Movie Moments XCII: Guardians of the Galaxy Edition (April/May 2023)

It's been a while since I've done a themed movie post, but with the last Guardians movie rolling in--or, at least, the last one helmed by James Gunn--I figured this would be worth doing. Hilariously, I dug into my old posts and discovered the vast discrepancies between how I used to do movie reviews (literally one-sentence random thoughts) and how I do them now (hefty TL;DR meditations on narrative). I'm trying to split the difference with this post, because I'm really tired, y'all.

Guardians of the Galaxy | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 | Avengers: Infinity War | Avengers: Endgame | Thor: Love and Thunder | The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXXIX (February + Partial March 2023)

I didn't quite watch all of the Oscar films, but I made a decent dent! Plus the latest in MCU, of course.

Tár | Causeway | Aftersun | Marcel the Shell with Shoes On | Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Close | Empire of Light | Babylon | The Fabelmans | Puss in Boots: The Last Wish | Triangle of Sadness | The Sea Beast | Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXXVII (November & December 2022)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever | Rise of the Guardians | Slumberland | Avatar | Avatar: The Way of Water | Ratatouille | Christmas with a Prince

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, 11 November 2022, Century Olympia 

I went to a 9 AM showing of the film, forgetting it would inevitably start with a funeral. Guys, I wept watching the friggin' Marvel Studios logo.

Four specific things I really, really love about #WakandaForever:

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXXVI (July/August 2022)

While I didn't watch all that many movies these past couple of months, the ones I did watch were pretty excellent. Action galore! #RepresentationMatters!



Thor: Love and Thunder | Everything Everywhere All at Once | Space Sweepers | Vengeance | Easter Sunday | Prey

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXXV (April/May/June 2022)

After my Oscars binge, I vowed to take a break from prestige films and go all in on my most beloved genre, science fictiony action. It's been a good three months, let me tell you.



Death on the Nile (2022) | Stargate: Continuum | The Batman | Spider-Man: No Way Home | The Lost City | Turning Red | Moonfall | Casablanca | Galaxy Quest | Ghostbusters: Afterlife | Ron's Gone Wrong | Dog | Moneyball | Morbius | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness | Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXX (December 2021)

Marie Antoinette, 05 December 2021, DVD via university library
When, close the beginning of the movie, the titular protagonist crosses over from her native Austria and into her new home, France, then hugs the mistress of her household, bids goodbye to all her friends, is stripped of her clothing, and is robbed of her Austrian puppy (You can have as many FRENCH dogs as you want, they tell her), you sort of see how everything is already going to go wrong for her.

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXIII (November 2021)

Free Guy, 02 November 2021, Blu-ray via Redbox
I wonder what it would have been like to watch this movie without knowing its central conceit: That is, Ryan Reynolds plays an NPC in an FPS named Free City and, one day, he becomes aware.

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXVII (May/June/July 2021)

I didn't watch a ton of movies in the past few months (aside from my Superman, Little Women, Fast/Furious, and Beauty and the Beast clusters, I mean).

Movie Moments LII: Spider-Men Edition (December)

Is this a thinly-veiled excuse to rewatch the Tom Holland movies? SHUT UP. Anyway, this entire narrative is a long-form argument that there should be more STEM funding but also WAY more oversight. And maybe a mandatory bioethics seminar every year or so.

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LI (November)

The New Mutants, 22 November 2020, Blu-ray via Redbox
Why didn’t anybody tell me this movie was about a queer interracial romance amidst a psychically haunted juvenile detention center? The writing of this movie is not great--not enough time to do justice to some psychologically complex trauma as channeled through an extremely ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group--but man oh man, it is crying out for some fic. I think I liked this, actually?

Movie Moments XLIV: August 2020 (MCU Phase 3B Edition)

ICYMI: My thoughts on the first half of Phase 3. Five more to go!

ALL RIGHT LET’S DO THIS.

Movie Moments XLIII: August 2020 (MCU Phase 3A Edition)

I’m closing out the summer with MCU Phase 3! There are ELEVEN of them, people, so I split ‘em in half. Even so, this is a very long post, my friends. There are many GIFs. So. Many. GIFs.

Movie Moments XL: August 2020 (MCU Phase 2 Edition)

MCU Phase Two! Things are about to get teamish!

Movie Moments XXXVI: July 2020 (MCU Phase 1 Edition)

I decided to break the Marvel movies into their phases, because otherwise I’d be doing them until the semester started. But yeah, WE’RE DOING THIS. (Though I should point out that, following my Step Up watch, I find myself disappointed when no dance scene happens.)

Movie Moments V: July 2017

Only two movies in July! I’ve got to step things up.

Creed, 28 July 2017, Amazon Prime
Full disclosure: I don't think I've watched any of the Rocky movies. I mean, I’m familiar with all the parts we all know via cultural osmosis, but I have no ties to the narrative history. I just really love Michael B Jordan, from Friday Night Lights, and it's well past time for me to familiarize myself with his work with Coogler. (Black Panther, y’all.) And who can say no to Tessa Thompson and Phylicia Rashad? (Stallone was a surprise, but yeah, that Oscar nom wasn't a sham.)

The charm of the movie, outside of its stars, were the pops of media-savvy: Youtube and the tri-color of the projector cascading over Donnie, the goofy playfulness of the pop-up boxer stats, the stilted hagiography of HBO Sports, the idle Google searches over breakfast, the cable sports commentary riddled with chyrons. The legend-building methods of the original movies are long in the past.

Congratulations to whoever created this graphic for knowing, I suspect, nothing about sports except what’s on this screen.
What's so odd to me was that the actual boxing, with its zooms and dramatic music, felt drastically un-boxing-like. I grew up watching matches on TV, and boxing is largely poorly-lit rounds of aggressive hugging, rapidly punctuated by oil-slick jabs. By making the matches a series of dramatic combos, they lost out on something.

In any case, think of this as a movie of folks who know they're making a dumb decision either immediately before or after they hurt someone, and then reluctantly attempt to do better, clumsily. Then it's incredibly graceful. And who doesn't love a good training montage?

Spider-Man: Homecoming, 29 July 2017, Riverdale 10 VIP Cinema

• Either this movie is excessively charming or enough time has passed to rob me of my rage about having paid to see Spider-Man 3 a decade ago.
• Brown folks! Brown folks everywhere! Of varying ethnicities, genders, roles, linguistic histories, and socioeconomic brackets! Plus NED! Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!
• This is why students need affirmation and challenges, STARK. Do you need a link to my teaching philosophy? GOD.
• Those Cap videos are delightful, and twice as much when you think about the work that must have gone into them.
• This is an argument that we need stronger unions, right? That's what I’m picking up.

And on to August!

Movie Moments IV: May & June 2017

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2, 04 May 2017, 3D at Cinemark 12
It would be impossible for this movie to evoke the same joy that the first did, simply because the first movie was a surprise. This was predictably delightful (and delightfully predictable), but ye gods, the meta ran thick. (And Ben Browder! Doused in gold paint!) And there were so many stingers that I wasn’t sure if I should leave even after the screen went blank and the lights came on. Too many narrative branches! No clear signal of whether they’re Easter eggs or actually relevant to future stories! Giggles with diminishing returns! Guardians has become, it seems, the most Marvelly franchise of the MCU. I’m looking forward to the third.

Wonder Woman, 03 June 2017, Carmike 12 Cinema
I cried four times during this movie: During pretty much the entire introduction of Themyscira, during the first battle scene, during Diana’s entry into the World War I trenches, and at the battle-climax of the movie. I clocked a couple of plot twists almost immediately (this is a superhero movie, after all, and tropes are tropes), but does anyone really watch these movies for plot machinations? I’d argue that any blockbuster-type movie isn’t really built to wow the audience with plot (though, ye gods, I wish that were a goal much of the time), but rather deliver a particular combination of emotional triggers: nostalgia, anticipation, vindication, and catharsis.

This isn’t a perfect movie. The romance with Steve Trevor is, possibly, lent too much weight, and thus Diana is fairly isolated from other human interactions once she enters the realm of humans. The plot twists, as I mentioned before, are way obvious, and the final battle is yet another iteration of Superpowered People Grimace Unconvincingly. And, while I’ll have to rewatch the movie to be sure, there weren't many Amazons clearly of Asian or Latinx descent, let alone humans--and like Captain America's Howling Commandos, this Steve’s band of merry misfits is a similar “gotta catch ‘em all” collection of token ethnicities.

But, Diana.



Diana, Princess of Themyscira, remains tank of my heart. Funnily enough, at the conference I was attending the weekend I watched the movie, I had actually presented on leadership and tanks (link to a PDF)--in some gaming parlances, “tank” means the member of a questing group who leads the way through the battlefield and draws the brunt of enemy attacks so the other members can get by. In the No Man's Land scene, the scene that so many, many folks cried through, that’s exactly what she does. And I’m tearing up right now, just typing about it.

X-Men Apocalypse, 07 June 2017, HBO Now
Three scenes into #XMenApocalypse and I mostly just wanted to watch X2 again. It's not a bad movie--it just feels like nobody but the studio stylists was really invested in the movie’s existence. Also:

• Folk rolling up on Magneto like he isn't always twelve minutes away from contempt for their petty human fears and cruelties.
  
• How can Erik be a Holocaust survivor but also have two children aged approximately ten years apart but also look exactly the same as he did at the beginning of First Class?
  
• Not that I don't dig Psylocke, but she's pretty out of place amongst the merry band of worldbreakers. (Angel is present mostly for iconographic mascot purposes.)
  
• I'm so down with the Wolverine cameo.
  
• We’ve established Magneto can frickin’ shift the planet off its axis, but sure, his contribution to the final battle is throwing some rebar around. Totally effective.
  
• #XMenApocalypse needed so, so much more Storm and Jubilee.

Deadpool, 08 June 2017, HBO Now
That was as vulgar and hilarious as everyone said it was, and yeah, meta and violent. And yet it kind of had actual feelings deep, deep down? Plus, Zamboni.

I would pay cash money for a team-up movie with Deadpool and X-23. Someone make that happen immediately.

The Huntsman: Winter’s War, 10 June 2017, HBO Now
This was fine? I guess? It just had waaay too much going on. Is it a sequel? A prequel? A new fairy tale spun with familiar characters? I legit had no idea what the first act of the movie was trying to accomplish, and that's a problem, even as things slowly started to resolve in the next hour.


Then again, this happened, so.

Haywire, 10 June 2017, Amazon streaming
I am deeply in love with a deep bench of the most attractive (male) actors they could find, all as setting to a movie devoted to shining a spotlight on how immensely powerful Gina Carano is. Ye gods, this woman.

It's not an extraordinary movie, but it's solid and doesn't do any narrative hand-holding. It trusts the audience will follow along. It's an action movie assured in its own confidence, and I dig it.

Galaxy Quest, 12 June 2017, Amazon streaming
Watching #GalaxyQuest for the first time:

1. This bench is DEEP.
2. Wow, I miss #SDCC.
3. Enrico Colantoni is a wonder, isn't he?

Friends with Benefits, 14 June 2017, Amazon streaming
Whoa, remember when Emma Stone and Andy Samberg were not-famous enough to be the opening exes for a movie headlined by Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis? And flash mobs were exciting instead of annoying AF? The times, they have been changed.

Anyway, this movie is dumb, but I will never be immune to Mila Kunis. And, okay, fine, playing “Pumped Up Kicks” over the credits is pretty stellar punch line deployment. BUT THIS IS THE LAST AFFLUENT WHITE PEOPLE ROMCOM I WATCH, SO HELP ME GOD.

Spectre, 19 June 2017, Amazon Prime
Well, that was a movie that happened, I guess.

Finding Dory, 19 June 2017, Netflix
This movie has more suspenseful sequences than every single spy movie I've watched in a decade. And possibly the full run of Sherlock, I think. Also, two whales breaking out of Monterey Bay Aquarium (because, come on, it is), and nobody noticed? An octopus jacks a truck and nobody loses their frickin’ mind? What a jaded place Pixar World is.

The Girl With All the Gifts, 20 June 2017, Amazon Prime
This is a pretty canny zombie movie. I think it works a little better onscreen than on the page, even. (I famously cannot watch an episode of The Walking Dead without having a precise week of nightmares following.) The slow double-crack of a jaw being realigned pretty successfully conveys the horror without undue splatter.

Legally Blonde, 21 June 2017, Hulu

• I mean, having an understanding of the fashion industry would be good background for going into trademarks and corporate law?
• On one hand, I dig that the message is “don't let folks with their dumb biases constrain you,” but on the other hand, only a rich white person with a ton of support could pivot so extremely in a couple of months, no matter how much they study (but I appreciate the focus on studying)
• Victor Garber offering internships to his top law students, so I guess LB2 is Elle murdering someone and getting away with it.
• Good for Elle, but how hella lucky was she that the stepdaughter had a perm alibi?
• I'm glad the moral of the story is, in part, don't hitch yourself to a complete tool.

Wonder Woman (second viewing), 21 June 2017, Jordan Creek Cinemark 20

1. Still cried all through No Man’s Land
2. That Chris Pine sure can smolder.
3. Aside from the exact 90 seconds of reveal, I think I disagree completely with Thewlis's character work and the direction thereof.
4. I would be so down for The Further Adventures of Diana Prince and Etta Candy.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (second viewing), 25 June 2017, Regal Riverside Plaza Stadium 16
I should first note that our theatre was one of those fancy ones with reclining seats where you can reserve your spot when you purchase. The seats were plush, but of the wrong proportions for petite me. The experience of approved foot-raising was delightful, though.

As for the movie, the tonal whiplash is especially pronounced when you know when the smash cuts will happen--which, in turn, throws the manipulative music cues into sharp relief. Effective, but I'd rather have had them build Ego’s heel turn more organically. (For a dude millions of years old, he sure did fumble his “come to the dark side” pitch really, really quickly.) Even, yes, if it meant tacking on another twenty minutes. Or, HEY, doing something besides that cheesy as hell “playing catch” scene.

Anyway, knowing what happens to Yondu makes that two-second flashback of Yondu and young Peter a pretty painful gut punch. And the interactions between Nebula and Gamora have a depth I didn't quite catch while Gamora was hoisting a comically-giant piece of artillery onto her shoulder.

Groot: still adorable. Rocket’s arc: still overplayed, but touching nonetheless. Mantis and Drax: still delightful.

Action Choreography in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Since Daredevil dropped on Netflix, there's been a lot of back-and-forthing about the relative quality of the Marvel universe TV offerings, on a lot of different fronts, with a lot of compelling logic. My take on things, if you're interested:

1. Agents of SHIELD has tons of interesting and diverse women. Agent Carter has ONE fully fleshed-out woman, and a couple of secondary ones, in service of a specific feminist-ish theme. Daredevil never passed the Bechdel test, which isn't a sole indicator of quality, but one that I take super-seriously.
   
   
2. Agents of SHIELD doesn't have a very coherent visual aesthetic. Agent Carter is gorgeously styled. Daredevil is not very comfortable with light in any of its forms.
   
   
3. Agents of SHIELD is corporatized and bland a lot of the time, with a full 20+ episode season. Agent Carter is well-driven in a very specific way, for a 10+ episode season. Daredevil is well-driven in a very specific way most of the time, for a 10+ episode season.

Fair? I feel like that's fair. I enjoy watching Agents of SHIELD most of the time, I enjoy watching Agent Carter most of the time, and I enjoyed Daredevil while I binge-watched it, and then got quickly weary of it after I recovered. In any case, however, both Agents of SHIELD and Daredevil have each done fairly remarkable single-take fight scenes, and I think they're fairly good at demonstrating the ethos of each of the two shows. (Sorry, Agent Carter.)

First, let's look at Daredevil, since that came out first. This is the end of the second episode, IIRC. Also, the green lighting was so Matrix-like that I couldn't get past it at first. I expected Agent Smith to emerge at any moment.


Vulture has a good breakdown of the scene. I, personally, was impressed by how well the fighters conveyed weariness as the fight dragged on and on (in an awesome way). If you've ever watched a decent boxing match, you'll know the signals: the staggering, the long pauses, the moments when it kind of seems like the combatants want to just hug and lean into each other instead of throw another punch. It's a great callback to Murdock's boxer father, and also a fair analogy for Daredevil's first character arc. Murdock runs into the fight all gung-ho, but gets slowly worn down, still focused on his objective, but feeling the pain and weight of it accumulate.

Now, let's take a look at this scene from Agents of SHIELD 2.19, in which Skye is a TOTAL BADASS.


Hitfix has the breakdown on the scene, but besides being a remarkable feat of choreography and camerawork, it also illuminates Skye's rapid acclimation to being an actual SHIELD agent better than a season-and-a-half's worth of sturm und drang. And it's not just a fancy martial arts fight, which the show often gives to May or Bobbi. Instead, we see Skye assess the scene, the environment, the hazards, and the opportunities in micro-seconds. We see her run out of ammo, reload, run out of ammo AGAIN, and dive for another weapon. We see her run around a table and how that effectively buys her a few seconds against one of her opponents. There's no hesitation in what she does, and it's amazing. AMAZING.

Anyway. Those are my thoughts for the day. If you need me, I'll be rewatching these two clips over and over again for the next few hours.

Fall TV 2013: Tuesday Nights

The saga continues. And Tuesdays are heavy. Not urgent, but entertainment-laden. I kind of wish networks would try some counter-programming, though.

Vague spoilers for the most recent episodes of New Girl, but otherwise I think this post is pretty safe.

Movie Review: Iron Man 2

I have seen Iron Man 2. WHERE TO START?

• OH HAI IDENTITY PERFORMED THROUGH MEDIA. DID YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU? Yeah, I love that a good chunk--maybe the first third?--of the movie was us watching the characters through the lens of another camera. That made me so happy in my academic bits, y'all, you have NO IDEA. *dreamy sigh* (One might wonder why so many fen are academics, but I wonder whether so many of us are academics because we started as fen.)
• PEPPER POTTS. BLACK WIDOW. THAT VANITY FAIR REPORTER. The women of this movie are so deliciously awesome, and we wouldn't even have to talk about Tony Stark much. I'm pretty sure. Well. Okay, yeah, this is not a Bechdel movie. BUT THE WOMEN ARE AWESOME.
• This movie has mixed feelings about America. Wait, no--this movie has mixed feelings about the choices of the American media, but it certainly doesn't argue that American media isn't ostentatious. Ostentation takes two forms: Tony Stark's performative vulgarity, and Hammer's (and by extension, the military's) performative vulgarity. Both are excessive and kind of gross, but one is supposed to make us laugh, and the other one is supposed to make us pump our fists to America, F*ck Yeah! And we're supposed to feel vaguely uncomfortable about both. This movie was about consumption, conspicuously.
• I missed California a lot in some of those scenes. A LOT.
• SHIELD! I love mythos and worldbuilding, y'all. This isn't even my side of the Marvel universe, but it all weaves together, and it makes me happy.
• I missed Terence Howard. Don Cheadle is amazing, but I don't know. Maybe they wrote Rhodes inconsistently, as well! (Though he was awesome in that last scene of his, I felt.) ETA: Apparently Terence Howard is not a good person! I had no idea, y'all. When I said I missed him, I meant that recasting (when not meta-winked at, Fresh Prince-style) makes me uncomfortable, that is all! /eta
• RDJ is delicious. Just wonderfully over-the-top.
• I liked Vanko. He had no motivation aside from screw you, Tony Stark and I WANT MY BIRD, but I liked him despite that. Well, maybe because of that. Go fig.
• I salute anyone who can build machines that make new elements by hand. WTF, TONY STARK? I did not know you were MAGICAL, as well as smart!
• Hey, did that little film of Howard Stark remind anyone of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm? Because it kind of felt like that Disney-esque World's Fair technology thing. (As opposed to Stark Expo, which was just ludicrous, for real. A year-long weapons fair? WHATEVER.)
• How HILARIOUS was it when cherry blossoms started falling before Iron Man and War Machine had their standoff with the drones? I started laughing out loud, for serious. That was AMAZING.
• Yeah, I don't see Pepper/Tony going anywhere, but they're definitely fun. (I am sad the movie didn't have the "You complete me!" bit from, like, ALL the trailers, though. BOO.)
• THOR. I clearly need to pick up a few TPBs before that all happens.