Autumn 2023 Movie Roundup

We are well into fall now, with winter just over the horizon. That means it’s time to share my opinion about the shows and movies I watched since the end of summer!

THE FLASH (2023)

This movie very famously failed at the box office, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s like the CG artists finally had their revenge on Warner Discovery for being overworked and underpaid, because a lot of the CG looks like something a beginner might crank out in an older version of Unity or DAZ Studio. Plus, there’s all the various serious crimes the lead actor has been accused of, which makes the main character rather less likeable. Also, THE FLASH, like many modern movies, simply cost way too much to make, which meant it had to make big money to earn back a profit. If your movie cost $50 million to make, a $200 million return is good news. If it cost $220 million, you’re in big trouble.

To be fair, the movie was not without its good points. The Flash realizes he can run faster than the speed of light, which means he can travel back in time and attempt to save his mother. Unfortunately, doing so breaks the space-time continuum and threatens to destroy Earth, and Flash tries again and again to set things right. Michael Keaton does well as an older Batman, and Supergirl was pretty cool. There were also several genuinely funny bits.

However, the movie leaned hard into two of my least favorite plot devices – time travel and The Multiverse. The problems with time travel and The Multiverse is that with an infinite number of alternate versions of the characters, the stakes ultimately becoming meaningless. I think it also shows how the superhero genre of film has run out of gas. Instead of telling new stories and new plots, all the multiverse movies are just churning up alternate versions of old stories and characters. It’s like playing a computer game you’ve already finished but making slightly different choices this time, like playing a fighter/mage instead of a thief/mage or something.

Overall grade: C-

BLACK ADAM (2023)

I think this was slightly better than THE FLASH, though not by very much.

There’s a somewhat complicated backstory involving the Council of Shazam Wizards, a demon-possessed crown, and a magical Champion. In the modern day, the story takes place in the nation of Kahndaq, which is meant to evoke modern Egypt and Iraq. Kahndaq is currently ruled by a British mercenary company called Intergang, but don’t worry about them, they disappear halfway through the movie without any explanation. The leader of the resistance against Intergang is an archaeologist named Adrianna and her son Amon, who is the kind of annoying kid who uses words like “neo-imperialist occupier” with a straight face while outrunning mercenaries on his skateboard.

Anyway, Intergang is looking for the evil magic crown, and Adrianna tries to stop them. In the process, she accidentally releases Teth Adam, the Champion of Kahndaq, from his tomb. Adam annihilates the mercenaries chasing Adrianna and then tries to come to term with the fact that he’s been asleep for the last 5,000 years.

Now that would have been a more interesting movie – a superpowered Bronze Age warrior wakes up and tries to come to terms with the modern age. Or he decides that the modern age needs enlightenment to reach proper Bronze Age warrior values.

Instead, we get the “Justice Society” (I assume they’re the store brand Sam’s Choice version of the Justice League) show up to fight Black Adam. Unfortunately, after they convince Black Adam to stand down, the crown’s evil magic wakes up and chooses a host, and only Black Adam can stop it.

Like THE FLASH, it had its strong points. The CG was better than FLASH, and Dr. Fate was an interesting character. So was Hawkman. Unfortunately, like FLASH, the plot didn’t make much sense, and it relied too heavily on hooks to the rest of the DC universe.

But on the plus side, no time travel!

Overall grade: C

HAUNTED MANSION (2023)

This flopped at the box office, but it wasn’t that bad for a movie about a Disney ride. It wasn’t a scary movie, it was a scaaaaaaAAAAaaary movie, in the tongue-in-cheek way that jack o’lanterns are “scary.” Like, the original purpose of jack o’ lanterns in Iron Age societies was apparently to keep malevolent spirits at bay during the harvest. Serious Business back then, but now it’s sort of play-acting to entertain children. HAUNTED MANSION is kind of the same tongue-in-cheek scariness overlaid with quite a bit of comedy.

The plot centers around a bittered, disillusioned former ghost hunter hired to use his ghost camera to take photos of spirits at a haunted house. The ghost hunter goes along with it, hoping for a quick payday, but quickly becomes ensnared in the curse surrounding the titular Haunted Mansion. He then has to team up with a crazy professor, a fast-talking priest, a medium with good Yelp reviews, and a widowed doctor and her precocious son to defeat the malevolent Hatbox Ghost who rules over the ghosts of the Haunted Mansion.

I am not, generally speaking, a big fan of the Disney Corporation, but I am told that the movie has many Easter eggs referring to the original ride for people who appreciate that kind of thing.

The movie didn’t do well in theaters, but I expect it will have a long afterlife (ha!) on streaming.

Overall grade: B-

MEN IN BLACK 3 (2012)

The original MEN IN BLACK was a near-perfectly constructed science fiction comedy. MEN IN BLACK 2 was good, but not quite on that level. MEN IN BLACK 3 falls at about the same ranking, I think.

In this one, a lethal alien named Boris the Animal breaks out of a secure lunar prison and embarks on a rampage of revenge against Agent K. To facilitate his vengeance, Boris steals a time travel device and goes back to 1969 to kill a younger K at a critical junction in the timeline. Once Agent J realizes what has happened, he obtains another time jump device and goes back to fix things.

As I’ve mentioned before many times, I don’t really like time travel stories. However, this one works because it’s pretty funny – to make the time “jump” work you literally have to jump off a building of sufficient height to trigger the device. The other comedy bits are good. Josh Brolin does a pitch-perfect impersonation of Tommy Lee Jones as the younger Agent K.

Overall grade: B

MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL (2019)

I’d heard bad things about this movie, but it was actually quite enjoyable. Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth start as Agent M and Agent H. Based on the movie’s advertising, I thought Agent M would be one of those tediously infallible #girlboss characters, with Agent H as her dimwitted sidekick. Fortunately, this turned out not to be the case. Agent M is a nerdy probationary agent who desperately wants to prove herself, while Agent H is a charismatic, somewhat lazy hedonist who always manages to pull off his assignments in the end. Agent M’s and Agent H’s first assignment together is to bodyguard an alien royal, who promptly gets himself killed by two mysterious shapeshifting assassins. As things go haywire in the aftermath, the agents realize that the royal had a dark secret, and there is a traitor somewhere within the Men In Black.

I thought it was an entertaining movie. Agent M and Agent H made a great comedic duo, and there were so excellently funny bits. Liam Neeson was also good as Agent T, the commander of the branch office.

And no time travel or multiverses in this one!

Overall grade: B+

AHSOKA (2023)

Good, but unfinished, since only two of the major plots get resolved, and in such a way that it sets up future adventures.

I realized the other day that STAR WARS is the American equivalent to DOCTOR WHO. The similarities are remarkable. 1.) Both are long-running sci-fi franchises. 2.) Both are definitely not hard science fiction. 3.) Both are under the stewardship of large, ponderous, frequently ineffective organizations, whether Disney or the BBC. 4.) Both have spawned a vast maze of tie-in novels and comics and games. 5.) Both have fandoms that act like religions, complete with a crazy fringe. 6.) And like religions that break into warring sects, both have fandoms that decide upon a particular era or release as the best one, and argue vociferously about which part of the franchise is the best, with almost the same fervor as people arguing about whether Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, or John Calvin had the correct interpretation of the Bible.

This isn’t to be glib, but to note that the same self-destructive tribal instinct that humanity exhibits in politics and religion also seems to appear in far less serious arenas, like football supporters and science fiction franchises. Or even in something as silly as game console brands, as a single glance at an online argument about the respective merits of the Xbox and the Playstation will demonstrate.

Anyway! That was a philosophical digression. Back to the AHSOKA show.

It was better than I expected. I thought that Ahsoka would be yet another tediously infallible #girlboss type character, but she was nothing like that. Instead, she made several serious mistakes, faced enemies that were stronger than her, and had to learn and adapt and grow to survive her challenges. In other words, a compelling protagonist! All the performances from the actors were good. Especially the late Ray Stevenson – his Baylan Skoll character really stole Episode 4, and if this was destined to be Mr. Stevenson’s last performance, at least it was a great one.  Diana Lee Inosanto was great as Morgan Elsbeth, who has to be one of the single most competent villains in all of STAR WARS. Evil, but she gets results!

I also really liked the lightsaber duels. They seemed more like something out of a samurai movie – the combatants careful of their footing and their stances, only to explode into sudden motion – than the more acrobatic flipping and spinning around in the prequel trilogy.

I have to admit, in the publicity stills for the show, I kind of thought that the show’s version of Grand Admiral Thrawn looked sort of like Elon Musk transmogrified into a Smurf, but that was just a bad angle – combined with his voice and mannerisms (ie, the acting performance) Lars Mikkelsen’s performance really works. I suspect Mr. Musk only wishes he had this version of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s air of gravitas and authority.

The show ends on a sort of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK style cliffhanger. I hope the story will continue, but I have my doubts. Disney wasn’t in a great shape even before the writers’ and actors’ strike, and I wonder if the company is simply going to run out of financing.

One more point – the soundtrack  by the Kiner family was A+ work, with the Japanese-style musical motifs for the lightsaber duels, the long ominous horns for the Nightsisters’ motif, and the blasting pipe organ for when Thrawn makes his return.

Overall grade: B+

COLLATERAL (2004)

This is a superb neo-noir thriller. Jamie Foxx stars as Max, a hapless LA taxi driver who picks up Vincent, played by Tom Cruise, who claims to be in town to secure signatures for a real estate deal. Vincent offers Max $600 to drive him around for the night, and in need of the money, Max agrees. Except it turns out Vincent is actually a hit man in LA to kill five targets, and when Max realizes what is happening and tries to bail, Vincent forces him to continue.

I really liked this one. Tom Cruise’s perpetual intensity works very well in a villain role, and the psychological duel between Max and Vincent was compelling to watch. Vincent claims that his targets are bad people who deserve their fates, but once Max figures out that Vincent’s final target most definitely does not deserve it, the race is on to save the target’s life. The movie did have the overused trope where the LAPD gets mad the FBI is taking over their case, which was a thing even way back in DIE HARD. In fact, that was a major plot point in DIE HARD, now that I think about it. In Real Life, the FBI’s interaction with local law enforcement mostly involves provides consulting and lab services, and local law enforcement is often eager to hand a troublesome case over to the feds because it then becomes Somebody Else’s Problem. I also thought the soundtrack seemed a bit off in the first half of the movie.

But these are minor quibbles – COLLATERAL was a thoroughly enjoyable thriller. Definitely recommended if you like this genre of film.

Overall grade: A

A HAUNTING IN VENICE (2023)

The third of Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot movies. I really liked the first one he did, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, though I thought DEATH ON THE NILE was only so-so, which was disappointing, because DEATH ON THE NILE is in my opinion one of the best of the Hercule Poirot books. But A HAUNTING IN VENICE is on par with ORIENT EXPRESS.

The movie takes place in 1947, and Hercule Poirot, soul-sick and world-weary after the horrors of World War II and all the depths of human evil he has seen in his cases, has decided to retire in Venice. His friend Ariadne Oliver (Agatha Christie’s self-parodying author insert in the Poirot novels) turns up to ask him to help debunk a medium preying upon a grieving mother. Poirot immediately demonstrates the medium as a fraud, but soon afterward someone tries to kill him, and a few moments later the medium herself is killed. It’s then up to Poirot to solve the case, even as the suspects become increasingly convinced that supernatural powers are behind the killing. It also had one of my favorite plot devices from the 2009 SHERLOCK HOLMES movie – the rationalist detective confronted by a seemingly supernatural mystery.

Branagh’s version of Poirot is darker and rather more angsty than the book version, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Tina Fey was also an excellent choice to play Ariadne Oliver.

Overall grade: A

So those are the movies I saw this autumn!

-JM