The Lion King (2019)

Once again Disney has mined their catalogue to put out a remake of one of their classics which doesn't come close to the magic of the original. Like some of these films there are some adjustments which I appreciated but mostly I felt it was either copying the original and not quite being as great, or making changes that just didn't feel as magical as what came before. I truly wish they could put this energy into making something new but I know audiences like something safe and secure where they don't have to wonder if they are going to like it.

So first what's good? Like their remake of Aladdin, I was happy to see them remove the gay-coding of the villain. The new Scar isn't a simple usurper who clearly isn't as worthy due to his lack of masculinity as he was in the first film. He actually articulates a different vision for the Pride Lands and has an ideological basis for his coup. Basically he argues a need for greater exploitation of the resources. While Mufasa managed a system that took into consideration the needs of all the citizens and managed conservation of resources, Scar wants a trickle down system which benefits the top of the food chain as much as possible without regard for the depletion of resources or the consequences for those further down the line. He is backed by the greedy who stand to benefit from such a reign. Basically he's a conservative.

I also appreciated the way the film gave more agency to its female leads (also in a way similar to the Aladdin remake). Both Nala and Sarabi are given more power and more leadership. I liked the new song for Beyonce. This was a welcome addition.

Sure I love Timon and Pumba in the original and here they are another bright spot. Billy Eichner (Timon) talked about how much freedom he and Seth Rogan were given to ad lib and improvise. The most changes to the film come from their scenes. Their chemistry is wonderful and their characters remain some of the best in the film. While I laughed a much of their material, one of their scenes also highlighted the issues with this film. There is a joke midway though Hakuna Matata which plays on our knowledge of the original film and it's version of the song. The joke that got the loudest laugh was one that takes a joke from the first film and then plays it differently. In this case, if you hadn't seen the first film you wouldn't get it at all and the joke would fall flat. However if you have seen the first film it's the best joke in the movie. Basically summing up this film making approach which relies entirely on recycling old ideas and your audience's knowledge of a product they have already consumed.

Overall the film never gave me any of the feels of the original. I had a hard time mustering any excitement to see a story that I had seen before when I knew how it was all going to play out. Seeing photo-realistic CGI animals wasn't enough to outweigh the loss of the gorgeous animation of the original film. This was most striking in the I Just Can't Wait To Be King number. While the first turns beautifully stylized and gives the animators some amazing opportunities to show off the beauty of the medium, here it was just a bunch of realistic looking animals running around. It lost all it's magic. So much of the film felt this way but this scene encapsulated it the most.

I couldn't feel anything when Mufasa died or when Simba and Nala discovered the changing feelings of adolescence. The real looking animals just didn't emote in the same manner and didn't offer the same connections their 2D animated equivalents did.

I know these films are popular and I am in the minority for not getting into line. They just don't offer me much of what I want when I go to a movie.

The Lion King
Starring: Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Seth Rogan, Billy Eichner, Alfre Woodard, John Kani, John Oliver, Beyonce Knowles, James Earl Jones
Director: John Favreau
Writer: Jeff Nathanson

Wild Rose (2019)

This is the sort of film that launches a career. It's a tour de force for Jessie Buckley, rising star, who knocks it out of the park in a role and a film which could have been far more ordinary, but ends up being nothing but. The story of a wanna be star, who is just a little self-destructive, and overcomes her hurdles to find her dream is a story told again and again, but writer Nicole Taylor and director Tom Harper find a refreshing and invigorating way to tell it, and most of that has to do with finding this scene stealer Buckley.

Buckley shows us a million things in her face as her character Rose-Lynn pursues her dreams of being a country singer in Glasgow of all places while having just got out of jail and taking to raising two young children she likely didn't plan or want. The film doesn't get mired down in the difficult stuff too much, leaving all of the pain, indulgence, and passion to Buckley who brings it out so wonderfully, so touchingly, so raw. She is completely captivating.

And she plays off against Julie Waters, always a force to watch herself, so well. The two are magnetic together each supporting the other into amazing roles. Waters is understated compared to Buckley and that balance they create works perfectly.

I think one of the things I appreciated about the film is it doesn't have the traditional pay off a movie like this has. Without spoiling it I thought the ending was far more satisfying that one would usually suspect.

And then there is the music. This is the sort of country music (don't say western) that I can embrace. It's all songs by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Joe Henry, Chris Stapleton, John Prine and the like. If you're wanting country radio you're out of luck. This is the hard living, roots country which, as the lead describes, three chords and the truth. Buckley nails all the music so perfectly, so lovingly. There is pain and passion in each note. A music film rises and falls on its music and this is a triumph. 

A crowdpleaser without being condescending, Wild Rose is the kind of film that makes me love being a film lover. I'll be singing along many more times I am sure.

Wild Rose
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters, Sophie Okonedo
Director: Tom Harper
Writer: Nicole Taylor

Crawl (2019)

Horror director Alexandre Aja doesn't always make the kind of horror movies that speak to me. After his impressive and upsetting debut, High Tension, his films have fallen more on the B-movie side. While Crawl falls quite plainly into the B-movie category it is all the things one would want from such a film. It's a tight, compact story, full of excitement and chills, with a real enough story and characters to pull us into the fun.

Here's the simple story; during a hurricane a young woman attempts to rescue her father and encounters alligators who are  hunting. Standard pitch: Jaws with alligators. Aja tells this just just as it needs to be told. He gives us a clear and real picture of who his hero, Haley, is and then sets up her struggle. We follow her through it without her making terribly horror movie cliche decisions. The hurdles she faces are frightening without being ridiculous. And the story is just captivating enough to propel you through it.

Fun, scary, and not stupid. While I tend to be drawn to horror that comments more on issues in our culture, perhaps explores how our society can be a terrifying place, sometimes a movie that's just fun frights can be entertaining too.

Crawl
Starring: Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper
Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Michael Rasmussen, Shawn Rasmussen

I'll Take Your Dead (2019)

Part home invasion thriller, part gangster film, part family drama, part haunted house movie, I'll Take Your Dead comes together as one taught and fully satisfying piece of art horror.

This is the story of a man who gets rid of bodies for gangsters, his life on his farm with his disturbed daughter, and how it all inevitably goes wrong. I did love that the film embraced its genres fully without reservation.

Like a great creepy story told late at night with a flashlight under your chin, I'll Take Your Dead goes beyond the tropes of its genres and weaves a little tale that gets under your skin. While I admit it is one of the rare occasions when a "horror" movie scared me (the jumps actually made me jump and look over my shoulder) it was a different kind of skin crawling which truly got me. It was the way the film taps into some pretty real emotions, the kind that offer you something to really chew on.

For parents, I'll Take Your Dead will truly make you reflect. Like recent horror mini-masterpieces The Babadook and It Comes at Night, I'll Take Your Dead explores how frightening being a parent truly is, the way we make choices we never thought we'd have to make, and the ways we fail.

Shot on a shoestring, the film occasionally feels like it cuts a corner here and there but the performances, the passion of the film makers, and the sweet pulpy story make up for any flaws to deliver a truly enjoyable experience.

I'll Take Your Dead
Starring: Aiden Devine, Ava Preston, Jess Salgueiro
Director: Chad Archibald
Writers: Jamie Laforest, Chad Archibald

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

Exciting debut films from promising directors seem to come a lot more often these days, perhaps as film making becomes a more accessible medium. The latest is The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a beautifully shot sentimental film from first time film makers Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails. Shot for very little but accomplishing so much, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is an great example of the idea that new film makers can get their visions made and we get to experience them as an audience.

Fails plays a fictionalized version of himself, a man attempting to reclaim the home his grandfather built, facing all the barriers, large ones and small ones, a black man in modern America faces. Talbot films his story with an invested eye, truly capturing the big and small moments in a way that shows a deeply insightful understanding of what this story means.

It is a delicious film to watch. A little garish (in all the best ways) while completely lush, The Last Black Man is a shows both as rough but ready to take on the task of making great films. If The Last Black Man in San Francisco is any indication, they are headed for some great things.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Starring: Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover, Tichina Arnold, Mike Epps, Thora Birch
Director: Joe Talbot
Writers: Rob Richert, Joe Talbot

Midsommer (2019)

Midsommer is described as "horror." Today we think of "horror" in a specific context of films, usually more appropriately associated with either "slasher" or supernatural films. The current trend dominating the box office is whatever sort of thing the Conjuring Universe is. Midsommer, the follow up to film maker Ari Aster's highly overrated Heredity, is nothing like those sorts of films. Aster follows more the example of the Haneke or Van Trier, making deeply unsettling movies about uncomfortable topics, often with a lot of shock value gore, but so far in a way that feels more straightforward and accessible than those film makers. Heredity flew closer to the mainstream horror esthetic but Midsommer is full on mainstreaming of that surrealist vibe. He's trying to bring that aesthetic to the masses and it feels like a cheap version of something richer.

He starts out strong by casting Florence Pugh who is revelatory in everything I've seen her in so far. He kicks off his story with a nice little uncomfortable situation of a severely damaged woman and her broken relationship. He then sets up the world of his story in a lovely pastoral northan Swedish community cut off from the world and bathed in almost 24 hour sunlight over the solstice. Perhaps this is where things start to feel a little cliched with the isolated exotic community. Like we all know we're supposed to fear foreigners, especially when we're far away and isolated, right?  It's from here that everything plays out in a manner that seems preordained. Each step feels like exactly what one would expect. The parties are welcomed, exposed to the "odd" culture of the strange community, enticed a bit by it before become horrified by it, and eventually swallowed whole buy it.

Little feels surprising in Midsommer. Each twist is telegraphed a long way out. Instead of surprising us with events, Aster seems more interested in shoving gore and other unpleasant images in our faces. Very similarly to Heredity he chooses to use imagery to shock us instead of the acts of people. In both films I felt he relies on our learned prejudices to unsettle us, not in a way that challenges those prejudices, but in a manner which revels in them. For example in both films he uses "deformities" as a signalling of evil, here even more directly than in Heredity.  This is a common film trope but one that I had hoped most cinema in this day had moved past. Perhaps he comfortable bringing it back. He also uses naked old people naked to make us squirm. Again, not something new, we often see it in horror, very recently in the Susperia remake which also felt like it was just recycling old ideas of what is supposed to be scary. Again I usually prefer something more originally upsetting than that.

There is a scene half way through which I felt both worked and then didn't for a number of reasons. There is a bit of a spoiler here so skip this paragraph if you don't want to know. He builds some tension for us by having two elderly people throw themselves from a cliff and then has our "heroes" react. Despite having this be obviously where the film was going (anyone who is surprised by the sacrifice simply isn't paying attention) I felt the scene was moving because of the different ways the characters reacted to it, their revulsion, their rationalizations, their anger, their discomfort. I felt the film was truly getting somewhere with this. But then Aster chose to focus on the physicality of the deaths. He focused on what happens to a body when it is thrown from a cliff and lands on rock. We see it. This in itself isn't a bad choice. I always think films that make us feel violence are better than films that gloss over violence. But it is how the film becomes about exploiting that gore instead of focusing on how we are to feel about people being sacrificed. It lessons it, makes it about being revolted by blood instead of by cruelty. Similarly the cult like sex ritual at the end feels less unsettling because of the rape that technically happens during it and more because we see naked old people (ew??) and it is used in a more comic form, so we can let off some of our discomfort by laughing. Again it distracted from the part I felt was starting to be interesting. 

There is a character I found the most fascinating, who the film mostly ignores. Vilhelm Blomgren as Pelle, once you understand his whole arc, is someone I wanted to know more about. His motivations and desires throughout. The one character the film actually surprises us with, who doesn't act like a complete stereotype. But he is mostly sidelined so we can follow the lives of the far less interesting comic relief characters and the dysfunctional relationship. I guess I always felt that when Aster was on to something I found interesting, he veered away into something far less interesting and often more juvenile. 

His inversion of setting his scary story in the light instead of the dark seems interesting at first. It's about putting it all in front of our eyes and not being able to look away. But again what he makes us look at feels empty-ish and not really that disturbing. When I saw Heredity I remember being disappointed that all it was was about being scared of, well, women. Here again, Aster tells a story about men being victimized by women. I guess I just don't find that very interesting or scary or disturbing. I find it a little boring.

Like I said his work reminds me of Van Trier and Haneke, film makers I find are often more focused on form than content and so far I feel Aster's work is like that too. That while I may appreciate the way they make their films, the stories they tell have either little resonance for me, or a resonance that is quite ugly.

Midsommer
Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhem Blomgren, Will Poulter
Writer/Director: Ari Aster

Spider-man Far From Home (2019)

The things I liked about Spider-man Far From Home I really liked. The things I didn't like I truly hated. For me there is a tension in the Holland Spider-man movies between its desire to tell Spider-man stories and its desire to be integrated into the MCU. As someone who isn't a fan of the MCU I find it's slavish devotion to that universe distracting. But I do truly enjoy Holland's take on the hero and the way the films have injected a level of fun and adventure into these movies. Far From Home is a perfect example of all that I like and dislike about this approach.

But there was more than just the MCU connective tissue which pulled me from the film. Villains make or break superhero films and this one is severely problematic. Without spoiling anything Mysterio is a villain with a wonderful inspiration who is executed poorly. I love, love, love the action sequences of his battles with Peter and I love the idea of his character, but the way his arc plays out is Mandarin reveal bad. It all starts about a third of the way through the movie when he starts monologuing in a horrible, horrible scene. It's the kind of monologuing The Incredibles critiques... and it's to his co-conspirators. He basically explains his plans to the people who are in on his plans with him!!

And the Nick Fury story line is pretty much BS too. Without spoiling the post-credit scene (which doesn't fix this storyline problem by the way) we are supposed to assume SHIELD is just that poorly run that Mysterio is able to pull the wool over their eyes so damn easily. But it is more than that. The whole nefarious scheme relies on too many coincidences (the villain even says "well that wasn't so hard" at one point) to be believable.

So I thought the main plot driving the film was flimsy and unbelievable. I also felt all the Endgame references were forced and distracting. Seriously the age difference thing is poorly explained and when you think about a really bad idea. Like with Homecoming, I could have done with a lot less Iron Man. Maybe one day Spider-man will get his own movie again. Maybe.

But there were things I really liked.

Once again I love Holland's take on Spidey. He imbues just an energy and a adolescent energy that no cinematic Spider-man had captured before (with the sole exception of the recent Spider-verse). His anachronistic relationships with MJ and Mae and his diverse peer group is so much fun to watch and well constructed when they aren't trying to fit in characters from other movies. In fact the mid-credits end scene (sure to be controversial) with a familiar face from the Maguire movies, was so refreshing for being related to Spidey himself instead of to the MCU at large.

As I mentioned, the action sequences are amazing. Visually the film is stunning. The way Mysterio fights Peter is remarkable and so exciting to watch. While I didn't like his story I did like his abilities and his fighting style.

When Far From Home is about Peter Parker and his struggles as a teen being a hero, and when he's fighting a criminal with power to make him question all that he sees, I enjoyed the film. When it's forcing us to think about the "blip" and connections to alien invasions that have nothing to do with the plot I get frustrated. And when it actually insults my intelligence by having it's villain conveniently pull of a scheme that is rather transparent (no pun intended) by relying on a number of coincidences I get mad.

While I know it's probably too much to ask, I hope one day to see Holland in a Spider-man movie, not a Spider-man chapter of the MCU series.

Spider-man Far From Home 
Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Samuel L. Jackson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Cobie Smulders, John Favreau, Marisa Tomei
Director: John Watts
Writers: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers