Eternals (2021)

Score: 4.5 / 5    ***updated

It can't be easy to step into the most fanbase-established, well-financed, studio-overseen cinematic franchise of all time and make something that feels fresh. The standard of superhero movies has been long set, and while every year threatens to end the hype, somehow the MCU (and, in my unpopular opinion, Warner Brothers' DCEU) manages to keep things interesting and moving forward. But as some of the more popular parts in Marvel's roster age out -- or die out -- I've been wondering how newer and more obscure characters will be popularly appreciated and welcomed. I certainly didn't know anything about Shang-Chi going into his first feature, and I was blown away by it. Something similar happened recently to me in a screening of Eternals, about whom I knew only the barest of details.

Basically -- and I mean very -- the Eternals are the ten children of a Celestial named Arishem sent to Earth in 5000 BC to destroy the Deviants, invasive monsters who kill apex predators. They succeeded and lived as gods (literally) in ancient cultures before spreading out and trying to lead normal lives, helping in small ways as they are able. In the present, the Deviants reawakened after the Blip, and so the Eternals band together to learn why; unfortunately, the truth is much darker and more frightening than they could have imagined. It doesn't help that the Eternals, much like any family, harbor feelings of resentment, joy, love, and loss between them, which makes their reunion rife with drama. It all leads to a fun but underwhelming climax that feels about as fresh as last week's cake. Its visuals feel ripped from any number of apocalyptic movies, and the action is almost laughable. But by this point, you do care quite a bit about the characters, which carries you through to the end. That's not nothing, but it showcases what Zhao could have used more help doing.

I confess myself a little underwhelmed too by the mythology of this movie. While you can certainly watch it with enough basic information to go on, I could not help wishing for more. Which is a bit absurd, when you account for its two-and-a-half-hour runtime. For its huge cast of brand-new characters, its extensive world-building, and more veiled references to less-popular Marvel titles, it almost feels not long enough; I couldn't tell you a whole lot more about the "significance" of any of these characters within the franchise even after seeing the movie. It's more of a standalone flick than any other in the MCU, which I guess is a good thing until the ending and post-credits scenes had me scratching my head. In fact, apart from a couple references to Thanos and everyone returning after the Blip, this movie was uniquely self-sufficient until the last few scenes (and, I have to note, the end of this movie teases Blade, which provoked me to let out a loud, excited squeal in a packed, silent auditorium).

Director Chloé Zhao (Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider, Nomadland) is a surprising and odd choice for this movie, based on her previous work. You can certainly see how she humanizes these characters and connects them to far-flung but very specific global and cultural locations; that's just something she's uncannily good at doing. That, along with finding perfect magic hour lighting in her landscape shots. Thankfully -- and I say this as someone who respects her eye and tone but generally dislikes her movies so far -- here her vision soars due to its intense, plot-driven structure. The credits indicate she helped with the screenplay, but I suspect it was others, largely, who brought franchise knowledge of the characters and plots as well as a sense of urgency and motivation. Many scenes are clear-cut with Zhao's easily recognizable eye for cool palettes, natural lighting, and relative stillness centered on a horizon; these are hugely important in introducing and establishing the enormous cast of characters in ways any screenplay would struggle to accommodate. On the other hand, when things do get expository, and messy plotwise, you can feel the pull of other artistic voices to "do the genre thing" and have more action, more cuts, brighter colors, louder sounds. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and the film is pretty darn coherent for all it's trying to do.

But it does make me wonder what would have happened if directors had swapped so that Eternals had the spectacle-oriented director Cate Shortland, and if Zhao had in turn directed Black Widow. I imagine a more character-driven focus with the latter, one rooted in time and place in a way that film, frankly, squandered in favor of admittedly brilliant action sequences. The former, however, would have embraced a bit more of the "wow" factor, turning the Eternals into full-on gods with all their magic on spectacular display, while sacrificing the existing film's determination to make the characters real people with a sense of age and belonging. Fruitless considerations, perhaps, but an interesting way to rethink how these iconic characters materialize in the public consciousness and how easily things might have been different.

I guess, in the broadest terms, I most liked the cast of this movie and the casting. Easily the most diverse group of performers yet in the MCU, they also play diversity in a way that does not feel forced or contrived. Salma Hayek plays the leader Ajak, Gemma Chan's Sersi is the protagonist of sorts, Lauren Ridloff plays the Deaf superhero Makkari, and Brian Tyree Henry's gay hero Phastos has a husband and son. Who else? Well, there's the hunky Richard Madden's Ikaris and equally hunky Kumail Nanjiani's Kingo, there's Lia McHugh as the androgynous and youthful Sprite, Don Lee as the strongest of them named Gilgamesh, and Barry Keoghan as the funny but creepy Druig (which totally checks out for him). Perhaps most interesting for me was Angelina Jolie as the warrior Thena; the way the film sensitively handles her mental illness is wonderfully refreshing. More surprising still, this marks what I think might be the first sex scene in a franchise literally built upon muscular models in tight outfits (I don't count Tony Stark falling off the bed with a reporter in Iron Man). It's nice to finally see some superheroes acting like real adults for a change, rather than just flirting or posing suggestively, and it adds a nice level of complexity to these characters in particular, due to their immortality and experience.

*** Upon a second viewing, I'm inclined to increase my rating for this movie. My concerns about the adaptation process and undercooked contextualization still hold, but this time I just wanted the movie to take me on an adventure. And I left the cinema this time with a profound sense of awe and warmth. This is, by far, the most theologically complex film in the MCU and possibly of 2021. Its entire premise questions humanity's relationship with the divine on a global scale rather than in culturally or religiously specific terms. The Eternals poke reverent fun at each other for being gods, historically, in the eyes of humans, and it's fascinating to see the way they (mostly) humbly shrug those titles off as cultures evolve. But then, right around the halfway point of the film, when the true stakes are revealed and apocalypse draws near, they band together to (SPOILER ALERT) stop a newborn Celestial. Essentially, they aim to kill a god, and it's viewed by the film as not only a good thing but as an imperative. It's fascinating and shocking -- less so due to a screenplay determined to not use the phrase "kill god" and by Zhao's wonderfully calm tone and pace -- and will surely lead to quality post-screening discussions.

1917 (2019)

Score: 5 / 5

My friend and I, after seeing 1917, were musing on comparable war films. I tend to inexplicably prefer the genre, and even I had trouble recalling other WWI movies. I guess there's War Horse, and of course All Quiet on the Western Front; later I remembered A Farewell to Arms and Kubrick's Paths of Glory. But there aren't a lot, especially when compared to the perennial WWII, Vietnam, and Iraq war movies. As we considered why, we came up with two solid answers: first, Americans weren't nearly as involved in that war (Wilson was determined to remain neutral until the Lusitania sank, and US troops were deployed in only the last year of the four-year conflict), and it was a particularly brutal fight.

The brutality and isolation of WWI take central focus in Sam Mendes's vision of trench warfare, which he and cinematographer Roger Deakins capture in two individual, almost unbroken shots. At least, so it's meant to appear, as Hitchcock and Inarritu have notably done before. Initially, I expected that this single-shot approach would prove the unbelievable technical achievements of these artists; it does. Then I suspected that this technique would pull us into the story with immersive and devastating results; it does. Finally, I realized that this feature was not so much a technical gimmick as it was a theatrical and artistic expression of integrity. This is one of the rare stories in which the expense of time is in fact deadly -- the tagline of some ads reads "Time is the enemy" -- and so as the bloody fighting increases in intensity, so does the thematic anxiety we feel as we watch.

The German army has withdrawn from a section of the Western Front. The British and French soldiers are on a watchful rest, but only just. Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), two young soldiers, are woken and ordered to travel to another battalion, across enemy lines, to prevent their attack. The German retreat is a ruse, and the British attack will result in thousands of their own casualties, including Blake's brother (Richard Madden). Blake and Schofield embark, first exiting their own trench to immediately see, probably for the first time, the horrific hell on earth that is the recently deserted battlefield. Making their way through the muddy, bloody no-man's land and into the deserted German trenches is a nail-biting exercise in tension. And it's just the first step.

Because of the immediacy and immersion of the film, it often feels like a sort of arthouse video game, where you play a character picking his way across various battlefields, including tunnels, trenches, rivers, forests, fields, abandoned towns. The journey and action are punctuated by terrifying open-world dangers, especially gunfire that tends to erupt when least expected from shooters we never see. Occasional reprieves take the form of lengthy bits of exposition-heavy dialogue, either between the two young men or various commanding officers, including Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch. The centerpiece, though, is a masterwork of light, sound, speed, and acting as Schofield sprints through a ruined town with Germans hunting him in the dark. Flares flying overhead turn the battlefront into a nightmarish ghost-town where shadows move and nothing is as it seems.

In what quickly becomes a sort of odyssey through war-torn northern France, the two young men are forced to deal with booby traps, enemy soldiers, friendly fire, dehydration, airplane attacks, rats, barbed wire, tunnel collapses, and hundreds of dead bodies. Not long after they initially enter no-man's land, Schofield cuts his hand on barbed wire and then, spooked and hiding, accidentally plunges his hand into a festering corpse's bowels. It's disgusting, and he'll probably lose that hand within a week, but it's just the beginning of the horrors to come. The action is relatively slow-paced, but so much detail and emotion is built into every minute that you still feel like things are flying along. In fact, lengthy sections feel not unlike Apocalypse Now in that, despite our protagonists' best efforts to find and deliver information, the battlefield is strewn with soldiers who have effectively lost their minds. Nobody knows where the command is, where the front is, who is a threat and who is a friend, or even how to function as a normal person. Madness is the cost these men pay to serve in war, if not their limbs or lives.

Rocketman (2019)

Score: 5 / 5

It's everything Bohemian Rhapsody should have been, and then some.

A biography that manages to use its jukebox rock and roll as a vehicle for its story. A fantasy that intimately explores what a life of music, addiction, and stardom does to someone's experience of life. A musical that reworks existing songs into new and exciting forms. And a transformative performance by a leading man who doesn't need the gimmick of exaggerated prosthetics to become his subject and who sounds amazing singing the music with his own voice

The movie frames the life of Elton John within the confines of an alcoholics anonymous meeting, where he enters in full devilish regalia and proceeds to recount the tribulations of his life, including his addictions to booze, drugs, and sex. His memories make up the film, filling it and forming it, as his music is often sung in the moment, adding to the story if not telling it outright, in contexts often offstage or outside the studio. We explore his childhood and family dynamics, his break into show biz, and of course his journeys through love (none more so than fame).

It's the musical event of the year, and it's an amazing achievement. Bask in the glory of the costumes and design, celebrate the stellar performances, and jive along to the music. Summer is here, and I think it's gonna be a long, long time until we have this much fun at the movies again.

Cinderella (2015)

Score: 1.5 / 5

It's hard to walk out of this movie without feeling "good" about yourself, but it's also just as hard to pinpoint anything that makes the damn thing worthwhile. Sure, it's entertaining. Sure, it's pretty and cute and funny and sweet. Sure, we all wish we had a guardian fairy to dress us up in beautiful clothes so we can escape our miserable lives and have an impossible romance come true. But we've had this narrative for centuries, and frankly I don't understand why any self-aggrandizing artist (Kenneth Branagh, I'm looking at you) would want to touch this moldy material without putting some kind of new twist or flair on it.

The Cinderella story has been adapted into countless media, with different audiences in mind, and with many different contexts. Context is crucial to any successful iteration of the tale, because as most of us know, the story has some serious problems. I'm not saying it's not an effective fantasy, but too often the story caters to a very mainstream, hegemonic culture, which is probably why it remains one of the staples of our culture now. We can probably count on one hand the number of direct Cinderella adaptations that feature people of color. We haven't seen one yet in the mainstream that features anything but a cis, hetero romance. And I've maybe only seen one production that doesn't glorify materialism and the absurdly wealthy.

So I don't think it's too much to ask that this adaptation might have had some kind of useful spin on feminist rhetoric (Ever After), the politics of monarchy (Ella Enchanted), or varied ethnicities (Disney's 1997 television film of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella). Even last season's Into the Woods featured a Cinderella who actively chooses to escape her surroundings and venture into the woods, uses her kindness and resourcefulness to better herself and those around her, and to make a conscious decision to reject her womanizing husband and thereby forsake a life of wealth and comfort. With these in mind, it's really hard to like much of anything about Branagh's new picture, which is simply a lavish-but-empty direct translation of Disney's 1950 animated film.

There are exactly two and a half valuable things about this film. First, the costumes are killer. Second, what's not to like about such a fabulous cast flouncing around like a dream? And third(ish), some of the music is rather lovely. That's it. The special effects are beyond overblown (remember Maleficent, anybody?) and take away even the slightest traces of real drama. The sets are lovely, but don't make much sense; Ella's family lives in a veritable castle in its own right, so it's hard to believe their cries of destitution and ruin when every scene shows them in a house many real people would kill to spend even a night in, all while wearing obviously expensive, gaudy clothes. Worst, though, is the script: I have not heard such vague, uninspired blather since I was riding mass transit in Chicago.

Don't believe me? Take the climax for example. Ella climbs to her attic-bedroom and opens the door. Dappled sunlight sparkles on the contours of her glass shoe, as her malevolent stepmother leers out of the shadows beyond. It's a beautiful image, and one in which the drama of the film seems finally to shine. Ella asks her stepmother, point blank, why she hates Ella so much, and my throat tightened in anticipation of a profound revelation or shocking delivery from Cate Blanchett. And all we get is a clenched cliché about Ella being too good, too pure, too innocent (the exact line escapes me because I was grinding my teeth in frustration) before she breaks off in mid-sentence and stalks away. What an absolute waste of talented actors and a beautiful scene.

I'm not going to pretend I don't find parts funny, sweet, or sentimental. In fact, one of the best scenes involves Ella's dying mother (played by our beloved Agent Carter, Hayley Atwell) giving some of the world's best advice to her young daughter. Another involves our Prince (handsome and talented Richard Madden) making his peace with his father (handsome and talented Derek Jacobi) on the latter's deathbed, before curling up next to him. And yes, okay, I fell victim to the rush of happiness when the damn shoe fits and everyone claps and smiles and kisses and sings and does whatever people do when their monarch falls in love with the little blonde help. But besides those few moments, and of course watching my goddess Cate swishing around in elegant (if bizarre) getup, most of this dull retelling have already passed effortlessly out of my head. And for that I can be truly thankful.

IMDb: Cinderella

P.S. Just a few parting thoughts. Courtesy Google Images, under "Feminist Cinderella".