I'm going to take a real leap here and talk about how creation is art.  By creating something, even if it is as low-brow as generating content, there's an artistic element to it.  I sometimes go through great pains to choose words for this blog.  Not often, but it happens. I strive for a conversational tone, mainly because I'm trying synthesize an artificial conversation around a dimly-lit table in a New York restaurant, post-film.  It doesn't work most of the time, but it's a way for me to live that life.  But Slowik in this film is the broken artist.  He has created and created and he's only built up this spite for his audience.  In the case of The Menu, he's found people to epitomize his wrath, with the exception of the girl from Brown.  While I love the joke, especially tied to the "Eat the Rich" theme, is she really worthy of his wrath?  I don't know.  Sometimes jokes hurt the message, but okay.  Going on.  Slowik finds this group of people to take out his frustrations on.  He's not necessarily mad at them as individuals, but what they represent.

But ultimately, Slowik hates himself.  With the dish, "Man's Folly", Slowik subjects himself to being mutilated.  It's unclear whether he was full-on stabbed in the genitals.  It seemed like it was his thigh, which scans with the thighs being served with the scissors implanted.  (But isn't the genital thing a bit more accurate, with the notion of castration?  Unless animals are castrated through the thigh.  If so, I'll shut up now.)  As much as he's directing his wrath outwards, it's really something that's pointed at himself.  But now, I have to tie all of this back to the meme: so what?  As an exploration of the frustration of art (despite the fact that this movie looked actually super fun to make), Slowik is the antagonist of the piece.  His character is defined by artificially and mystery.  If the story is an unpacking of the artist, the only offering is that art is a waste of time and that all artists should self-immolate.  Art, in itself, is painful.  It's actually a celebration of low art.  In the most messed up, superficial way, it is about how high art should destroy itself and low art should be embraced.   

But The Menu is kind of prestige horror.  I have a hard time ascribing the term "Black comedy" to it, or else I would have to do the same thing with Silence of the Lambs.  It hits a lot of the same beats tonally.  As prestige horror, The Menu offers a lot of the same visual contradictions that A24 has done so well.  Three-quarters of this movie are classy as can be.  Honestly, if my wife was a fan of the last quarter, which is straight gore horror, she'd probably dig it as an authentic film about cooking.  Lord knows that I did as well. It offers more high art than it doesn't.  And it's perfect.  I'm a guy who is a fan of this movie and it hits every button.  I'm the audience of the movie; I'm a patron of the restaurant.  The worst part is that I know which patron I'm replacing.  I'm replacing Tyler and I hate myself for it. 

Okay, quick digression because the writing took me this direction.  I'm Tyler not because I love Tyler.  I hate Tyler.  You're supposed to hate Tyler.  In a movie where a cult slaughters a group of individual in food-themed murders, it's odd that Tyler is the real monster of the piece.  Tyler ends up doing horrible things to make him the evil one. He was the one who knew that they were dying.  He's the one who invited a prostitute, knowing that they were all going to their deaths.  He is the obsessive otaku.  Any personality trait that goes to an extreme is probably pretty toxic.  But we're meant to be Tyler in this case.  I love food.  I love fancy food.  I also love dirty food, so keep that in mind.  I went to my first Michelin star restaurant and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.  My wife had an embarrasing moment at the restaurant, so I'm never allowed to talk about it.  But it might be on the top five experiences of my life.  I adored it. But because fo that, I have to align myself with Tyler.  There's such beauty in the works that a talented artist / chef can create in a kitchen that there's just a bonafide respect for the creator.  It's weird to demonize Tyler. Tyler represents respect and appreciation.  Yeah, again, any trait that goes to extremes is completely toxic.  But it's weird that Tyler is the grossest person in the room.  Is the movie supposed to say that we're not supposed to appreciate art?  

There's a moment for Tyler that is very telling.  If I had to try to find the message of Tyler, it is going to be in a few moments.  Tyler not only loves the food to a point of sycophancy, but wants approval from Slowek.  Everything is about trying to gain a conversation with Slowek.  It's all about being acknowledged and equally respected.  Maybe if Slowek notices how Tyler really appreciates the art more than the others in the room, they could somehow be friends. It's pathetic, but Tyler's version of that becomes murderous.  While the movie literally is about food, maybe it's a commentary on celebrity culture.  But Tyler really does seem to appreciate the artist, which is somehow poo-pooed.  I am trying to make Slowek Taylor Swift.  I imagine that the obsessive fan is one who buys every album and hates every one of the people that Swift has broken up with.  But that's not really Tyler.  Tyler, if he was a Taylor Swift, is someone who picks apart the instrumentation.  He would know the craft of what Swift is doing and what instruments, both literal and those that record, that Swift is using.  It's not about Swift's personhood or her celebrity.  It's about her as artist.  That's what I don't get by the creation of Tyler.  Tyler is doing what he is supposed to as the audience.  He's being critical.  Again, I told you.  An extreme version of this blogging thing is Tyler and I don't feel comfortable.

Back on topic, we're left with this story glorfiying art and artists while simultaneously asking us to shut it all down.  I mean, part of me doesn't care.  The movie's pretty and love pretty movies.  It's also weirdly fun and spiking part of my brain normally reserved for cooking shows.  But the last act...might not work?  Slowek at one point accuses his diners of not really trying to escape. It's a weird thing, because they definitely do.  They lack the competancy to escape.  That's a very different thing.  Slowek, with the "Man's Folly" dish, allows the men to try to escape.  All of them get captured and sent back. But there's genuine fear.  In fact, one of the men bolts before the time is started, showing his genuine desire to escape.  Slowek's accusation that they didn't try to escape very hard is almost a justifcation for an ending that doesn't work.  All of the patrons, except for Erin (whom I've not spoken of at all, because she's the avatar and meant to represent a general audience watching this horror), allow themselves to be flambeed in a killer s'more bonfire.  I don't buy it.  I like it as a visual ending, but I think we were told that they weren't going to run rather than shown that they weren't going to run.  I'm sure fan theories show that they've been sedated through each meal, but that doesn't make sense with Erin's saaviness to flee.  Also, they all ran for the door when they had a chance.

I want ot talk about Erin / Margot.  Margot is the heroine of the movie.  As I just mentioned, she's the avatar of the piece, despite the fact that I see too much of myself in Tyler.  Margot is invited to this thing, but she instantly scoffs at the entire nature of fine dining.  Sure, fine dining is a thing for the rich who are disillusioned with society.  Okay.  But is the movie making a case against art? Erin is borderline rude at the beginning of the feast, before things get bad.  She is being paid to eat this food and pretend to enjoy it.  Yet, before Tyler shows his true colors, she keeps berating his joy of the meal in front of him.  (Admittedly, Tyler's a jerk who comments on her smoking.  But that being said, she really shouldn't smoke.) She's oddly confrontational before things get really evil.  Yeah, she's the hero, but only by sheer luck.

Yeah, I crapped a lot on it. I  probably don't love the message of the film very much. But it didn't change that I absolutely loved it.  All of this might mean that I might have to make the message myself and that message is one of self-loathing.  I love something that hates art.  I love art and love the message.  By extension, does that mean that I am a paradox or is it that I cannot abide my own obsession?  Either way, it's a good time with a weaker third act.

Not rated, but if any movie that involved mass carnage was made for kids, it's the Godzilla franchise.  But wait!  If there has ever been a Godzilla movie that has osmething offensive, it's probably going to be this one.  Man, it's uncomfortable as can be, but there's just a mess of Blackface in this movie.  I've never really associated Blackface than any culture other than America, but Japan apparently is very cool with Blackface.

DIRECTORS: Ishiro Honda and Tom Montgomery

I can't believe the Kong mashup happens so early!  These collisions of franchises should take forever to get to.  I'm entirely basing this on my gut and on Zatoichi movies.  I mean, the current Godzilla franchise only had two movies before getting to Godzilla vs. Kong.  I would say that they are just mirroring the original franchise with the new stuff, but we've already met Ghidora and Mothra, so that can't be an absolute thing.

I should absolutely read the history of this movie before writing this blog. King Kong vs. Godzilla was half an American movie, half a Japanese movie.  My Criterion disc told me so.  *insert snooty laughter here*  Now, I have all kinds of theories that a quick Google search could probably solve.  Did Japan make a King Kong vs. Godzilla movie that played differently?  If so, why isn't thta movie on the Criterion disc? *snooty laughter*  Did Japan start to make a movie and then America decide to make the footage work?  Was it always planned to be split in half?  Either way, the result is the stereotype we get about Godzilla movies, in the sense that they are poorly dubbed and barely function as films.  That sounded harsh.  It probably sounded harsh because it was harsh.  I'm actually getting kind of cool with Godzilla movies.  Maybe just watching enough of them has made me interested in the subject matter.  Maybe the expectations of these movies has been so lowered that I can appreciate them for the serialized nonsense that they are.  

For all my bluster that films need to be vulnerable and have a message, by this point in the franchise --only movie three! --it seems like the Godzilla movies have lost all of the relevancy that the first Gojira movie held so closely to the chest.  I liked the allegory behind Godzilla.  I liked that the Japanese were making entertainment while scolding the world on its use of atomic weapons.  Now, I'm aware that since I'm seeing the American perspective on King Kong vs. Godzilla, I can't say that the Japanese have lost their messaging through the need to make fun monster movies.  But the casualness of which people jump to the atomic bomb seems almost irresponsible. Listen, the crux of my argument lies on the notion that the Godzilla movies have lost their souls, but that makes for fine entertainment.  I am aware that the people who say "Drop the bomb" on Godzilla are either evil or wrong.  But when the notion of atomic destruction is used casually by people who know firsthand what the bomb is all about, it's a bit uncomfortable.  

Remind me to talk about Blackface.  I need to do that.  I did a little bit in the MPAA section, but Blackface needs to get addressed.  I'm still talking about the quality of the movie right now, so I need to discuss that first.  King Kong vs. Godzilla makes so little sense as a concept.  Because artistry is going downhill, so is quality of film.  Yeah, I thought the movie was going to look worse than it did.  That didn't mean that it didn't look really bad.  But I'm more concerned about the shortcuts taken in a movie like this.  Man alive, King Kong vs. Godzilla relies heavily on archetypes to get ideas across shorthand.  I'm putting everything on the shoulders of Mr. Tako right now. He's not the only one, but Mr. Tako is representative of how lazy this movie was.  I mean, this is borderline a clown in this movie.  He's Jar Jar Binks (with all due respect to the actor who played Jar Jar Binks) in a Godzilla movie.  There's literal jumping up and down in frustration.  He is wacky and where did this come from?  But do you know what archetypes are allowed to do that grounded characters can't do?  Anything they want.  The Mr. Takos of this movie excuse so much insane behavior that when the grounded characters do stupid things, it makes you forget them.

I think we need an example.  I think it was Fumiko that does this.  If it isn't, I'm so sorry.  I was not paying attention to names during this movie.  I allowed my brain to go completely numb for the monster fighting movie.  For the sake of argument, Fumiko goes looking for another character in Hokkaido (which is pronounced correctly by an English-speaking Japanese character, but no other dubbed Japanese characters).  It's stupid that she's going.  All reports are that Godzilla is about to attack Hokkaido for the majority of the film.  Ignore the fact that she's a moron for going to Hokkaido.  It might be a noble and selfless character trait to look for someone who might be lost in the city.  After all, I've never attacked other characters in other franchises for pulling an equivalent card.  But do you know what doesn't make sense?  There's a train going to Hokkaido. So much of the news has been about evacuating Hokkaido before Godzilla makes landfall that I'm pretty sure that any train headed for the town would be cancelled.  But because this moment is excused because we have a bunch of Mr. Takos running around doing dumb stuff all the time.  We tend to forget basic plot stuff when it comes to this.

Alright, Blackface!  Why? Okay, I get why.  It's 1963.  The Civil Rights Movement in America is still in its early days and everything was permissable.  Japan wasn't even American.  I had an argument that Japan has as much culpability with old timey Blackface that America does.  To a certain extent, that's not completely accurate.  But I still argue that there is a culpability here.  One of America's great tragedies that it doesn't get rid of racism.  It can't.  We thought we got close.  In some ways, we're better now.  In a lot of ways, we might be worse.  But there is this notion of other cultures being backwards.  It's why I kind of have a hard time watching Indiana Jones movies anymore.  I don't think I've ever seen so much Blackface going on at once. Every person with Blackface was being described as a savage.  The two men come on the island, looking for Kong.  Kong could be this great god who can take down Godzilla.  But they are instantly met with hostility.  Okay, fine. Whatever.  But these natives are placated with a radio and they give everyone cigarettes.  I almost fell off the treadmill when the two Japanese men start handing the savages cigarettes and then gives one to the kid.  Yeah, I'm over-exposing my White fragility right now, but could this movie be any more 1963?  

Okay, so what's the takeaway?  After all, by choice, there is almost no theme in the movie.  King Kong vs. Godzilla is a movie that doesn't make a lick of sense, yet is still entertaining.  This is me getting dumb, but that's only because the movie makes me stoop to its level.  King Kong and Godzilla are mismatched. Godzilla is a strong giant who shoots radiation from a distance.  Kong is a strong giant that can't get close to him.  The movie even establishes that this is a terrible idea.  Okay.  So they just make something up at one point.  They give Godzilla a vulnerability that, if you squint, might make a bit of sense.  They make Godzilla fearful of electricity.  I mean, I don't remember that being a bit in the other movies, but whatever.  Then, they just say that King Kong is powered by electricity?  How?  How would they know that?  King Kong lives on an island devoid of technology where he's the strongest one there is.  Also, why would he be powered by electricity?  He's an ape.  Apes traditionally don't have electrical powers.  Also, there's a lot of assumptions happening in this movie that we just have to accept.  It's odd, because the recent remakes also do the same thing.  Both versions of this movie assume that these alpha creatures would sense each other and be drawn into battle.  That's...something.  I know that apex predators, when in the same environment, fight for dominance.  But they aren't called across great distances to defeat each other.  It's really odd.

Do you know why Kong wins in this one?  I mean, there's one really obvious reason: the movie has to end.  If Godzilla is rampaging Tokyo and Hokkaido, that battle has to end somewhere.  Kong is the hero and Godzilla is the villain of this one.  Okay.  Fine. But I get the vibe that there's a bit of symbolism here. King Kong represents America.  He goes to New York where we take him down using planes.  (I now realize how outgunned Kong should have been.) He's the story of the American.  It's our OG monster movie and Japan can't have him.  So there's Godzilla, who reminds us that we did this first.  And then there's the American production company, Universal, who wants to sell this movie to Americans.  After all, there are a lot of Japanese people in this movie and memory is long. So why not make a movie where the American OG star takes down the newest kid on the block?  I wouldn't be surprised if Godzilla trounces Kong in the Japanese version and he just, you know, leaves.  Or he gets trapped in a hole again.  (Can I just say, trapping Godzilla in a hole seems to be the most effective thing against him?  You aren't going to kill him.  Just bury him.)

I'll also admit something else that I've hinted at.  King Kong vs. Godzilla is incredibly dumb.  But I also kind of liked it?  It was so stupid and I had such low expectations, that I could watch another Godzilla movie today.  It's a shame that this is where the franchise devolves. But I didn't really like the early ones, despite the fact that they checked off a lot of boxes for me.  Either way, I don't regret watching these movies...yet.

PG-13, although I hear that the original cut of the movie might have been a hard R.  It was a lot of back-and-forth between Warner Bros. and the MPAA.  The reason is the kill count.  Wow. Black Adam kills a lot of dudes in awful, awful ways.  It's really a lighter toned Punisher with all of the live people being turned into dead ones on screen.  It's almost uncomfortable that the message of the movie is that Black Adam absolutely should be killing people.

DIRECTOR: Jaume Collet-Serra

Well, I guess we'll never see Dwayne Johnson's Black Adam fight Henry Cavill's Superman, will we?  I've railed against the DCeU.  I have.  While I think the DCeU / DCU is not good, I know that some people probably genuinely like it.  But like a lot of otaku culture, it's devolved into something so awful that I actively hate it.  I'm looking at the Snyderverse people. Man alive, you are keeping hate alive and well. Sure, a lot of us hate what you like (look, I used the word "hate"!), but you want to scorch the earth around you.  I'm always an advocate for liking what you like.  But stop claiming these movies are genius.  If you find them fun, by all means, keep finding them fun. Honestly, when I heard that Henry Cavill was going to have another shot at Superman (before that was unceremoneously taken back), I was excited for him.  Sure, Man of Steel is one of my least favorite movies possibly ever, but it's not because of Henry Cavill.  (Besides, they played the John Williams Superman theme when he came on screen in Black Adam, so a lot is forgiven.) But Black Adam seems to almost be an embracing of some Snyderverse stuff that I thought was dead.

When I was really young and knee-deep in comic books (I'm now old and knee-deep in comic books), Marvel was always the edgy one compared to DC.  DC was Superman and the Flash and Green Lantern.  Sure, they had dark storylines.  But these characters always stood out as beacons of light to society.  They showed that there was another way.  Yeah, there was plenty of violence.  But the way that these characters often saved the day was thinking out of the box and played against their strengths for the sake of outwitting a bad guy.  In my mind, Marvel was home of Daredevil, Punisher, and Wolverine.  These were guys who saw the seedy side of the world and lowered their morals to fix problems.  It's because they lived in New York, not Metropolis or Central City.  Sure, we could argue that Batman had a dark tone and that Gotham was worse than any real world city.  But Batman also has the Adam West version.  (Real nerds are now screaming out, "Mike Murdock!" and they aren't wrong.) But since Man of Steel, it feels like DC has wanted to be the edgier brand.  It's not that Black Adam shouldn't be edgier.  It totally should.  It's placing Captain Marve--I'm sorry, Shazam's villain in the driver's seat.

But what the hell is the message here?  The movie is going out of its way to say that murdering people is for the betterment of humanity. Now, even the casual comic book reader is probably pulling out tomes of Punisher: War Journal right now.  I totally agree.  I kind of hate that The Punisher exists.  But I will say this for Marvel.  In the past decade, Marvel's pushed to slowly demonize Frank Castle more and more.  While he exists as a character, there's the understanding that he absolutely should not be worshipped.  Even Frank Castle hates himself. But in an era where we're trying to stop domestic terrorism, DC comes out with a character who just loves killing folks?  I mean, there's this message throughout the movie where the Justice Society tries to stop Teth Adam from killing folks, but they just come across as naive and antiquated.  Adrianna, the morally righteous character of the story who is trying to save Kandaq, advocates openly about Teth Adam's brand of justice. It just feels so telling about the Snyderverse movement.  It just is a scream for more carnage and more gore and why?  Why do you need your heroes to be active murderers? 

Say what you will about The Punisher, almost every other hero thinks that he's an extremeist.  He doesn't have a society or a group of supporters thinking that he's some kind of champion.  There's a story where a bunch of cops start wearing Punisher skulls and try to take justice into their own hands.  Frank himself calls them morons and stresses that he wish that he didn't have to exist.  He then states practically point blank (if I remember correctly) that they should have hero worship for Captain America, not him. Instead, Teth Adam is embraced for his murderous rampage.  There are some jokes that I could kinda / sorta enjoy.  But it's not like Teth Adam is crossing some moral line that he swore that he would never cross. At least with Man of Steel, there's this moment where Superman hurts himself by killing Zod.  He's broken for this moment.  Teth Adam, killing like it's nothing.  How depressing is that?  And everyone rallies around him.

The smart version of me would save this point for last, because it is the most important point.  But also, I feel like writing it now, so I'm going to do that.  I loved Dwayne Johnson early in his acting career.  It's not that I dislike him.  The man has phenomenal comedic chops and has charm up to wazoo.  But The Rock is getting in his own way, isn't he?  I know.  From the early days of the DCeU, Dwayne Johnson advocated for playing Black Adam.  It's perfect casting.  (Well, almost perfect casting.  Maybe a Middle Eastern actor playing someone from the Middle East would be perfect, but that's a different argument.)  The dude looks naturally like Black Adam from the comics. Okay, a bald version of the guy from the comics, but that could just be a choice.   But this movie feels so ego driven it hurts.  First and foremost, it's the Rock destroying everything.  I read somewhere that, for playing a part in The Fast and the Furious, The Rock is not allowed to lose a fight on-screen. That explains so much about this movie.  There's never really a physical threat to Black Adam. Maybe, MAYBE, in the final third act fight, there's a little something.  But you know that the fight is going to Teth Adam.  Dwayne Johnson has so much plot armor on that there's barely a story where he's the protagonist.

You know he's not the protagonist in this movie, right?  For as much screen time as he has and that every shot I looked for regarding this movie, he has almost no agency in this film.  No, the real protagonist is either Adrianna Tomaz or her son.  They are the ones who make active choices.  Everything they do is to change Black Adam, who is just borderline a force of nature.  Yeah, the Crown of Sabbac may be the Macguffin, but so is Teth Adam. It's archeologists running around the world trying to stop this crown from falling into the wrong hands.  That's the plot.  Black Adam barely does that.  It's the archeologists who are actively working out the goal of the film. They are the ones who make choices that affect the story.  It's really weird.  Heck, even the Justice Society, with a little editing, act as better protagonists than Teth Adam.  Because I like dealing with one protagonist over protagonist roulette, let's make Dr. Fate the protagonist of the film.  I like Hawkman, but he's a bit reactionary for me.  Dr. Fate brings the Justice Society to stop a threat to Kandaq and the world.  When they get there, they see this morally questionable tornado be as destructive as they thought he could be, but only to bad guys.  They are then accused --kind of accurately --of being passive collaborators to the bad guys.  They have agency to decide "Do we shut Teth Adam down or do we help the people of Kandaq?"  Teth Adam himself, very little to do?

All of this is because Dwayne Johnson isn't allowed to lose fights in movies that he's in.  They have to create stories around him because he's not allowed to be wrong. That's so messed up.  Now, I'm going to give some credit here.  Teth Adam, when he accidentally injures Amon, allows himself to be arrested. It's part of his troubled history and it probably is the only vulnerable part of the film.  But then, everyone realizes that Teth Adam's way is the best way and he's released from his prison, in a really dumb way.  But this could have been a movie where Teth Adam leads the story.  This is borderline Captain America where someone has a second chance, only to realize that he's the villain all along. Teth Adam does these atrocities when he's younger.  The world has rewritten history to make him a great champion.  Cool.  Imagine a story where he sees that he's branded a champion after 5,000 years only to discover that it's fundamentally against his nature.  Maybe there's a consensus towards the end that Black Adam is a necessary evil and there's an ominous ending about what could Kandaq look like under a psychopath.  That's a story.

But instead we get just the most chaotic grouping of story ever.  There are moments where I had a really good time.  I know I'm ripping into this movie, but I left thinking "meh, some stuff was cool".  But I'm going to start listing things that made no sense to me and that's just me griping.  First of all, gunshot wounds that feel fatal don't allow you to be the vanguard of a riot.  That guy was straight up thinking that he was going to die from a bullet wound, which is super painful.  The next time we see him, he's clocking around zombies left and right and telling jokes.  No thanks.  I'm pretty sure Dr. Fate didn't need to die.  He just needed to convince Hawkman to use the Helmet of Fate to hold down Sabbac.  Okay.  Freeing Teth Adam from his prison is smart.  Why did he wait to take out his breathing tube until he was in the water?  I'm sure the power of the champions would have been really helpful in that Task Force X base.  How does Amanda Waller have the dossier on Black Adam ready to go so quickly?  Was she expecting the resurrection of Black Adam in her lifetime?  He was gone for 5,000 years.  This is all nitpicky.  Heck, I could probably nerd explain some things in here with less-than-satsifactory answers.  But I remember just watching this movie, thinking "Why are people acting absolutely bizarre?"

I'm pro-James Gunn.  I know.  I like Marvel movies and I like James Gunn now.  But this universe needs to die.  Any time they take a step forward, a less-than-impressive movie comes along.  It's really weird that Dwayne Johnson doesn't want to make a movie with Zachary Levi.  It's really weird that he wanted to make a Black Adam-centric movieverse.  Just all of these things make no sense to me.  For a guy who is burned out by reboots, I can't wait for a new DCU.

Rated R for a lot of reasons, but primarily for sexuality, especially considering it kind of / sort of makes light of statuatory rape.  There's some pretty intense language throughout and some mild violence.  It covers some pretty icky content.  It also might be making a bit of fun of homosexuality, although that could be left up to interpretation.  R.

DIRECTOR:  Alexander Payne

For years --FOR YEARS --I've wanted to watch this movie.  It was always on Comedy Central when I was in high school, but I was an idiot then and thought that there was no better movie than Moulin Rouge!, which I can now confidently say is incorrect.  But my wife was always on the fence about watching this movie.  I think she had seen it before and had no reason to watch it again. Now that I've seen it, I know why she was probably hesitant about watching it.  I had no idea it was about statuatory rape and inappropriate relationships between teacher and student.  It also is very casual with the notion of adultery, so I can see why my wife wasn't itching to watch this movie.  

Why did I want to watch it then?  I mean, I wish I could say that it was my devotion to Alexander Payne, who has absolutely crushed it in the past.  Okay, I didn't like Nebraska.  The rest of the stuff I've seen is pretty phenomenal.  But I didn't realize that Alexander Payne did this, let alone worked for MTV Films.  Yeah, when that MTV Films thing came across the screen, I realize that Election falls into a very specific subgenre of films that I would have been all over in the late '90s / early 2000s.    But it wasn't the MTV Films thing either. It was one of those movies that kind of just felt...lost in my viewing canon.  I've seen so much and it almost felt like I should have seen this movie.  I mean, Criterion released it.  I had the pleasure of watching that edition.  But Election seemed like one of those movies that was released on a lark, but had somehow entered the cinematic canon oh-so-quietly.  I don't know. It's not like people are constantly talking about Election.  But like movies like Office Space or Idiocracy (both Mike Judge vehicles, appropriate because Election feels like a Mike Judge joint), these movies that were considered stupid filler acted as beautiful satire while preserving a snapshot of the cultural zeitgeist.

​I can't look at this movie without looking at myself.  Yeah, I don't teach history, but I'm a humanities teacher.  I'm the guy who would get dressed up in a cowboy outfit for the sake of the students.  To a certain extent, I teach the same book over and over again. If Mr. McCallister wasn't pointed at me, who was he pointed at?  (Let's establish this right now.  I know this is not just a story about a high school.  But I want to look at the diagetic storyline before I start talking about allegory.) I've never crossed any lines like McCallister does.  I've never wanted to cross any lines like he does.  Do things about teaching irk me?  Yes.  But for all of the ways that I'm like McCallister, there's way too many ways that I'm not like him at all.  McCallister kind of sees something pathetic about himself.  There's one moment that is really telling about his character. It's when he's driving Linda Novotny home and he makes a really crass comment about getting a room at the seedy motel.  For McCallister, teaching is a script that he uses to cover up who he really is.  Anyway, I feel like I'm protesting too much. Let's look at the movie.

Man, it takes a lot to make Tracy Flick unlikable.  Honest-to-Pete, the movie has to put her through the wringer to get her to where she is at the end.  From moment one, Payne makes Tracy both annoying and the most sympathetic character imaginable.  In fact, the things about her that are really annoying are almost the biproducts of an absentee character: Tracy's mom.  I mean, she's in the movie, but she's almost a spectre looking over the events of the film.  Everything Tracy does is for the sheer desperation of being the best because she needs to be the best.  It's programmed into her through insidious methods.  I don't even see Mom as evil so much as she's what women have forced themselves to be because of (God, I'm about to say it) the patriarchy.  What's interesting is how she views her relationship with Mr. Novotny.

Dave Novotny is appropriately cast as the most pathetic character in the story.  While Tracy and Novotny's relationship is pretty crucial to the story, it is played for laughs.  It's really uncomfortable.  It doesn't ruin the movie for me, but it took a lot of winning me back after this moment.  The odd thing is that Dave Novotny is two very different people and I don't know if Payne knows which one he is.  Dave is the one who says the most vulgar thing about a student ever. There's a smash cut to Dave saying something vulgar to McCallister, which really makes me wonder how complicit McCallister is.  I mean, to give McCallister all of the credit, he is the one who turns in Novotny.  But in this moment, Novotny breaks down crying screaming how much he's in love and that things aren't fair.  These moments leave a lot for us to consider because Tracy also has her duality about the relationship.  We, on the outside, know that Novotny, regardless of how mature Tracy may seem, is absolutely a rapist and should be treated as such.  But Payne doesn't let us live in a world where things are so black-and-white.  Like almost every character except for Paul Metzler, the world exists in shades of grey...

...you know.  Like Nebraska?

But Tracy is all over the place when she talks about her relationship with Novotny through the film.  Payne has to make her a villain.  Not the main villain.  She's a villain in a bevy of villains.  When she talks about Dave Novotny, she both treats him like a child whom she manipulated and someone whom she adored.  It's really weird. I know, I'm talking about the rape a lot.  I can't help it.  I tried getting someone like Novotny booted at a school, so I tend to rage about these things.  But all this creates a feeling of mystery behind Tracy Flick.  From her perspective, she is absolutely the hero of the story.  She knows she can do the most good for the school.  She looks at a school full of burnouts and bullies and she knows that she can make change.  Yes,s she is selfish because her mother taught her to look out for number one.  But that selfishness has put her into the position to make drastic change.  It's this stuff: the obsession, the drive, the success, the brainwashing that makes her the perfect allegory for government.  Of course Tracy Flick ended up working for a congressman.

It takes a sociopath to run for office.  There are presidents I like. There are presidents whom I loathe.  But one thing that they have in common is the really screwy notion that they can tell everyone what's best for them.  Like, who has that kind of confidence?  I'm irresponsibly confident and even I have to draw a line saying that I can fix everything that other people can't.  If Election was concerned more with morals than themes, the message would be that we encourage sociopathy by fostering Tracy Flicks.  The Mr. McCallisters are the folks who keep crossing moral lines for small subjective goods.  I mean, the answer to McCallister's problem is right in front of him.  Let's pretend that we live in a world where people can't control their sexual impulses.  McCallister, a teacher in a place of authority, should never be left in a room with Tracy Flick, a girl that he has forbidden feelings for.  Do you know how to fix that problem?  Don't be the head of student council.  His internal conflict is that he doesn't want to be placed in a situation where he's tempted.  Fine.  But then he starts seeing himself as the hero of his own narrative, despite constantly crossing lines in other areas of his life.  When he finds out that Tracy won by two votes (by the way, nice moral dilemma that Payne gives McCallister), he sees himself as ridding the student body of the girl who tore down posters and keeps breaking little rules, like finding out the results of the count early.  

But that's what makes Election great.  McCallister and Flick are the same person, just at different ends of the ladder of success.  Both are willing to break little rules for the sake of what they consider the greater good. That's why we have the Metzlers running in the race too.  These two are the foil to the insanity of the race.  Say what you will about Paul, he'd make a great student body president.  If the Presidency is about sociopaths taking what they want, Paul is doing this because he was told it was what other people wanted.  He acknowledges that he might not be the best person for the job.  It's so endearing to see him confront McCallister at dinner with his ideas for the student council.  But McCallister, like Tracy, can't see what's good for the whole through the rage and self-centeredness.  Similarly, Tammy, who is in the race for the worst reason, acknowledges that government refuses to change itself for the better.  Now, there's a very innocent 1999 view of government in this if you present Tammy as a valid candidate.  Like with Trump, Tammy wants to clear out the swamp and disband government (Okay, there's a loaded sentence, but the short version is that Trump didn't want to do that, but just push the Trump name and narrative).  But we now realize that if you don't vote, you get Trumps.  A weird irony there.

I get pretty heavy into politics since Trump took office.  I didn't think that the world could get as bad as it did before he took office.  Whenever I take breaks, I have to kick my own butt to get back in.  Unfortunately, this means that I checked my CNN app today (It's actually January 10 while I write this) and got really depressed over Biden's parallel crimes to Trump.  Election, for all of the laughs it gave me, depressed me just like politics.  I suppose that's Alexander Payne's way of torturing his audiences.  For all the laughs and giggles, you probably end up leaving his movies a little more depressed than you came into them.

Rated R for violence, sexuality, and language.  It's got a real Royal Tenenbaums vibe to the whole thing.  Every element almost seems comperable in terms of explicit content to Royal Tenenbaums.  Both movies don't necessarily feel R for large portions of the movie, and then something happens to remind you that it is, in fact, R.  

DIRECTOR: Noah Baumbach

How do people not love this movie?  Genuine question.  I could honestly watch this movie forever.  I never wanted it to end.  Is a movie versus novel thing?  I haven't read the novel, so I have no strong opinions about one beating the other.  But I will tell you, despite the fact that I got a lot out of the movie by itself, that I'm really considering reading the book.  (Look, I'm not commiting myself to a lifestyle change right now.  I write these things in a haze anyway.  Give me some room to live my life.) 

Last year, Noah Baumbach changed my mind about him with Marriage Story.  Okay, he changed my mind a couple years before that with Meyerowitz.  I went from a guy who actively hated Noah Baumbach (okay, that's a bit rough) to someone who can't wait for his next project to come out.  You can read this two ways.  The first is that I've changed.  I mean, we're always changing, so I'm not going to completely disregard that idea.  But I also think that if I go back and watch The Squid and the Whale, I think I'll be equally mad. Which leads me to the second thing, and that's the notion that people change as artists.  Baumbach confuses me.  Take a gander at his IMDb page.  His credits are hilarious.  He wrote Madagascar 3.  Now, from what I've read, he absolutely regretted doing it and he probably did it for the money.  There's theories that one of the lines from Marriage Story is reflection of regret for writing that movie.  Okay.  Fine.  But I do realize that there's something recognizable (in the auteur sense) in Baumbach's work. That's very cool, but also the bigger takeaway is that he kind of refuses to make the same kind of movie anymore.

I mean, White Noise is absolutely Baumbach.  It's got that Royal Tenenbaums vibe that I mentioned earlier.  It's grounded people stressing the mundaneness of life in America.  It takes the mundane and lifts it up to the levels of loftiness through the lens of absurdism.  (That sentence alone almost felt like Baumbach made me one of his characters.  I apologize.) But instead of allowing the world to stay mundane, he places his mundane and quasi-grounded characters in a disaster film.  I use the term "disaster film" because I have no other way of describing such a movie.  A large element is a sci-fi disaster epic, but the rest is a commentary on academia, big pharma, and the role of truth in marriage.  It's a very complex movie and I can see why people may have called the book unfilmable.  But just imagine taking Owen Wilson's character from Tenenbaums and asked him to deal with apocalypse-driven mortality.  That's White Noise.  I absolutely love it.  We can debate it, but I'm probably still going to come out of that movie loving it.

It's the fact that I fell in love with the characters from moment one.  Adam Driver is a weird guy who should continue doing exactly what he's doing.  It's so funny that many of us got to know Adam Driver as Kylo Ren.  Every so often, the image of Kylo Ren (unfortunately shirtless and swole) comes into my head and it makes me giggle.  Kylo Ren seems like the least Adam Drivery role that I can imagine.  Driver has almost defined himself as the guy who flourishes in a low-budget environment.  He makes these phenomenal movies that often were made to lose Oscar categories.  Oh, they'll get nominated, for sure.  But they won't ever win. Jack might be my favorite character of his.  The second that Jack represented success-in-academia, I lost it.  I know that the professor archetype is well-worn, but Jack is something special.  It's not insane that a professor might be obsessive about a topic.  Before I get too big for my britches, I'm a high school teacher, ride-or-die. I always thought it would be nice to teach a college course for retirement, although I'm doing very little to secure that now.  But, goodness me!, the full-on nerdy otaku elements of academia are gorgeous in this movie.

There's a little corner of this movie devoted to Adam Driver and Don Cheadle as mirrors for each other.  Jack is obsessed with Hitler.  Not World War II necessarily, but he's not shying away from that.  But the notion isn't that he's an expert on World War II.  He's an expert on Hitler. And the pride that he takes on being America's foremost expert on Hitler is such a baseball bat to the audience's legs as a character choice.  I don't think more about a character has been conveyed so quickly as making him an expert specifically on Hitler.  Because Cheadle's Murray acts as foil to Jack, his obsession and almost desperation for status with the expertise on Elvis is equally hilarious. That scene.  Guys, that scene.  I hope you know what I'm talking about because I just about lost it.  Yeah, it is so divorced from what actual teaching looks like.  But so much is going on there telling about who these people are. The easy read of that scene where Jack is "helping" the Elvis lecture is that Jack is Hitler, enthralling the masses with his empty rhetoric about motherhood.  Yeah, that's there and it's even a read I get from the movie.  But the irony that I see is that Jack's greatness isn't even his own.  Murray's obsession with greatness coming from an in-depth knowledge of Elvis Presley isn't even real greatness.  Instead, they are riding the coattails of history.  The entire first sequence is the delusion that academics have fame.  They have fame in a very small pond.  Hitler, as gross as he was, had fame.  Infame, I guess.  But still.  Elvis had real fame.  These guys are famous to thirty kids and a handful of adults around the world.  This blog, no fame.

I love Baba.  I don't think I'd love Baba if it wasn't for Jack.  That's a thing.  Maybe that's what Baumbach really does well. He creates characters that, in isolation, probably do nothing for me.  But when interacting with others.  I love the idea that Baba exists for truth-telling.  If Marriage Story is Baumbach's thesis on marriage and divorce, the story between Jack and Baba carries with it the spectre of divorce and death without full on hitting me over the head with it.  I don't think many marriages are shown with the same love that Jack has for Baba.  Baba seems to be slipping away from Jack.  The more we see of Baba, the more the tale carries a portend of infidelity behind it. Jack and Baba have been married multiple times.  Neither of them seems abusive.  Neither of them is the monster of a spouse that Adam Driver was in Marriage Story.  But there seems to be something inevitable about Jack and Baba.  I know that we're left with Jack and Baba being fine and I will even accept that there's a narrative where they die in each other's arms, painfully and irresponsibly old.  (After all, they're afraid to die second.) 

But in the movie, it seems like happiness is fleeting.  It's the secrets and private moments that are both necessary and poisonous to what is happening.  They both end up on stretchers at the end, being monitored.  In that moment, their relationship is on life-support by a German nun who doesn't care.  The world doesn't care about Jack and Baba.  Jack needs to be a Hitler scholar who doesn't need to speak German and Baba has her movement class.  That's who they are to others.  Their writing is on the wall and it seems like the world could care less.  It's funny, because their customized family is near perfect.  It's screwy and really weird.  But mostly, everyone seems happy.  Usually, character quirks are reasons for characters to hate each other.  Not in this case.  Characters seem to treat wild personality traits as something that is not only normal, but something to be encouraged.  For the audience, there is this odd relationship with people who are epitomized by their quirks.  I can't get enough of it. 

White Noise might be up there for one of my favorite movies for 2022.  I can only use anecdotal evidence for how much people liked it.  But I do hope that it gets some attention from the Academy Awards.  Yeah, it's weird.  But it's awesomely weird and I love it. Also, shout out for the best prop department in the business for the A&P alone.

PG and I'm just waiting to say what someone says about this movie.  A lot of parents didn't take their kids to see this movie because it has an openly homosexual relationship in it.  Normally, I don't include homosexuality in my MPAA section because my politics don't view this as offensive.  But I know that it is the central contention point for a lot of people, so I'll confirm it.  Yes, one of the major characters is gay and talks about being gay.  But the thing that really scares kids is a big scary world where everything is trying to kill them.  You know, Disney stuff.

DIRECTORS: Don Hall and Qui Nguyen

Such a point of contention.  Man alive, I would love to throw stones, but at a point in my life, I would have been close-minded enough to probably avoid this movie.  Yeah, it's the movie where Disney finally stopped beating around the bush and made a character gay.  Am I going to talk about representation in movies?  Yeah.  I really, really am.  Does that mean that I liked Strange World.  Unfortunately, no.

I was told the movie wasn't that good.  My son didn't care for it.  He's eight.  He doesn't like lots of good stuff, so I wouldn't take his advice alone.  I really thought I would like it.  I mean, I like when Disney goes into sci-fi territory. I saw the trailer for this and thought that it would be up my alley. From that first trailer, I thought it was going to be very Star Trek-y or something like Lost in Space. I mean, it's right there in the title.  Just add "New" and you have the title of a really good Star Trek show in front of you.  Now, I'm putting myself in the shoes of a Disney exec.  A Disney exec attaches his name to this movie.  Maybe her name.  Not the point.  A Disney exec needs for Strange World to not be an outright failure because there's the Disney brand to think of.  And he or she is holding the cards to the movie that is going to crack Middle America and China.  This is the movie that is going to be so good that the whole question of gay representation isn't going to be a conversation anymore.  And then they see the final product.

And it's not amazing.

On paper, everything about Strange World should have been a slam dunk.  I know that early drafts of Disney movies don't look anything like the final versions.  I am specifically citing Frozen.  Frozen crushed.  It was one of those earth-shattering Disney movies. I know a lot of people love to hate that movie.  They're allowed to, but I think it's a bunch of bandwagon nonsense.  As a father to too many kids, Frozen's a pretty solid outing from Disney that has few notes from me.  But the original drafts of Frozen were very different beasts.  I mean, Elsa was the bad guy in the original Frozen movie.  Now, everyone knows Elsa.  Heck, it's been a really long time since that movie came out and they're still selling merch from that movie, even beyond the sequel stuff. I'm sure that the folks who make original Disney stories were looking at Strange World thinking that whatever rough edges were in the early drafts of Strange World and those things would be fixed by release dates.  And they were.  My biggest problem with Strange World is that none of it gels.  Some problems don't just get solved because Disney puts its name on it.

The biggest problem is that it needed to be amazing.  I keep using Jackie Robinson as my example. Bear with me, because I'm more of a history guy than a sports guy.  Jackie Robinson destroyed the color barrier in sports because he was amazing.  He took a mundane game and made it better by his presence.  It's a crime that it has to go that way, but it's true.  When Jackie Robinson played ball, it showed that a group of people treated as inferior could elevate something so-so into the stratosphere.  But on the other hand, when something is less than amazing that is supposed to change the game, it's evidence --inappropriately --that the old ways are the best.  I'm talking about Ghostbusters: Answer the Call here.  You know, the girl Ghostbusters movie.  Answer the Call was supposed to prove that an almost all-female cast would not only prove marketable, but also dominate the summer blockbuster market.  But that movie, for what goodness it had, paled in comparison to the all-male cast that Ghostbusters is known for.  Because bigots are looking for ammo, they took away from Answer the Call that women aren't funny and it's all unfair.

The same thing is true for Strange World.  Strange World's gay son, Ethan, is front and center in this story. It's a sci-fi story of a different planet that ultimately ends up being a living creature.  Cool.  But the really revolutionary element of the story isn't that Ethan is gay.  It's that it doesn't matter that Ethan's gay.  It's never an issue.  Even with the Boomer avatar in the story who tends to be pig-headed, Ethan's sexuality is never a point of concern for Jaeger.  Finally, Disney made a movie to represent a demographic that has been criminally underrepresented in cinema.  There are peopel who could look at Ethan and see themselves in the story. That's great.  (Or it's not, for those out there.  I really want to throw stones.  Like, really really want to.  But I also know that I lead a privileged life and that I may not have someone in my ear telling me the value of this moment without contention.)   But when the rest of the movie is meh, what that simply does is give evidence that America, China, and the Middle East don't want to see movies about gay kids.  They don't want to brainwash their kids into seeing this movie.

The big argument I have heard is that Ethan doesn't need to be gay.  Why make him gay?  I'm about the be the culprit of whataboutism, so just be aware that I recognize it.  Disney has always had romantic subplots.  It's something that Disney does.  Why I like Disney is that it humanizes its characters in a lot of cases.  People's problems aren't one thing. Sure, Searcher, Ethan, and Jaeger all have a very concrete external conflict:  they need to survive the land underneath the mountains.  But that doesn't stop them from being human.  It's the moments where people talk about their problems that remind us that there is a sense of normality to return to.  This conflict is temporary.  My problems out there are what I desperately want to return to.  Now, here's the whataboutism.  Disney's told Ethan's story before and no one made a fuss, ever.  Do you know who Ethan is in Strange World?  He's Violet from The Incredibles.  Violet's crush on the guy at school plays absolutely no part in the overall narrative.  It's her internal conflict.  The external conflict is keeping her from really exploring her inner conflict.  Thus, she must help solve the external conflict to give proper attention to the internal conflict.  Ethan and Violet are the same characters.  Yet, no one seems to have a problem with Violet.

So what makes Strange World not great?  I'm going to steal Henson's analysis first before talking about my own:  It's too many relationships. The story is about Daddy-issues.  I should be on the floor, weeping openly with snot running everywhere.  I'm not.  The father issues did nothing to me.  The reason being is that I didn't know on which family issue to tackle.  It's cool that Ethan has the same problem that Searcher has with his dad.  I like it. But both relationships are watered down.  I don't really get an in-depth look at what makes each relationship tick.  Instead, we get an obvious parallel that Ethan takes after Jaeger and Searcher feels left out.  But even that is muddy.  Ethan yells that he doesn't want to be like either one of them and it's pretty obvious that he wants to be like Jaeger. Pick a lane.  (I'm going to start devolving into my own thoughts here, so don't yell at Henson from this point on.) Also, Ethan's...wrong a lot?  Maybe that's me as Dad coming into the story, but he does some wildly irresponsible things in the name of being the protagonist of the piece. (You can also think that Searcher is the main character, but Searcher seems helpless throughout.)   When Ethan goes off to find his dad, he risks everyone else's lives, including his mom's.  That's not fair. She wouldn't even be there if he listened to his dad.  But there aren't any come-to-Jesus moments about his lack of listening skills.  He almost got so many people killed and he's the one we're supposed to be celebrating.  I mean, it is against the odds that Splat would have made that soulful change about treating Ethan like a friend.  So it's weird to come down on Searcher for the way he acts around either Jaeger or Ethan.  Searcher deserves to be a little standoffish against both these people.

But the really rough edge is about the film's message.  There's this card game motif that ties directly into the film's theme.  The film keeps coming back to this card game over and over (and with a heavy hand, if I do say so).  Ethan's obsessed with this card game and, in a moment of family bonding, sits down to play the game with his dad and reunited grandfather.  Now, the outcome of the game is to ensure total harmony in this fictional world.  Ethan makes it very clear that this isn't about murdering creatures or anything.  The two adults can't wrap their heads around this notion, even Searcher whose motivations and lack of clarity don't really make sense in this moment.  But both Jaeger and Searcher end up losing the game for the group because of their naturally violent tendencies towards obstacles.  Ethan then yells at both of them, stating that it everything needs to live for the society to function and that, by removing one creature, other more dominant creatures destroy the homeostasis.  Cool! I love this message.  

But what happens at the end?  Once Searcher and Ethan discover that their planet is a living creature and that the source of energy that they've been exploiting is killing the creature (there's another message, but it seems more preachy than organic, despite the fact that I kind of agree with it), they forget the message of the card game.  They decide to wipe out the creature that is attacking the heart of the planet.  (The green stuff is called Pando.  I don't know why I have to state that now.)  Wasn't the point that you can't kill one thing to save the rest of society?  You lost your own message trying to do a little bit of everything.  I know that the card game is important to the character arcs of the three generations, but the metaphor really got in the way of the point of the film.  

It's just so...meh.  I hate meh.  I want things to be good or bad.  Good or bad I can work with. Meh is forgettable.  Like The Rise of Skywalker, Disney can't get away with stuff like Strange World.  A strong opinion means that there's probably someone out there to defend this movie and maybe that the movie wasn't for me.  Meh means that more time was needed.  I get the vibe that someone just said, "Dump it and we'll move on."  It's a bummer because this movie needed to be good and it really isn't.