CBR argues that director Waititi deserves better treatment than what he’s gotten after the release of Thor:Love and Thunder, his second at-bat with the character.He’ll get a better treatment when he makes a better movie. His first turn on the Thor franchise worked because of a couple of smart decisions , the first being turning the film into a Hope-Crosby style road comedy and developing an effectivey humorous relationship between the two. Also, it was very cool and effective to bring some Jack Kirby influenced designs to the look of the film. So far as story lie, line it was complete and with a satisfying resolution, Thor’s hero’s journey in learning what it means to be “worthy” of his mantel. Love and Thunder undoes by making the return of Jane Foster into a romantic comedy, a genre that generally requires the hero, Thor in this case, to be a self-centered, preening, emotionally immature dolt who’s intellectual capacity is as dismal as his powers are impressive. The newly matured and worthy Thor of Ragnarok is erased . The film is overcrowed with too many characters, far too many gags that are essenially all set up and dud punchlines, tangents, spectacles, abrupt and unearned shifts in tone. It starts as a romantic comedy, wanders deep and far into Clash of the Titans territory, becomes a super hero version of a PBS kiddie show by the movie fourth quarter, tries to redeem the rioting themes, tones and battalion of one dimensional characters by turning it into a three hankie weeper with the death of Jane. Worse, though, is the shallow grasp to keep fan loyalty by holding out the chance that we’ll see more of the Jane character by showing in in Valhalla, an after life I’m sure writers will no doubt contrive to enable Jane to leave and enter again as the franchise rolls forward. Waititi is a talented writer, director and actor and one can expect good things from him again, but he overplayed his hand on hs second go round on Thor. It was an unmitigated mess in all respects, as most of the Phase films have been so far.
THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS
So much of this project depends on the use of actual clips from the first three films that you’re not convinced that director Lana Wachowski didn’t have much faith in the ideas that are haphazardly strung together here. To be expected, the action sequences are well made. The look of the film is dark with desaturated color in all shots to give this enterprise an oddly fetching grunginess. Still, when they are not fighting, the characters are talking, talking, talking, talking and talking and then talking some more as they hash through plot points and concepts of the three previous films, indulge themselves in some very 90s Baudrilliardisms and stale deconstructive bromides, all of it given with a hurried, breathless pace, none of it really makes any sense in ways that you care about. What you realize is that this whole reshuffling of the Matrix mythology is to set us up for another trilogy of movies, or more even, if this current effort justifies its expense and hype financially. It’s not without some laughs, some cool moments, some genuine surprises, but as with most franchise films these days, it’s drawn out, it drags too often, you find yourself fast-forwarding to the next action sequence because of all the chatter amid the longing looks of cypheratic actors cannot keep your attention
MIAMI VICE
Director Michael Mann has brought his old TV show Miami Vice to the wide screen, and the results are darker, grittier, nastier. But lets place the emphasis on darker. The original was bright pastel pinks and saturated sunshine up and down the Florida coastline, the movie, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx as the undercover Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs, is in severe contrast dark , as if filmed from inside a bottle of Coca Cola. Night sequences are what Mann does brilliantly, evinced by how sexy , alluring and alienated he made downtown Los Angeles appear in his previous film Collateral; this is a world of taciturn masculinity set against black and amber city scapes and empty industrial sites where the gears of inevitable violence are enacted in quick, cryptic spasms of dialogue. The plot itself is hard to follow, as drug-trafficking stories usually are, and it’s a vain effort to seek philosophical substance or solace from what any of these characters are saying; Mann’s films are about the actions characters take to define themselves and maintain their authenticity, moral or immoral, in a world where poses and equivocation are the norm. To be sure, there is a rousing fire fight between good guys and bad guys at the end.Colin Farrell as Sonny Crockett fairs better than you had a right to expect; gravely voice ala Nick Nolte, slicked back hair and handlebar mustache, he takes his terse dialogue and offers up a face that is determined to see his mission to the end even with the knowledge that he and his partner’s efforts against the drug trade is a war lost from the outset. Jamie Foxx , in the role of partner Tubbs, is a convincing mass of sleek, muscled anger, a man with deep wounds with the discipline to contain his rage into a drive to undermine the drug dealing bad guys foul enterprise and to make them accountable for the evil they’ve insinuated into the populations. Miami Vice is short on compelling dialogue or an articulate expansion of the moral ambiguity of selling drugs to a clientele willing to forgo safety and health for a momentary chemical distraction — there are no Bondian villains who suddenly become philosophers expiating about the inevitability of vice and challenges to right-thinking — but it is rich in style and mood. What he lacks as a thinker Michael Mann makes up for in a beautifully mounted evocations of masculine adventure, sullen, unshaven, muscular, terse, matter of fact, elegant in action, decisive in results. Hemingway would have liked these movies.
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 — PARABELLUM
