So here’s another batch of flicks I saw at some point this summer but have neglected to review so far in My Movie Diary. It’s been some time since I saw some of them, and I’m trying to get through a lot of flicks, so some of these are a bit shorter than my usual spiels…
(r) = repeat viewing
Justice League (2017) – DC’s laughably obvious and hamfisted attempts to mimic Marvel’s superhero success continue with this star-studded team-up, clearly modeled on The Avengers. This languidly paced dud brings together DC’s stable of legendary heroes, including Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and the Flash, to take on the ubiquitous villains bent on intergalactic destruction. The writers don’t stray too far from the Avengers template, and the villains’ quest for the three building blocks of “The Unity” is so baldly similar to Thanos’ search for the Infinity Stones that it hardly bears mentioning. Everything about this flick screams “cut-rate Marvel” – even the animated opener that shows all the DC heroes before morphing into the logo is exactly the same as Marvel’s opener! The movie plods along sullenly, following Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne/Batman as he assembles his team of mismatched heroes. After the success of her own film, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman has clearly been given a few extra scenes, including an opening fight that couldn’t be more obviously spliced in from out of nowhere. But Affleck’s emotionless, leaden take on Batman drains the life out of everything around him, and even Gadot’s natural charisma gets lost in the abyss. She’s got nothing to work with here, people. The only bits that sparkle are Gadot’s occasional flirtations with Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, to the point that you wish everyone else would just go away so you could just watch these two gorgeous humans do whatever they felt like doing. I saw this in July and even now can’t totally remember how it ends, so that should tell you something about its quality. I assume the good guys won. My notes say that there’s even a post-credits scene tacked on that leads into the next flick, so I guess the Circle of Marvel Mimicry is complete.
Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire (2005) (r) – Saw this at the Hollywood Bowl, with live orchestral accompaniment by the L.A. Philharmonic. Pretty cool, it’s amazing how the players can sync themselves up so perfectly with the film as it’s running. My wife and son are both big Harry Potter fans, so I’d seen this flick a bunch of times already. It’s definitely one of the better Potter flicks, with some memorable set-pieces built around the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Goblet of Fire is a really long and involved tome, and the filmmakers had to cram a lot of plot machinations in here, so there’s no time for any nuance as they race from one confrontation to the next. It’s easy to get whiplash as they introduce one character and twist after another, and I really wonder if people who haven’t read the book would care to try to keep pace with it. Decently fun flick, though, and seeing it with the live orchestra was a really cool experience.
Gun Crazy (1950) (r) – My wife hadn’t seen this old noir classic before, so I happily rewatched it with her a few months ago. I came away impressed all over again. Of course, the ingenious one-shot heist scene is rightfully considered one of the most innovative (and important) scenes in all of noir, but Gun Crazy boasts a handful of scenes that are almost as good. It has a naturalistic feel that sets it apart from a lot of flicks from this era. Its claustrophobic worldview traps the lead couple squarely in fate’s merciless headlights, but everything about the path that leads them there seems pretty believable as it unfolds. This is a movie you should have seen a long time ago, so go watch it if you haven’t.
The Gumball Rally (1976) – I don’t know why, but I thought this might have some merit as a 70s car chase flick. It doesn’t. It’s basically a (slightly) classier version of Cannonball Run, following a motley collection of wealthy assholes as they compete in an illegal coast-to-coast car race. It’s not funny, exciting, or particularly well made. Because it was made in the 70s, it does take itself a shade too seriously, so it’s got that going for it. Crap flick, I didn’t even watch it to the end, which is pretty rare for me.
Dark Passage (1948) (r) – Another Saturday night spent rewatching an old noir with my wife, although this Bogie and Bacall opus is considerably crappier than Gun Crazy. For some reason, I remembered this flick as being okay, but the story is pretty ridiculous. The film opens interestingly enough, with a jailbreak that’s shot from the escapee’s point of view. The flick continues to unspool its story in the first person, until the protagonist gets a dodgy underground plastic surgeon to change his face and make it look like Humphrey Bogart’s. It seems that Bogie was framed for the murder of his wife, and only wealthy ingenue and amateur courtroom sleuth Lauren Bacall believes him. What good luck that she happened to be driving by just as Bogart escaped from prison! What bad luck that she’s friends with the very person who provided key testimony against Bogart at the big trial! What good luck that the cab that Bogart randomly hops into is driven by a cabbie who knows an illegal plastic surgeon! The whole movie is just a series of increasingly improbable coincidences, leading up to a final reveal of the real murderer that really doesn’t make much sense at all. None of these characters behave with anything resembling actual human behavior, and even Bogart and Bacall’s legendary chemistry can’t save this dubious plot.
Dunkirk (2017) – I don’t want to end this batch of flicks on a down note, so instead I’ll delve into Dunkirk, easily one of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year. Christopher Nolan’s masterful film tells the story of Dunkirk by interweaving three separate stories that take place in three distinct timelines. One story follows a soldier over the course of a week as he tries to find a way off of the doomed beach. The second takes place during the span of one day, telling the tale of one of the privately owned civilian boats that set off from England to shuttle trapped soldiers off that same beach. Finally, Tom Hardy plays an RAF pilot trying to stave off Nazi bombers in a story that only spans one hour. All three storylines eventually intersect, with the result being that the audience gets a truly multi-faceted understanding of the events. Trying to intercut three stories moving at three speeds might seem crazy, but Nolan pulls it off beautifully. He doesn’t make hard cuts from one timeline to the next, but blends them together by maintaining the same ominous score through the transitions. It really pulls the three stories together into one, and gives the film a scope it couldn’t have achieved otherwise. It’s pretty incredible the way Nolan builds each of the stories toward (and through) the same moment in time, with the momentum of each timeline working in perfect sync with the other two. Way back in Memento, Nolan pulled off one of the most audacious timeline stunts in film, telling his story backwards in order to trap viewers in the mindset of its memory-challenged protagonist. What he’s done here, though, is even more impressive. Dunkirk‘s three storylines present the real historical events from a variety of perspectives, seamlessly blending points of view into something that feels like the truth. I know, it’s a movie, but I don’t think it would actually be possible to tell a fictionalized version of the story of Dunkirk any better than Nolan has here. This is without a doubt one of the best war movies I’ve ever seen.
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