Eternals - Movie Review

Starring Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie, Kit Harington, Kumail Nanjiani, Salma Hayek, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, Lia McHugh, Lauren Ridloff, Don Lee and Harish Patel.

Written by Chloe Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo & Kaz Firpo.

Directed by Chloe Zhao.

★★½ 

This is the 26th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and some of the seams are showing in keeping such a franchise together. How many more new superhumans can be introduced without it feeling like we're going through the motions of the usual superhero origin story?

The Eternals are a group of ten immortal beings (though they can be killed) who were sent to Earth in 5000 BC to watch over it by Arishem, the leader of a gigantic god-like race called the Celestials. The Eternals are led by Ajak (Salma Hayek), and only she can communicate with Arishem. They have been told not to interfere with human conflict, as conflicts are what help a race of sentient creatures evolve. We see them throughout history and get to know their personalities a little. Ajak is the wise one who can heal. Ikaris (Richard Madden) closely resembles Superman in his abilities of flight, super-strength, and the ability to shoot fire-beams from his eyes. Sersi (Gemma Chan) can transform elements, such as turning solid rock into water. Druig (Barry Keoghan) can control minds. Thena (Angelina Jolie) was the inspiration for Athena, the goddess of war in ancient Greece. She is a master fighter and can generate weapons from energy. Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) can focus energy and fire it in blasts. Sprite (Lia McHugh) appears eternally 12 years old and can create illusions. Gilgamesh (Don Lee) has super-human punching power than puts Iron Fist to shame.  Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) is the intelligent inventor who can perform telekinesis. Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) has superspeed, and the MCU's first deaf superhero.

Game of Thrones' Kit Harington? Oh he's Dane Whitman, the regular human boyfriend of Sersi. I was amused when Ikaris and Dane meet, as if they weren't brothers from a fantasy world.

The Eternals' main task is to rid the world of the Deviants, mutant magical creatures that seek constant destruction on Earth. We eventually learn that 1521 AD is when the last of the Deviants was killed, and that point the Eternals parted ways and lived amongst the humans, waiting for Arishem to let them know their job was done and they can return to their home planet.

But 500 years later,  in "Present Day", a Deviant appears in London and attacks Sersi while she is hanging out with Dane and Sprite. She decides they need to find the other Eternals and figure out why the Deviants are back.

This massive ensemble - ten Eternals - means that few of the characters really get to stand out. It did have a couple plot twists I wasn't expecting, so that was nice. I'm not spoiling much by saying one of them dies within the first hour. But there's a lot of wheel-spinning as this character or that gives exposition and flashes back to different points in time. It does ultimately answer the questions of "Why didn't the Eternals help the Avengers? Or stop slavery or genocide?"

The fight scenes are fine, but where Shang-Chi found ways to make them feel original and exciting until the final CGI-heavy battle, this one is nothing but CGI-heavy battles. They feel like battles we've seen a hundred times before.

The best part of the movie for me is the last twenty minutes or so and the post-credits scenes, with its implications for the rest of the MCU. And I think it'd be fun to see these characters pop up in the next Avengers movie. I love the MCU. But if I'm ranking all 26 movies, this one would be closer to the bottom of the list than the middle.

Random Movie Stuff - 5/8/12

- Sharlto Copley (The A-Team), Miranda Richardson (Harry Potter's Rita Skeever), Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter's Dolores Umbridge), Lesley Manville (Another Year) and Sam Riley (Control) are joining Angelina Jolie in Walt Disney's live-action Maleficent.  Elle Fanning (Super 8) will play Aurora.


- Jessica Chastain will not be joining Iron Man 3 after all, saying she couldn't work it into her busy schedule but hoped she could be in a Marvel movie in the future.

- George Lindsay, best known as Goober from The Andy Griffith Show, has died at age 83.


- Maurice Sendak, children's author best know for Where the Wild Things Are, has died at age 83.

Random Movie Stuff - 12/7/11

- William Hurt is in talks to join Saoirse Ronan (Hanna) and Max Irons (Red Riding Hood) in The Host. Based on the Stephenie Meyer best-seller, it's about post-apocalyptic world where a girl has an alien soul controlling her brain.

- Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren will play husband and wife in Alfred Hitchcock & the Making of Psycho. Hopkins will play Hitchcock, the profilic director who had to scrounge for financing in order to make Psycho, which no studio wanted to touch.

- Angelina Jolie, whose directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey opens later this month, has her next two acting projects lined up. First is what's described as a scientific thriller for director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), and then she'll star in a biopic about Gertude Bell for director Ridley Scott (Robin Hood).

- Chris Columbus's 1492 Pictures have acquired the movie rights to Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Stoning of Soraya M.) will direct.

- Tom Wilkinson will play the main villain in The Lone Ranger, starring Armie Hammer (The Social Network, J. Edgar) as the Lone Ranger and Johnny Depp as Tonto. Director Gore Verbinski is working on getting the rest of those originally cast reassembled, including Helena Bonham Carter, Barry Pepper, and Dwight Yoakum.

- NBC is looking at Ryan Seacrest as a possible replacement for Matt Lauer on The Today Show.

- Harry Morgan has died at the age of 96. He's been in movies ranging from High Noon to The Apple Dumpling Gang to Dragnet, but he's best known for his Emmy-winning turn as Col. Potter on M*A*S*H.

Kung Fu Panda 2 - Movie Review

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Starring the voices of Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan, David Cross, Lucy Liu, James Hong, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Haysbert. Directed by Jennifer Yuh.

Saw this at the $1 theater. Should come out on DVD pretty soon, actually.

I really enjoyed Kung Fu Panda, and I was worried the sequel might diminish the memory off the original. My fears were unfounded, although I will say this isn't as good as the first.

Jack Black voices Po, the Baby-Huey of a panda who's now really good at kung fu, to where he can stand tall with the furious five. A new threat is sweeping across China. Turns out China's emperor family are peacocks, and the evil prodigal son Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) has returned to reclaim his throne. He's raised an army of assassins and brought a secret weapon to help him conquer the country. But the subplot is that Po, adopted by a goose, wants to learn about his biological parents, where he comes from.

There's more fighting and a bit darker tone this time around. It's also left wide open for Kung Fu Panda 3.

The Tourist - DVD Review

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Starring Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton and Steven Berkoff.
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

This is the kind of tale I could see Alfred Hitchcock batting out of the park with Fred MacMurray and Adila Valli in 1943. Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie seem like a dream paring, and yet their chemistry never ignites, and the movie floats along like a series of "movie star" shots on different soundstages and exotic locales.

Depp plays Frank, an American math teacher on holiday in Venice to recover from a broken heart. I never believed Depp was a math teacher, and even his being an American strained credulity. Jolie is Elise, a British spy, but she didn't seem to get much more direction than "Look marvelous, darling!" She meets up with him on a train in hopes that those spying on her will believe Frank to be her lover named Alexander, a thief who's made off with 744 million pounds. He is a decoy.

The director von Donnersmarck was behind the excellent The Lives of Others, but he is the wrong man for the job here. The pacing starts slow and never picks up. It's not funny so it can't be called a comedy. What little action there is goes through the motions. The stringed soundtrack is relentless. There were times I felt like I was watching the serious parts of a 1970s fish-out-of-water comedy starring Dean Jones.

But at least Timothy Dalton has fun.

Wanted - DVD Review

WANTED (***) - Starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp, Thomas Kretschmann and Common.
Directed by Timur Bekmambetov.

This wild ride of a movie is based on a comic book series, and if you didn't already know that the first few minutes into the movie, you'd know it based on how stylized the whole thing is. The movie isn't trying to be realistic, but it is trying to be fun, putting Fight Club, Matrix and Harry Potter in a blender and hitting Frappe.

James McAvoy, a long way from Mr. Tumnus, is our hero Welsey Gibson, such a loser than his name in Google gets no hits. Although my theory is that the Fraternity was rigging his computer to do that, because Welsey Gibson actually yields 142,000 hits (the first few related to the 'Wanted' character, but if the movie addressed that, it would be eating its own tail.)

He finds out his long-lost father died yesterday, and he was one of the best assassins in the world. He finds this out from a beautiful woman named Fox (wink!) who instantly gets into a gun fight with the man who killed his father. She then brings him to the Fraternity, a secret organization of assassins run by a mellifluous man named Sloan, played by the almighty Morgan Freeman.

Bullets fly in this movie like they have a mind of their own, like they could hover in mid-air and then change direction in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Blood splatters nicely against white walls, and the action scenes get the blood pumping.

This movie dared bill McAvoy first even though Jolie and Freeman are the big names, but this is where McAvoy really comes into his own, for my taste, as a movie star. Yes, he was very good in Atonement, and he was very different in Narnia, but I can remember him better from this. It's fun to watch him go from pathetic office drone to top-notch rootin'-tootin' shooter.

Changeling - Movie Review

CHANGELING (***1/2) - Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan, Michael Kelly, Colm Feore, Geoff Pierson, Amy Ryan and Denis O'Hare.
Directed by Clint Eastwood.

This movie makes the old-fashioned new again. We have an old-fashioned mystery that spins and spirals into different genres, as the unfolding of the story takes us in new directions.

Except that it's based on a true story. So if you don't already know the events surrounding this tale, I recommend seeing this first and then doing your research. I didn't know, and I was enthralled.

Jolie plays Christine Collins, a single mother in Los Angeles 1928. One day when she comes home from work, her son is missing. The LAPD won't help in the first 24 hours, but five months later, they claim to have found him in Illinois. Trouble is, the boy is not her son. He claims he is, the police claim he is, and when she continues to protest, the sneering detective has her thrown into an insane asylum.

So we go down a tumultuous road that is reminiscent of One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest, but also has elements of Chinatown and Norma Rae. Jolie, for her part, is great in a role that doesn't have too many notes beyond steely determination. She must say the phrase "my son" over 200 times. Her plight is scary; there is more intensity in the asylum than in 95% of horror films. What I love about Eastwood is his ability to move from genre to genre and master it. I think of how diverse and yet how competant movies like Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima and this are. (Although now that I think about it, I wonder if he could pull off a comedy.)

There's a melodrama to it I liked. It follows the 1970's tradition of Act One being setup, Act Two being injustice, and Act Three will either be triumph or destruction. And false endings aside, it squeezed a tear out of me, which movies very rarely do.

And the actual true story could spawn a slew of movies from different angles.