Thor: Love and Thunder | Everything Everywhere All at Once | Space Sweepers | Vengeance | Easter Sunday | Prey
Thor: Love and Thunder, 09 July 2022, Cinemark Rave Colonel Glenn 18
Can't decide if I dig #ThorLoveAndThunder despite or because of it being constructed largely of future GIFs.
In any case, we pick up after the events of Avengers: Endgame, in that Thor is off on a journey of self-discovery with the Guardians of the Galaxy, while Valkyrie is now King of New Asgard. Everyone's living their best sartorial life, is what I'm saying.
Meanwhile,
But back in New Asgard, things are great! There are a bunch of adorable Asgardian kids running around, and the kingdom has a fairly booming economy as some sort of mytho-historical theme park? Or something? It looks like kitschy fun, anyway.
When Gorr's anti-god campaign hits New Asgard, Thor returns home to fight off the first incursion of shadow-creatures. Valkyrie, who had clearly been sleeping in a Broadway T-shirt, does quite ably without him, particularly because she's been joined by a new hero: The Mighty Thor! AKA Doctor Jane Foster, Thor's ex-girlfriend, dying of cancer but powered up due to her connection with Mjolnir. (This also kicks off a hilarious runner of Thor being jealous about Mjolnir and Stormbreaker being jealous about Thor.)
Anyway, Gorr the God-Butcher kidnaps all the kiddie Asgardians, so Thor, Jane, Valkyrie, and Korg go off on an epic rescue mission. This includes a visit to a World o' Gods and it's GREAT, I can't even start with it.
This film was ALL. OVER. THE PLACE. In tone. It's hard to reconcile a movie that starts with a dead kid and Stage 4 cancer with the constant shrieking of rainbow goats, you know? I enjoyed it TONS, but so much whiplash, y'all.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, 11 July 2022, Blu-ray via Redbox
This movie is so goddamn weird. Which, like, what else can we expect from the dudes responsible for the "Turn Down for What" video?
Evelyn Wang seems to be living a life of quiet desperation. She's about to hit a personal apocalypse--her business is being audited by hostile IRS agent Deidre, her sweet husband Waymond seems to be contemplating divorce, she's at an impasse of understanding with both her ailing father Gong Gong and her alienated daughter Joy--and then an alternate universe version of her husband hops in and asks her to save the multiverse. Cool?
Jamie Lee Curtis plays an extremely resentful accountant who knows WTF she's doing, okay? "Now you may only see a pile of boring forms and numbers, but I see a story. With nothing but a stack of receipts I can trace the ups and downs of your lives."
I was, for the record, going to call bullshit on the IRS calling four ARMED security guards to deal with a couple of cranky visitors--I mean, TBF, Evelyn punched someone in the face--and asking said cranky visitors to lie down on the ground with their HAND on their HEADS, like, hello overkill? And then they turned out to be right? Essentially by accident, even.
But it turns out the multiverse is in danger, and Evelyn is the only one who can save it!
Particularly, it's in danger from
"She's an omniversal with unimaginable power. An agent of pure chaos with no realm motives or desires. Jobu Tupaki."
"You're just making up sounds!"
Evelyn goes through a LOT of different lives to acquire skills needed for the battle, but the answer to why her, why her particular version of herself is the one to do solve the problem, well, the answer stings. "You're living your worst you."
So Evelyn goes on a multiverse slide through multiple selves and, it turns out, she really likes some of them. The most gorgeous version is, of course, an In the Mood for Love tribute, where she became a movie star but never married her true love, which. Ow.
'Verse jumping, for the record, requires doing something so improbably weird that you end up slipping between dimensions or, uh, something. It includes switching your shoes to wrong feet, eating chapstick, getting four paper cuts at once, and sitting on the crack of the sofa. And sometimes things get…weird.
The most horrible thing, however, is that Jobu turns out to be Joy. Evelyn's daughter. She stared into the multiverse and it drove her to utter nihilism. But, also, some EXCELLENT wardrobe.
Jobu's confrontation with Evelyn ends up being a traditional villain's monologue, except in the weirdest walk-through possible.
It should not surprise anybody, however, that the solution to saving the universe is, well, love.
Or, as Waymond puts it: "The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind." Never change, Waymond. None of the universes deserve you.
I would legit watch an entire movie about Chad and Evelyn rescuing Raccacoonie.
There's a lot of other stuff we could dig into here, including:
- Perceptions of Asian masculinity
- Tensions of being queer in a multi-generational Asian family
- Ongoing linguistic racism when films incorporate more than English
- Psychological impacts of growing up in the Asian diaspora
But honestly, y'all, I would just like an everything bagel right now.
Space Sweepers, 12 July 2022, streamed via Netflix
This one is a Hugo nominee--as it's a South Korean film, it's likely I wouldn't have watched it otherwise? I mean, not just because it's in Korean, as well as a melange of other languages (English, Russian, Arabic, Mandarin, Nigerian pidgin, French, Tagalog, Spanish, Danish, and the subtitles claim German but that woman was speaking English, so okay), but because I legit don't think I've heard about it at all, otherwise. Which is a goddamn shame.
The introductory text reads:
In 2092, forests vanish and deserts spreadWe open with Tae-Ho, who's paying real rice and his only pair of magnetic boots for a chance to take a peek at a cryo-frozen little girl just in case it's his lost daughter. (It is not.)
Fading sun and acidic soil cause plants to disappear.
Fleeing the sick Earth, UTS Corporation builds a new orbiting home for humanity.
But only a chosen few can ascend.
The cruelest flashback.
Outside, on Earth, people've got to wear gas masks. The real living is up the space elevator (wooooo space elevators) and out into the UTS-owned habitats in Earth orbit. Savior of humanity, James Sullivan, is a 152-year-old (white, male, rich) scientific entrepreneur now investing in cultivating a "Super Plant" on Mars. He's making an Eden and very carefully sidestepping around the question of the 95% of humanity being left behind, as well as the tons and tons of radioactive debris drifting around in the name of "progress."
Cue space sweepers.
Despite having what someone describes as a beast of a spaceship, Our Heroes are actually dead broke and on the wrong side of drowning in debt. This leads to predictable interpersonal conflict. And then one day they find a little girl while they scavenge.
Funny story, though--she's not a girl, she's an android named Dorothy. Also, she's been implanted with a bomb by a terrorist organization. Also, she's been imbued with the UTS Super Plant magic or something, I don't know.
The crew quickly decide to ransom her to the terrorists--she's just a robot bomb, after all--but she names herself Kot-nim and she's adorable and you can see where this is going, right?
Spoiler: It does not go where you expect. Anyway, Our Heroes are pretty great. We've got Tae-Ho, the aforementioned mourning father who is not at all keen to get attached to some adorable new moppet.
We've got Jang, dirtbag captain and hottest human in the known universe.
We've got Tiger, obligatory tough dude with a marshmallow heart.
And Bubs! Bubs is a robot saving up for a humanoid skin! Bubs has a traditionally masculine voice but very much wants a feminine envelope to call their own. It's awesome.
There's a running theme that kicks off when Tae-Ho asks his crew if they're poor because they're bad people, or are they bad people because they're poor. Like, we on the outside know that's a false analogy, but the important point is that's how Tae-Ho feels because that's how the world treats him and his. (We also learn later: Tae-Ho was a child soldier, Park ran a drug cartel, Bubs was an assassination bot, and Jang was a pirate.) So yeah, what we learn is: Poverty robs people of choices, not morality, and, also, rich white dudes are knowingly trying to destroy the Earth because of their unshakable faith in eugenics as meritocracy. Also:
Once again, the secret to saving the universe is LOVE.
Vengeance, 30 July 2022, Century Olympia Theater
What if That Guy From Grad School made a true crime podcast, but slowly realized that he was the douchebag all along?
Seriously, BJ Novak took his NPR dirtbag ethos and made it into a surprisingly touching and comedic suspense film.
It's an interesting premise: BJ Novak (whose character has a name, but let's be real, nobody will remember it) gets a random midnight call to find out that Abilene, a casual hook-up of his, has died. The caller is her obviously-incredibly-grief-filled brother, who says he'll meet BJ Novak at the airport because OBVIOUSLY BJ Novak will be at the funeral the next day, right? RIGHT?
It turns out the aforementioned casual hookup talked about him as if he was a serious boyfriend. Also, Abilene's brother thinks she was murdered. BJ Novak decides hey, this is a podcast opportunity if ever he saw one. What, he asks his podcast producer Issa Rae, makes redneck yokels tick? Maybe this spurious murder investigation will help him understand What Divides America or whatever!
Except it turns out he really likes Abilene's family. It turns out the redneck yokels he's observing aren't mindless idiots. And it turns out Abilene might really have been murdered.
I ended up liking this so much more than I thought. Maybe it's because I spent the past five years two hours East of Texas, so I kind of get it? But it's a good couple of hours, and there was nothing more satisfying than seeing BJ Novak try to condescendingly explain Chekhov's gun to Abilene's sisters and then get totally stumped when they ask him in which play did Chekhov ever include a gun?
Easter Sunday, 13 August 2022, Regal Auburn 17
How Fil-Am is #EasterSundayMovie? I may have fist-pumped when, a few minutes in, somebody asks his auntie for leftover kalderata to take home and she pulls out an empty Cool Whip tub to use as a container.
Also, of COURSE a Fil-Am movie has Black Eyed Peas playing in the trailer. It would have been irresponsible NOT to.
Anyway, Joe Valencia is a half-Filipino comedian whose mother guilts him into coming home for Easter Sunday, and he decides to bring along his son, Junior, who is only a quarter-Filipino and somehow doesn't know anything about his heritage and it's horrifying. Junior's also pretty irritated at his dad, who keeps missing school meetings for, I don't know, comedy career reasons.
Joe's been called back home mostly to make peace between his mom and his auntie, who are once again at war for reasons as yet unknown.
There's also some superfluous drama with Joe's cousin
While weirdly reluctant to learn about being Filipino, Junior finds himself encouraged when he meets local girl Tala. She is, rightly, appalled to find out Junior doesn't know what halo-halo is, like, WTF, Joe you are a BAD father. Also, hilariously, when Junior gets mad at his dad for something, Tala's like, That's not how we talk to our elders around here, dude, and I love her.
Guys, I loved this movie so much. Like, it's corny and the action parts are goofy and unnecessary and you will be mad you don't have all that food right in front of you, but that's kind of what makes it feel real, you know? MY PEOPLE.
Prey, 30 August 2022, streamed via Hulu
The Predator series is one of the 80s action franchises I haven't gotten to yet--though technically I should have done so already, since I hit the Alien films a couple of years ago. ANYWAY. It's slaughtering time!
I opted to watch the Comanche dub, which I thought was pretty cool. I mean, it did mean I unfortunately couldn't, like, flee to the kitchen during particularly gory parts, but we all make our sacrifices, right?
Naru is a young Comanche woman in the 1700s. She's excellent at tracking and wants to become a hunter, but she's, y'know, a girl. Her mother asks Naru why she's so dead set on doing this one thing when she's actually good at, like, a ton of stuff. Naru's answer? Because nobody believes she can do this.
When one of the other hunters goes missing--everybody assumes a lion is involved--Naru's surprisingly supportive brother Taabe convinces the others to let her tag along because she's got healing know-how in addition to the tracking skills.
So she tags along with the party, but spoiler: It is not a lion out there. Or, not just a lion, let's say. (There is a satisfying bit where one of the other hunters, making fun of her for not having the balls to hunt a lion, gets taken out by said lion like, that's on you, my dude.) She gets wounded, though, so her brother drops her back at camp with, for the record, the hunter she managed to save with some herbs that lower the fever from his infected wounds.
Even though Taabe kills the lion--after, he later admits, Naru softened it up--she's certain something else is out there. She takes Sarii, her Very Good Dog, to find out what's going on there. There's some good stuff that happens in this segment--she gets stuck in a bog, chased by a bear, and then snatched up by her brother's friends (they were out looking for her, as if she was a runaway). Unfortunately, the Predator gets to those dudes first, which is a shame. Like, they were jerks, but they weren't awful, you know?
Anyway, the French arrive. Ugh. (The French is subtitled but not translated at all. I don't mind it, but it's kind of weird?) They'd previously captured and tortured Taabe, then use him and Naru to bait the Predator, so it's difficult to feel bad about their inevitable slaughter, y'know? Also, there's a hilarious bit where they all shoot the Predator, then when that doesn't work, they all frantically try to reload before it attacks again. It…does not turn out well for them.
The climax of this is so, so satisfying. It pulls together a TON of things we've seen Naru observe and do through the film: Herblore, laying bait for traps, identifying the Predator's ways and weaknesses, using new and unfamiliar weapons. Naru's a badass and I love her.
No comments:
Post a Comment