My review, as originally published on Flickering Myth's website on April 13, 2021:

In I Care a Lot, Marla Grayson (portrayed by Rosamund Pike) uses her respected, socially privileged position as a legal guardian to manipulate the legal and medical systems in obtaining wealthy, elderly people for care facilities, regardless of whether or not they actually are disabled or in need of assistance; she then limits their freedoms and rights while personally taking advantage of and seizing their assets and finances, all in the faked interest of doing what’s best for them.

For Marla and her business and romantic partner, Fran (Eiza González), business is booming and life is sweet, even more so when they get intel on “cherry” Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), a retired, unmarried woman (with no heirs) who is squatting on a fortune, seemingly easy pickings just waiting to be exploited and imprisoned. The catch, however, is that Ms. Peterson has connections to some nefarious folk, particularly crime leader Roman Lunyov (played by Peter Dinklage), who really wants to break her free and give her some baked treats. What follows is a battle of resources, wits and wills between Marla, Roman and his goons.

The greatest thing that can be said about I Care a Lot is that it has been perfectly cast, and the whole ensemble is more than up to the task. Rosamund Pike is the best among them with a strong, dynamite performance, committed to providing her layered, “caring” sociopathic character with strength and nuance. Dianne Wiest also gets to flex around in a couple scenes, but the script only really allows her to hint at what probably would have been a much more playful and sinister turn if she was given more screentime than Peter Dinklage instead of being relegated to a position of little significance soon after the action gets going.

In other words, I Care a Lot has the makings of an interesting and engaging plot that showcases smart satire while also delivering on more mainstream thrills, and the movie certainly sets these things up nicely in the first act, but a little before the halfway mark the focus and tone changes for the worse.

Instead of two very different kind of empowered, nasty female predators playing cat-and-mouse in America’s greedy, seedy social and political underbelly for control, unsympathetic Marla Grayson becomes positioned as an anti-hero protagonist against a typical male mobster villain who has some kind of corporate connection. The viewer is supposed to root for her, but beyond the facts that she is a resilient lesbian woman and is protecting her territory from a man who thinks he is better than her, investment in her fight is unwarranted; Marla is still a selfish, shitty member of the elite clinging to everything she stole from vulnerable people, and there is no redemption arc or message to her struggle, but instead ending with a misguided sequence that once again changes how it wants us to regard Rosamund Pike’s character.

Fighting her way up in a male-dominated society where she has to change who she is in order to move ahead would be a significant story; so would a story ultimately centering on what two crooks show each other about themselves and the depths they have sunk to. As is, I Care a Lot turns into a mild black comedy/standard crime thriller that thinks it’s funnier than it ends up as, and disappointingly with more teeth and resources than it knows what to do with.

My Rating: 3 1/8 /5

My review as originally published on Flickering Myth's website on February 24, 2021:

Director Neil Marshall has a history of making movies that thrive on darkened blood, add demonic features to the human body, and share a pallid, grainy aesthetic. He likes to get the adrenaline going, but in recent years has tunneled in to blunt, flagrant bombast that tries to disguise that the writing isn’t as well-executed as some of the imagery is striking. The Reckoning is an attempt to reel in the ticks and return to a more grounded sensibility. However, old habits die hard.

In the film, the Great Plague has rotted the bodies and minds of people throughout England. As humans tend to do in periods of strife, the “religious” English find other people to blame; this case involves pointing fingers in persecution of women who stand out, are less fortunate, or are vulnerable, decrying them as witches that are cursing their country and neighbors. Frontier woman Grace (played by Charlotte Kirk) loses her husband after he goes in to town, contracts the Plague, and kills himself to protect her and their infant child. Soon after, Grace’s landlord threatens and tries to rape her, she fights back, and the town gets to buzzing about how she is a witch that sent her husband to Hell.

Grace’s immediate capture by officers is guaranteed. When the accused is brought forward, the presentation of flawed evidence is the only prosecution needed to convict a woman of witchcraft. Most of The Reckoning takes place following Grace’s conviction, when specialized religious officials try by means of torture to get Grace to confess before they execute her.

In the opening scenes, The Reckoning establishes Grace as not simply a victim, but a strong, independent, skilled, and ultimately resilient woman trying to free herself from the constraints and prejudices of her time. This is only a problem because we don’t get to know much about her past (aside from the fact that when Grace was a child her mother was killed in front of her) and how such an anomaly for this period of history came to be. The person Grace is doesn’t fit the environment she has been written into; nowadays, women sticking up for themselves and having rights isn’t a groundbreaking notion, but back in the 1600s, for most people, it would be radical and alien.

Neil Marshall hasn’t entirely crafted this movie for today’s feminist movements. In fact, The Reckoning is positing its star, Charlotte Kirk, as a victim of the system around her; she has come under scrutiny these past few years due to her career blossoming after having intimate relations with a couple of Hollywood moguls. Kirk and  Marshall are currently engaged, and the film was cowritten between the two of them and Edward Evers-Swindell after Marshall likened the allegations against his fiancée to a “witch hunt.” The character Grace struggles with the issues of her times, but her attitude and actions come from the woman portraying her.

Putting the motivation and personal drama behind The Reckoning aside, there is genuine conflict in the story, and Ms. Kirk’s energy comes through, even though as an actress she is not very good at expressing emotion. If a viewer didn’t know of her relationship with the director, you couldn’t fault them for thinking that Charlotte was chosen for the movie because someone involved in the making of it was turned on by her body and wanted to graphically show her more than once, with no parts of her body left covered, having sex with her character’s deceased husband, who sometimes turns out to be the Devil (such a reading of the material would say that the film gives in to misogynistic inclinations by treating Grace as much of an object as the other characters in the story do, with Kirk’s lack of emotive capabilities either saying Grace is cold and unable of true human expression, or as traumatized by the world around her to such a degree that she has to detach herself in order to survive).

Other actors (particularly Sean Pertwee as Judge Moorcroft) have the opposite problem, hamming the material up enough that The Reckoning‘s harsh muchness doesn’t end with the serious plot, modern-day comparisons, and partly unhinged filmmaking and story/tonal structure choices that make things uneven; the overacting of sparse lines from dangerous, brazenly ignorant characters pushes things out of the vicinity of the realm of realism, further illuminated by Kirk’s contrast in approach and direction.

All things considered, The Reckoning ends with an exciting, rousing finale that could sway less critical viewers more in the film’s favor. This is a messy product from a once-promising director, but a possible guilty pleasure to look in to whenever one is in the mood for that sort of thing in the future. Or put another way: If you need a break from neat and tidy genre filmmaking and don’t mind noise, phlegm, and underdeveloped, ham-fisted social issue soup…well, nothing’s stopping ya.

Rating: 2 3/4 /5

My review as originally published on Flickering Myth's site on February 10, 2021:

No, The Mad Hatter has nothing to do with the goofy fellow from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but the movie still acknowledges that connection throughout its runtime by mainly spending it around the villa of a wealthy 19th century hatter whose favorite pasttimes included intoxicating masquerade parties, well-prepared tea, hormonal orgies, and getting nearly everybody high on drugs. Oh, and it just so happens that the hatter might be a madman as well.

This last point, however, is mainly inferred as opposed to shown. The Mad Hatter opens with a short scene where the Hatter’s daughter accidentally causes a fire during one of her father’s parties, killing everybody inside; not much is learned about the Hatter’s nature during this, and even after the movie then proceeds to jump over a century into the future for the remaining time, there is still very little expressed beyond the fact that all these years later he has become infamous.

There is a lot wrong with The Mad Hatter, with the writing being one of the most damning features. Our protagonists are four “modern” college students who are brought to stay at the villa for a few days by their odd parapsychology professor, David Hart (played by Armando Gutierrez), in an attempt to study how the supernatural affects them. The more that happens to them, and the more they can do to instigate things, the better. It’s alright if you’re a bit puzzled by this setup, because pretty much not a single thing happening in the movie is explained or justified, just thrown at the viewer and characters as soon as they can be dished out. Take, for instance, that right after the students sign up for the trip to the haunted villa, Henry (Samuel Caleb Walker) walks around on campus and is immediately confronted by the disturbing spirit of a little girl who flickers on and off like a broken projector image. This, plus anything creepy or alarming that boldly happens for the first couple days of the study, is brushed off.

Beyond the faulty setup, logic, and world-building (which is forced and insubstantial), faults in The Mad Hatter‘s writing go on; the dialogue is poor and tasteless, the characters aren’t fleshed-out people (plus have next to nothing in the personality department), scares are the same dried-up variations on repeat, and the twist ending is completely predictable.

More shade can be thrown at The Mad Hatter: The acting is flat. The CGI special effects are subpar. The music fits but is overdone. But sure enough, the movie drags on, feeling two times longer than it is. If this production was analyzed any deeper, the list of faults would go on even longer.

A small amount of credit is due to those people who put together a musty visual scheme that would have been more fully realized with better support from the rest of the production; the underwater shots alone promise something richer than The Mad Hatter is capable of putting together.

All in all, The Mad Hatter is a movie to avoid, even for consumers who like watching bad movies. There is a good chance that viewers will leave or turn this off in the first 15 minutes; and true to their suspicions, sitting through the whole movie and waiting for something to latch on to proves to be fruitless and just not worth it.

My Rating: 1 1/2 /5

My review as originally published on Flickering Myth's site on January 27, 2021

Despite there already being many cinematic versions of the story of wooden boy Pinocchio (with a plethora more still planned for the horizon), the pile of adaptations is worth it for the few fresh films that can stand on their own two feet. This Italian adaptation of the original 1883 book by Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio, is one of them.

Starved-for-work carpenter Geppetto (played by Roberto Benigni) is given a magical block of wood, which he uses to sculpt a handsome young puppet to tour with and make money off of. But then, Geppetto’s creation, Pinocchio (bright child star Federico Ielapi), stirs to life, becoming the son Geppetto believed he would never be able to have. Out of love, Geppetto barters his jacket to acquire a schoolbook for his puppet, but the ignorant boy ditches school to satisfy his curiosity and see the puppet theater that has come to town. Ending up far from home, Pinocchio wanders around the country in order to make it back to his papa, all while meeting new people and enduring a series of unfortunate accidents and trying tests.

When discussing the movie Pinocchio‘s benefits, the meticulous and top-notch production values are a good place to start. The dim but richly textured small-town country life of Italy features for most of the runtime through glowing sized-down sets, traditional outdoor locations, and standard period garbs. Later, when things get fantastical, these grounded features help establish this as more of a reserved fable where the abnormal is simply another, more figural, dimension of everyday life.
Pinocchio‘s fantasy elements mainly revolve around animated puppet Pinocchio, his friend the Blue Fairy, and an extensive assortment of half-animal, partly human creatures, which appear through the process of charming, heavy-duty prosthetic makeup and minimal computer imagery. Since all the actors can physically share the same space with each other, it makes it feel that much more physical and personable than if a lot of the characters were digitally rendered and so seemed to be on loan from a different reality.

On top of all that, there is colorful and melodic music from composer Dario Marianelli; a respectful albeit whimsical screenplay by actor Massimo Ceccherini (the tricksy Fox) and director Matteo Garrone; and warm performances from a cast that includes a couple previous Pinocchio movie veterans (Roberto Benigni, and Rocco Papaleo as the blind Cat).

To be completely honest, though, this adaptation of Pinocchio doesn’t quite reach the level of cinematic perfection. There are all the elements of a good movie, except for the soul to bring purpose to the pieces and connect with the film’s audience. When the story reaches its end after two whole hours, we are left uncertain about what this journey and its individual strange episodes was for; an overarching message or moral to the fable can be surmised, but not in such a way that the tonal evidence throughout shows there was supposed to be one in the first place.

The newest Pinocchio is a slightly uneven and overlong excursion into well-endowed fantasy comfort food, the kind that amuses and is greatly appreciated even if its inspiration and warm-hearted origins don’t stick with you for long after the end credits roll.

Rating: 4/5

My review as originally published on Flickering Myth's site on August 28, 2020

Archive opens with a wide shot of a wintery, coniferous forest somewhere in Japan. Underlying the frigid air is an endless network formation of trees, establishing breathtaking nature as manufactured isolation. The real chill in the air comes not from the frigid temperatures, but from being drawn to the beauty in something that does not feel natural.
 
Scientist George Almore (played by Theo James) works and lives alone at a giant Artisan Robotics compound in the middle of the forest; alone, that is, except for the presence of two robotic creations who serve as his helpers and children: J1 and J2. George implanted ghosts in these machines to recreate life and add meaning to his work.  J1 and J2 are essentially prototypes of George’s vision, appearing to be more so when compared to what the next step of his project is.
 
The next step involves illegally taking the technology of another business (the Archive collective) and using it to privately upgrade George’s newest corporately-funded concoction (the human-like J3 (embodied and voiced by Stacy Martin)) for personal reasons pertaining to the accidental death of his wife years before.  As the unnatural tinkering results in happenings of more profound value, the unreal becomes purer while the natural world continues to be a shell of its former self.
 
Director-writer Gavin Rothery has obviously been inspired by numerous works of science/science-fiction (from the sleek design of J3 mirroring and building on that of the Machine Man in Metropolis, to a reliance on all the latest think-pieces on how memories make up who a person is, to the nature of the Replicants in Blade Runner media, etc.). What does not show in his final product of Archive, however, is a love for story-telling or an eagerness to explore new ideas.
 
While everything in Archive is grounded in a gritty, modular aesthetic, it becomes harder to distinguish between what is real and what is ultimately only experienced. The path to creating a physical manifestation of will on reality is paved in George’s disassociation with it. He lives in his head, the only place of control, and the isolated chambers around him symbolize its barriers. Without giving too much away, George is the ghost in his own machine.  The robots he lives with want to become more fully realized, but that can only happen by becoming real on their own terms because George’s output becomes internalized.
 
Very few of these realizations come until after finishing Archive due to how slow and mechanical the film moves.  Sure, inexplicable things happen, but they are treated mundanely and within the limited parameters that have been set to see into Archive’s world.  Only after a confusing ending do things take on another dimension of meaning.  By that time, it is too little too late, and all one is left with is an empty feeling of resignation.

Rating: 3.125/5, or 3 1/8 /5

Note: This review is not at all comprehensive; what you need to know is that the film gets everything right, and it has the committed performance of an actor who helped bring us the best incarnation of one of the greatest fictional villains of all time.

I love this movie so very much. It feels weird for me to use that word, "love", but it is the first thing to pop into my mind, and it is most accurate. This is my second favorite film of all the ones that I have watched; even as I go further ahead in time and watch more and more movies, The Dark Knight still brings about awe in me. This is the rare film where If I see that it is playing on TV I drop whatever I am doing (even if I am trying to make a deadline), sit down, and watch until either the end or as long as I can before life calls.

And for the more watchful viewer, I want to point out something: The Dark Knight winks at past Batman adaptations by replaying some moments in different scenarios. One such example is that near the end of Tim Burton's Batman the Joker asks the Batwing in the sky to "come to" him, observes as all shots fired at him miss, and then proceeds to send one bullet into the sky as Batman passes overhead. Now, when director Christopher Nolan proceeds to introduce to us his vision of the Joker, he takes that same kind of end payoff setup and gives us not only a reason for why Batman misses, this time swerving the Batcycle out of the way and crashing, but arguably in that moment also begins to establish how the Joker has the guts and intelligence to do what no other villain can and tear Batman apart from the inside out. The Joker walks forward shooting his gun, growling for Batman to hit him (the line itself coming from Batman Returns), and proves that as long as Batman carries a personal cross of responsibility over his shoulders he can be exploited and played like a fiddle. This is the validation the Joker was waiting for, and with this he assures himself that Batman is the lovable play-toy that he thought he might turn out to be.

Nolan takes the knowledge we already have of the Batman mythos and gives it weight, spark, depth, sincerity, dexterity, and grandeur in his Dark Knight trilogy, the second film, The Dark Knight, being the pivotal center of it all. It is a film that understands the allure of darkness, sees how it can efficiently spread, and then presents us with the facts regarding the realities of honor, strength, and influence and the realities that passions can construct inside of us, the most twisted of all being those that see the faults in others' realities and can link the faults to the endurance of their own self-principles, channeling energy and free thought into the measured manipulation of society. How the citizens of Gotham view Batman and explain their emotions through what he stands for is enough to spark a conversation of its own, especially if one applies how Bruce Wayne created this image and how it defines both what he sees in himself and what he sees in others.

When The Dark Knight first came out it seemed to excite conversation; what I have observed in the past nine years is that it continues to do so, and the achievements it pulls off in areas across the board doesn't hurt its chances at being viewed as a milestone in the history of entertainment and art either.  Even more than that, it is one of the greatest films ever made.  Yeah, I went there.
My rating: 5/5

Well, here we are again.  Another film in The Conjuring (Extended) Universe.  It might not be well known by everyone, but I am a big fan of this series.  The first movie in the franchise even made it onto my list of favorite films.  I state this so that you know that whenever I watch a new installment I am already biased in support of it.  However, since I don't like assigning a film a rating unless I have already seen it, and I begrudgingly give good ratings to movies that I end up not liking, I try to be honest in my final assessment of a film.

The Conjuring was a big deal to me when I first saw it.  For the rest of that day I kept talking about it to anyone who would listen.  Annabelle was a disappointment, cheaply knocking off other films, showcasing a range of characters who did not know how to act intelligently, and drawing viewers into a mean-spirited and nasty atmosphere that threatened to suffocate.  The Conjuring 2 was a well-made, intelligent, and suitably spooky concoction that was burdened with an overstretched length and a somewhat confused climax.

Where does Annabelle: Creation stand?  It depends on how you look at it.  All these spin-off films are made because Warner Bros. and partners see that there is an audience out there for them and wish to make a profit.  Annabelle: Creation has certain characteristics that bear quite a resemblance to previous entries (an obsession with terrifying adolescent girls, period setting, hidden alcoves and scary basements, and a game that is used to manipulate people into following a bread-crumb trail, just to name a few), yet knows how to handle things with skill, craft, attention, and respect.  In this way, it's like the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  The films in it can get old after a while, but it's hard to deny that they do what they set out to do, and they do it well.  There may be individual parts that change to help put up the appearance of "variety" and may hint at greater depths, but at heart its all still the same.  If you approach Annabelle: Creation in this way, then you're more than likely all ready to criticize it before you even enter the theater.  You're not in a position to be swept up into it, and the movie isn't going to do enough to catch you off guard and win you over.

However, it must be said that for a movie that is okay with repeating things from the past, the fourth film (and earliest chronologically) in this series at times can be quite a doozy.  And I do mean that in a good way.  Some parts of the series might be based on real events as advertised with the main, non-spin-off films, but this is the first movie where I found that it no longer matters to me.  At times these films border on fantasy, what with weird devices like teleportation being possible, but they are done in a way that enhances the experience, intensifying the moment, instead of calling so much negative attention to themselves that people just want to throw popcorn at the screen.  They are done to affect the audience, not as plot gimmicks to advance the story along, or as signs of lazy writing.  Annabelle: Creation is the first in the franchise to recognize any hints of absurdity and use it to its advantage, making for a film that is possibly the most intense entry so far.  The absurdities are used to racket up more scares a minute, but they are almost all effective due to decent set-ups and ideas to redo some of the same scenarios over again in different simple variations of the same freak-outs.

That's the thing: the filmmakers keep it simple.  The Conjuring 2 eventually got tangled in its own logic by trying to add layers onto something that not necessarily should have been more complex.  These movies aren't meant to do good by inserting mysteries revolving around betrayal and motives or with adding so much mystery or mythology around a creature that it appears to be all-powerful.  Instead of variations on a few notes, they could build the scares on top of each other, but the variations here are so well-done that they appear to build on each other even when it is just the same thing played over again in a different environment with new faces.  I say this because I am impressed by how well it managed to work.  Lesser movies would fall flat on their faces or appear conspicuously empty and meaningless if they tried this.

Annabelle: Creation at times feels like it gets close to crossing over the line that the first Annabelle sprinted over and make something that is unoriginal and ugly to experience.  There is even a moment where I became nervous that the movie was going to replicate the awful time I had watching Messengers 2: The Scarecrow.  Instead it becomes one of the few unnecessary gimmicks that doesn't point at itself, pretending to be organic, but still manages to be noticeable and show that the writers are running out of ideas.  Even if these kind of moments don't completely work, they still function quite well into instilling fear into cinemagoers.  The tale and scares are told with such ferocity that the simple fact that it's all done with taste won me over.

The new movie in The Conjuring Universe is no classic and has next to no originality.  It doesn't make you think, it is not all the way thought-out, and it doesn't care to extend itself far from what it needs to.  But what Annabelle: Creation does do is meet expectations and do it with heart.  What it lacks in ideas it makes up for with what it decides to do with the few it has.  It supplies characters with little to no depth and that resemble some of those you have seen in other films, but it treats most of them with enough respect and attention that you like them anyway.  Beside from making money, its other goals are to scare you, thrill you, and please fans of the franchise.  It succeeds in this, and you come away from the film feeling your money was well-spent.  You didn't grow as a person,  but that wasn't what you came to the movie for in the first place.

Of the four films so far, this is the third-best in the way it is constructed.  It is the second-most satisfying, probably because the first Annabelle set the bar low and this new film has no pretensions in what it is trying to be.  It fits into this Universe quite nice and snugly and even manages to make some things in the first Annabelle more easy to understand.  I recommend Annabelle: Creation to any that are interested in seeing it, and I wait to see if the film being released next year, The Nun, is worthy enough to be noticed in a positive way as well.

 My rating: 3 3/4 /5

   This movie has a hard time staying still, and seems content to overwhelm the audience. No, I shouldn't say overwhelm. It is like a blind giant that keeps reaching down to pick you up and ends up smacking you repeatedly atop the head and knocking you down. The first half hour is the worst part of the film, as it speeds through events without giving the audience very much explanation for what is going on. It isn't until 2/3 of the film are completed before it goes back and addresses the confusion, but in such a hurried manner that a person is bound to still be tipsy. The whole movie is a rush, a mad rush. I don't know why the movie was rushing, though. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was an editing monster as well, but that movie was more about the boom than about substance. Here the movie tries to do both, and it is isn't restricted to the editing. People speak so fast back and forth between each other before cutting to something else that if you aren't paying attention you'll get whiplash, and if you ARE paying attention you will still get a bit of a rope burn. A deficiency in pauses and moments to better understand the characters also deters from getting emotionally invested in the characters instead of the rapid-fire, exuberant action.

   When Vortigern transforms into his buff, skull-faced form and battles with Arthur, I was reminded of a video game battle, but one that was resolved too easily. There are also many moments in the film where people cast their heads back, jaws taut but slackened, and appear to simultaneously growl like a lion (or one of the dogs in the film that tersely bark with jowls flapping) and howl like a wolf. It's almost as if the movie wants people to feel everything some characters are, or it could be that it wants the audience to be entranced by the action, as the sensitivity to detail including sound and vibrations grabs you, and the focus on faces when they are either in agony or rushing hither and yon makes you wonder if this a found footage film where there are multiple cameras traveling with different people that capture all the nauseating hysteria.

   This movie wouldn't have been half as engrossing if it wasn't for the music. There are patches of the movie that could work as music videos advertising for an actual film that is yet to come. In fact, the song "The Wild Wild Berry" from an actual trailer for the film is used in a couple spots with some of the exact same images.

   Beside from the rapid pace that doesn't slow down and leave room for the movie to breathe and let in quieter moments that deepen the impact in a more subtle way, I struggled with how the story went with this version of Arthur. The movie focuses so much on the magic inherent in the tale that it neglects the humanity. I didn't have trouble believing in the power of Excalibur; the film flashes the sword's might all over the place and makes quite a big deal about it. What I had trouble swallowing was the man behind the sword. By the end of the film, I still wasn't convinced that he was king, that he had earned it and had the heart of the person from ancient legends and the best interests of the people at that heart. The guy's got spunk and bravery, but they seem to be inherent in him instead of something risen in him from his travels that make him a better person. This spunk and bravery up until near the very end of the film stinks of arrogance. And in the final battle against Vortigern, Arthur states that Vortigern is the one who made Arthur who he is. This bothered me. This seems to me not as if he is saying, "I was born into darkness and in it found the light to combat it and lead these people", but, "Darkness made me whom I am, and who I am and why I am here is because you brought this on yourself." It feels a bit vindictive and hurt, not strong in the conviction that what Arthur is doing is for what is right.

   If I let my criticisms of the film fall to the back of my mind, as I can for this one, though, what I find when looking back at is an enjoyable action adventure with hint of vision and lots of intensity and ambitious dedication, even if it is off-kilter. For those who end up liking this movie, it more than likely is going to end up as a guilty pleasure.  I don't know if there will be another five films in the series like was originally planned, but if there are, I sure to God hope there is more focus in them on characterization, lucidity, and fleshed-out plot and less on spectacle mixed with assertive play. If so, well, that would sure make my day.

My rating: 3 1/2 /5 (for entertainment value and artistic merit rather than for coherent craft)

I'll also include the Comic-Con trailer, so you can get a sense of what I'm talking about when I say there are parts of the movie that play like a music video, and also so you can hear the song I had mentioned.

Maybe in my life I have watched the original 1991 movie too often and no remake would have been good enough. I don't know. But I do know I had a lot more trouble accepting this remake while watching it than I did with last year's excellent The Jungle Book and the previous year's Cinderella. While the other two felt like relatively fresh retellings, this one felt to me like a high-production rip-off.  The production details are near flawless, with excellent cinematography, set designs, makeup, and the like.  This means that the average viewer will more than likely be caught up in all of it, as this film is indeed a beauty to look at.  Now onto my negative rantings.

There are many changes and things added, but they are not all successful. Some of the things they copied over again did not work for me this time. Like the design of the inanimate object servants. They look too much like the objects they are. It is often hard to interpret facial expressions or body language. I am reminded of the carpet in Aladdin, which is bad if this is a large part of your supporting cast. That could just be my own problem though. But my biggest problem with them lies with the tea kettle and cups. I was not impressed with any sort of warm characterization for them that I felt in the animated film. The voice of Mrs. Potts here bothered me, though it may be me just comparing her voice to the former film's. When all those characters transformed back into humans at the end, I wasn't as excited to learn what they actually looked like. The underwhelming nature of this overwhelmed me later after I got home.

The end fight on top of the castle was not strong enough. Part of the problem might be that Belle gets involved and assures the Beast that what Gaston says about how she feels is wrong, which then motivates the Beast to fight. The problems extend more off from there, though.

"The Mob Song" pales in comparison to the original. The former version felt like a dark ranting that you could almost feel persuaded to join in, while this one is brief and not too rapturous.  Because Gaston is now a living, breathing human it is much harder to be certain that he is evil and deserves to die, instead of just being a mighty self-centered buggard with a lot of influence and pride.  Animation is better with caricatures.

I was confused about the townspeople's mockery of Maurice in this, as nothing is shown with him being eccentric. I had a harder time picturing Belle and her father as this odd pair that everyone talks about. If the movie is going to promote its theme of inclusion by revealing that a few characters are of color, treated equally with white people, and a couple are of the LGBTQ community, why do Belle and her father get such a bad reception from others? Emma Watson is okay as Belle, but she doesn't have as strong of a personality as the Belle in the 1991 film.

The film doesn't have much of a personality either, which may be as a result of it being lost in distant nature of the inanimate servants and the inconsistent pacing, which speeds much too quickly through some places that I would have preferred it slow down, and then lugs sluggishly through other areas. The pacing threw me out of the film too many times than I count, which upset me when I was finally starting to get into the narrative's groove.

The Beast looks like too much CGI or motion-capture and not enough like a living being, which made it harder for me to be convinced of the possibility that Belle could fall in love with it. At least in the animated film both characters were animated, appearing to live in the same domain of reality, even if the Beast was figuratively "disfigured".

Of course, this all could just be me being "picky", as someone already called me after I shared my thoughts on the film.

I will say this, though: I actually liked this version of LeFou. I like both versions, the former for comedic relief and his devoted empty-headed banality, and this one for his charm, warmth, and gusto, the only character I felt that from during the whole movie. I actually WANTED the scenes with him in it. People may worry about this, as he is "gay" and might appeal to children. The "gayness" of him is barely pronounced, basically only being noticeable if you look for it. I didn't care. In this version, he actually seems like a nice guy, and for all the indifference Gaston gives to him as a fellow human being and all the times LeFou must struggle with fighting his own conscience, I do actually feel sad that he may never be able to love anyone. Sure, he is seen dancing with somebody at the end, but society will guarantee that nothing will come of it. That's not me saying that I approve of gay marriage, but it is me saying that I realize that the withholding of it can lead to heartbreak and a lifetime of misery. And I respect this LeFou. But this is a fantasy/fairy tale, so who knows? Maybe someday he'll have a "happily ever after" after all.

My rating: 3 1/8 /5

P.S. I maybe used too many "maybe"s in this review. (Perhaps I'll overuse "perhaps" next time?)

The X-Men franchise is the comic book franchise with the highest pedigree. It keeps pumping out film after film that strive for quality and address sensitive subjects with an aggression that doesn't belittle what they are driving toward, though some of them may be critical misses. I go to these comic book films when they are released, and over the past several years I have been growing more and more adverse to them, just as I am wanting to love them. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been reinforcing this negative feeling within me, as films like Doctor Strange should be resounding hits but are merely adequate in delivery while being emptily high in quality. But I KNOW when I go into an X-Men film hope will be injected back into me, even if it is only for a short time. X-Men: Apocalypse of last year ended up being a major disappointment for me. It had so much potential, but it was wasted.

Logan to me is the best of the franchise, which was previously held by X2: X-Men United. More than that, it is the best Marvel movie I have ever seen, and I have watched a plethora. It is so good that it is now one of my Favorite Films. It strips away nearly all the things that have become the norm in these types of films and injects a feeling of relevance and emotion. This emotion builds and builds, as it gently shakes your hand and walks with you down a road to a still horizon. I am going to be honest. By the end tears were running down my face. I had to hold back sobs, as the weight of how different this film is than any other superhero film dawned on me and exposed how empty nearly all these other ones are, as well as what this movie does intimately and coarsely on a film-making level while working on a personal level to devoted fans of these characters. The film doesn't conclude on an energetic note that says "life continues". If I didn't know better, I would say that this feels like the true end of the emotional core of the series. When I sensed that the movie was going to take a turn into territory that let down all that came before, it instead affirms that it understands you have that worry and goes a different way that stays more true while not being afraid to step you out of your comfort zone.

This is THE superhero film that I didn't even fully realize that I was waiting for. After it was done, no one in the theater talked. People went on their ways, and looking into their faces you could see they had been crying as well. I will miss all the things Logan says goodbye to, and I hope, for the sake of the future of the X-Men series and for other superhero and action franchises, that they more than know what they are doing, but give more than one legitimate reason for doing it as well. For right now, this feels like the end. My rating: 4 3/4/ 5