Avengers Endgame (2019)

Avengers Endgame is the perfect culmination of the MCU so far. It is all that is good and all that is bad about the MCU.

I am not a big fan of the MCU but there are aspects of it I like, films in it I enjoy.  Mostly I find the films focus on being light and accessible, often leaning so far in that direction they become rather meaningless and forgettable. But they also have built a universe of characters and worlds more successfully than almost any franchise I can imagine. By focusing on the relationships it has drawn up, this MCU climax manages to capitalize on all that they've built. I liked how Endgame captured what I have enjoyed about the franchise but was still frustrated by how much it is like the parts I don't.

Perhaps this is best summed up in the opening. There are a couple scenes which set the stakes in a very MCU manner. There is a sense of loss and tragedy but only pushing the line so far. And Tony Stark is there to crack the jokes so it never hurts too bad. It's an easy pill to swallow. There is nothing difficult or challenging about the MCU. It's always accessibly enjoyable. And that's why it rakes in the dollars.

Endgame, like most of the MCU, is a very surface oriented story. What I mean by this is while the film may have its dramatic and entertaining moments, it isn't about anything more than just its rather story, a story which is fairly pedantic and basic and laced with more than enough humour to keep us from ever having to feel too much (Thor remains a joke within a joke within a joke). There aren't underlying themes, symbolism of grander ideas. Like with how Civil War skimmed over it's moral questions, Endgame flirts with moral conflict over time travel and its consequences but dismisses it all rather quickly without truly resolving any questions. It's a story in and of itself and that is all it tries to be. While this is fine and certainly popular, I like my movies to offer something more. Perhaps to say it better, a film will hold so much more for me when the story and characterization serve readings which can be explored on multiple levels. Only occasionally have MCU films attempted this (such as Black Panther's dabbling in afro-futurism and deconstructing colonialism). There is none of that here. This is all focused on finishing the story arc the last 10 years of MCU films have been building towards.

I am also frustrated with the contrived nature of the characters' arcs. Characters are used for convenience without investing much in making their arc organic. Captain Marvel's showing up (both times) felt blatantly deus ex machina. Hawkeye's journey feels force fed without making us really feel it (probably because what it would take to really make his story believable would be too difficult for the MCU audience to handle). The excuses for why the infinity stones snap can do certain things but not other things makes no sense and is a bit insulting. But I went into this expecting that. Knowing as we did that the ending of Infinity War was temporary it sucked pretty much all of the emotional impact for me. All of Endgame feels constructed, convenient. While I get that people are buying into the "tragic" nature of this story, for me the inevitability of it, without inevitability being the moral of the story (wow that could have been interesting), takes away from that power. For me, the whole thing, and buy whole thing I mean the 10 years of MCU films, feels like a predictable and rather classically basic grand story arc. As other franchises are beginning to deconstruct the very ideas explored here, such as the hero's journey tropes, the MCU stays firmly in that past idea of story telling. I guess I am just rather bored with it.

However, that being said, neither Endgame nor the MCU story arc is a bad story. It's a story told without much art of originality but it is still an entertaining story. Even if I feel over this sort of story telling, it doesn't mean it is a bad story. I love the commitment Disney has given this. There is something extremely satisfying about seeing it all come together. The story, in all its contrivances, is a perfect vehicle for revisiting each and every corner of the MCU allowing fans to touch on all the characters and back stories. There is a Back to the Future Part II vibe to it which ends up being pretty fun. It's brilliant it how it pulls together all the threads from all the stories making it poetically lovely. Marvel movies are fun and Endgame, despite its sad parts, remains fun. Despite the running time you'll be entertained. The MCU has aspired to little more than that so it achieves it. It is a success for what it is. I had a lot of fun watching Endgame. But I likely won't return to it many times.

My criticism is that this sort of story just doesn't hold the interest for me as other stories, the kinds which make us question the very things this story purports. So while I understand why the masses eat up this sort of thing, it all just leaves me a little cold. I couldn't muster up the excitement to get worked up. I'm glad it is so much fun for so many. I'm just waiting for something that resonates more for me.

Avengers Endgame
Starring: Pretty much everyone...
Directors: Anthony and Joe Russo
Writers: Christopher Markus, Steven McFeely

King Lear (2018)

I've always had trouble sympathizing for Lear, who many describe as the central character in Shakespeare's most impressive work. I've never felt that attachment to this play preferring many of his other works, but appreciating a lot about King Lear. In Richard Eyre's film Lear is almost over the top a spoiled entitled white man, throwing temper tantrums and barely ever reckoning with his follies, the way I've often read him so much of his take on the story resonated for me.

Eyre also uses the modern convention of making the audience sympathize with the villainous bastard's plight. Instead of assuming Edmund is inherently evil due to his "illegitimate" birth as previous audiences may have, we are instead presented with his seeking revenge for being treated as such by his world, a reading which is grounded clearly in the text. I appreciated how Eyre flushed this out and founds ways to make Edmund so fascinating and despite his resolution he manages to bring everyone down.

And in the case of Lear I've never seen this as a bad thing. By focusing on the Lear family's destruction at the hands of a wronged anti-hero, Eyre manages to find a way to deal with the common problem with adapting Shakespeare to film, how to pair it down in a way that doesn't feel paired down. Lear is epic and trying to tell its story with a runtime of 115 minutes is foolhardy. But I think Eyre mostly succeeds by narrowing his focus.

Eyre also finds a nice visual esthetic for the film. Setting the story in modern England Eyre uses a palette which supports without distracting from his story.

Does he make Lear riveting? I'm not sure this production gets there. I think for fans of the cast of of Shakespeare this film presents an interesting take. But it's also not going to be the film that draws in a crowd outside that. Still it made me think a lot more about one of Shakespeare's works which is less impactful for me than most.

King Lear
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Emily Watson, Jim Broadbent, Florence Pugh, Jim Carter, Andrew Scott, John Macmillan
Writer/Director: Richard Eyre (with William Shakespeare)

Her Smell (2019)

Is the self-destructive rock star trope that interesting. While I found myself impressed with Elizabeth Moss fully embracing her character's ____, I kept waiting for there to be something original in the insight. Is it just a tragedy or is there something new for us to understand about the creative mind or about the way the corporatization of that creative mind wrecks it? I'm not sure Her Smell gets there. It does give Moss a chance to give a truly fascinating performance and it does give us a chance to feel her and her pain.

The story of a rock star whose success and mental health are waning is shot by writer/director Alex Ross Perry in a cinema verite style, mimicking the kind of back stage documentaries that we like to watch about real rock stars. Moss plays the centre of a once successful band who is surrounded by family (her husband and mother) industry (the executives and other artists) and her own demons. She is isolated from the very start, both literally and emotionally. She is both victim and author or her own destruction. She is sober but finding that sobriety isn't giving saving her from herself either. We watch helplessly as she ensures no one helps her and everyone around her uses that as the excuse for not helping her. And in the end everyone takes from her what they need.

This is the sort of story we've seen played out both in fiction and in reality time and again. Her Smell isn't about answers or blame, answers and blame are thrown around but as an audience we aren't left with anything easy. In that Her Smell is strong. But as the story reached its conclusion I was left feeling fairly empty about Becky and her trajectory. Her Smell never got under my skin. I felt too removed, like everyone around Becky perhaps.

Her Smell
Starring: Elizabeth Moss, Amber Heard, Cara Delevingne, Dan Stevens, Eric Stolz, Virgina Madson
Writer/Director: Alex Ross Perry

The Grizzlies (2019)

Sports movies have that arc that happens in each one. Inspirational leader, usually with his (almost always a him) own demons, stumbles across a rag tag group that needs inspiring, and they find it through the love of "the game" building camaraderie and a sense of purpose, leading to a climax where they beat all the odds and win or some equivalent, a moral victory. We've seen it all a hundred times and often it's hard to take these things seriously due to the formulaic nature of the stories.

Western movies about racialized cultures also come with their baggage. The white teacher that inspires a group of marginalized kids of some other racial group is a trope that we see again and again in movies (reversed in To Sir With Love but the same idea). These films' glorification of the white savior complex and model minority complex often reduce the stories to something trite. So going into The Grizzlies I was worried.

Fortunately The Grizzlies mostly deals with these problems in a way that pays real tribute to the people who lived this story in real life. The Grizzlies pretty much embrace both issues, the sports film cliches and the white teacher caricature and finds a way to make it all feel honest. It seems aware of these issues, taking them head on, showing us that there remain problems with these ideas but finding what hope they can in this true story.  The cast and director Miranda de Pencier  own it and make it something inspiring.

And within this milieu they find a way to get into the hard truths about northern communities. The film doesn't pull punches or provide easy answers. There is a difficult subplot about an abused youth who sees how his abusor's history with residential schools is the source of their struggle. His father never gets redeemed, but is also not a two dimensional villain. His story is a tragic one that his son is able to overcome.

de Pencier finds a strong visual narrative in her directorial debut. Her film truly inhabits the space it is set in and immerses us in the story. The Grizzlies is a stunningly beautiful film, not just for the landscape but for the way it is captured and explored. The town is as much a character as any one of the actors.

The Grizzlies is everything one would expect but it also manages to be more and offers a real tribute to the people it is celebrating.

The Grizzlies
Starring: Ben Schnetzer, Booboo Stewart, Paul Nutarariaq, Anna Lamb, Natar Ungalaaq, Tantoo Cardinal, Aletha Arnaquq-Baril, Will Sasso
Director: Miranda de Pencier
Writers: Moria Walley-Beckett, Graham Yost

Missing Link (2019)

The animation studio Laika has yet to do wrong. While the marketing for Missing Link was underwhelming the film ends up being nothing like how it was sold. It's smarter, more absurd, and by far more spectacular than anything one would expect from the trailers. It may very well be Laika's least project so far, but it still remains so much better than most of the animated fair out there.

Closest to Paranorman than any of the other Laika work, Missing Link is irreverent yet clever plays of its genre's tropes to deliver an entertaining story. I was worried it was going to go for the slapstick a little too heavily, and at times it might cross that line, (there is a poop joke that just falls flat) but the film usually recovers quickly and gets us back on track.

Missing Link is about finding oneself, both literally and figuratively, and in that it's message is probably the simplest and most trite of Laika's work. But none of this makes it bad. The film is laugh out loud funny and with the short running time and incredibly gorgeous artistry the studio is known for, Missing Link remains worth watching.

Missing Link
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Zach Galafanakis, Zoe Saldana, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Timothy Olyphant, Amrita Acharia
Writer/Director: Chris Butler

Man Running (2019)

Gary Burns made one of my favourite films of all time, Waydowntown. His The Suburbanators and Radiant City are also great films. I was excited to hear he was putting out a new fiction film and Man Running lived up to my expectations. Surreal and almost Lynchian, Man Running is a film that deals with pain and grief and hard decisions. And it does so without compromising by finding easy answers. Instead it lets us sit with these feelings.

Man Running is surprisingly uneasy. Burns finds a way of telling this story which doesn't take the easy way. He sprinkles horror tropes along his story to emphasize just how difficult some of these questions are. Man Running is remarkable in how powerful it is.

It is also remarkable in how beautiful it is. Burns knows southern Alberta and uses the beauty of the Rockies to his fullest advantage. He films is magnetically, finding both terror and inspiration in the woods. He effortlessly and seamlessly swings between different cinematographic styles exploring the mixed emotions of his character. Man Running is stunningly beautiful.

As soon as it was over I wanted to watch Man Running again. I wanted to reflect on it knowing where it went to see what I could glean the second time. Man Running will sit with me for a while long after I have finished watching it.

Man Running 
Starring: Gord Rand, Milli Wilkinson
Writer/Director: Gary Burns

Pet Sematary (2019)

Pet Sematary is the kind of horror that bores me. The movie, not the source material. I think we've seen Hollywood screw up this story twice now (not counting sequels). There is potential in this story to explore upsetting themes relating to grieving and guilt but both with the original film and this remake gloss over that instead focusing on cheap jumps and a sort of yucky revulsion of disability. All in all I was bored during Pet Sematary and wasn't scared once.

The directors focus their efforts on long drawn out scenes leading to fake out jump scares. They rely on things that are supposed to be scary as opposed to exploring things that might actually be terrifying. Time and again we sit through shots of people walking towards something potentially scary only to have nothing really come of it, again and again. This is a style of horror movie which is popular so it's not like this film stands out. It's just that it is a kind of horror that doesn't do it for me. I get nothing out of it. So I get bored.

And when the film does get to its "pay off" it ends up being rather cheap violence. I liked the film ended without reverting to a comforting resolution where the "good guys win," you know what I mean, when the hero ends up prevailing and begins to return to a sense of clam, usually to have the last moment interrupted by the suggestion that evil may not be quite vanquished yet? Like the original film and novel. This ending is rather dark but that darkness is mostly cheapened by how over the top the climax's confrontations are.

However the thing that disappointed me most in this film is the way it treated the one character's subplot. The mother character is dealing with regret over how she treated, and perhaps caused the death of, her sister who suffered from a debilitating disability. However the film doesn't use to this explore her character in anyway.  Instead they use it to up the creepy factor by making her sister a terrifying monstrosity that makes the audience jump. It's pretty pathetic actually and took most of my goodwill for the film away.

So while Stephen King's work might be going through a bit of a renaissance this remake isn't part of it.

Pet Semetary
Starring: Jason Clarke, John Lithgow, Amy Seimetz
Directors: Kevin Kolsch, Denis Wydmyer
Writer: Jeff Buhler

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)

Can any film live up to expectations that have been building for 25 years? Terry Gilliam's infamous attempts to film this movie have become legend (as well as the subject of their own movie) so going into this, one just has so much to wonder about, and when one sees it one wonders even more.

Terry Gilliam isn't known for making straight forward films (although not all his films are madness masterpieces either, cough cough Brothers Grimm cough) so I was prepared for some Baron Munchausen shenanigans. Clearly, Gilliam being so dedicated to birthing this story there must be something special about it, so I was ready to have a narrative of twisted importance. All in all I was expecting the unexpected. But The Man Who Killed Don Quixote turned out to have very little of any of that. The most unexpected surprise was just how little there was there.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a random, rambling, inconsistent meandering, almost a stream of consciousness. There is a sort of a story about a sell out director (Adam Driver) being confronted with his past (through ridiculous coincidence) who must question his own sanity by encountering what he perceives to be madness. All of that sounds fascinating except that Gilliam's take on it is ADHD and refuses to be shackled to things like plot, character, or even cinematographic style. The film breaks the fourth wall, then it doesn't. The film oscillates through time, but then drops that. The film indulges in absurd humour but ends up mostly slapstick. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote can't seem to decide what film it wants to be.

Perhaps it was the long production issues and funding problems which shrunk the budget, but The Man Who Killed Don Quixote looks cheap and often feels like a student film. I considered whether this is on purpose due to certain references in the film, but once again the film isn't consistent. Later in the film more of Gilliam's artful style starts poking through and there is more of his avant guard artistry.

I puzzled over this as I watched. What is intentional in all this chaos? Is the chaotic approach completely the point? Or is it a rather bold failure of story telling, attempting to be something greater than it manages to be? So instead of searching for artistic meaning I began looking into what the story was telling me. And I got even more lost. The film never says anything coherent. Again I asked myself, is that the point? But this endless circle of questions leading to nothing finally started to feel like a shell game. And I began to believe that the elusive pea is just not there at all.

Would I recommend you see The Man Who Killed Don Quixote? That truly depends. It is certainly not for those who want escapist entertainment. Perhaps if your tastes lead you to enjoy the absurd without needing much meaning. Or perhaps, if you just want to see what a brilliant artistic mind can produce when it isn't restrained by needing to be anything other than just what it wants at any moment. So puzzle it out for yourselves if you dare. I worry this emperor has no clothes, and it may not be the most beautiful nude out there.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Starring: Adam Driver, Jonathan Price, Stellan Skarsgard, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro
Writer/Director: Terry Gilliam

Dumbo (2019)

Remaking masterpieces is rife with folly. Disney's been doing a spotty job in my opinion. Either they basically retelling the exact same story only with "live" actors (Beauty and the Beast), or they tell a new story that has little if anything to do with the spirit of the original (Alice in Wonderland). I've always felt a remake is only worth doing if you can add something new, give us a reason to see a newer version, especially of a truly good film. I don't feel Disney has a good track record with this yet, but Dumbo might be as close as they have come.

You see the original Dumbo isn't really a masterpiece. While there is much beloved about it, it also remains rather problematic in numerous ways. This version takes just the basics of the Dumbo story and fleshes it out removing most of what doesn't work. It also adds in a critique of capitalism and throws in classic Tim Burton style and celebration of the marginalized for a take that mostly works.

By focusing the story on the people of the circus and adding in a plot about business exploiting artistry, the new Dumbo finds a reason to revisit the story. The pairing of Devito and Keaton is a fun revisiting of the hero villain complex but reversed. Overall I was surprised at how much I was enjoying it.

However the Dumbo story just doesn't have that much meat to it and this version remains rather thin. The film does feel like it's drawing out it's climax. Still there was far more here than I was expecting.

Dumbo
Starring: Danny Devito, Colin Farrell, Eva Green, Michael Keaton, Alan Arkin, Nico Parker, Finley Hobbins, Roshen Seth, DeObia Oparei, Sharon Rooney
Director: Time Burton
Writers: Ehren Kruger

Capernaum (2018)

The thing that makes Capernaum work as well as it does is the actor at its centre, 12 year old Zain Al Rafeea who has as much star presence as any Hollywood star. He embodies the screen when he's on it, and tells us the story of this young, abused, boy living in extreme poverty in a way that not only devastates us but brings us hope.

Capernaum is the story of Zain, suing his abusive parents for creating the situation that leads him to take justice into his own hands. It is emotionally wrecking yet completely inspiring. Director Nadine Labaki uses a cinema verite style so that we feel we are watching a documentary, and Zain's raw honesty brings this feeling alive too.

Zain isn't the only one. Yordanos Shiferaw as an undocumented worker/mother is incredible and her performance is heartbreaking. All of it comes together in a way that makes Capernaum impossible to take your eyes off of.

Capernaum will make you feel a complete range of emotions and remind us of the strength of the human spirit. 

Capernaum
Starring: Zain Al Radeea, Yordanos Shiferaw
Writer/Director: Nadine Labaki