Author’s preface: In an attempt at due diligence (see above) on the eve of Endgame, I’ve tried to blow the cobwebs off some dusty corners of the MCU, which I’d either not seen at all or had seen long enough ago that it might as well not count.  As with most such endeavors, this ended up coming up a little short—meaning I watched Iron Man 2 and 3, because they were both streaming for free*.  I’d seen the former back in the day, and remember it being a quasi-letdown, but not the travesty that most hindsight and listicles have painted it as in the intervening years.  Meanwhile, and maybe mostly as a byproduct of fatigue, I plain and simple never got around to the latter.  Let’s start with that one, since, be warned, I’ve got the most to say about it (intermittent but substantial spoilers for a six-year-old film to follow):

(*After a firebrand comment or two in rebuttal a certain hot take from this review, I’m quasi-keen to visit Asgard again one of these days; alas, thanks to Thanos snapping the films in question off free streaming availability, those will have to wait.)

I’m of two minds on Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, just as it seems to be of two minds on itself.  As loyal readers know*, I’ve talked about Black in this space before.  I was hoping, honestly and for the sake of narrative consistency—convenience, really—to come away from this film with the pithy thesis that Black does his worst work within the studio-franchise mold, since it stifles his creative impulses.  That’s not exactly borne out, which is almost more frustrating, and takes us back to the “two minds” bit.  This feels like both a Marvel movie and a Shane Black movie, complete with his requisite bits of Christmastime-setting, buddy-cop banter, smart aleck-y kids, abrupt violence, PTSD, and, of course, the hyperverbal voiceover bookends of your Master of Ceremonies, Robert Downey, Jr.**  The end result doesn’t fully gel.

(*Hello, all two of you!  Y’alls rock!)

(**This, while initially feeling a little too divorced from MCU [and a bit precious in its own right], is a nice echo of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and ends up justified, which we’ll get to.)

It also reveals the occasional shortfalls of both styles.  Curiously, the film is barely over two hours, which is downright brisk by Marvel’s standards—but it also feels exceptionally busy.  It’s certainly more-so than either other Iron Man, and arguably even more than a couple Avengers (the dismal Ultron notwithstanding, as that earns the distinction of being both overlong and busy*).  But the movie’s episodic structure, coupled with its volume of villains, renders it a sprawl, and without the banter and assemblage (ahem) of viewpoints and voices that helps carry much longer MCU joints.  Here, it’s chiefly Stark (or Downey?  Tough to really discern the difference, to speak of…) bouncing off a series of mostly discrete scene partners, like Paltrow’s Pepper, Cheadle’s War Machine Iron Patriot, and a pre-Jurassic World Ty Simpkins as a mismatched child companion who, miraculously, isn’t the worst part of the proceedings**.  While perhaps extraneous, I find the frequent criticism that the movie “keeps Iron Man out of the suit” a feature rather than a bug, since it does help distinguish the overall film and, oddly, humanizes both Tony and JARVIS.  The sequence with Simpkins’ Harley, meanwhile, offers up the literal poster-child for it, and so bore the unfair brunt of its backlash.  It’s also kind of the whole point, right?

(*It also, as it turns out, retroactively undoes some of this film’s more meaningful bits along the way; we’ll get to that, too.)

(**Not a knock on Simpkins, specifically, who’s actually quite good in everything he’s in, just the trope in general.  That said, Adam Pally also has a great bit part as a Stark fanboy, which I could have easily watched for another twenty minutes.)

As for those aforementioned abundant villains, there are no fewer than four familiar faces, by my count (if you include James Badge Dale’s one-dimensional but effectively menacing goon-in-chief, whom I’m told is named Savin, though no way in hell would I have come up with that without IMDb).  The other divisive keystone of the film, the twist built into Ben Kingsley’s hammy Mandarin, I actually don’t mind, either–at least in and of itself.  I think it plays fine in context, and brings a nice dose of daffiness into the often overly dour bad-guy corner of the MCU.  But then that’s swiftly undercut by the role of Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian*, since the essential plotline progression is as follows: the perpetually underappreciated genius Killian has turned bad, as characters with “Kill” in their names are wont to do, and he’s working for a terrorist because he finally feels like he belongs.  Except!  Turns out, the “terrorist” is just an actor working for him!  And he’s a monster who literally breathes fire now!  Isn’t that so clever?

(*Neither here nor there, but I’d seen somewhere that this had initially been written for Val Kilmer, which would have been all kinds of amazing, especially for fans of Black.  But hey, Pearce is certainly no slouch, and does get to play pathetic, smarmy, and threatening, which is at least two modes more than most MCU villains tend to get.)

The first half of this truly feels like the more compelling story to tell, I’d say, while the back-half, despite the laughs of Kingsley’s reveal as shlubby washed-up face-of-evil-for-hire, pretty much just pivots things precisely back to ‘passed-over self-serious Big Bad from Tony’s past’ mode of prior Iron Men.  What was meant as narrative curveball ends up, ironically and in a circuitous way, more of a boomerang*.  The climactic showdown, as well, basically just presents the photo-negative image of Iron Man 2’s, where instead of the heroes fighting a league of drones before getting to the Boss Battle, Tony’s suits serve that same essential purpose, but for the good guys instead.  These are all, at first, seemingly novel tweaks that are ultimately undone by their own superficiality.  They are, like the pre-reveal Mandarin’s terrorist bogeyman, the illusion of something new.

(*Is it any coincidence Guy Pearce spent his formative years in Australia?  You don’t have to answer right now, just think on it.)

And this is where Black does end up butting up against the MCU as a whole, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent.  Although most of his stylistic touches end up, to a fault, dovetailing tidily into Marvel’s, his most substantial tweak to the formula is his final.  Stark letting his suits stay dead for the sake of self-betterment, and taking what seems to be a significant step away from the superhero life in favor of his personal, is a pretty impactful place on which to round out this trilogy about self-betterment and personal versus public lives.  If anything, he (Black, although I guess Downey/Stark, too?) goes overboard there, as the whole removal-of-shrapnel bit seems like gilding the lily*.  But it’s nonetheless a quietly triumphant counterpoint to the lengthy bombast of the final fight scene proper.  Plus, the button it puts on Stark’s framing voiceover is a nice final reminder that, hey, this is a Shane Black movie you’re watching**.  It’s just a shame that, thanks to Ultron, pretty much none of it sticks, as Stark’s back in the suit and Avengers alike, two years hence.

(*Or maybe de-gilding would be more accurate?)

(**Not only does it bring a nice sense of completion to that long-since-forgotten[-by-me, at least] frame, but the mid-credits stinger, where it’s revealed it’s all been part of Stark’s unburdening to “not that kind of” Dr. Bruce Banner, who’s nodded off, to boot, is pitch-perfect in how it squares one of Black’s signatures and one of the MCU’s with some legitimate cleverness.)

Also:

-Anyways, yeah, Iron Man 2.  As I mentioned, I’d seen it before back in the day, thought it was decent if underwhelming, and truthfully, not much has changed.

-Alright, fine.  It’s not as instantly iconic as Favreau and Feige’s franchise-maker—nor, inherently, could it be—but I’d argue it holds up as solid second-tier MCU, which is still pretty good (think Guardians Vol. 2).  If anything (and believe me, I realize the irony of this in the wake of that concluding paragraph above), its biggest faults are the consequence of hindsight.  It paves the way for the multi-villain miasmas that would end up overused and obligatory, although both Mickey Rourke as Whiplash and especially Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer bring their A games.  The former finds the quirks (that bird!) buried in his bruiser; he did something similar in that other 2010 franchise fodder, The Expendables.  The latter is a reliable comic livewire whose half-manic, stammer-y delivery fits perfectly—and feels perfectly outmatched—alongside Downey’s more smug, self-assuredly snappy Stark.

-You could also argue these dual villains’ dynamic is basically just flipped around in 3, in that Hammer’s supposed ‘puppeteer’ also-ran egotist character is just as goofy and hapless as Killian is vicious and cunning, and their respective cronies are not what they first seem (with Whiplash hewing towards the severe overlooked threat, and Mandarin obviously the opposite).  Toss in the series-best unpacking of Stark’s self-destructively addictive personality, the added backstory of John Slattery’s always-welcome Howard Stark and his Epcot-like Stark Expo, the unequivocal upgrade (both in-story and behind-the-camera) of Cheadle’s Iron Patriot War Machine, and a slightly closer look into S.H.I.E.L.D. (including a newly-minted Black Widow), and Iron Man 2 still somehow comes out feeling less cumbersome than its successor.  I’d call that a solid showing, even if it doesn’t hit the heights of the MCU’s absolute best.

-I hate to harp on this (clearly!), but segueing back to Iron Man 3’s chief issue—the more that I think about it, all of its villains are, basically, one big villain.  In 2, Hammer and Whiplash are both opponents of Stark’s (and, well, Starks), but with dramatically different means and ends that happen to briefly eclipse before drifting apart once more.  Meanwhile, what looks at first like the food chain of Killian is, upon closer inspection, more Ouroboros, beginning and ending with him, and with little in the way of contrast or, indeed, complexity along the way.  (The closest we come is Rebecca Ferguson’s rather quickly-dispatched double-agent, who’s gone almost as soon as deeper shades start showing through her character.  Call it the Walking Dead effect.)  Then again, it’s difficult to argue that there should have been yet another bad guy with yet another motive in the mix, per se, just that the myriad on display could have been given more nuance.  As it stands, it’s theme and variation—just more of the same, masquerading as something new.

-On that note (and speaking of notes in general), please feel free to sing the title to the tune of this song from Book of Mormon.

The same statement can serve as both praise and criticism of Captain Marvel: It feels like an average MCU movie.  ‘Average,’ here, can mean both ‘typical,’ but also ‘middling.’  The implication of the former, for what it’s worth, probably still has its detractors—but really, if you’re watching the 21^st entry into this sprawling mega-franchise and still lobbing criticisms of the MCU house style as a whole, well, there’s a decent chance you may not have come in good faith.  For those who have, meanwhile, there can be the opposite tendency—if not as frustrating, per se, then certainly not far behind—of something being praiseworthy merely by riding beneath the Marvel, uh, banner.  Thankfully, Captain Marvel avoids the nadir of the likes of the all-but-third Thors and best-left-forgotten Edward Norton Attempts to Present the ­Hulk, and lands squarely in the middle of the pack, near your Guardians Vol. 2 and inaugural Captain America.

In fact, it’s perhaps instructive to view these two entries, in particular, as spiritual companions of sorts to the movie, in terms of both environs and tone.  Set, for some time, in the sci-fi sublease of the MCU, Captain Marvel (mostly) deftly navigates the space opera portion of its narrative in a way that calls to mind the Guardians series (with which it just so happens to share a few tertiary characters, as unfortunately underdeveloped here as there).  While not quite as rollicking or fresh-feeling as Vol. 1, it does inspire one to want to rewatch it, which is arguably its own reward*.  But even in these cosmic corners, there are slight senses of both 1) forcing-it and 2) been-there-done-that, which aligns it more firmly with Gunn’s fun-but-samey follow-up.  It’s fine, but not much beyond that.

(*Spoiler: It holds up.)

Thematically, meanwhile, Marvel targets some parallels with the aforementioned America, its fellow plucky Captain sharing a military background (him Army, her Air Force), as well as a connection to some supplemental, experimental projects goosing (ahem) both characters’ intrinsic grit and gritted-teeth determination.  The films also share setting in the past—him the ’40s, her mid-90s (resplendent with arguably anachronistic Nine Inch Nails tees, beepers, and a Blockbuster video, for as much as nostalgia can now be counted as “historic”), and both then culminate with a swift, sudden, and somewhat jarring jump to present-day*.  And clearly, to anyone who’s been following this mega-franchise for the decade-plus(!) it’s been dominating theaters, Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers is being framed as the heir-apparent to Chris Evans’ rock-solid Steve Rogers.

(*I’d contend that each time-hopping epilogue sort of weakens the parent films as a whole, since what had been largely self-contained stories become clearly mere pieces in a larger game.  That’s Marvel’s whole deal, obviously, but there’s something to be said for how certain films seem to work quite capably as standalones even within the macro trappings.  Here again, Guardians Vol. 1 springs to mind.)

Whether/how this will play in the long run is still up in the air, but one thing in particular bodes pretty well for the premise: Larson’s Carol is flawed.  In flashbacks, she’s seen getting rowdy at the bar, she frequently lets her temper get the better of her (this is made into a plot point), and is overall pretty brash and hard-charging.  She eschews that whole “discretion is the better part of valor” shtick, since that doesn’t tend to down warheads.  In other words, she’s like most every male hero the MCU has brought to the screen, a move that’s more progressive than it probably sounds.  One viewing companion drew a contrast between Marvel and the non-Marvel film to which is will inevitably be compared most, the Distinguished Competition’s own Wonder Woman.  While certainly the strongest of that particular billion-dollar boondoggle’s post-Nolan offerings, WW is assuredly guilty of putting its protagonist up on what my partner called a “pink pedestal”*, purposefully coloring everything she does with the frame of her femaleness, and fairly bluntly so (“I am no man,” anyone?**).

(*Copyright pending.)

(**This line does get a questionably intentional thematic echoing in a climactic “My name is Carol!”  As hokey as it is, it does at least speak to the film’s prioritizing character over semiotics.)

That movie gets away with it, largely by virtue of its own historical setting (the 1910s, its way of simultaneously attempting to sidestep and one-up the First Avenger) and preamble of female empowerment within Amazonian society.  The most quietly crucial next step Captain Marvel takes is in its wholesale removal of this rosy lens.  To the script’s great credit, Carol isn’t even saddled with an obligatory love interest, aside from some vibes you catch here and there (and even those aren’t from the places you might expect from a major mainstream blockbuster).  There’s, of course and as always, an opposite argument to be made, that by molding the character so squarely to fit alongside the likes of Stark and Steve Rogers, Marvel has yet again prioritized staying on-brand above doing something truly new.  Myself, I don’t buy it.  It would feel more disingenuous, I think, for the film to turn its feminist subtext into text, purely to the end of earning amorphous cultural “points.”  It would, in an ironic twist, feel reactionary, too, to DC’s semi-recent stab at the same.  Mostly, though, it would feel pandering, and not in the way that serves and (super)suits an average MCU movie.

Also:

-Obviously, I focused mostly on the film at large and Carol in particular (hard to do one without the other, really), but shout-outs must go to Samuel L. Jackson (the latest to benefit from Marvel’s mystical, increasingly impressive de-aging magic) and, especially, Ben Mendehlson as a Skrull with layers (and not just of latex and CGI).  The former does an actually-pretty-nuanced job playing a younger, less self-assured iteration of a pre-eyepatch Fury, and the running joke of his interplay with a furry friend both humanizes him more than the whole of the MCU thus far (give or take a Winter Soldier) and ends up weaving together another of the film’s runners.  As for Mendehlson, his blend of wit and exasperation as a not-so-bad guy strike a nice counterpoint to his blend of smarm and, well, different kind of exasperation as Director Krennic in Rogue One, from that other Disney-owned powerhouse mega-franchise.

-Less fortunate are Carol’s (well, at that point technically Veers’) Kree compatriots, who start out seeming to have a dynamic of Guardians-lite bickering among their ranks.  But that quickly dissipates into the ether, and other than Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg (whose own villainous heel turn was basically [and stupidly] already spoiled by the trailer), they end up more along the lines of Thanos’ equally indistinguishable Black Order from Infinity War; this seems like a major missed opportunity to world-build by fleshing out more of the jingoistic Kree culture within the microcosm of the squabbling squad.  Alas.

-Speaking of squandered opportunities, between its fighter-jet-pilot backstory and cat called Goose, the movie seems to be teasing a Top Gun homage that never really takes shape.  I mean, it doesn’t exactly gel with the otherwise-90s aesthetic, and I could certainly see wanting to steer clear of the “Danger Zone,” especially given that more people probably associate that with Archer than its original home these days, but still.  Not even a volleyball scene?  Alas.

Prickly as a point of pride (like its protagonist), Can You Ever Forgive Me? is an actors’ showcase notably scarce on actors—but then, you get the sense that the twin leads (well, the characters they play, rather) likely wouldn’t have it any other way.  Starting below the title, Richard E. Grant (aka, “the scientist villain from Logan”) brings a convincingly unkempt charisma to his alcoholic gadabout, the almost Dickensian-ly named Jack Hock, schmoozing and boozing and bridge-burning his way through Manhattan, while his not-so-quiet desperation thrums like a subway grid just behind his jokes and sunken eyes.

Meanwhile, there’s the main event.  Much had been made of Melissa McCarthy’s dramatic turn as Lee Israel, the self-aggrandizing, -pitying, and most of all -medicating biographer-turned-forger, but what seems to have been lost in all the buzz is how caustically comic her role actually turns out to be.  Sure, she, too, is imbued with a deep and striving sadness, best laid bare in a last-act statement before a judge, which 1) it’s no shock they chose for her Oscar clip, and 2) is, full disclosure, what chiefly motivated me to finally give the film a shot in spite of myself, after having written it off as hokey awards bait.  But this lady—Israel, I mean—is funny, and that’s almost exactly why it works as “serious” acting: You come away feeling that it’s not McCarthy cracking the jokes, but instead the beaten-down but take-no-shit Lee finding the spirit for these lacerations.

You also sense that they’re both armor and evasion—for a great many, after all, it’s much easier criticizing outwards rather than the opposite*.  But McCarthy makes you root for Lee, both because and, eventually, in spite of these bristles.  Which is the other thing: For all her chutzpah, it’s stretching to call Lee a likable person.  That’s part of the point.  And colored even further by a reveal around the midpoint about the cause of the nagging “fly problem” plaguing her apartment.  The sequence skillfully packs in a lot of information, from what it tells us about Lee’s mental state, to Jack’s reaction (and subsequent angling), and finally to the fact that, as the viewer, being mostly Lee’s companion to this point, we had no reason to really interrogate some of the noxiousness that surrounds her.  The whole thing speaks emphatically to how she’s not only a literal unreliable narrator, but also, through omission and circumstance, ends up one even when she’s not even actively attempting to be.

(*A-cough.)

For a movie with its mind on authenticity, these character beats resonate even more deeply.  Ultimately, the story itself—a curiosity to some, less than that to many—is nearly an afterthought to the character study.  There’s the literary forgery circuit, obviously; there’s an extortion attempt (from a nicely, nastily oily Ben Falcone—Mr. McCarthy himself!); an investigation from the FBI (who really seem like they should have better things to do) that scans as intentionally backgrounded.  Even the most intense of these “plotted” moments are pervaded by a sense of inevitability; even if you don’t know the true story—which, if you’re seeking this movie out, seems unlikely—you can probably guess how it ends, being based on a memoir and all.  Tellingly, the tensest bits involve a sick cat, as well as an alarmingly tender coda with a since-estranged Lee and Jack (apparently, and sadly, fabricated for the film).  What makes them such is the characters, and how for all their faults and vices and emotional tardiness, we care about and relate to them—if we’re not too cowardly to admit to it.

Also (Slight Spoilers Follow):

-About that aforementioned “fly problem”—in addition to everything else, it’s a good indicator of the understated touch the film brings to Big Issues like mental illness.  It doesn’t bludgeon you, but presents these aspects of the characters and world as just that, pieces rather than the whole.  Not to say they can’t nor shouldn’t be talked about, of course, it’s just that this film isn’t as interested in telling that specific story, so much as showing glimpses of it.

-Jane Curtin shines in a smaller part as Lee’s agent.  Their exchanges are superb, not least because they involve some great takedowns of Tom Clancy, whose windbag nature is on full display at a cocktail party, and whose choice of drink Lee dutifully resents.

-Back in the “understated” column, it’s not really my place to say, but to me it felt the film by and large did a good job showing-not-telling when it came to the characters’ sexuality—until the point is comically underscored by one barroom exchange between Lee and Jack.  Even then, the character legwork and shading done up to that point justifies the obviousness.

Impressive but inessential, particularly for those already acquainted with the 1973 original with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, Danish director Michael Noer’s take on Papillon always feels just on the verge of something great, but never quite clears the precipice.

Fault not the actors.  As Lou Dega, Rami Malek is reliably great, playing up the wiry, half-entitled, half-vulnerable aloofness of a forger deeply out of his element in a foreign prison yard full of violent toughs, con and guard alike.  Charlie Hunnam, meanwhile, is an actor about whom I’m largely agnostic, seeming as he does to rise or retreat to the level of material he’s given.  He was fantastic in the lamentably underseen Lost City of Z; bland in his turns in some of Guillermo del Toro’s lesser works, Crimson Peak and Pacific Rim; a nigh-unrecognizable firecracker in his six minutes of be-dreadlocked screen-time in Children of Men*; and I’ll confess to having never seen Sons of Anarchy, without question his biggest role, so maybe all this preamble is moot.  Here, as the titular safecracker-turned-wrongfully accused jailbird, he’s able to play brooding brutality to his major advantage—“Papi”s not quite a cipher, but a man who keenly recognizes his worth in his new environs is largely physical, and whose taciturn resistance belies a buried power of will.

(*Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and it’s okay: I didn’t realize that was him, either.)

As a two-hander, the film would likely soar.  The chief problem, I think, is that it overloads itself, adopting a structure that’s not quite episodic, but seems like it wants to be.  While this has the potential for a rich and dense mise-en-scene, Papillon unfortunately populates its corners with only vague sketches of characters that (intentionally?) play more as plot points than people.  A hulking bruiser on a transport ship is notable chiefly for his grotesqueries, disemboweling a weaker inmate and finding quick comeuppance via some particularly graphic steam-burns.  Curiously, this largely acts as the most violent (onscreen, at least) aspect of the film, give or take an execution by guillotine.  Among those secondary characters—and I hesitate to even label them that, so sparse are their characterizations—those that make the largest impression are Yorick van Wageningen as an almost clinically grim warden, who escapes being over-the-top simply by being so matter-of-fact*, and Roland Moller as a prisoner whose hard-won chumminess with Hunnam’s fellow muscleman and barely-veiled distaste for Malek’s daintier con feel equally organic.  He makes such an impression, you almost remember his character’s name.

(*The backgrounded detail of him repeating the same slyly sinister-yet-formal welcome speech to new convicts is an especially nice touch that doesn’t overstate itself.)

Still, it would be disingenuous to say the film is “about” these others, at least not nearly so much as it is Papi’s muted, then smoldering, then heedless defiance, as well as his unlikely partnership with Dega evolving into sincere friendship, slowly and almost in spite of itself.  The former progression is weakened, slightly, by occurring in sizable chunks off-screen—necessarily so, since I imagine it’s especially tough to make a five-year solitary confinement sentence work from a pacing perspective after already devoting significant screen-time to a two-year stint.  The latter thread, meanwhile, is ultimately undermined by this very myopia, all the tertiary subplots, locales, and digressions decentering the film, and in due time robbing what by most accounts should be an emotional conclusion set on a stunning cliffside of much of its resonance.  Then again, it could be that most folks interested in this story, myself included, have seen it once before, and while this modern return to the well is faithful, it strains to say much new.

Also:

-A Paris-set opening is evocative but also busy—and, in that way, an apt introduction for the film on the whole.  Still—also like the film—it gets a lot across with fairly little, and Hunnam’s charming early interactions with an intimidating boss and a woefully underdeveloped love interest help contextualize his veneer of steeliness upon imprisonment; the viewer knows he’s capable of wit and compassion, and that he purposefully suppresses these for self-interest’s sake.

-On the Blu-ray, there are deleted scenes (over 30 minutes’ worth, in fact) that overall likely wouldn’t have helped the film’s cause from a pacing perspective, but help flesh out some characters, like the afore-mentioned transport-ship-prowling bruiser.  They also help underline the transactional nature of Papi and Dega early on, which may have helped the ultimate turn towards a less mercenary companionship more impactful.  Still, it’s difficult to argue the film should’ve been longer, per se, just that its time could have been devoted somewhat more wisely.

The second adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary is, thankfully, a bit(e) of a different animal (say…) than the first, even if their story beats by and large mirror each other (same source material tends to do that, after all) and, in a curious coincidence, their runtimes differ by a grand total of two minutes.  We’ll get back to that.  In truth, the trickiest thing here is trying to unpack the new film without the lens of the first—something that the movie itself seems to lean into, sometimes quite effectively, other times, slightly less so.

The improvements are plain, though.  The cast is uniformly excellent—not just “horror good,” but genuinely believable, capable actors, all, which shouldn’t be surprising from the likes of the Trinity Killer himself, John Lithgow and Jason Clarke, who deserves better than my constantly confusing him with the (also-great) Joel Edgerton.  Lithgow, especially, does a bang-up job as gruff neighbor Jud Crandall, adroitly stepping out of the longest-enduring (and rightfully so) shadow cast by Fred Gwynne* in the 1989 original.  Clarke, meanwhile, conveys our hero(?) Louis Creed’s mix of repression, resentment, put-on-a-happy-face resilience, and best-laid-plans-falling-asunder desperation, even before any of the true supernatural sets in**. More unexpected, but perhaps even more deserving of praise are Amy Seimetz and relative newcomer Jeté Laurence as Rachel and Ellie Creed.  Neither are “names,” so to speak, but both should be soon.

(*That performance, ace as it was, blended camp and gravitas—there’s a reason it’s tough to tell whether it or the South Park parody is the more goofily grave; it’s probably the textbook definition of “horror good.”  Lithgow, for his part, dials down the camp, and swaps in grit for grim.)

(**Contrast this with his ’89 counterpart, Dale Midkiff, whom I not only have to look up every time [in itself telling, since I’m typically a spewing fount of C-Listers, to the absolute delight of all around me], but who also essentially remains firmly in miserable shitheel mode for the entirety of that movie.  That could be an interpretation of the character, and a valid one given the text, but it’s not a particularly gripping presence in a lead role.)

Laurence, in particular, imbues her Ellie with a realistic sweetness and sensitivity, occasional preteen petulance, and, ultimately, a simmer-to-boil menace.  This last bit should count as a spoiler, were it not for the truly baffling decision to have each and every trailer reveal that she, rather than toddler Gage, is the first human “benefactor” of the wicked woodsy resurrection.  On the plus side, this turns out to be only the first curveball the new adaptation throws at fans familiar with the first—though it’s also, somewhat dishearteningly, the most nuanced and effectively explored one.  Regardless, to my mind, it’s the shrewdest move away from the source material.  Gage is a cute lil’ cherub and all, but also, inherently, a total cipher, more symbol than character—an understandable byproduct of being mostly preverbal.  But damn if they didn’t pick the right girl on which to hinge their key plot pivot, since the work Laurence does to build up affection and sympathy for Ellie early on is not only another example of well-beyond-horror-good, but also renders her slide into sinister all the more tragic and affecting, rather than just sick and shocking.

Acting aside, what works best about it is that it feels like a complete throughline, a progression with a beginning, middle, and ending.  It just so happens this is where a few other pieces of the plot fall short, perhaps cast into relief by Ellie’s thread—the Gallant to their Goofus, if you will*.  A brief sequence used to terrific, ominous effect in the trailers (they weren’t all bad!) is a procession of children off to visit the titular site, clad in creepy animal masks and playing a drum that, somehow, sounds spooky.  That they fail to materialize anywhere outside the film’s first fifteen minutes feels like a major missed opportunity, especially once the terror starts ramping up in earnest.  Ditto the spectral soothsayer Victor Pascow, played jointly by Obssa Ahmed and whole bunch of gross-out makeup.  It’s maybe fitting that his role never fully materializes, but even his limited function as harbinger/soothsayer seems to lack a third act.  That is, unless you count the rather sudden substitution of the Wendigo as de facto scary-presence-looming-off-in-the-distance, which yeah, the one sequence it’s in doesn’t want for dread, but the whole plot point feels a bit undercooked**.

(*Highlights Magazine, citation needed)

(**Also, Hannibal did it better.  You know which one I mean.)

Incidentally, here’s where we get back to that runtime: At about 100 minutes, Pet Sematary isn’t especially short; in fact, it’s arguably long for the genre.  But it’s also one of the all-too-rare horror films that feels like it actually could’ve benefited from a few extra scenes, and not merely to establish character, which it honestly does a fine job of.  Chalk this up to recency bias, but it’s nonetheless instructive that the work of horror that kept coming back to my mind during Pet Sematary,more-so than the original and more and more as it went along, was Mike Flanagan’s Netflix adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House.  Its blend of moody ruminations on mortality, deftly drawn character work, and scares that feel in service to the fears of said characters, rather than the reverse, are all echoed.  Not for nothing, but that was a miniseries, and as such had even more room to flesh out both aspects of its world, the mundane and morbid alike, and allow them to inform and transcend each other.  Pet Sematary gets at that, largely by way of its fantastic performances and avoidance of kitchen-sink jump-scares for their own sake (they’re there, of course, but not for their own sake), but ends up feeling like, with just a handful of extra scenes to more tightly stitch all its sinews together, it could have been an all-time King adaptation.  As it is, well, it just has to settle for top five.

Also (Spoilers Follow):

-As for the post-Ellie divergences, some work better than others.  The downer ending, with all but the innocent Gage absorbed by the malevolent perversion of the afterlife (and he to surely soon follow), puts a unique spin on the already-miserable finale of the original, making it even more tragic.  On the other hand, the film’s deliberate subversion of the tendon-slicing scene (arguably the most iconic sequence from the first) feels clever at first, but ends up undone by its reliance on the familiar, in that the same thing happens, basically, just in a different room.  It’s the one moment I wonder where it’s even possible to appreciate it without foreknowledge.

-The Zelda effects were pleasingly disturbing and gruesome (she’s always been the most upsetting piece of the whole story—seven-year-old and 28-year-old me agree), but the tacked-on dumbwaiter thread, while making great use of sound design to create scary atmosphere, was maybe too reminiscent of Hill House.

-Although I grew up under the thumb of a voracious King acolyte with his full library, I’ll confess to not having read this novel.  That said, as someone who did a deep dive into his multiverse-spanning (and multi-book-leaping) Dark Tower series, the outcry among certain segments of King’s fanbase about the movie’s alterations to his text seems especially silly.  “Go then, there are other worlds than these.”  Indeed.

I’ve made this seemingly nonsensical criticism of films before outside of this space, and will surely return to it here time and again, but The Sisters Brothers is a movie that could have stood to either be half-an-hour shorter, or half-an-hour longer.  What I think I mean by that is, for the storytelling and tone it’s trying to strike—a mélange of melancholy, contemplation, morbidity, dark humor, and light political parable—there are either too many interludes and abrupt shifts or too few to fully coalesce into a whole-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-type thing.

But what parts!  The cast is uniformly, expectedly excellent, with John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix (the title pairing) volleying their complementary energies back and forth, as well as into their respective characters: Reilly a striver at soul belied by his hangdog resignation, Phoenix the sort of volatile, drunkard cynic he can do in his sleep (I mean that in a good way).  They both contain multitudes, naturally, which are—rightly, I think—doled out rather than ladled on.  The former’s third-act capacity for violence is implied but merely glimpsed earlier, and the latter’s literally masked crying jags evolve from seeming-gag to potent product of a lifetime of repressed trauma*.  The meditation on guilt, companionship, and responsibility runs like a rich vein beneath their interactions, with touches like a folded shawl as evolving symbol, or a dead bear at the perimeter of a campsite also saying much with relatively little text.

(*Between this, You Were Never Really Here, and the surprisingly fascinating-looking upcoming Joker, Phoenix can make a cottage industry out of playing theme-and-variation here.)

Meanwhile, rounding out this four-hander is the Nightcrawler reunion the half-dozen people who saw that film have been clamoring for: A squirrelly-yet-strangely-self-possessed Riz Ahmed and dandyish-yet-haunted Jake Gyllenhaal play a prospector and scout, respectively, whose uneasy predatory-turned-professional-turned-something-more(?) acquaintance maps one of the film’s most elegant and tender through-lines.  Pity, then, that it’s more sidelined around the midway point.  It’s a narrative necessity, perhaps, but one that comes at a cost—and, again, speaks to either the trimming down or bulking up that could have potentially made things better hang together.  No surprise that the scenes that the four actors share are some of the most electric of the film, rife with shifting sympathies, grudges, and unburdenings, and capped with a tragic twist to all their shared interests and good(ish) intentions.

The plot up to (and, for a spell, after) then, being based around pursuit, is inherently momentum-driven, so it’s telling that even then the digressions—Reilly’s bizarre dalliance with a too-brief cameo role from Fargo’s Allison Tolman as an unnamed prostitute springs to mind, as does an evocative (and technically impressive) coda—are some of the most memorable bits.  Had the film more fully committed to fleshing out these edges of its world, deft as it demonstrates itself to be at doing so when the inclination strikes—or to excising them in favor of narrowing in more specifically on its title pairing (who, and this should be obvious by now, but here goes, have rapport and screen presence to burn), the pacing as a whole may have resolved into something more, well, resolute.  As it stands, though, we have on our hands a half-great film, buoyed by its tremendous performances and grace notes, but as beholden to hedging as its title implies.

Also:

-It may well have just been my screen, but in a potentially deliberate move, several of the action sequences are difficult to distinguish due to both darkness and motion, particularly the opening massacre and Mayfield reckoning.  That, in and of itself, could be frustrating, but gives us grimly beautiful images like a fleeing horse afire, then ends up (accidentally?) justified when the final bouts of violence occur largely in the periphery and with clearly intentional muddying.

-One delightful, understated recurring bit involves characters dissecting each other’s diction, questioning usage of terms like “victimized,” “precipitate,” and the seemingly-innocuous “part ways.”  Not sure if there’s much of a Greater Point there, but it made me laugh.

-A ripe running commentary of the film explores ideals of utopia and “true democracy” in the face of capitalist interests, especially the naïve premise of gold as mere stepping stone.  That it may be, but a treacherous one, both corrupting (see: the entry of our title pair into the prospectors’ idyll, for the Brothers wouldn’t be in pursuit were it not for the “divining formula”)—and ultimately, literally corrosive (see: well, the rest of the movie from there, pretty much).

Oof.  Where to even begin with this?  I like Shane Black, whose Nice Guys is an excellent spiritual sequel to his also-excellent Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, both of which are the type of clever gloss on noir that Cold Pursuit tries to be on action-revenge confection*.  Couple this with Black’s personal history with the franchise at its apex, minor as that was, and the prospect of a self-aware continuation/reboot/you-tell-me of a series with more missteps than successes (and that’s not even counting AVP, which, why would you, other than needless and frankly uncalled-for cruelty?) was a lot more exciting to yours truly than it likely was to a lot of people.

(*As noted last week, many of these are from a backlog, so I can almost guarantee the Cold Pursuit references will sputter out soon. Almost.)

Well, turns out, a lot of people were probably right.  First, the good things: The gore is here, if that’s your thing, and by the bucket. Any fears of them attempting to tone it down are unfounded, as this hard R is well-earned, and not just by f-bombs.  The premise, such as it is, is an intriguing one, if soon squandered.  The cast is, by and large, pretty capable—especially Trevante Rhodes, showing a whole different side of wounded-machismo than he did in Moonlight, and Sterling K. Brown who, as a viewing companion put it, is basically playing William Fichtner’s Accountant character from Drive Angry 3D*.  He gets most of the best lines you’d be within your rights to expect from the screenwriter of Lethal Gun and Last Action Hero.  And, of paramount importance, the film tries to say some thoughtful stuff on mental illness, centering around Group 2, a crew of main(ish) characters suffering from various disorders, some recognizable, others (deliberately?) left obfuscated.

(*If you’re looking, as I was during The Predator, for a fun and frivolous movie to put on while you have a few beers with friends, do yourself a favor and seek out that one.  Almost certainly Top Five Nic Cage for me, which is saying something.)

“Tries” is the operative word there.  Well, one operative word, with another being “stuff,” which is about as clear an unpacking as you’re likely to arrive at of whatever the movie’s trying to convey.  It helps to clarify that, obviously, not every film needs to have a capital-M Message.  It’s perfectly fine to forego one, even in a genre as notoriously prone to social-commentary as sci-fi.  Hell, look at the first Predator.  Pretty sure any capital-M there was “Muscles.”  The problem doesn’t stem from having a message or not, but from garbling one so dreadfully that you’d have been better off without it in the first place.  Essentially, what seems to be the movie’s well-intentioned thesis is this: Mental illness shouldn’t be stigmatized, and everyone has value, which, yes, hopefully that’s not too controversial (although these days, in certain sickening corners, who knows?).  But then, the issues begin to arise, and they are legion, like lumping Tourette’s syndrome in with anxiety, as well as manic episodes, depression, and suicidal tendencies—and that’s all before the film unleashes its whopper of an Indigo Children (basically, autism-as-evolution) conceit, which, I’d just as soon not even wade into those waters.

And that’s just it: I know I’m ignorant, and so find it best to not say anything—and honestly, that may have been the move here.  Or, at the least, have a coherent story as a framework when you’re wiring in that subtext, rather than the scattered mess of flotsam we get.  The end product both reeks of the ample rewrites and –shoots that pretty publicly dogged the movie’s production, and lessens (if not outright undoes) whatever work of thematic resonance might have been there to be had either way.  Ditto the aforementioned act of painting all mental illness with the same brush.  Actually (and this isn’t so much playing devil’s advocate as it’s giving the benefit of the doubt), maybe that part’s intentional, a latent criticism of society’s tendency to do just that, having all these disparate folks riding the same bus, as it were.  In this case, the bus is literal.

But then, to wit, having the bulk of these figures of sympathy also be comic relief?  Questionable.  Doing it in such a flagrantly one-note way, complete with them calling themselves “the Loonies”?  Doubly so.  I’ve seen that Black wrote (well, kinda-sorta) Thomas Jane’s character with Tourette’s because he (Black) suffers from it himself.  I can only speculate, but maybe he felt that justified such an especially broad portrayal (and there’s certainly some competition on that front), but you shouldn’t really need that kind of context to make the script palatable, especially from the pen of such a consistently capable scribe.  At another point, a different viewing companion, no stranger to anxiety and depression herself, remarked, “Oh, so suicide is okay, as long as it’s for the greater good?  Nice.”  Can’t help but feel like that’s the opposite import than this film’s ham-handed grab at empowerment was supposed to have.  The Predator is kind of gruesome and ghoulish, but not in the right way at all.  No amount of quips, neon green blood, and Jake Busey stunt-casting can make up for that.

Wow.  You can’t spell Widows without it.  It’s rare for a film that pushes past the two-hour mark (closer to 2:10, for those counting) to leave me wanting more, but that’s exactly what Steve McQueen’s elegant, impactful thriller did.  Another Neeson joint in the wake of Cold Pursuit (this won’t be a theme, maybe), but with him squarely in the Dern role of mostly-silent partner—aside from a volume-at-11 opening cross-cut, which 1) what an entrance and 2) is thankfully the first of many flourishes that McQueen uses to both dis-* and reorient the viewer throughout his twisty and sprawling, yet taut and quite tidy exercise in pulp.

(*Dis: You also can’t spell Widows without it.)

On that: “pulp” can be brandished as a pejorative, when really it shouldn’t—or, at least, needn’t have to be read as such.  Here, for example, it’s an absolute feature, not a bug.  The seediness with which the smallest of supporting players occupy space, even at the edges, is a hallmark of the genre.  Take one look at Kevin J. O’Connor (Benny himself!) as a paraplegic connection to the underbelly, whose deep-set eyes betray decades of misfortune.  Or Garrett Dillahunt, as a loyal but simple wheelman who nonetheless shows reserves of fortitude that his betters sorely lack.  Or Jacki Weaver and Jon Bernthal as one of the titular widows’ mother and husband, respectively (I think); both are abusive monsters, but you see from their intermittent affection exactly how she “graduated” (that’s not the word) from one to the next.

It’s fitting, though, that a name like Bernthal—and, make no mistake, a superb actor whether or not he’s portraying monsters—is out of the picture after ten minutes, since this truly is the ladies’ show*.  Viola Davis brings dignity with her wherever she goes, but her performance here also shows how that can either solidify into ice or be perceived as such outside of certain circles of society.  Michelle Rodriguez, fresh from the lucrative mines of Fast and Furious, turns in a surprisingly nuanced performance as one of those working-class compatriots often put off by her ad hoc crime boss.  Cynthia Erivo, who was terrific also in the terribly underrated Bad Times at the El Royale, pulls off the same trick here as there in a comparably minor role, in that she makes you assume she’s been on the big screen for years—when really, it’s been, uh ::checks notes:: Widows and El Royale (so far; watch her in 2019).  Last but not least, Elizabeth Debicki stands out as the aforementioned victim turned survivor, who routinely makes the most of everybody’s expecting less of her, both in the film and audience.

(*The screenplay, aptly enough, was penned by Gillian Flynn, of Gone Girl and Sharp Objects fame [or: infamy?].)

Honestly, the cast is uniformly great, the only false notes coming from unexpected sources, like Colin Farrell’s occasionally shaky Chicago accent (he’s otherwise predictably stellar) and Robert Duvall’s drifting eye-lines (although, frankly, that could be his character).  Daniel Kaluuya’s gaze, meanwhile, pierces without falter, and the roiling menace behind it makes you forget that he’s mostly played decent dudes.  His cousin and partner in crime-and-politics (redundant?) Brian Tyree Henry adds yet another notch to his ever-growing roster of remarkably disparate compelling characters, all of whom say twice as much with their eyes than anything else.  Between this, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Atlanta, the man needs some sort of goddamned trophy, already.  And Neeson, sparse as he is, delivers at least one terrific, entirely silent scene that should make the actor’s compilation roll for his inevitable Lifetime Achievement honor.

Tally it all up, and the chief complaint I can levy against the film is that, no doubt because of having so many characters (interesting, all) and threads in this tapestry—above all else, so much to say, on gender, of course, but also race, class, politics, police violence, you name it—that it can get overcrowded, and some faces and themes inevitably fade into the background.  But when everything weaves together in the climactic heist, the result is gripping and visceral, with at least one semi-comic curveball, and the intensity of that extreme opening sequence matched if not bested.  But it’s also one of the few films with a denouement that’s just as compelling—so much so, in fact, that it almost feels as if a scene or two is missing.  Then again, maybe I just wanted to spend some more time in this world, slick and cynical and wry and riveting as it is.

Also (Slight Spoilers Follow):

-One choice I especially liked about Robert Duvall’s political patriarch (if, again, not necessarily his performance) is how early on it’s established that his is a performative liberalism, as the erstwhile Democratic alderman starts dropping racial epithets as soon as the office door closes.  A lesser film would’ve made that into a “reveal,” and Widows has no such pretenses about its cynicism.

-Carrie Coon of the egregiously underseen Leftovers gets a largely thankless role, but makes the most of her limited screen-time as someone who’s clearly in over her head, as we learn, in a very different way than her fellow widows.  Then again, she’s also got some Avengers money coming her way, so, I guess things have a way of working out.

If you were to attempt to pinpoint what’s made Liam Neeson’s renaissance as taciturn, brutal, actions-speak-louder(-and-much-bloodier)-than-words tough-guy action star, “a sense of humor” likely wouldn’t be the first thing that springs to mind, or maybe even the fourth or fifth.  However, a self-serious Taken here (the first one, obviously) or Grey* there notwithstanding, there’s always been a steady undercurrent of absurdity influencing the proceedings, perhaps culminating when last year’s mostly-decent The Commuter both figuratively and literally jumped the rails.  What Cold Pursuit does, to both its overall credit and occasional detriment, is turn that undercurrent into a surging, icy river, ripe for body disposals in a fashion befitting a crime novel.

(*The latter movie, aka Liam Neeson vs. the Wolves [except, as is so often the case, turns out it actually might all be a metaphor], gets superficially and unfairly lumped in with the likes of Non-Stop and Run All Night and that ilk, but still, most folks would place it there.  And though I enjoy it quite a bit, it’s nothing if not self-serious.)

It’s refreshing, at first, to see the movie subvert expectations of this chapter of Neeson’s oeuvre, to the point that you’d be forgiven for taking a scene or two to get the gag (although how a theater full of people failed to produce more than a nervous chuckle during an early rake joke of a body-identification scene baffles, especially buttressed with some comically bad bedside manner from the coroner).  As well, watching Neeson’s Nels Coxman (which, yes, the film acknowledges this, too, in one of its less-subtle jokes) go about the business of making a sawn-off, uh, hunting rifle, or hearing him dispassionately talk about his newly adopted revenge-taking side-gig via workaday details like wrapping bodies in chicken wire before submerging them so that the fish can eat them deftly underplays his traditional gravitas for some dry, wry laughs.

Still, the movie can’t escape its familiar genre trappings, and despite its mordant, nasty streak, it doesn’t quite hit the black humor heights of Coen Brothers or even Martin McDonagh to which it so clearly aspires.  Part of this is the shagginess, as seen in a pair of police played by an overqualified Emmy Rossum and John “Fuck you, McNulty” Doman with no discernible purpose in the plot (other than that aforementioned dick joke), or a same-sex relationship subplot introduced and coldly dispatched in such short succession so as to feel uncomfortably beholden to the “bury your gays” trope.  Or, maybe most egregiously, there’s Laura Dern’s glorified cameo as our Mrs. Coxman, in what felt like amounted to, with no exaggeration, fewer than five minutes of screen time.  Is it meant as ironic that she chides Neeson’s character for being so withheld?  Tough to say, although I’d doubt the movie is quite that clever.

And that, ultimately, is its biggest flaw, not its stabs at injecting the now-tried-and-true-and-getting-tired template of Neeson gets revenge on X for Y with a bit more tongue-in-cheekiness, but that many of these attempts are too self-aware.  Or rather, they try to be.  They smack of an above-average kid, who’s witty, certainly, and has barbs to spare, but also isn’t quite as smart as they think they are.  Put it this way: At one point, a young hostage-of-sorts asks Coxman if he’s heard of Stockholm Syndrome, before dozing off next to him, head nestled on Neeson’s chest.  The punchline gets a decent laugh by underlining its own obviousness, which raises the question: Wouldn’t it be better to avoid the setup?

Well, gang, I’ve up and decided to finally do something halfway constructive with my habitual, borderline-compulsive media consumption, and thus beginneth the Hargablog. Specifically, the Andreview Hargablog, since syntax and clarity be damned! My chief aim here is to post reviews on movies, and possibly the occasional album or TV show, that are by and large new to me. Although I like to think I’ve gotten better about avoiding reviews prior to going into any new viewing (or listening) experience, I still find myself seeking them out almost immediately afterwards, and too often to such an extent that I let them influence my own opinions and interpretations before they’ve even had enough of a chance to crystallize in their own right.

And so, this is, as much as anything, an attempt to combat that, to document my own takes–hot, tepid, and frigid alike, since these films aren’t all new, necessarily, just new to me–before outside corruption creeps in, which is an awfully dramatic way to put it. Speaking of which, on account of I’m overcautious and procrastinate, I’ve essentially been compiling some pieces over the better part of the past couple of months in a Word document (on my work computer, naturally), and will be posting the backlog over the forthcoming week or two. This works out, since not only will it give you, the reader, an unrealistic expectation of my output and productivity moving forward, but it also might even give me enough time to get some coherent thoughts together on Us, which…eh, don’t know, two weeks might be overly optimistic.

In any case, my typical target from there on out will likely settle into at least one or two new write-ups each week, circumstances and viewing schedule permitting. I may also revisit some old favorites and/or the-opposite-of-thats, and who knows, potentially even end up taking requests, although, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I’ll confess I’m a little rusty on this whole review thing, as it’s been many a year since those salad days of earning 0.07 cents (read: NOT $0.07, but seven-hundredths of one penny) per page-view writing about “Baltimore music” (read: bands with new albums out who also maybe had shows coming up in D.C. or something tristate-adjacent) on the long since lamentably defunct Examiner.com, so bear with me. Hopefully we’ll both learn a thing or half a thing along the way; at the very least, I’ll now be able to say I’m watching a movie marathon in order to be productive, which, y’know, is a new one.