Tag: movie review

The Infinity Saga’s legacy shouldn’t overshadow Thor: Love & Thunder

The newest MCU installment has become one of the more polarizing with mixed reviews. But is the criticism deserved?

Thor Odinson is back in theaters with the colorful, guitar-riff-filled Thor: Love and Thunder. The latest Marvel Cinematic Universe entry — Taika Waititi’s second at the helm of the franchise — is much like 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok. While Love and Thunder does not reach the same heights as its predecessor (a difficult task as Ragnarok is nearly flawless), it is the character’s second-best solo movie and a worthy addition to the MCU.

But Thor’s latest adventure has become one of the most polarizing.

Love and Thunder is sitting at a 67% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, making it tied for the third-lowest in the MCU, ahead of just Eternals (47%), Thor: The Dark World (66%) and tied with The Incredible Hulk (67%).

SPOILER WARNING! DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER! WE ARE NOT TO BLAME FOR YOUR REBELLIOUS NATURE! 

Complaints about Love and Thunder include struggles with tone, relying too much on humor, and a meandering plot. In the fourth Thor installment, our hero (Chris Hemsworth) is trying to track down and stop Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) from doing exactly what his name implies: killing all the gods.

Bale is absolutely electric as Gorr, and my biggest issue with Waititi’s latest is maybe there wasn’t enough of him. Spurred on by the death of his daughter and dismissal by his god, Gorr acquires the Necrosword and takes up this raison d’être. Along the way, Gorr kidnaps Asgardian children to lure Thor to the Shadow Realm, needing Thor’s weapon, Stormbreaker, to open the doorway to Eternity and get his one wish: wipe out all the gods at once.

King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Waititi) and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) all return to assist Thor on his journey. Foster is also now the Mighty Thor after Mjolnir deems her worthy, but the power that comes with it is sapping the life out of her as she battles with a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis.

These moments are incredibly heavy, along with overall themes of loss and sadness as Thor tries to navigate his life. One can make the argument that Thor has had the roughest draw of any Avenger. We have seen the death of his mother, father, brother Loki (three times!), best friend Heimdall as well as fellow Avengers in Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff. We’ve also seen the guilt Thor lived with after failing to deliver the death blow to Thanos before half the universe was eliminated with a snap. And don’t forget he was forced to kill his sister, Hela, too.

For a god who’s been alive for thousands of years, dealing with all of this over the course of a decade is … a lot.

Waititi’s Thor deals with his trauma by secluding himself, lightly painting over his feelings with humor and sarcasm. The use of humor doesn’t automatically diminish the seriousness of the issues at hand, but rather feels like an outlet for that emotion. Mjolnir holds so much history for Thor, and all he wants is to feel that connection again, even if that puts Stormbreaker on the back burner.

As someone who thoroughly enjoys Waititi’s brand of humor, I laughed heartily throughout — I will not apologize for cackling at the screaming goats — and love that Hemsworth’s comedic abilities have been unlocked. That said, I also cried several times. There’s something incredibly sad and touching about Thor imploring Mjolnir to look after the one true love of his life.

I will fully admit to being an MCU fan who has not read the comics, but I have a general idea of where everything is headed as Phase 4 continues. And at this point, we are still in building mode.

Phase 4 has had its struggles connecting with some fans in the wake of the Infinity Saga. A lot of the complaints seem to be exaggerated or setting expectations too high. Not every MCU movie that came before Infinity War and Endgame were instantly beloved or told a story that directly tied into the Infinity Saga’s end picture outside of introducing new characters or developing current ones. The MCU’s capstone to its first decade not only rewarded fans who stuck with the series from Iron Man’s humble beginnings, but it raised the audience expectations for every film that followed whether right or wrong—regardless of how much groundwork was laid for the portals payoff in Endgame.

There have been six films — Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder — released as part of Phase 4, as well as seven shows in WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If?, Hawkeye, Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel.

Eternals (which really isn’t as terrible as people like to say) pulled in the second-lowest domestic box office with $164.9 million, but doubled its budget with $400 million made worldwide. No Way Home is literally one of the biggest movies of all time with over $1.9 billion (with a b) made at the box office. What If? and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier underwhelmed, but WandaVision and Loki knocked it out of the park both with story and character development.

Look, everyone is entitled to like or dislike a movie, it just feels like massive expectations might be hitting Love and Thunder harder than it should. Despite that, it has already crossed the $400 million threshold and is well on its way to doubling its budget.

If you go into Thor: Love and Thunder expecting a serious and dramatic film, you’ll likely be disappointed. If you go in looking to have fun, laugh, maybe cry a little, and be impressed by sweeping vistas of gorgeous color, you’ll probably enjoy it.

Thor: Love and Thunder isn’t the best Marvel movie, but it’s certainly nowhere near the worst. Where this will fit into the bigger MCU picture as Phase 4 unfolds is still not clear, but the post-credit scenes make it obvious that Thor will continue to grow (and face a brand new, exciting foe/potential ally).

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Lightyear is just another example of what Pixar does best

Buzz is back on the big screen, and Pixar’s latest is full of the heart and charm we’ve come to know and love.

WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS LIGHTYEAR SPOILERS! DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW PLOT DETAILS.

I now understand why Andy so desperately wanted that Buzz Lightyear action figure back in Toy Story.

Disney Pixar’s latest film, Lightyear, hit theaters Thursday, and it’s simply the studio doing what it does best. It doesn’t have the same heart that Coco has, nor does it absolutely devastate your soul like the first 10 minutes of Up or the entirety of Inside Out. But it takes you into a far away world and really makes you care about Buzz and co.

Not only does it warm the heart, but it’s also visually stunning. It one of Pixar’s more gorgeous movies, rife with beautiful space vistas, lava fields and more. At times, it looks more like a live action movie than an animated one.

Opening text informs the audience that Lightyear is the movie that Andy saw in Toy Story that made him want the action figure, clearing up a little bit of the mystery around how this flick would fit into the timeline or canon of the Toy Story series. Hunky superstar Chris Evans has taken over the voice role of Buzz, and he brings a perfect mix of Steve Rogers rule following and young exuberance to the character.

Buzz and his best friend and mentor, Alisha Hawthorne (voiced by Uzo Aduba), divert the course of their turnip-looking spaceship to investigate a new planet. That duo — plus rookie Featheringhamstan (if you though that was the voice of the incomparable Bill Hader, it was) — unsurprisingly run into problems in the form of giant vines and flying bugs. In trying to escape, Buzz refuses the help of the rook (he doesn’t like rookies), and he crashes the ship.

As a result, the entire crew of Space Rangers, scientists and more are now stuck on this new planet. Lightyear begins testing out different fuel mixes to try and find the right combo that will allow them to hit hyper-speed and resume their original mission, but they find out quickly that each four-minute trip off planet for Buzz equals four years for everyone on the ground.

Filled with a deep sense of regrets over his mistake and responsibility to come up with a solution, Lightyear continues to make test flights. He lets his life and friends pass him by — each return home shows us the life that Alisha has made with her new wife, son, granddaughter and eventual death — all while trying to right his perceived wrong.

Thanks to his emotional support robot cat, Sox, the appropriate fuel mixture is discovered. But by the time he returns to the planet, 22 years have passed, the Hawthorne suited up is granddaughter Izzy (not Alisha) and an ominous group of robots have invaded.

Buzz, Izzy (voiced by Keke Palmer), convicted felon and demolitions expert Darby Steel (Dale Soules) and the very nervous Mo Morrison (the impeccable Taika Waititi) band forces to attempt to reconnect with the rest of the members of the colony cut off by the robot forces. Oh, and Sox. You cannot forget Sox. Sox (Peter Sohn) is utterly wonderful and must be protected at all costs.

They run into several challenges, none bigger than a face-to-face meeting with the mysterious Zurg (James Brolin) that is way more than he seems. Along the way, Buzz must learn to cooperate, ask for help and realize that although life may not go as you planned, it doesn’t mean that it needs to be fixed.

Lightyear is a ton of fun and a very worthy entry into the Toy Story lineage. There’s just enough nostalgia that connects us to the Buzz of years past, plus plenty of new faces that will have viewers of all ages laughing, stressing and yes, crying (it is Pixar, after all). To infinity and beyond.

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If you thought Jurassic World: Dominion was going to be about dinosaurs, you were wrong

It’s about bugs.

[Spoiler warning: this post contains spoilers for Jurassic World: Dominion]

Part of that might be because the main villain in Dominion was locusts. That’s right, locusts. Like big bugs. But we’ll come back to that.

Dominion, which hits theaters everywhere on June 10, is nowhere near the best Jurassic Park movie (that is, of course, Jurassic Park), but nor is it the worst (hello, Jurassic Park III). It struggles with finding a really gripping plot six stories in, especially considering that the actual source material — the 1990 novel by Michael Crichton — told a perfect and concise story.

Still, there’s something that creates a sense of youthful exuberance at the idea of seeing dinosaurs grace the big screen again. The biggest thing working against Jurassic Park: Dominion (other than a plot that hinges on a loose issue with locusts) is the fact that they missed hitting the right notes with that nostalgia. Within the last 175 days, movie goers have been treated to both Spider-Man: No Way Home and Top Gun: Maverick. Each one perfectly tapped into that sense of nostalgia while telling a fresh tale. Neither one should have worked as well as they did, but they knocked it out of the park both for critics and fans.

The return of Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) pulled at the heart strings, and that trio — along with series newcomer Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) — were the best part of the movie. Goldblum was utterly fantastic, delivering his lines with the timing and cadence that made Malcolm (and Thor: Ragnarok’s Grandmaster) so iconic.

It wasn’t all misses on the nostalgia. Malcolm surreptitiously unbuttoning one more button on his iconic black shirt elicited huge laughs. The worst human character getting eaten by the same dinosaurs as Dennis Nedry while the latter’s Barbasol container rolls on the ground absolutely works.

But back to the locusts.

Since Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, all of the dinosaurs rescued from Isla Nublar that were set to be sold on the black market have now just gone wild. There are Hadrosaurs roaming the countryside, Velociraptors in the woods and Mosasaurs stealing crab traps off of boats in the Bering Sea. This, in turn, leads to underground black market hunting rings and a biotech company CEO — Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) — trying to “help” by creating a safe haven for all the dinos in the mountains of northern Italy.

Suddenly, gigantic and terrifying locusts start destroying crops from Iowa to Texas before migrating across the continent. Dr. Sattler is convinced these locusts have been cross bred with dinosaur DNA and gets Dr. Grant to come with her to the biotech headquarters — where of course Dr. Malcolm works — to get proof.

Oh, I forgot about the clone child and baby raptor.

Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and former Navy-man-turned-raptor-trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) are still together and caring for Maisie Lockwood in a small cabin in the woods. Lockwood (played by the fantastic Isabella Sermon) is the DNA clone of her mother, but we find out in Dominion that she isn’t created by her grandfather out of sadness as Fallen Kingdom led us to believe. Instead, Charlotte Lockwood (who apparently helped … found Jurassic Park) made Maisie as a replica of her that she … carried and birthed herself. Try. not to think too hard about it.

When Charlotte realized she had a genetic disease, she was able to “fix” Maisie, giving her a chance at a full life. Dodgson hires black market criminals to kidnap both Maisie and the aforementioned baby raptor (the genetic replica of Grady’s trained raptor, Blue) so that Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong) can study them both.

Of course in the end, we have the T-rex battling a bigger dinosaur that allows our heroes to escape the forest fire caused by burning locusts rages around them (wow, what a sentence). Dr. Wu claims he can mimic the process Charlotte Lockwood used to heal Maisie, therefore killing the horde of locusts, ending the impending ecological collapse and saving the day.

If you’re thinking this all sounds like nonsense, well, it is. Was it still kind of fun? Sure. Jurassic World: Dominion won’t win any awards, but the absolute mayhem of the story made it a good time. Even if it was just to laugh at the absurdity.

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‘Jockey’ is the most realistic, heartbreaking and hopeful look at horse racing we’ve ever gotten

What life is really like on the back side of a track.

Clifton Collins Jr. has memories of the race track from his childhood, but no nostalgia for them.

His father lived near Hollywood Park in Inglewood (now the site of SoFi Stadium, the $6 billion home of the Rams and Chargers). On the rare occasions his father would sober up enough to remember to pick him up for their time together, they’d go there.

Collins Jr. learned how to place a bet, but that was it. They wouldn’t go down to the paddock to get a closer look at the majestic thoroughbreds. All of what could have made these trips special was missing. His father mostly drank with his buddies.

“We’d walk from the trailer park to the liquor store, then across the street to Hollywood Park,” he told me last month. “That was my weekend with him.”

Collins also told me that he channeled the pain from those lost weekends — and from having a father who was always just out of reach — into his remarkable performance as Jackson Silva in the film “Jockey,” which is in theaters in select cities now.

The film follows Silva, an aging jockey, as he navigates two potentially life-altering storylines: The trainer he rides for most frequently gets a once-in-a-lifetime horse, and a young jockey with a mysterious past confronts him with a startling revelation.

“Jockey” is a sparse, raw film that unfolds like a Raymond Carver short story. Nothing is wasted, nothing is extraneous. The writing is taut but the cinematography — it feels something like a too-perfect documentary — shoves you into a story you probably had no desire to live through but won’t want to leave.

Collins drives the film but is supported by Molly Parker (as the trainer, Ruth Wilkes) and Moises Arias (as the young jockey, Gabriel Boullait.) “Jockey” provides such a realistic look at the realities of the day-to-day racing that underpins the more glamorous side of the sport — the public-facing events that make up the Triple Crown, for instance — because director Clint Bentley (who also co-wrote the film with Greg Kwedar) is the son of a jockey.

It wouldn’t have worked without the right lead actor. In fact, the story morphed to fit Collins’ ability to channel the yearning of an aging rider. It originally focused on the young jockey — on the new and rising and hopeful, as so much of the storytelling around horse racing generally does.

Ultimately this film, though, is about an athlete coming to terms with the end of his career, the ways it went awry and what it cost him in the end.

To prepare for this role, Collins tried to live like a jockey. He hung around the track (Turf Paradise, in Phoenix) and tried to blend in with the other riders. Like them, he did not chat much with trainers — or anyone else, really. He stuck with the jockeys and listened to them talk, in the way that they do, and absorbed.

That’s probably the feat here. Accurately portraying a jockey is especially difficult because even for those of us who have covered horse racing and been around the track they are extraordinarily hard to know and understand. First, there is the fact that they are willing to risk life and limb by clambering upon a 1,000-pound animal that may or may not care what the trainer, jockey or crowd wants it to do. “They are, pound-for-pound, the toughest athletes,” Collins told me.

More than that, though, they endure an existence that wouldn’t make sense to most of us. They barely eat. They attempt to sweat off weight anyway. They migrate to wherever the racing works for them. They get trampled and vow to return as quickly as possible.

They also must compete with each other for absolutely everything: They are vying to get the best horses from the best trainers every day. Then, once on the track, they must fight for every inch of ground. It’s brutal.

Collins is known for being exacting. He took it further than usual, this time: He cut off all communication from friends and family, save for two mentors he trusts implicitly (Samuel L. Jackson and the musician Slash) and his grandmother. He credited Slash for recognizing how consuming the role needed to be. There were times, during a lull in filming, when Collins was tempted to get away and the Guns N’ Roses guitarist dissuaded him.

“Slash is very masterful and humble and subtle and the epitome of an artist,” he said. “So he was able to tell when I was in certain zones of prep that sometimes I wasn’t aware of because I’d be so deep in the forrest and he’d have to very nicely nudge me or remind me, ‘Hey, it sounds like you’re kinda in the zone right now,’ and I’d say, ‘Oh my god, you’re totally right.’ ”

Instead of getting away for a weekend, Collins spent that time holed up in a Courtyard Marriott, talking to other jockeys. One of them, Logan Cormier, also acted in the film. He’s back racing after drug addiction drove him away from the sport for nearly 16 years, much of that time spent in jail.

Cormier’s character, Leo Brock, delivers one of the most memorable lines of the film. He’s just been badly injured in a fall and faces, as best, a long recovery that will cost him money he doesn’t have while preventing him from racing to make more anytime soon. Silva declines an invite to party with the other jockeys and heads to the hospital to comfort his friend.

They talk about why the do what they do.

“Out of all the things you do in life,” Brock says, “there’s that one minute that you feel like you’re the most important thing in the world because everybody’s watching you.”

The scene is beautiful and serene, distilling so much into so few words. It was also filmed under duress: Cormier, Collins told me, kept whispering to him to ask the film crew to move it along.

He had a race to get back to.

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