And he went through so much to save them.
Noooooo!
Sige, Taylor Swift pa more.
Is it over? Is the Gwyneth gone?
Ha! These two with their zingers flying.
(No, that was not a euphemism.)
These zingers are fun.
Who wrote these zingers?
Zingers. Zingers everywhere.
“We’re all gonna die!”
New York City bus drivers, they’ve seen everything.
I’m seeing this movie again.
The official trailer for Avengers: Infinity War has been released, and I just realized I feel the way I used to feel catching a featured music video from an upcoming movie on MTV. Why? because I’m old and music videos used to function as unofficial trailers. Anyway. It’s here!
I have no idea how many times I’ve hit replay because that thunderous Avengers theme is so emotionally manipulative, I don’t know where to begin. Or maybe I have all the feels because I’m revisiting how much money I’ve spent on the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the past ten years and this April I might end up spending even more. If the movie is as great as its trailer, I just might watch it a couple more times. Or five. It’s like the MCU is a goddamn annual subscription or something, you guys.
(It is.)
So, a few things:
Are we 100% convinced that Thanos is Josh Brolin and not Bruce Willis in Smurf drag?
Teen Groot!
Rocket Raccoon and the fervent hope that Pepper Potts doesn’t appear anywhere in this movie!
Doctor Strange as the 1% who want to know where the hell Hawkeye is and his adversary as the rest of us who don’t give a rat’s arse!
And lastly, but not leastly, I expect the mandatory Marvel superhero heaving beefcake shots to be on a strict 1:1 ratio. Or this happens.
Sorry, paying customer here. It’s only fair.
I was looking forward to The Shape of Water, something Le Hubs and I have been planning to go see, but through a combination of factors – chief of them being apathy because it’s winter – didn’t really get to see until yesterday.
The Shape of Water, which, by del Toro’s confession, came from his obsession with the Creature from the Black Lagoon, is the story of what would happen if the girl ends up with the creature. It doesn’t help that the creature – referred to as “The Asset” – looks so much like Abe Sapien from Hellboy, it’s hard to silence the voice in my head screaming “origin story!” (For the record, I wasn’t the only one doing this.)
Set in the Cold War era, Elisa (Sally Hawkins, here a soundless tour-de-force) is a cleaner who works for a top-secret government institution whose main goal is to outstrip the Russians in the race for space dominance. She’s mute, lives above a movie theatre and has friends who are full of spunk: a gay BFF (Richard Jenkins) and a sassy black woman (Octavia Spencer, earning every inch of that Oscar cred) at work. Her life is a routine, and she seems content. Well, content enough. Whatever frustrations she may have are exorcised in her bathtub before her morning even begins.
A story isn’t a story unless something happens, so of course something happens to Elisa, in the form of a mysterious tank brought in one day by Strickland (Michael Shannon, channeling that intense menace as always) who turns out to be the worst sort of alpha male. Twisted, racist and brutal, Strickland is dismissive of and yet inexplicably turned on by, imperfection.
The tank holds The Asset, an amphibious humanoid (Abe Sapien!) caught in the wilds of the Amazon and dragged to America for dissection because scientists need answers for allowing astronauts to breathe in space. Elisa meets The Asset (Abe Sapien!) and feels sorry for him. She decides to keep him company during her lunch break, and their unlikely bond is formed by hard boiled eggs and classic oldies. Despite The Asset (Abe Sapien!) having a bulge as unobtrusive as a Ken doll, there are clearly sparks which lead to the inevitable.
Other things happen of course, as they must, because stories have to have beginnings, middles, and ends. There’s a beautifully evocative scene involving some towels and taps that are allowed to run. Stripped of everything, The Shape of Water celebrates love in its purest form, where looks don’t matter, shortcomings are overlooked and physical barriers are swept aside, the way humans have improbable sex with dinosaurs in those crazy erotic fiction novels that actually exist. But having effectively silenced “Abe Sapien Origins!” the voice had popped up again, squeaking things like “monster porn!” and “slimy, slithery, splendid!”, the possible mechanics of this particular scenario so distracting, it messed with my ability to appreciate the movie for how visually striking and remarkably tender it really is.
Maybe this was because I didn’t go in expecting a love story. That’s on me, for ignoring every obvious marker and breathless movie blurb. To be fair, I never expect a romance when it comes to Guillermo del Toro. Not even when it’s marketed as one. (Exhibit A: Crimson Peak.) To watch a Guillermo del Toro film is to surrender to the clutches of the visionary equivalent of Edgar Allan Poe, even when he goes full-on Technicolor with something like Pacific Rim. It’s the dance of the dark, and the sinister, everything imbued with the sweet scent of rot that seeps through his work. If there’s any sort of romance to be had from del Toro, it’s the deep and abiding love he has for the macabre.
It’s official. It took the third movie for me to finally admit it, but Wonder Woman is single-handedly saving the DCU from its moody, emo self.
She’d already made the last third of BvS watchable, even if the rest of the movie was complete shit, similar Martha’s and all. The standalone Wonder Woman movie shone, if only because next to all those duds it was nice to see a DCU movie done right for once… done right, except for the fight scenes, which I wasn’t quite satisfied by, but it’s a minor complaint in a movie that was okay.
Full disclosure: I was fully prepared to dislike Justice League. I had seen Suicide Squad, and that ensemble movie was a complete dumpster fire. The aesthetic of the DCU has never charmed me, and I don’t think it’s meant to be charming at all. Not that every superhero world has to be charming, but if you’ve sat through Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, you’re going to come out of the theatre wondering if they hate their viewers. The world is too grim, its colour palette too dark, its heroes too tortured and there seems to be absolutely no hope of redemption from the cartoon characters who play their villains.
It doesn’t help that DC’s villains have been played in various reiterations by actors capable of truly mining the depths of their character – Heath Ledger’s Joker and Kevin Spacey’s Luthor come to mind. (I realize this is a bad time to celebrate Kevin Spacey, but the man can act. Let’s give him that.) After bravura performances like that, what are their successors supposed to do to avoid being carbon copies? We get Jared Leto as the Joker by way of Hot Topic. We get a motor-mouthed Jesse Eisenberg as a wholly irritating Lex Luthor. They even gave up on having an actual actor and handed us Steppenwolf (still can’t get over that name, my mind goes to Scandinavian metal bands whenever it’s mentioned.) Steppenwolf, for all the vocal stylings of Ciaran Hinds, is the crappiest CGI rendered character since Continue reading “Justice delayed is still justice. Or something.”
There are directors with a signature so unique, there is no mistaking their work for anyone else’s. Martin Scorsese and gravitas. Steven Spielberg and childlike wonder. Christopher Nolan and mindtrips, Wes Anderson and whimsy. Quentin Tarantino and dialogue, Tim Burton and oddities, Joss Whedon and wit… Taika Waititi and sheer unbridled irreverence?
It’s official. Taika Waititi takes nothing seriously, not even Asgard. And it works.
Continue reading “Thor:Ragnarok is totally, madly, wonderfully skux”
So here we are five years later, staring down the barrel of yet another Spider-man reboot, hoping against hope Marvel will make it alright. After all, this is the studio that made us fall for a homicidal talking raccoon. Anything is possible.
The best way to kill a bug is to douse it with something flammable and set it on fire. Say what you want, it’s the most satisfying feeling, ever. This, in effect, is what Marvel Studios has accomplished with Spider-man: Homecoming. Pretty sure this sentiment is shared by a few when it comes to the second reboot of the Spider-man franchise. Not even the combined charms of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone could overcome the hot mess that was Jamie Foxx’s Electro.
The new teaser for Thor: Ragnarok is out, and it seems to have taken a page out of the GOtG playbook. More colour, yay! More humour, yay! More friends from work, yay!
The Thor movies have never really been at the top of my Marvel fave list, but this outing by Taika Waititi just may change things, because they had the audacity and sheer genius to cast Cate Blanchett as a badass Hela, Goddess of the Underworld and equip her with multiple antlers. This was a no-brainer – Cate Blanchett is awesome when she plays queens. She was Elizabeth I. She was Galadriel, Elven Queen, she of the pointy ears who brings the light. And now, queen of the underworld + major smokey eye + Mjolnir- destroying, fighting-in-insanely-horned-helmet capabilities? Go ahead and #takemymoney Marvel, you glorious sons of bitches.
PS: I used the version where Batfleck reacts to Ragnarok, because the mash-up works even better than the standalone teaser.
PPS: Major points for using a Led Zeppelin single. I’d never heard of it before, but it fits the mood to a T.
Saving for Botox 
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