Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Podcast: Episode 27 - Wonder Woman 1984

In this tension-filled episode Barry and I discuss the much anticipated Wonder Woman 1984. Highlights include shared frustrations over the movie‘s missed opportunities, multiple mispronunciations of Gal Gadot’s name and an enraged me viciously assaulting Barry over a misunderstanding.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Ep. 27 - Wonder Woman 1984

Thank you for listening and Happy New Year!!

©2021

Just when you thought 2020 couldn't get any worse - along comes 'Wonder Woman 1984'

 Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 12 seconds

Wonder Women 1984 is the horrendous, man-hating, militaristic, imperialist movie no one wanted but that 2020 deserves.

On Christmas Day the highly anticipated Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) premiered in theatres and on the streaming service HBO Max. The film, co-written and directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot, is the sequel to the smash hit 2017 film Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman (2017) wasn’t a perfect movie by any stretch, but it was a well-crafted, thoroughly entertaining superhero origin story. The film featured a star making performance from the gloriously gorgeous Gal Gadot and tapped into the anti-Trump feminist zeitgeist of the time and was handsomely rewarded with a hefty $822 million box office.

As for Wonder Woman 1984, it is the exact opposite of Wonder Woman as everything good about the original is bludgeoned to death in the sequel.

In Wonder Woman, Gadot’s character, Diana/Wonder Woman is forced into a fish-out-of-water scenario and must adapt to the rigid confines of feminine etiquette in 1918, a task rife with comedy for an Amazonian warrior princess. This played to Gadot’s strengths as an actress and her impassioned naivety came off as charming and magnetic.

In WW84, the fish-out-of-water is Steve (Chris Pine), Diana’s resurrected boyfriend…and that falls entirely flat and fails miserably. The predictably unclever lowlight of which is a 1980’s fashion montage that features a recurring American flag fanny pack.

Diana is no longer naïve in WW84 but the bearer of burdens, and this shift brutally exposes Gadot as being a wooden, severely limited, remarkably dead-eyed and dull actress.

As for the plot of WW84, it is so incoherent as to be inconceivable. At one point a tertiary character yells out “what the hell is going on here!” and I completely concurred with that sentiment. I had almost no clue what the hell was happening most of the time in this movie, but thankfully the characters were so poorly written and dreadfully acted that I didn’t care.

As for the film’s politics…if you like white male hating movies that feel like two and a half hour long commercials for American and Israeli militarism and imperialism...Wonder Woman 1984 is the movie for you.

Wonder Woman (2017) succeeded because it wasn’t heavy handed in its cultural politics, but no such deftness and delicacy is on display in WW84.  

The film makes perfectly clear that white guys, Steve the lone exception, are irredeemably evil and painfully one-dimensional. To prove this point there are endless scenes of both Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) and Diana being sexually harassed by 80’s guys, all of them white except for an Asian guy who is apparently white guy adjacent.

White guys are even revealed as the reason why the film’s main villain, Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal)- a Latino, is bad. A flashback shows his villainy being born when he was bullied as a child by…you guessed it…evil white guys!

Another group held up as evil are Middle Easterners. There’s an “Egyptian” Emir who’s so bad he wishes for and receives a giant wall that encircles his Caliphate-esque kingdom of Bialya. The giant wall sprouts up and cuts off water to poor people and essentially imprisons them…which sounds a lot like Israel’s West Bank wall used against Palestinians…but of course in a supreme bit of Orwellianism in action, in Wonder Woman 1984 the bad guys creating the wall aren’t Israelis but Arabs.

The film’s unsubtle and unsurprising politics are made shamelessly clear when Gadot, who as a former Miss Israel (2004) and a former soldier in the Israeli Defense Force is a walking avatar for Israel, fights a convoy of heavily armed Arabs, and saves Arab children from being killed by those same evil Arab men.

Ultimately, if you love America’s belligerent foreign policy, especially in the Middle East and in relation to Russia…you’ll definitely connect with WW84.

Repulsive politics aside, this film is just appallingly directed by Patty Jenkins, as it is humorless, tedious and devoid of any drama, tension or notable action.

Jenkins made a name for herself with Wonder Woman, and has since signed a deal to direct some Star Wars movies, but her dismal work on WW84 has exposed her, just like it did Gadot, as an extremely limited one-trick pony.

Jenkins’ inability to shoot a decent fight scene, and to exploit the 80’s for comedy and cultural relevance, are calamitous comic book cinema crimes of negligence.

Jenkins doesn’t even plumb the plethora of popular 80’s music in order to set tone and place and appease her nostalgia-craving audience, a tactic used to great success by recent tv shows like Stranger Things. Unbelievably there isn’t a single 80’s song in the entire film, and that is the most monstrous moviemaking malpractice imaginable!

WW84 saves the worst for last as in its climactic scene Gadot gives a monologue directly to the camera meant to be profound and poignant that is pretentious and patronizing…which is eerily reminiscent of Gadot’s other 2020 misfire, the “Imagine” viral video. In that disastrous effort she and her fabulously wealthy celebrity friends condescendingly sing John Lennon’s saccharine anthem in a tone-deaf show of faux solidarity with those poor little people suffering during the pandemic.

A testament to how unbelievably unbearable this year has been is the fact that the best Gal Gadot movie released in 2020 was “Imagine”. It’s entirely fitting that this awful, dreadful, no-good year should end with a movie as awful, dreadful, and no-good as Wonder Woman 1984.

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A dreadfully tedious and idiotic movie that pales in comparison to the first Wonder Woman from 2017.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Just When You Thought Celebrities Couldn't Get Any Worse, the "I Take Responsibility" Video Comes Out

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 21 seconds

In response to America’s racial unrest, Hollywood celebrities once again feel the need to flex their virtue signaling muscles with a nauseating, self-serving video.

Unfortunately for us, Hollywood never lets a good crisis go to waste.

First there was the coronavirus pandemic.

Hollywood bravely responded to that calamity with Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot, and a cavalcade of her clueless celebrity friends putting out a video of themselves “singing” John Lennon’s saccharine anthem Imagine.

The world responded by collectively throwing up in its mouth.

With Imagine, Gadot and company appeared to have the Cringe-Worthy Video of the Year Award all wrapped up.

But then there was the police murder of George Floyd, an unarmed and handcuffed black man in Minneapolis, followed by protests, riots and looting across the country.

A new collection of entertainment industry nitwits has responded to that catastrophe with an anti-racism video titled ‘I Take Responsibility’.

Ladies and gentleman, the race for the Cringe-Worthy Video Crown has a new front-runner.

‘I Take Responsibility’ features Sarah Paulson, Aaron Paul, Kesha, Bethany Joy Lenz, Kristen Bell, Justin Theroux, Debra Messing, Mark Duplass, Bryce Dallas Howard, Julianne Moore, Piper Perabo, Stanley Tucci, Ilana Glazer, and Aly Raisman telling us they “take responsibility” and “stand against hate”.

The unintentional comedy of the video is absolutely off the charts, as it is littered with sub-textual ironies like the fact that it is shot in black and white (apparently it doesn’t see color!) and is entirely devoid of any racial or ethnic diversity.

One of the more hysterical moments is when these Hollywood dopes repeatedly tell us that they “take responsibility” for “every not so funny joke, every unfair stereotype”.

What about the funny jokes and the fair stereotypes? Who is going to take responsibility for those? Wouldn’t a video made by the people taking responsibility for the funny jokes and fair stereotypes be much more enlightening and entertaining than this dour diatribe?

Other lowlights of ‘I Take Responsibility’ are the egregiously brutal performances.

Aaron Paul, who is one of the worst actors of his, or any other, generation, strains so hard to be credible he appears to be actually moving his bowels on camera. And if you listen closely enough when he speaks, you can actually hear the wind whistle through the vacant and cavernous void where his brain should be.

Debra Messing only makes a brief appearance and seems to have been abruptly awoken from a nap to record her lines. I understand why she is so tired, as she looks like she was up all night haunting houses. Yikes.

The talented Sarah Paulson brings much-needed gravitas to the festivities in the form of ridiculously oversized glasses. As everyone knows, it is a scientifically proven fact that people who wear oversized glasses are both serious and incapable of racism…especially when they have an adorable lisp.

Academy Award winner Julianne Moore appears in the video and nobly casts hyperbole aside and tells the unvarnished truth when she adamantly declares “black people are being slaughtered in the streets!”

I’d be willing to bet that not only are the streets where Ms. Moore lives devoid of slaughtered black people, they are most likely devoid of all black people.

Stanley Tucci and Justin Theroux get in on the act by not acting at all. They are so flat and dead eyed they could’ve, and should’ve, been reading from the phone book.

Speaking of reading…by far my favorite part of the video is the fact that these actors and actresses, who literally memorize dialogue for a living (and they make a very good living), apparently care so little about “taking responsibility” and “standing against hate” that they cannot be bothered to put in the least amount of effort and memorize their idiotic mini-monologue.

This cornucopia of clowns may have set out to highlight how “not racist” they are, but instead, by obviously reading their lines, they only proved how entitled and lazy they truly are.

As I watched this train wreck I couldn’t help but wonder…who is the target audience for this thing?

The answer is self-evident, as the video is made solely for the people in it and their fellow privileged Hollywood elites who enjoy watching masturbatory displays of faux, me-first moralism.

As a not-so-proud resident of Los Angeles and an active member of both the entertainment business and the creative community, I do hereby declare that I do NOT take responsibility for anything these mindless morons vomit out onto the world.

They claim to stand against hate…how impotently and insipidly trite of them.

In contrast…I stand against virtue signaling. I stand against moral preening. I stand against the vain, vacuous and vapid pandering of elitist prigs. I stand against the shameless self-indulgence and self-righteousness of Hollywood narcissists too enthralled by their own sense of superiority to see that they are utterly and ridiculously absurd.

In conclusion, I think I speak for every sentient being in the universe when I take a knee and plead with these imbecilic celebrities to pretty, pretty please…from now on, just…Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Coronavirus Pandemic is Bad, but the Epidemic of Incessant Celebrity Attention Seeking is Much, Much Worse

Estimated reading Time: 3 minutes 33 seconds

A bevy of house bound celebrities have turned a global calamity into a stage 5 narcissism outbreak, where they compulsively spew their mindless thoughts and feelings upon the rest of us.

Coronavirus is a terrible malady that is killing people and the economy, but it isn’t the most pernicious pandemic afflicting the globe right now. No, the most diabolical disease currently in circulation is the dreaded Celebrivirus.

The onset of the Celebrivirus starts with a steady stream of verbal diarrhea gushing forth from empty-headed, self-absorbed, attention-starved celebrities, which is quickly followed by convulsive puking and rage headaches from the rest of us.

The most recent outbreak of Celebrivirus began with a plethora of Covid-19 related videos from a cavalcade of self-aggrandizing stars.

For instance, the consistently empty-headed Matthew McConaghey thought now was a good time to espouse his incoherent optimism regarding coronavirus.

The Typhoid Mary of Celebrivirus, Madonna, that aging taut-faced tart, rose from the grave that is her moribund career so that the she could, in the nude of course, benevolently inform us that Covid-19 has, in fact, made us all equal.

The perpetually petulant Serena Williams publicly lamented that she was “stressed” over the coronavirus. Poor Serena doesn’t have to worry about losing her job, or being evicted, no she’s stressed because she is safely tucked away in her mansion with her husband, daughter and her gobs of money.

Serena explained, “I don't hang out with anyone, and when I say anyone I mean my daughter. She coughed, I got angry and gave her a side-eye. I gave her that 'angry Serena' and then I got sad.”

Shock of shocks that Serena’s number one priority is the well-being of Serena, and not the health of her toddler daughter. Serena has a boatload of tennis championships, but it seems like the title that will forever elude her is Mother of the Year.

The Celebrivirus that forced McConaghey, Madonna and Serena to compulsively share their idiocy, has also mutated into song version.

Self-adoring U2 front man Bono caught the Celebrivirus bug and decided to share with humanity an original song he conjured related to Covid-19. Yikes…this song is pretentious EVEN FOR BONO, the Crown Prince of Pretension. Note to aging restless rockstars recording shelter-in-place mediocrity: At least make it remotely decent before you drown us in pompous indulgence*.

The most egregious of all the Celebrivirus videos came from Gal Gadot of Wonder Woman fame, who recruited a bunch of her patronizing and condescending celebrity friends like Kristen Wiig, Jamie Dornan, Mark Ruffalo, Amy Adams, Sarah Silverman, James Marsden, Natalie Portman, Sia, Labrinth, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Kravitz and Will Ferrell, who looked like he had just ingested his body weight in cocaine, to sing a truly nauseating version of John Lennon’s iconic kumbaya knock-off “Imagine”.

On the best of days “Imagine” is a cringe-worthy number, but in the hands of these smug and self-satisfied jackasses it rockets into the stratosphere of saccharine dreadfulness.

If John Lennon were alive to see this cloying, celebrity fueled monstrosity he would beat Mark David Chapman to the punch and shoot himself in front of the Dakota Building just to end his own mortification and misery.

The fact that these filthy rich stars, not a single one of which is not a multi-millionaire, chose to un-ironically sing the lyric, “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man”, when there are millions of people potentially facing evictions from their apartments, foreclosures on their homes, losing their jobs and life savings, not to mention the fear of getting sick and dying, is a staggering testament to their delusional fantasism and fatuousness.

Yes Wonder Woman and friends, people can imagine life with no possessions because most of them live a life with few or no possessions…especially now since the ranks of the unemployed are swelling from the coronavirus depression.

It is easy for these inane imbeciles to sing about a world of no greed or hunger because they are rich and nourished. I wonder if they hum “Imagine” to themselves as they drive past the filthy hordes living in cardboard boxes on the street?

It would have been less offensive if Gal and her cornucopia of celebrity clowns started a band named The Marie Antoinette’s then wrote and performed their new song titled “Let Them Eat Cake”.

These oblivious buffoons are so in the thrall of the Celebrivirus they actually thought their syrupy crooning from the security of their golden-gated castles would ingratiate them to the masses rather than inflame hatred.

When I watched these various vacuous and vapid Celebrivirus videos, I didn’t have the insipid “Imagine” playing in my mind. No, my soundtrack was Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” with its wishful lyric, “when I am king, you will be first against the wall, with your opinion which is of no consequence at all”. 

On the bright side, at least the Celebrivirus is bringing ordinary people together out of common animosity toward these despised narcissistic nitwits. I know hate is supposed to be bad, but I think in this case it is healthy and helps to keep our collective immune system robust.

As for a cure for the dreaded Celebrivirus, scientists have found only one…and that is for celebrities to simply keep their moronic mouths shut. In other words…there is no cure.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

*This quote courtesy of my good friend…and an even better poet - The Irishman.

©2020

Do You Believe in Miracles? Parasites Shocking and Glorious Upset Win at the Oscars

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 37 seconds

The 92nd Oscars were a chaotic and turbulent train wreck, until Parasite shocked the world and won Best Picture.

In 1980 the overwhelming underdog U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey beat the juggernaut Soviet Union 4-3 in the semifinal game of the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. As a result of this improbable win, dubbed the Miracle on Ice, the rag tag U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.

When the final seconds of the Miracle on Ice ticked down the play-by-play announcer Al Michaels gave his now iconic call of “Do you believe in miracles?”

It is a shame Al Michaels wasn’t doing the play-by-play for the Oscars last night…as the heavy favorite and presumed winner, 1917, went down hard in defeat to the Korean film Parasite, not only in the Best Picture race but also in Best Director. Parasite became the first foreign language film to ever win Best Picture. Do you believe in miracles?

The irony of Parasite’s completely unpredictable victory is that the Oscar show itself, was a predictably scattershot mess.

The show dragged on for three hours and thirty-one interminable minutes.  Renee Zellweger’s Best Actress acceptance speech alone took up three hours and twenty minutes. Do you believe in miracles? It would be a miracle if Renee wasn’t still talking over at the Dolby theatre right now, rambling on as she named all the people that are heroes in the world…one by one.

The show opened with a very disjointed musical number by singer and actress Janelle Monae who was pretending to be Mr. Rodgers. Monae had a mild wardrobe malfunction where her blouse was accidentally unbuttoned in front of her breasts and she couldn’t get her coat off and Mr. Rodger’s sweater on. Welcome to the Oscars everybody!

After that the evening was chock full of the same stereotypical politically correct posing and pandering we’ve come to expect from Hollywood on its big night…all of which was greeted with unabashed adoration by the audience in the echo chamber that is the Dolby theatre.

A plethora of stars and award winners, including Best Supporting Actor winner Brad Pitt, trotted out a variety of political and social complaints that were all too familiar. Among the buzzwords that made appearances were ”representation”, “inclusion” and “diversity”.

Another one of the night’s big topics was women’s issues.

There were proclamations from stars Brie Larson, Gal Gadot and Sigourney Weaver that all women are superheroes, and that it is tiresome and maybe misogynistic for women to have to keep answering the question of “what is it like to be a woman in Hollywood?”

I wonder, would Larson, Gadot and Weaver also complain if no one asked them what it was like to be a woman in Hollywood? Do you believe in miracles? Well, it would be a miracle if the answer is anything other than yes.

As the evening wore on the show became more and more unintelligible. Eminem performed a song to pay homage to how songs are used in movies sometimes. Greta Thurnberg showed up in a film clip. Some guy I have never heard of who was dressed like a waiter at a moderately priced suburban restaurant did a rap that summarized the night. A group of foreign women sang some terrible song from Frozen 2 with Idina Menzel for some inexplicable reason.  It would be a miracle if any of these things made any sense.

As the night wore on and on and on…things became more and more unhinged. A highlight was Joaquin Phoenix’s entirely expected win for Best Actor, and his acceptance speech was…well…something else.

Phoenix is a weird dude, and his speech fantastically on brand. That is not to say that he didn’t make some valid and profound points.

For instance, Phoenix was the only speaker of the entire evening who had the courage to not tell the Dolby audience what it wanted to hear. In fact, Joaquin took the audience to task and talked about cancel culture and how destructive it is. Between referencing artificially inseminating a cow and stealing its calf and milk, he also said that he and the other people in that room had a tendency to think of themselves as the center of the universe. What?! Do you believe in miracles, indeed!

Then, after having won earlier for Best Original Screenplay, Bong Joon-ho won for Best Director and Al Michaels was in my head whispering about believing in miracles.

The Oscars rarely get anything right but Bong winning Best Director is a shockingly fantastic turn of events as Parasite is impeccably directed and most worthy.

And then Best Picture was up and I was ready to throw my shoe at the television when the middle-brow 1917 won, but then Parasite was announced and I was yelling like Al Michaels in my living room “Do you believe in miracles!”

And then during Parasite’s producer’s acceptance speech the Dolby Theatre house lights went down and in response the audience chanted for them to be turned back on…and they were! And I believed even more in miracles.

And then Jane Fonda did one pump fake, then another and then another…and then the greatest miracle of all occurred and she finally and officially ended the 92nd Oscars. And then I really believed in miracles!

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Justice League: A Review

***THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!***

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT: See it in the theatre if you are a comic book/superhero film fan, it is worth the effort. If you are lukewarm or ambivalent about comic book/superhero films then feel free to skip it in the theatre and see it on Netflix or cable. 

Justice League, written by Joss Whedon and Chris Terrio and directed by Zack Snyder (with re-shoots directed by Whedon), is the fifth film in the D.C. Extended Universe and is a sequel to Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. The film is the completion of the origin story of the Justice League, which is a collection of superheroes who join together to fight evil. The film stars Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Mamoa, Ezra Miller and Henry Cavill. 

My experience of Justice League was very similar to my experience of 2016's Batman v. Superman (BvS). I did not see Batman v. Superman until very late in its theatrical run, therefore even though I do not read reviews, I had seen enough headlines to understand that the film was not widely loved…or even mildly liked. With my expectations very low I went and saw Batman v. Superman and much to my shock and amazement I joined the rarest of groups, the handful of people who actually enjoyed Batman v Superman a great deal. It wasn't a perfect movie but it was certainly better than all of the negative buzz that was floating around about it.

When Justice League came out last month on November 17th, I once again avoided reviews but was still exposed to a deluge of negative buzz surrounding the film before I saw it on December 19. And just like when I saw Batman v. Superman, the theatre for Justice League was deserted except for the three other people.  And…just like with Batman v. Superman, my expectations were in the gutter for Justice League and either in spite of or because of that, the movie was able to greatly exceed them leaving me most pleasantly surprised. 

Justice League is supposed to be DC's attempt (at Warner Brothers insistence) at "lightening things up" from the dark themes and tone of BvS and being more "audience friendly". While I am not a fan of "lightening things up" in general and was attracted to the darkness of Batman v. Superman, I was not turned off by the more approachable tone of Justice League. Would I have liked a much darker version? Most definitely…but Justice League held onto enough darkness that it maintained a certain superhero gravitas that I found compelling. 

It has been my experience that while the rest of the world adores the Marvel franchise, I am more temperamentally suited for the brooding DC universe. The DC films have on the whole been pretty uneven, with Batman v. Superman, Wonder Woman and Justice League being pretty good and Suicide Squad and Man of Steel being abysmally bad. What I liked about Batman v. Superman and Justice League are that they are both cloaked in a very heavy, existential angst that regular folk may find boring and impenetrable, but which I find very philosophically intriguing and creatively courageous. In contrast, I find the Marvel films to be much too light-hearted and frivolous and to be lacking in visual and narrative texture. Marvel films are made for kids while DC films, at least Batman v. Superman and Justice League, are made for tormented kids who've grown old. While Justice League is definitely not a great film, it is probably at best an average cinematic venture, but it is still considerably better than many of the Marvel/Avenger movies. 

Justice League benefits greatly from Zack Snyder's visual style that gives the film a distinct look and feel that the flat and cinematically dull Marvel films lack entirely. Snyder's Justice League world looks like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape, which is only heightened by its being populated  by hordes of villains, para-demons, who may very well have flown out of a Bosch painting. Snyder has always thrived when it comes to giving a film a distinguishing and original look, and so it is with Justice League.

On the other hand, Snyder has always struggled with narrative clarity and cohesion and while he doesn't excel at that in Justice League, he doesn't entirely flounder either. Justice League is more coherently structured than Batman v. Superman and flows better, that comes at the expense of dumbing things down and settling for a standard and generic approach over a more complex and challenging one.

I had a chance to see the extended directors cut of Batman v Superman and thought it added a great deal to the film and I hope that Warner Brothers releases an extended Zack Snyder cut of Justice League as well at some point as I think that Snyder can be at his best when he is free of the restraints of running length and focus groups. 

Justice League is greatly enhanced by a top notch cast that all do solid if not spectacular work. I realize I am in the minority here but I think Ben Affleck does a terrific job as Batman. Affleck's caped crusader is a grizzled, aching and aging icon struggling to keep up with his more supernaturally endowed colleagues and keep the undefeated father time at bay. Affleck is not an actor whose work I have been impressed with over his career, but his brooding Batman is second only to Christian Bale, and it isn't a distant second either.

Gal Gadot is simply sublime as Wonder Woman for the second time this year. Gadot is such a charismatic, magnetic and dynamic power it is impossible to keep your eyes off of her when she is on screen. Gadot's commanding screen presence never feels forced or disingenuous, but always feels grounded, earthy and forceful.  

Jason Mamoa and Ezra Miller do solid supporting work as Aquaman and Flash. Their roles are used to good comedic effect in Justice League (they do most of the previously mentioned "lightening up") but they could have been greatly bungled in the hands of lesser actors. Both Mamoa and Miller never push too hard and they make specific choices for their characters while never settling for half measures when bringing them to life. I don't know if Aquaman or the Flash will be able to carry a film on their own, but we shall see soon enough. 

As for my biggest issues with Justice League…the first and most pressing issue was that the CGI seemed to be rather sub par. Steppenwolf was the arch villain in the film and instead of using a human actor, they made him entirely of CGI. The CGI simply did not look real or believable and so it felt like the members of the Justice League were fighting a really evil cartoon character. 

Another example of bad CGI is such a remarkable tale it demands retelling. The opening scene of the film shows a flashback of Henry Cavill as Superman being interviewed on a video phone by some local kids. Cavill, who is impossibly handsome, looks very...weird in the scene. I couldn't place it at first, but there was something wrong with his face. As I looked closer I could see his mouth was deformed. I started wondering if Henry Cavill in real life had an accident or been sick and was left with some sort of facial paralysis or something. I noticed the same issue at other points in the film featuring Cavill as well and was completely distracted by it every time. When I got home I searched the internet and found out the story behind the bizarre look of Superman. 

The story goes that Cavill was signed on to shoot Mission Impossible 6 (God help us all) once he wrapped shooting Justice League. Justice League director Zack Snyder stepped away from the film in post-production due to the death of his daughter and Joss Whedon stepped in to replace him. The studio wanted Whedon to do a plethora of re-shoots to change the tone of the film which they feared was too dark like Batman v. Superman. Whedon complied and did a great deal of re-shoots to the sum of $25 million. Bringing back Cavill for Superman was tricky though because he was currently shooting MI6 and had grown a mustache for his role and was contractually obligated to not shave it off for the duration of that shoot. So Warner Brothers, the studio of Justice League, which had a budget of $300 million, was at the mercy of Paramount, the home studio of Mission Impossible, in regards to their star Superman. Paramount, not surprisingly since they are not in the business of making life easy for their competition, wouldn't let Cavill get rid of the mustache. So billion dollar company Warner Brothers, who was spending $300 million on Justice League, was not allowed to walk down to CVS and get a Bic razor for 99 cents in order to shave the face of the star of their movie. The movie business is completely and utterly insane. 

Superman and Steppenwolf's faces aren't the only missteps in Justice League. The enormity of the plot was a bit burdensome as well. All of these superhero movies now revolve around end of the world cataclysms that seem to me to be overkill. Whether it is the Justice League or the Avengers or anyone else, the threat of global annihilation is so overplayed as to be ridiculously redundant. And as much as I think Steppenwolf in theory is an excellent villain (although as stated he didn't look right in the film) and his minions the para-demons are quality Miltonian/Boschean foils, the scenario presented by their assault on Earth felt much too similar to The Avengers plots with Loki or Ultron. In execution I think Justice League pulled that scenario off better than The Avengers, but that doesn't make their lack of originality any less of a creative sin. 

The political subtext of Justice League is pretty interesting. Steppenwolf is a Putin-esque, power hungry warlord who begins his quest for total world domination in what is alleged to be a small Russian town but looks an awful lot like Chernobyl in Ukraine. Justice League accurately captures the divided mess that is our current world as we stagger and stumble from a uni-polar world protected by Superman/U.S. to a multi-polar world reigned over by God knows who, that acts like a bi-polar world. 

The Justice League itself is obviously a metaphor for the United Nations or the defunct League of Nations, in which the good guys protect the globe from the bad guys. Of course, life is never as clearly defined as that, and in our world it is becoming more and more difficult to discover who is good and who is bad. To Justice League's credit, the good guys aren't always so good and they struggle to find their place in the world.

After seeing Justice League I did something I rarely do, which is go read other reviews of the film. Critics have savaged the film with an unabashed glee and seem to have a pre-disposition against the movie. While it was never stated, I think that predisposition to critical displeasure with Justice League (and Batman V. Superman) may have to do with critics subconsciously comparing the film to the last "Batman" movies which were Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy which are a far, far superior collection of films. Any superhero films compared to the Dark Knight Trilogy will pale in comparison as Nolan has raised the superhero bar beyond anyone’s reach with those phenomenal films. To be extremely clear, Batman v. Superman and Justice League are not The Dark Knight series, not even remotely close, but that doesn't mean they are completely devoid of any redeeming value.

The mythic and archetypal energies at the core of all of these these superhero stories, be they DC or Marvel, is the same, it is just the window dressing that changes. The core archetypes at the heart of superhero stories are what resonate with our collective psyches. Just as the Greeks told stories of their Gods, we tell stories of our mythic gods…Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Flash. These comic book characters and the Greek gods are the same archetypes but are only wearing different masks. 

In conclusion, I found Justice League to be a pleasant surprise of a movie that wasn't great, but was certainly better than its buzz would indicate. Justice League is a solid companion piece to Batman v Superman and in fact enhances that film a great deal in hindsight. If you love superhero films then I recommend you go see Justice League in the theatre while it is still there. If you are lukewarm or ambivalent about superhero films then you can definitely skip it in the theatre and catch it at your leisure on cable or Netflix. And finally, in this holiday season when we anticipate a bounty of gifts beneath the Christmas tree, let Justice League be a lesson to us all, that low expectations are the golden key to a happy existence. 

©2017

Wonder Woman : A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!****

My Rating : 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation : SEE IT IN THE THEATRE.

Wonder Woman, written by Allan Heinberg and directed by Patty Jenkins, is the story of the DC Comics superhero Wonder Woman, the Amazonian Warrior-Princess. The film stars Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, with Chris Pine, David Thewlis, Robin Wright and Connie Nielson in supporting roles. 

Just to set the record straight…I have always loved Wonder Woman. When I was a little kid, Lynda Carter starred on the TV show Wonder Woman and I watched religiously. Back then, every year for Halloween I would dress up as Wonder Woman. That tradition has continued well into my adulthood and has extend beyond Halloween. In fact, I am wearing my Wonder Woman garb at this exact moment as I type. Ok, truth be told, nothing in this paragraph is true. Well, not nothing, Lynda Carter did play Wonder Woman on TV in my childhood, but I never watched, and frankly, sorry ladies, but I have little to no interest in Wonder Woman as a character. I know, I know, I am a misogynist mansplainer for the patriarchy…guilty as charged.

Wonder Woman, in case you do not know, is the fourth film in the current DC Universe, with the first three being Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad. All three of the previous films have been very poorly received by critics, and even though they have made gobs of money, audiences haven't been too thrilled with them either. Like most, I greatly disliked Man of Steel and Suicide Squad and unlike most, I actually enjoyed Batman v Superman. So when I heard Wonder Woman was coming out, due to the previous films and my own feelings about the character, I was a bit ambivalent, to say the least. That said, I readily admit that when Wonder Woman appeared in the Batman v Superman film from last year, I thought she jumped off the screen and was one of the better elements of the film.

I was not alone in my skepticism about the film leading up to its release. While the recent buzz surrounding Wonder Woman has been overwhelmingly positive, that hasn't always been the case. Just this year there were rumblings that Wonder Woman was a disaster waiting to happen and that Warner Brothers were scared to death they had a gigantic flop on their hands. The box office receipts, nearly $500 million so far, strongly suggests those fears were entirely unfounded.

Quite to the contrary, in fact, Wonder Woman has tapped into a nerve and is resonating across our cultural consciousness like none of the previous DC films were able. Women in particular have embraced the film as a feminist power totem and have reported crying during scenes where the female superhero is at her most forceful. I knew all of this heading into the film, and while that got me excited to see the movie, I assumed my high expectations would not be met. I was totally wrong.

Simply stated, Wonder Woman is as good a superhero origin story as you are going to get. Is it a perfect film? No, not even close, but it is a really good superhero movie that is exceedingly well made, acted and entertaining. 

The key to the film is that it is grounded in reality, and from that reality all of its power flows. Set in Europe during World War I, the film does not shy away from the brutality and suffering inherent in war. Part of Wonder Woman's appeal is that she has a pure heart and wants to help and save everyone, and cannot grasp the cold and callous approach of mankind that permeates the war to end all wars. 

A lot has been said about the tone of Wonder Woman, which is lighter and more humorous than the previous DC films. While this is true, that humor is never forced, rather it is born out of the main character's orientation, or disorientation as the case may be, to the film's reality. It is funny, for instance, that Wonder Woman has to learn the baffling female etiquette demanded by a male dominated world. To the film's great credit, it never pushes or distracts with its comedy or lightheartedness like the Marvel films do, it lets that humor grow spontaneously out of setting and situation. 

Director Patty Jenkins does a stellar job with the look of the film. All of the DC films have a grainy, gritty and dark visuals, and Wonder Woman is no exception, but that effect works exceedingly well in bringing this period piece to life and making it feel real. Jenkins does a remarkable job of setting the right tone and maintaining a solid balance between love story, action, comedy and drama. Jenkins walks a tightrope, and never falls into the trap of turning the film into a self-conscious farce, one of the weak spots of the Marvel films.

Wonder Woman does suffer from some script problems though, but that is not Jenkin's fault. The film gets a little lost trying to make itself bigger than it needs to be, but that is a problem with which nearly every superhero film struggles. I believe the wiser choice for these types of films is to do less, and be more simple, but what the hell do I know?

As for the acting, Gal Gadot does superb work as Wonder Woman. Gadot, a statuesque beauty, imbues Wonder Woman with a strength, sincerity, earnestness and ferocity that makes for a compelling character indeed. Her battle scenes are believable because of Gadot's natural grace, athleticism and magnetic intensity. 

I will be interested to see if Gadot can crossover from non-superhero action films and make a mark in pure drama. She has all of the tangible qualities, beauty, intelligence, charisma, that make for a movie star, but she also possesses the intangible qualities that make for a great actor, emotional intelligence, compassion and complexity. I hope she gets to spread her dramatic wings in the future, she has the makings of an intriguing artist.

Chris Pine continues his recent run of top notch work, following up last years stellar Hell or High Water with his turn as the love interest Steve Trevor opposite Gadot's Wonder Woman. Pine is outstanding as the rogue and daring spy trying to stop the Kaiser's war machine. His light comedic touch and dramatic sincerity elevate Wonder Woman to heights it would not see without him. 

The rest of the cast have minimal roles but do consistent work. David Thewlis, Danny Huston, Ewen Bremmer and Said Taghmaoui solidly buttress Gadot and Pine's more demanding work. And Lucy Davis does exceedingly well as Etta Candy, Steve Trevor's secretary. Davis brings a subtle, yet masterful bit of craftsmanship to her role which would have been a throwaway in lesser hands.

Wonder Woman is a top notch superhero movie that feels particularly relevant in a world filled with strongmen, from Trump to Erdogan, to Duterte and Putin. Wonder Woman gives voice and vision to the anima in our collective unconscious that yearns to be actualized in the real world. The reason Wonder Woman is resonating so deeply with audiences in general, and women in particular, is that the archetypal feminine energy, the anima, has lost its value and power in our modern world by trying to imitate and mimic the masculine, the animus. Wonder Woman is a force not because she is mimicking masculinity, but because she is uber-feminine. Contrary to what many women will claim, it is not men that need to learn that lesson, but women, and Wonder Woman is a great place for them to reconnect to the primal power inherit in the anima and to engage in therapeutic psychological catharsis.

In conclusion, Wonder Woman is a well made, entertaining and ultimately satisfying film that both men and women can thorughly enjoy. It isn't Citizen Kane, but it is a top-notch superhero movie that gives insight into the character Wonder Woman, and propels the DC Universe forward in a positive direction. I wholly encourage you to spend your hard earned dollars and go see Wonder Woman in the theatre. You never know, the anima you save, could be your own.

©2017