Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Directed by Ryan Coogler

Story by Ryan Coogler

Screenplay by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole

Stars: Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Tenoch Huerta, Dominique Thorne, Martin Freeman, Mabel Cadena, and Alex Livinalli 

I did not think this movie was going to happen. After what happened with the death of Chadwick Boseman, how could the movie go on? I'm sure there was a lot of rewrites that had to happen. Film friends were not to keen with movie. Is it on par with the original movie? No.

After the sudden death of T'Challa (Boseman), Queen Ramonda (Bassett) and Princess Shuri (Wright) have to put their broken pieces back together. Foreign powers are pressuring Wakanda to share the vibranium with the world. It is discovered that vibranium is not the only place it is housed. A new threat, Namor (Huerta), the king of Talokan threatens to wage war against the surface world unless Wakanda aligns with them. Who will take up the mantle of The Black Panther?

This is not an easy watch. The movie is melancholy. It is understandable why has to be. Some people's roles had to be expanded, because certain actors from the the first movie were not there. It seemed that the characters changed from the first movie to this one. 

The problem I had with the movie is the pacing. The middle of the movie where was had to have the backstory of Namor was fine. It dragged along. Namor as a character was very good. It felt like his motivations were the same of Erik Killmonger from the first movie. Okay.

Some of the action scenes were lackluster. It wasn't suspenseful. They were mostly boring. The soul of first movie was not present in this movie.

Rating: 7/10

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022)

Directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp

Story by Dean Fleischer-Camp, Elisabeth Holm, Nick Paley and Jenny Slate

Screenplay by Dean Fleischer-Camp, Nick Paley and Jenny Slate

Stars: (voices) Jenny Slate, Isabella Rosselleni, Dean Fleischer-Camp, Lesley Stahl, Andy Richter, Nathan Fielder, Jessi Klein, Jamie Leonhart, Conan O'Brien, and Brian Williams

People on Letterboxd had this movie on their minds for the longest time. It flew under the radar from me. Heard some rumblings that the movie is in consideration for Best Animated Feature Film. A live-action movie about an animated talking shell? Okay. This is sweet movie that has its flaws.

An amateur filmmaker Dean (Fleischer-Camp) rents out an airbnb after the dissolution of his marriage. He befriends a talking shell named Marcel (Slate). Dean wanted to make a mini documentary about Marcel and his life living in this vast house with multiple people coming in and out. Dean realizes that Marcel only has his grandmother, Connie (Rossellini), but his other family were accidentally taken by a previous tenant. A whole adventure begins to find a lost family.

Going into this movie, I didn't know what to suspect. There is a talking about shell with one eye and pair of shoes on. How do the shell pick up things with no hands? They dynamic between Dean and Marcel was sweet and genuine.

The biggest problem I had with this movie is that some situations felt telegraphed. The obvious foreshadowing. If you have picked up on the clues, then certain scenes don't have the emotional impact that Fleischer-Camp wanted you to have. That's a bummer.

Rating: 8/10

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

Directed by Eric Appel

Screenplay by Al Yankovic & Eric Appel

Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Diedrich Bader, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rainn Wilson, Julianne Nicholson, Toby Huss, Thomas Lennon, and Evan Rachel Wood

The trailer was bonkers. I knew going into the movie that it was not going to be a biopic. Maybe that is the reason that I enjoyed the movie for its silliness and being over the top.

Snippets of Weird Al's real (Radcliffe) life are mentioned in the movie. You don't know what was real and what was fiction. It seems that Al has a typical childhood when playing the accordion came naturally to him. People saw that he had talent and then the parody songs are mentioned. The action takes a complete 180. It falls into a fever dream that I didn't want to wake up from.

The biopic is always some desperate attempt to get nominated or win Oscars. Hollywood has at least five of them a year. It's tiring. This movie is not the run of the mill biopic. This is taking chances. It deviates from the boring chronological drivel Tinseltown churns out. I want to see more movies taking chances like this one moving forward.

Rating: 7/10

Review Rewind

 It's nice to enjoy watching movies again without reviewing every single movie that I have seen. These movies were intersperse between my previous reviews.

Sleepaway Camp: This is second re-watch of the movie this year. Every viewing I see something different that I didn't pick up on. This is a bad movie, but it's so bad that it turns out to be amazing. 10/10

X: After I watched Pearl, I wanted to revisit this movie. I hated the name last time, because the situations were very cliched. This time I kind of let my logical mind go. I liked the movie more of this latest viewing. My original score was 2. Now, it's 7/10.

Bringing Up Baby: I wanted to see the movie where Cary Grant was in a robe. It was this movie. It's not a laugh out loud funny. Katharine Hepburn's got too annoying for me with her running and rapid-fire ling delivery. 7/10

Bros: Another re-watch. I loved this comedy as much as I initially reviewed it. Still hate the steroid section. 9/10

Auntie Mame: Holy shit. What took me so long to watch this movie? Mame is so fabulous. Rosalind Russell gave it her all in this movie. I loved it. The only knocks I will give it is the middle section and the length of the movie. 2.5 hours. 9/10

Heartstopper (Season 1): After the whole "queerbaiting" accusations and Kit Connor forced coming out, I wanted to watch the series. Some "fans" of the show are missing the point of themes entirely. Nobody should have to tell a damn thing. You don't anyone an explanation about yourself. It sucks that this happened. It's stilling happening in 2022. I enjoyed the series, but I had a few problems with character motivations in the middle of the season. Any queer person or ally should see this show. 8.5/10

Roman Holiday: This movie was on my watch list for the longest time. I thought I was going to be enthralled with it, but I wasn't. The movie was boring. Didn't care about the romance. It was meh. I heard somebody say if you didn't appreciate this, you are a cynic. Yes. Yes, I am. 5/10

The Great Lie: I saw this movie a lot on Instagram. If you look up melodrama in the dictionary, this movie will be there. It's like a soap opera with a nonsense plot and uninteresting characters. I stopped paying attention to it and did another things while it was still going. 4/10

Causeway

Causeway (2022)

Directed by Lila Neugebauer

Screenplay by Ottessa Moshfegh and Luke Goebel & Elizabeth Sanders

Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Linda Emond, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Frederick Weller, and Jayne Houdyshell

There were rumbling about the performances in this movie from the film festival circuit. I agree with that, but the script fails them from truly shining.

Lynsey (Lawrence) has been sent stateside after a traumatic event while she was on deployment in Afghanistan. Suffering from PTSD, Lynsey tries to reconnect with her mother, Gloria (Emond) to no avail. She befriends a mechanic, James (Henry) on day and they strike up a friendship. These two broken people try to find some way to forward with life.

As I stated before, Lawrence and Henry give solid performances in this film. Lawrence conveyed the raw emotion of having your world turn upside in a split second, and having to pick up the pieces again. Henry's character has to deal with a stupid decision that affect the people around him, and how he dealing with the fallout of that.

It felt like it was not a fully realized world. People were going through the motions. The screenplay tries to paint the portrait to a shattered woman living a shattered life. The downside is that the pacing of the movie makes the flow feel like a slog. The dialogue does not feel authentic. The plot sometimes gets lost along the way. 

You question if the screenwriters dropped subplots or they didn't have a good way to have any resolution. It is a shame that the movie does not living up to expectations.

Rating: 6/10

My Policeman

My Policeman (2022)

Directed by Michael Grandage

Screenplay by Ron Nyswaner

Based on the book by Bethan Roberts 

Stars: Gina McKee, Linus Roache, Rupert Everett, Harry Styles, Emma Corrin, David Dawson, and Kadiff Kirwan

The discourse around this film was palpable on Film Twitter with articles talking about the cast getting an ensemble award from TIFF. There was also news that the stars are campaigning for Oscar consideration. I can see that for one person and it's who you think it is.

Centering around a trio of friends. Marion (McKee) brings Patrick (Everett) to live with her and her husband, Tom's (Roache) after he has suffered from a stroke to care for him. Marion digs through Patrick's personal items to discover that he suspicions of the relationship between Tom and Patrick were more than meets the eye.

Getting this out of the way. There has been talking about the acting abilities of Styles. I have seen three movies that he has been in. My problem is that he is not embodying the character to become it. It feels like he is saying lines, because the script told him.

The saving grace of the movie is David Dawson as the younger Patrick. He was the emotional anchor of the movie for me. The character goes through a lot in the movie.

Watching the film, you get the sense that the pacing is very slow and laborious. It becomes a chore to try to finish it. It was like going through marathon. The plot was stepping into melodrama. It did not have any levity. No nuance. It was boring movie about miserable people trying to "do the right thing."

Rating: 5/10

The Good Nurse

The Good Nurse (2022)

Directed by Tobias Lindholm

Screenplay by Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Based on the book by Charles Graeber

Stars: Jessica Chastain, Eddie Redmayne, Nnamdi Asomugha, Noah Emmerich, Kim Dickins, David Lavine, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Devyn McDowell, and Alix West Lefler

The story sounds familiar to me, but I confused it with a case of a nurse that killed four patients by injecting air in their bloodstream. Anyway, there was a tepid response to this movie at the London Film Festival. The story is compelling. The movie is not.

The action center around Amy (Chastain), a hardworking nurse that doesn't have health insurance which is complicated that she has a severe heart condition. A new hire, Charlie Cullen (Redmayne) comes in to ease the workload for the staff. The two become fast friends. Patients who are normally is good health suddenly code. Two detectives, Baldwin and Braun (Asomugha, Emmerich) are brought in to investigate and uncover a dark secret.

The thing with telling true stories is that they feel generic. You get the feeling that some stories should not be told. This is one of them. If this movie was a talking head documentary, the subject matter would be more compelling. A dramatized version of the story will fall flat. This movie is a prime example.

Chastain and Redmayne give solid performances, but it is not enough to warrant seeking out this movie. Have in on in the background while doing chores around the house.

Rating: 6/10