Sunday, February 26, 2023
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Sunday, January 1, 2023
Comixology: Library and Annotations | Fan Made Commercials
Recording my guest appearance on Superhero Cinephiles was a fun, wonderful experience. The host was incredible, and the conversation was excellent. Preparing for it, balancing the comic, a notebook, and a pen was a lot more frustrating than expected. What's worse is that it was completely unnecessary. I remembered not just all regular features using a Kindle affords, but I also remembered manually drawing underlines and highlights, and putting notes in the margins of unformatted PDFs that professors occasionally send us. It wasn't perfect, but it was still all on a single tablet and required one hand.
Credits
Voice Acting
Kiyana Morgan
Music
Christophe Beck's Ant-Man Theme
Owned by Marvel/Disney
Photos
Adobe Stock & Shutterstock
Script Consulting
Julia Yorks – The Baby Writers Podcast
Software
Figma for UI & Final Cut Pro for editing
Play with the Figma files however you’d like
Annotation & Library
Inspiration
Superhero Cinephiles & Nerdsync
ComiXology & Kindle by Amazon
Comics owned by their respective creators or publishers
Purchased through ComiXology or, more likely, Humble Bundle
I’m affiliated with neither
Special Thanks
SUNY New Paltz Comic Books United!
My school’s comic club showed me the wide world of comics outside of the movies
Monday, August 29, 2022
Ant-Man: Movie (2015) | Guest Appearing on Superhero Cinephiles Podcast
From the episode's page, because Perry covered it really well, "This week, Perry is joined by video editor and writer Eddie Thomson of Why We Watch to discuss 2015’s Ant-Man! We discuss the long road this movie took to getting made, from Edgar Wright’s long involvement in the project, switching over to Adam McKay and eventually landing in the hands of Peyton Reed. We also talk about how the heist film aspect helps set this apart from the rest of the MCU and why not every movie needs to end in some world-ending threat."
For people interested in talking with Perry, see what's available to discuss and his contact form.
Our discussion on the Nick Spencer comics is a Patreon exclusive. Re-reading them years later was not entirely what I expected, and that's one of the things that we talk about. It was a great experience though, and it inspired me to cobble together a variant cover for one of the issues.
Like the Doctor Strange poster, this was done with re-used assets in Blender, and then it was finished in Photoshop. The main challenge was laying out and rendering the apps separately and posing Scott. The main issue with Scott is it's an FK rig, so the arms and fingers had to be rotated individually, instead of if it had been an easier-to-pose IK setup. Also I’m sure the scale is ridiculous, but I wanted to balance readability of the phone with showing some background, and perspective is hard.
Friday, July 22, 2022
Amazing Spider-Man: Family Business (2014) | Graphic Novel
A plain-clothes Peter Parker is nearly captured by private military contractors. That's weird. He's able to escape capture with the help of his long-lost sister, Teresa Parker. That's weirder. And now they need to go globe-trotting to stop The Kingpin. If this story threw many more curveballs, there's a chance people might've checked out, but it doesn't. Instead, it just gets more enjoyable to read and, frankly, just stare at because of the artwork. Amazing Spider-Man: Family Business is part of an Original Graphic Novel line called Marvel OGN, so it's like a longer, self-contained, single-issue. It's written by Mark Waid and James Robinson, painted and covered by Gabriele Dell'Otto, and penciled by Werther Dell'Edera.
The best thing about stories that go off the rails is that it makes buying into ones like this pretty easy. We don't need to forgive "Sins Past," or anything like, but we should give them a bit of a break because of what they allowed future writers to get away with. Plus long-lost siblings reveal themselves in comics, Law & Order: SVU episodes, and even our world all the time. Waid and Robinson do introduce the story gently though, with a standard, but very entertaining, crime-in-progress.
Peter stumbles onto a truck that's full of shop-lifted laundry detergent, intended to be resold to wholesalers, and then smaller retailers. We get great quips, like "Stop in the Name of Mr. Clean," great panels, and a good sense of where this Spider-Man is right now. No Parker industries, so this is the only way to keep Family Business somewhat grounded.
Once the main story kicks off with Teresa's introduction, they're quickly "Jason Bourne-ing," as Peter calls it, to places like Monte Carlo, Switzerland, and Cairo.
As a fan of the show Archer, Monte Carlo was easily my favorite destination. It took a few minutes to confirm, but someone somewhere will rest easy knowing that Peter and Sterling Archer both don't know the first thing about Baccarat. At least they both clean up nicely.
They're there to get information to lead them to their parents' safe house. They're nearly stopped by a villain named Cyclone, and I really like the way his suit is analyzed. Spider-Man figures out that this version of the character isn't a mutant, so it'll be quick work to basically tear out his battery pack. Still, it would've been nice if Teresa could've helped. The best parts of this story, dealing with this relationship and their relationship with their parents, is where the writing does have some hiccups.
We only get to experience so much of these these two learning about each other, and their mom and dad, because of the constraints of about a hundred pages. Shorthand dialogue about power and responsibility is well-used, but it still feels like a workaround because the plot has to keep powering through. Other times, it is a bit on the nose. The Monte Carlo contact tells the two that Richard Parker was a wisecracker, instead of it being shown in one of Waid and Robinson's flashback scenes. Yes, this stuff should be in there but in a less clunky way. Luckily, the buy-in of the sibling storyline doesn't really have this problem.
Since there's no time to do a DNA test or something, what Waid and Robinson come up with is that Teresa has a family photo and Peter's expertise as a photojournalist tell him that it's not doctored. Doubt is in the back of his mind and ours, but things are addressed well, and nothing about the story really feels cheap because of that doubt. A costume change for Spider-Man is handled similarly, and outside justification for that is the artists get to have more fun. It just works. And again, this part of the story is not the wildest thing to happen in comics, other pop culture, and everyday life. What is wild is that they meet The Kingpin in Cairo.
Leaving out some details, what Family Business comes down to is a male Parker is able to unlock a vault full of Nazi gold that's also guarded by a robot. Nick Spencer's Ant-Man runs into a robot just like this a year or two later, and I recently re-read that for a (Patreon exclusive) guest appearance on the Superhero Cinephiles podcast, so the suspension of disbelief is still going strong here. Plus, this was around the time of the Webb/Garfield movies that were all about Peter's parents, so that probably helped some readers at the time. Now, I'm not so sure. I also wonder if this book has much of a legacy outside of the art and Wilson Fisk's iconic look?
Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk | Copyright 2021 Marvel StudiosThe closest comparison I can make to Dell'Otto and Dell'Edera's work is Alex Ross because of how it's painted. A quick comparison can be made with the Ross art in my Uncle Sam review, but a better one can be made by looking at his work in Marvels and Kingdom Come. Where Ross excels is scope and detailing, but, as far as I know, work like this in comics is still incredibly hard to come by outside of covers, and any instance of it should be celebrated. Personally, a character like Teresa should be, too. She's definitely not well-known.
I wish she was. Peter having that connection felt really heart-warming, as unexplored as it felt at times, but I couldn't find too much on the character after that, but if I'm missing something please correct me. As far as Family Business goes, Fisk and the robot are stopped, the day is saved, and there doesn't seem to be any major lasting impacts to the story. Some of that is probably by design because of the self-contained thing, but something about a bombshell like this just defusing, one that could've opened up the world of a character, doesn't feel right. This isn't even where Cindy Moon (Silk) was being kept, which is where I thought the story was going, but that just goes to show what casual reading gets you sometimes. Anyway, someone on Reddit said that the Webb/Garfield movies created the perfect universe to introduce and adapt her story, and they're right, but the MCU wouldn't be a bad fit either.
For those who've seen No Way Home or ready my review, they know that that Peter could use literally anybody in his life just popping up right now, and while writing around Doctor Strange's magic to make this happen logically would be quite difficult, it could be incredibly rewarding for Peter, his sister, and the fans who feel especially close to them.
Update: It looks like Chip Zdarsky featured her a few years later in his Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man run.
Monday, May 23, 2022
Doctor Strange (2016) | Fan Made Poster, Co-Created By CGFlow and Other Artists
Friday, April 1, 2022
Morbius (2022) | Short Review
Sunday, March 6, 2022
The Batman (2022) | Spoiler-Free
The Batman is directed by Matt Reeves (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes). It is written by Reeves and Peter Craig (The Town), as they stitch together dozens of Bat-sources and incarnations. Non-Bat-sources, as everyone has noted the influences of movies like Seven and Zodiac, play a large part, too. However, this isn't a patchwork, but a deep, warm, red tapestry of a movie. It stars, among others, Robert Pattinson (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Zoë Kravitz (Catwoman/Selina Kyle), Paul Dano (Riddler), Jeffrey Wright (James Gordon), John Tuturro (Carmine Falcone), Andy Serkis (Alfred Pennyworth), Colin Farrell (Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot), and Jayme Lawson (Bella Reál, Gotham's mayoral candidate). The plot is that after two years of developing The Batman, the changing tide in crime isn't what Bruce expected. There's still deep-rooted corruption, but now there's an escalation and assassinations of high-ranking people in Gotham carried out by the mysterious Riddler. It's up to Batman and Gordon to try to get a step ahead of him and his puzzles.
So, let's start at the top with those sources. For the most part, everything with Batman has probably been done in some way, shape, or form. It's all about what hasn't been done in a live-action film yet, and which combinations of elements either haven't been tried before or work best. The notable source that's not a spoiler is the action, and some set design, being inspired by the Arkham games. Snyder and Affleck were too when it came to action, but they're still fairly different takes. Reeves and Pattinson are less gadget-reliant, as this version of the character is still experimenting with what utilities work best. He's also using armor that doesn't sacrifice speed and flexibility, but that's actually much more for Reeves and his crew than it is for the character.
According to Cinema Blend, "Pattinson was working with eighth degree red and black belt Brazilian jiu-jitsu intstructor Rigan Machado ahead of The Batman." Fights are primarily hand-to-hand and rely little on editing. Any tiny cuts or breaks in the action are thanks to the darkness Batman operates in. That's until the firing of a gun or a bullet sparking off his single, removable batarang chest plate reveal a little more. Really, the movie's cinematographer, Greg Fraser (Dune), and the people responsible for lighting and color grading deserve special recognition for shrouding everything away from the light while still keeping it visually comprehensible and beautiful. In all honesty, I have no clue how they made that work, especially after I criticized No Way Home for their night-time scenes. Anyone who can further explain it, please chime in. The best I can come up with, and it's an oversimplification, is that less cgi was involved.
Onto the actors! To come right out with it, I need to see another movie with Pattinson before I can give him a fair ranking against most other Batmen. I think I wanted to see the looser, party-boy Bruce Wayne, even though it's a good thing we didn't get it, just for a fuller picture of his performance. Still, his Year One style narration that opens and closes the movie is fantastic. Ben McKenzie had that in the animated Year One movie, but it was overly stiff. This is closer to Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach in Snyder's Watchmen, in tone, but it doesn't go overboard in over-the-top despair. It's the fine line that The Batman, luckily, comfortably walks.
Zoë Kravitz, on the other hand, makes a great Selina and Catwoman, and it only took this movie for her to solidify that. Selina is more drawn from her sources than ever before, so Kravitz is given a lot to work with. Selina's frustration with the city radiates in ways that Bruce's can't, as she quickly sizes him up, behind the mask, as some kind of trust-fund kid. Blunt political, and racial, talking points of Joker (2019) are quickly handled much better through her, Riddler's plans, and Lawson's role as an AOC-like figure. And I very, very much appreciate that, and I'd add more if spoilers weren't at risk. Anyway, those sources include an interesting connection to mob boss Carmine Falcone, and I've never seen a stronger performance from John Tuturro. I've seen funnier and more out there, but I've never seen a show of real strength and power from the man. He and Kravitz are both inspired casting choices.
Someone named Morris said "Jeffrey Wright is the best Jim Gordon and it's not even close." Again, I can't go that far without another movie, but we both agree on one thing, "they both go on the streets and both figure shit out." Especially for a first movie in a new set, is a slightly more hands-on Gordon than Nolan's and Gary Oldman's. It's a big benefit of that two-year head start. They're casual with each other, unless it appears one may have crossed the line. A close comparison is probably the Gordon and Batman of the 90s cartoon or The Dark Knight Returns.
While it's still odd that Penguin isn't played by Richard Kind, since that's how Farrell looks under prosthetics, the only real problem with Oswald is we didn't get enough of him. Still, him only as a mid-tier thug is refreshing, especially for fans of the Arkham games, and it's probably the only time we'll see him with much of a funny bone that doesn't rely on breaking them. His interrogation by Batman and Gordon is a comedic highlight, as he mocks their inability to remember some basic Spanish in one of Riddler's clues. In returns, he's left of waddle in handcuffs until he gets picked up. It seems, the next time we see him, it'll be in an HBO Max show tracking his rise to power. Expect a lot of cruelty from him in it, and be ready to savor it.
Finally, Paul Dano was absolutely pitch-perfect as Riddler. The character may be excruciating to hear to some, as he whines and pleads for attention and validation, but that is how small men like him should appear. When in control, Dano is menacing. One of his great strengths as an actor is an unassuming nature. That's been shown at least a few times over with Swiss Army Man, Prisoners, and There Will Be Blood. Pairing that with this character, he's able to twist reason and the symbol of Batman to suit his own needs, and gravitate people toward whatever side of reason that is. The movie comes together because of this.
To start to close things out, I'll say that Reeves, Craig, and Pattinson have expertly created another "Brooding Bruce." To balance that out, they crafted a story and city where "it'll get worse before it gets better." A Gotham that never quite hits rock-bottom, although it gets close, is a great opening. A Bruce and Selina who share a kiss and haven't either is, too. Batman has hope. You can see it, and so much more in Pattinson's eyes behind the mask. And so does The Batman, and something like that has been missing from his stories for a while. Maybe because hope's usually more of a Superman thing?
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) | Spoiler Review
Seriously, spoilers. Also, thank you to my friends Louis and Matt for previewing this review. Please check out Matt's podcast, Saturday Morning Confidential, which takes a deep dive into nostalgic properties.
In Spider-Man: No Way Home, villains from other universes get sucked into the MCU, after Peter Parker (Tom Holland) enlists the help of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to re-conceal his identity as Spider-Man and the spell goes wrong. The movie also stars, among others who'll be discussed, Zendaya (MJ), Jacob Batalon (Ned Leeds, "Guy in the Chair"), Jon Favreau (Happy Hogan), Marisa Tomei (Aunt May), Jamie Foxx (Electro), and Alfred Molina (Doc Ock). Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers, and Jon Watts, return from Far From Home to, respectively, write and direct.
Jon Watts also directed Homecoming, and he's proven himself to juggle the demands of bigger and bigger blockbusters...to a point. He, and Sony and Marvel execs, didn't deliver a perfect movie, but this could've gone wrong a hundred different ways. It just went wrong a few ways. So, while the majority of fans are praising this movie from the top of the Chrysler or Empire State Building, known hangout spots of Spider-Men, let's address the issues now. They're the action and some of the villains.
With the exception of Into The Spider-Verse action in Spider-Man movies still has not been topped by the train scene way back in Spider-Man 2. Up until now, I used to think the sole reason why is that Sam Raimi and his crew thought of every possible maneuver Maguire's Spider-Man, or any Spider-Man, and Doc Ock could throw at each other at any given moment and left nothing on the table. That's all you need if your fight scene is staying on the page, but No Way Home made me realize that how every possible maneuver was staged and shot truly is what it's all about. It's not about visual effects, although that's a huge factor, it's filmmaking 101. Rather, it's advanced visual filmmaking, something that people have said that Marvel Studios brushes aside to instead focus on things like the characters, story, and humor of the universe. There's evidence to support these claims. If you don't want to watch that video because it's a bit illusion shattering, I can simplify things a little.
Action movies need to stop setting their action scenes at nighttime, and producers and directors need to add more color to their movies, like these people did for them. This isn't always a problem, like in Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok, but it's a weakness in the visuals that leads to seeing different kinds of weaknesses in the visuals. Some parts of Thor Ragnarok, at least to me, look they were quickly shot from just one angle on a soundstage. The environments of those particular scenes were stylized, but it's still a problem. Suddenly, it's done during a living room scene, and something just feels off. It becomes a repeated problem until it's not seen as a problem anymore. It may be seen as lacking, but accepted. Other people can go more in-depth when it comes to these production issues and the practical reasons why they happen, so let's go back to No Way Home as the main example.
The action in this movie has the most weight when it's stripped down and raw. Yes, that's appropriate, but those fun scenes should have something like that weight too. Holland's web swinging finally does, when it's shown in the daylight, but his webbing people up, less so. Luckily, he starts throwing punches, hard punches, a lot of them, and for a heartbreaking reason.
The Green Goblin, aka Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), kills this universe's Aunt May during a battle with Spider-Man, and Spider-Man nearly responds in kind. It feels brutal, as an onslaught of pain is brought upon Goblin. They begin out of fear of what Norman may do, and then they come from vengeance. Those punches are coupled with a great performance from Holland. He's never been better in this role, as Peter is put through the trials of what people are basically calling his official origin movie. His quieter moments are played more understated than ever, as this version of the character has faced, arguably, more loss and has become more beaten down by life than his two counterparts. But one of the character's greatest strength, across universes, is helping others find their strength and resolve. So, let's talk about more bad guys.
So, the returning roster of big baddies also includes Thomas Hayden Church as Flint Marko/Sandman and Rhys Ifans as Curt Connors/The Lizard. At least, I think it was them. Sandman is all sand until the very end of the movie, and similar can be said about The Lizard. I wasn't completely certain it was Ifans voice. Maybe they weren't interested in returning fully, maybe there were scheduling issues, or maybe it was because of Covid. Whatever the case, all understandable, it's noticeably felt. Flint Marko's deal basically is that he just steals to live, he's not homicidal or anything like that, and he wants to go back to see his kid. He's sensible. This movie's deal is that Peter is trying to save and cure the villains because everyone deserves a second chance. Of course, not all of them are going to be okay with that, but Sandman should be. They set it up in a way where he doesn't really trust the people trying to help him, but again, he should be more sensible than how he's presented. And Lizard, stuck in his transformed state, just doesn't think straight. It's...fine. Maybe it's better than spreading everyone out and too thin, which these movies always risk doing. Plus Church and Ifans got full enough characters the first time around. Jamie Foxx's Electro, on the other hand, didn't.
As a refresher, he was just stereotypical nerd, and a Spider-Man fanboy, then he feels slighted by the wall-crawler after a misunderstanding. He's not given a full story arc or anything like that, but Electro's desire to been seen and have power is carried over well from his previous movie. With an arc reactor, he has that chance. Quick sidebar, we all thought we weren't going to hear that sound again, didn't we? Anyway, it helps immensely that Foxx doesn't have to act under as much makeup this time. He must've been promised the chance to really have fun with the role, and he took them up on it. Andrew Garfield definitely did that, and so did J.K Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. We should touch on J.J for a second, before discussing my favorite actor. Not my favorite actor in this movie, my favorite actor period.
I really wish they didn't go the Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist route with the character. This isn't Raimi's Jonah, but it still feels like character assassination. He can serve the same purpose in this story by just having Spider-Man be his one blindspot when it comes to behaving like a real journalist. Simmons has no issue with the new approach, though, and he gleefully hocks Bugle-branded supplements on the air.
So, I checked what people were saying after the movie, and people did note how it addresses where Garfield's movies fall short. What I picked up on in the theatre was Maguire giving him some much needed encouragement when they're sharing stories. Acting as Uncle Ben like as we wished:
Maguire: "Can we rewind it back to the I'm lame part? You are not."
People today still say that this version of the character looks too cool and handsome, and some still harp on the skateboard. That stuff doesn't mean much if your self-confidence is low and you see something else in the mirror. Fucking trust me on that. It's a reading to far into things, but it's fitting that his mask in the second movie is attached to the front of his costume in a way that he can very quickly hide his face. Most blow past the fact that Gwen asks him out, and that's one of the scenes that always stuck with me because it's one of the reasons he became "my Spider-Man." The exchange reminded me of this post I made a few years ago.
This reunion for the fans isn't solely built on the references and memes that we've been making and awaiting. It's built on something real and necessary. We get an idea of what an Amazing Spider-Man 3 could've been after fighting Rhino. It's a Peter who struggles to keep going after Gwen's death and puts anger back into his vigilantism, the same way it began for him. It's something we may not have wanted to see. We get a good look at how Maguire would appear in a followup to the Holy Trilogy, too. I'm happy to report he's doing okay. Other have noticed he has serious Peter B. Parker energy from Spider-Verse, as he should. Also, this reunion for the fans is built up to, with the movie having a pretty strong opening that for the most part doesn't rely on the team-ups.
Peter, MJ, and Ned are finally a proper trio, after the first two movies kinda had to slowly bring MJ into the fold. The best and easiest comparison to make is the Harry Potter trio. It's not in the character-types but in the actors' chemistry. Adding an annoyed Doctor Strange to the mix has its moments too. His title still being butchered to "Wizard" is a throwaway joke that never gets old.
The movie's close is equally strong. With May's death and Doctor Strange's original spell needing to go through, this version of Peter is back to a square one we've never quite seen before. Everyone knows Spider-Man, but no one knows Mr. Parker. Iron Man Jr. is no more, and we find ourselves in a one-room apartment (sorry, Mr. Ditkovich cameo) with a, seemingly, beautiful fabric suit. We don't get the best look at it, like the film's action, and hopefully some official pictures are shown after a couple weeks.
Marvel Studios and Feige are still involved in these movies, but if shit goes south between Sony and Marvel, they set it up right. They set it up so that while we may sacrifice some characters we know and love, we may get well-lit battles back. It's a fair trade-off brought after one of the highest highs a Spider-Fan can experience. That's what this movie was too, a fair trade-off. MCU style, for all of its pros and cons, with the interpretations Sony helped build, with all their pros and cons.
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Let's get the hard part out of the way immediately. In this movie, one of main characters, Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) makes a new friend at her new school. Here's how that goes:
"I call myself Podcast, because of my podcast." That effectively is Logan Kim's character's name.
I was going to reference that old email hack/leak and say that Amy Pascal and the higher-ups at Sony Pictures haven't learned anything in at least nine years, but it turns out the skateboarding in The Amazing Spider-Man was actually Andrew Garfield's idea. (Give the man an Oscar this year, please.) Plus, the results are the same. Something inserted into the movie to stay trendy actually has some genuine meaning or payoff to it, and the actors and other filmmakers make those things work. Ghostbusters: Afterlife just has a lot of that. There's a conflict just in what the movie is that can be seen and felt.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a direct sequel to Ghostbusters II. The 2016 reboot is now its own separate thing, and the same can probably be said for the 2009 video game that kinda-sorta was Ghostbusters III until now. So, with all that being said the basic plot of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, from IMDb, is "When a single mom and her two kids arrive in a small town [called Summerville, Oklahoma,] they begin to discover their connection to the original Ghostbusters and the secret legacy their grandfather left behind." It stars Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Logan Kim, and Celeste O'Connor. Since it's a direct sequel, some legacy cast members may pop in. It's directed by Jason Reitman, written by him and Gil Kenan, and Ivan Reitman returns as a producer.
It's probably best to star with Finn Wolfhard because of the Stranger Things/It/80s vibes of his casting. The way this movie grapples with nostalgia is that it knows if it goes all-in people will, for the most part, pissed. So, it's incredibly selective what it brings back in a way where I couldn't tell when the movie took place. Except for a couple lines of dialogue and the timeline having to fit so that somebody could be a grandpa, this could take place in the 80s or 90s. Instead, Summerville is more like one of those tiny towns that time forgot. Like one John Oliver may cover in one of those invisible injustice kind of episodes. So, one of the featured locations is a car-hop diner, and how out of place it looks will vary from viewer to viewer. Wolfhard plays Grace's brother. He's not given as much to do as he probably should, but one of the first big legacy scenes comes from him, and it's pretty wonderful. Drifting in a field in the Ecto-1, with only a learner's permit, is something that dreams are made of. It's even more heartwarming when there's an Ecto-1 in your area that's occasionally in the movie theatre parking lot.
The other great thing from him is that his scenes with Celeste O'Connor give Summerville a lived-in quality that helps explain that clashing feeling in the town's look. You could easily become stuck there. Whether that's really for better or worse is not really addressed, so that leaves the question more open than most movies that bring up the idea. It's actually pretty fitting, since Reitman's movie Young Adult, reviewed here, really dives into that.
Mckenna Grace and Carrie Coon's first experiences in Summerville are on the more mysterious side of things, and they both work really well off of each other and Paul Rudd.
A lot of the emotional moments of Afterlife come from Grace and Coon learning more about the upbringing they never really had and coping with it. Reitman could, in a lot of successful ways, push this heavily, but instead it's done just enough so that the momentum of the plot, for the most part, doesn't suffer. The movie's editing is a bit choppy in this way, as one discovery is interrupted with a check-in with Wolfhard back at the diner, and it seems like something that could've been left out. It's meant to build up his relationship with Celeste O'Connor, but I think better scenes later on end up doing that anyway.
Finally, there's the humor, effects, and action. Jokes largely do land, and I laughed out loud a few times in the theatre. Most of the time, this was because of Rudd or some visual gag with a ghost, but everyone delivers in some respect.
A personal favorite, is when one of the kids says they can't even get any bars on their phone, Coon says there better be at least one. This one, luckily, is the only one ruined by Grace pointing out that it's a joke. Just to be clear, both give great performances, and Mckenna Grace is especially phenomenal. If you haven't seen her in Gifted, go check it out. She and Logan Kim are given what could've been two of the easiest roles to forget, if this was bad Ghostbusters movie, but she's given a lot of time to develop Phoebe, and Podcast has a real charm to him.
Jokes are actually a big part of Grace's character, as she's told to use them to break the ice in Summerville, but it could've been handled better. She does some pretty standard stuff out of a joke book, and I wonder if something really funny, but also really weird or awkward, and science-based could've been done instead. What we get is somewhere between wasted opportunities and eye-rolling moments. Early on, I was afraid there'd be more of them and that they wouldn't go anywhere...not that they leave a huge impact in the end.
In a huge surprise, to someone who follows this stuff, Sony Imageworks didn't do any of the special effects for Afterlife. Companies listed are Double Negative, Instinctual VFX, Moving Picture Company, and Proof. They all did a gorgeous job, especially considering that they had to, among other tasks, update our beloved Mr. Stay-Puft.
The major action set piece is a chase to capture a Slimer-like ghost. Tailing him in Ecto-1, while using an RC-Car/Trap, it's a good to modernize things. It's not too much, and it fits the established world.
Having said that, I would like to say that the 2016 reboot had a lot of fun with their gadgets, the Ghostbuster's logo actually being a ghost for a minute was a delightful surprise. That second one is what told me it was more than a cash-grab, at least to some people involved. There was a lot more stuff like that, this time around.
Sunday, August 22, 2021
Iron Man (2008) | Guest Appearing on the Media Buffet Podcast
Monday, March 8, 2021
Lava (2021)


The look also is similar to a lot of classic flash videos. Where Lava falls short of even them though is in the lip syncing, but that's probably because it was re-dubbed in English. It just looks a little too exaggerated when lines don't match up, but that also positively lends itself to the ridiculous feel of the film.
At under 75 minutes, this should feel like a quick watch, but it wasn't. Lava, unfortunately, flows about as slowly as the real thing typically does. There seems to be two big problems with Lava. First, character interactions and relationships rarely have a lot of weight to them. Second, the film's editing is incredibly dry and static. The best scene in the movie is one where all cards are on the table and we know where Deborah (Garofalo), her roommate Nadia, and Samuel, who's into Deborah, are in relation to each other, as far as who is/isn't interested in whom. I think it stood out because it was more drawn out than most of the quick chats in the movie. It leads to something great later in the movie, where Deborah and Nadia's relationship grows. The movie has a solid LGTB+ moment, but how people react to them explicitly highlighting the moment may annoy some people. Lava's editing in between sequences is to cut to black and just stop for a second. Once or twice music bridged the gap, but it just felt so lacking that it had to be brought up. That's, apparently, a very tricky cut to pull off right. Luckily, there are some things about the movie that are nailed incredibly.
With that solid grasp of, as mentioned, "Generation X-ish geeks/nerds who are in their 20s-30s" comes a solid grasp of the crap they put up with. The takes some solid jabs at the business side of the entertainment industry, and it's through more than a tattoo of Mickey Deborah does for a client. Employee burnout is shown and how various types of studios and production studios can wreck someone's creativity is shown too. Knowing when to walk away from that kind of environment is a rough analogy, or metaphor(?), that can be pulled out of Lava, but it's rough because it's also walking away from a probable apocalypse. It doesn't work when trying to apply the message to something like current politics, but the relatively small-scale of Lava doesn't make that a lasting issue. All-in-all, it's incredibly rough, but with it's choice moments. For every silent cut to black, there's an interesting tattoo scene or blink-or-you'll-miss-it reference.
A screener of this movie was provided to me by TriCoast and Rock Salt Releasing. Original reports of Rock Salt picking up the movie come from Variety. I was not compensated for this review.