‘Tis The Season For Some Streaming: WONDER WOMAN 1984 & SOUL

Yesterday, it seemed that just about everybody on my social media feeds was watching WONDER WOMAN 1984, which premiered on HBO Max; and SOUL, which premiered on Disney Plus. Both were originally slated to be theatrically releases, but, well, you know why they’re getting rolled out this way. However, WONDER WOMAN is getting a limited theatrical release including at some IMAX venues, while SOUL is being released on some big screens overseas.

Christmas afternoon, I viewed WW84, as the film declares itself (guess it’s better than WWII), Patty Jenkins’ sequel to her ultra successful 2017 WW, which is maybe the best of the recent spate of DC movies. Gal Godot returns as Diana/WW, who now works as a Smithsonian Institute anthropologist in Washington D.C. and lives at the Watergate complex.

It’s the mid ‘80s, as if you couldn’t tell from the title, and our heroine appears to be sad, and friendless. That’s where Kristen Wiig, an odd choice for a superhero movie, comes in as an awkward co-worker named Barbara Ann Minerva, who is inspecting some ancient stone, which is referred to as a “dream rock.”

This stone is obviously the movie’s McGuffin, as it grants wishes and everyone is after it including, of course, the villain, oil tycoon Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), who you can’t look at and not think of Donald Trump. The guy has a similar bogus billionaire background and even says “I’m not a conman; I’m a television personality!” 

Jenkins may say that the character is an amalgam that’s as inspired by Bernie Madoff as it is Trump, but c’mon! That’s about as convincing as Orson Welles saying that CITIZEN KANE was only partly based on William Randolph Hearst.

Trump, I mean Lord, steals the stone and wishes to become one with it so he can grant everybody their wishes, and predictably they all have Monkey’s Paw-style consequences.

Oh, I haven’t even mentioned the return of Chris Pine as Diana’s dead boyfriend, Steve Trevor, now resurrected by a wish. Not sure if Pine is really necessary as their romance feels a bit flat.

WW84 is a very mixed bag, the first half is mildly enjoyable, though I could’ve done with more ‘80s kitsch and tackiness, but it gets crazy convoluted with big bloated action scenes including a desert highway chase sequence with army trucks and heavy artillery that fails to be very exciting until the last minute of it. Wiig’s Minerva, whose arc reminded me of Michelle Pfeifer’s in BATMAN RETURNS, is another element that doesn’t quite gel as Jenkins and crew don’t seem to know what to do with her. Her entire role is as awkward as her character.

There’s only intermittent dumb fun in WW84, and those instances aren’t helped by the two and a half hour running time. Despite not having very interesting dialogue (a speech at the end tries to rectify this and almost succeeds), Gadot does her best as she flies, glides, and lassos her way through the messy set-pieces. She really deserves a sleeker, more polished narrative. It’s also disappointing that they felt the Trump guy is worth redemption. Because, man, he really isn’t.

I almost hesitated even blogging about this movie, because either most folks have already seen it or are going to anyway no matter what anybody says. Oh, and if you do - stay through the end credits. It’s worth it.

Much, much better is the Pixar film, SOUL, co-written and directed by Pete Docter, who’s worked on over two dozen Pixar productions. Jamie Foxx, who is the first African American protagonist in a Pixar movie (jeez it took over 20 of their movies for this to happen!) voices music teacher Joe Gardner, who on the verge of a big break playing piano in a band headed by acclaimed jazz saxophonist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett bringing the attitude) steps into an open manhole and finds that he’s become a glowing blue soul (sort of Casper-esque) in the afterlife set to be sent to “The Great Beyond.”

After Joe attempts to return to earth repeatedly, he meets a surly soul named 22 (voiced by a constantly quipping Tina Fey and they try to make the trip back together. But lo and behold a wacky mishap has Fey’s 22 entering Joe’s body, that’s in a coma in a hospital bed, while Joe takes over the body of a therapy cat resting at Joe’s feet on the bed. The mismatched duo frantically scramble from one farcical situation to another, but I’m not complaining as there are many hilarious moments. This is one of those films that makes me really miss the theater experience as I kept imagining an audience’s hysterical laughter in key places. Sigh.

The Pixar flick that this engaging romp most resembles is INSIDE/OUT, which Docter also directed, but it marches to its own beat aided by a delightful soundtrack by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Stephen Colbert’s bandleader Jon Batiste that should get some Oscar attention (that is, if they have the Oscars for this year).

I should also mention the rest of the well chosen supporting cast such as Phylicia Rashad as Joe’s mother, Questlove as a drummer in Bassett’s band, Phylicia Daveed Diggs as a rival of Joe’s, and Graham Norton as a spiritual hippy name Moonwind, who tries to help Joe and 22 solve their mixed-up shenanigans. 

It will be no surprise for Pixar fans, that the animation is gorgeous, especially in the photo-realistic New York street scenes. Eye-candy city, for sure.

A cute, charming, and heartwarming story about literally chasing your dreams, SOUL is another winner for Pixar. The only issue I had with it is the title made me think it was about a soul artist, not a jazz musician. I get that the title JAZZ wouldn’t really work, and that the premise concerns souls, so I guess it’s that I’ve got to have something to criticize here. So if you’re considering cancelling your Disney Plus subscription because you’ve finished watching season two of The Mandalorian, before you do make sure you see SOUL.

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Summing Up The Cinematic Summer Of 2017

Reportedly this summer was the lowest grossing at the box office in many years. The low turnout can be blamed on franchise fatigue (more ALIENS, APES, CARS, TRANSFORMERS, and PIRATES, anybody?), the abundance of big budget bombs (THE MUMMY, KING ARTHUR: THE LEGEND OF THE SWORD, DARK TOWER, VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS), and all the good TV shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, Twin Peaks: The Return, Game of Thrones, and Glow competing for people’s attention. But whatever the case, despite several gems, it’s been an abysmal season crowded with bland blockbuster wannabes.

It started off promising last May with James Gunn’s GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2, a solid sequel to the big Marvel hit from three summers ago. GOTGV2 had a juicy role for Kurt Russell as the father of Chris Pratt’s character, Peter Quill (or Star Lord, if you prefer), a bunch of amusing action sequences and gags, and a stellar soundtrack going for it, and audiences responded by making it the third top grossing movie of the year. Read my review.

The next few sequels that followed - Ridley Scott’s ALIEN: COVENANT, David Bower’s DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE LONG HAUL, and Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES came and went quickly, with only PIRATES turning a profit despite bad reviews (it’s at 30% on the Rottentomatometer). I only saw PIRATES of these three, and I'm pretty tired of Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack schtick so I didn’t care for it (read my review: PIRATES 5: DEAD MEN TELL NO NEW TALES), but at least I enjoyed the Paul McCartney cameo.

I wanted to see the latest ALIEN sequel on the big screen, but didn’t get around to it. I’ll probably catch it someday on Blu ray or streaming, but I’m not really dying to.

Early June, the summer was shaken up by the major success of Patty Jenkins’ WONDER WOMAN, the first actually good movie of the new DC Extended Universe. 

The gorgeous Gal Gadot portrays the iconic superheroine in the WWI era adventure, and with the help of Chris Pine, and a supporting cast including Robin Wright, Danny Huston, and David Thewlis, she lassoed up a satisfying piece of entertainment (read my review). Now, I’m just waiting for Zack Snyder to get the franchise back off track with JUSTICE LEAGUE (also featuring Gadot) this November. 

Another superhero favorite, Spider-Man, returned the next month, and restored the character to his former glory after Marc Webb’s forgettable THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN movies with Andrew Garfield. Featuring a likable kid in the form of Tom Holland, who was introduced in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, the extremely fun (and funny) experience of John Watts’ SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING was embraced by moviegoers to the tune of over $300 million, and critics to the tune of a 92 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Read my review.

Another sequel that did well at the box office was Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin, and Eric Guillon’s DESPICABLE ME 3 (though not great critically – 61% on Rotten Tomatoes), but not being a fan of the series or the whole Minions thing for that matter, I opted out.

Of the other summer sequels, I took a hard pass on CARS 3 as the CARS series is my least favorite Pixar franchise, but I took in Matt Reeves’ THE WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, and found it to be a good not great entry in the rebooted series. It contains some powerful visuals, the enjoyable comic relief of Steve Zahn voicing one of the few talking apes who calls himself “Bad Ape,” and Woody Harrelson as the villain, a sinister Colonel who wants to kill off Andy Serkis’ ape leader Caesar and his army, but it’s never been one of my favorite franchises, and I’m not really itching to see more APES movies after it. 

As for the fifth TRANSFORMERS movie, which made over $600 million yet is still considered to be an underperformer - I have never seen one of the TRANSFORMERS movies all the way through, and I’m not considering changing that.

One of the worst, if not the worst, movies of the summer was Alex Kurtzman’s THE MUMMY, which was primed to kick off Universal’s Dark Universe series, but its commercial and critical failure (here’s my pan) may cause the powers that be to reconsider things. Tom Cruise is bound to do much better in the Doug Liman’s upcoming AMERICAN MADE, which is getting some early buzz, so don’t worry about him - he’ll be just fine.

The comedy genre fared horribly during the summer months with flops such as Lucia Aniello’s ROUGH NIGHT (saw it - lame waste of a talented cast headed by Scarlett Johansson and Kate McKinnon), Jonathan Levine’s SNATCHED (didn’t see it, but it looked lame - sorry, Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn), Seth Gordon’s BAYWATCH (another I skipped for what should be an obvious reason), and Andrew Jay Cohen’s THE HOUSE (also didn’t see despite being a fan of both Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler) which was savaged by critics and ignored by audiences.

However, in the world of independent film, there was a comedy this summer, a rom com no less, that did great business, and got critical acclaim to boot: Michael Showalter’s THE BIG SICK. The film, starring Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan is the story of how Nanjiani met his later wife, and stuck with her while she was in a coma, while dealing with her worried parents played by Ray Romano and Holly Hunter. It’s a real witty charmer that has now played for over eight weeks at the Rialto Theater in Raleigh where I work part time. I haven’t seen a movie connect with audiences at our local indie arthouse like it has in a long time. My review.

A few other indies that didn’t connect as well: Trey Edward Shults’ IT CAME AT NIGHT and David Lowery’s A GHOST STORY. Of these, the former, starring Joel Edgerton as a man whose family is holed up in a house in the country while a plague ravages the land, had its edgy moments but was far from fully fleshed out, while the later, featuring Casey Affleck as a ghost - in a white sheet with eye holes, mind you – was just plain weird as I wrote in my review.

In the non franchise department, there’s Edgar Wright’s BABY DRIVER, a crackling crime thriller, with a great cast including Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jon Hamm, and Jamie Foxx, and an even better soundtrack. It wowed crowds and critics, including me as I declared in my review that it was the best film of the summer.

Another non sequel that I enjoyed was David Leitch’s ATOMIC BLONDE, starring Charlize Theron as a kick ass MI6 field agent on a mission in West Berlin during the waning days of the cold war. It’s a bit uneven and wonky at times, but has some excellent set pieces including a stunning fight in a stairwell, a sharp lead performance by Theron, and a well chosen ‘80s soundtrack. Hmm, that’s three films this summer with great soundtracks – not bad.

Up there with BABY DRIVER in quality is Christopher Nolan’s DUNKIRK, an immersive war epic that I’m glad I saw in 70 mm. I had a few issues with its structure, which I discussed in my post, Notes on DUNKIRK, but was overall impressed by Nolan’s work, his best since INCEPTION. I bet we’re going to hear a lot more about it come Oscar season.

Lastly, I hate to say I was disappointed in Steven Soderbergh’s late summer entry, LOGAN LUCKY, which many critics have praised.

I loved its premise – a hillbilly heist centered around robbing the Charlotte Motor Speedway in my homestate of N.C. – and its cast including Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and especially a bleach blond Daniel Craig – but the job is pulled off with very little conflict, the stakes don’t feel very high as folks can be broken out of and back into jail for the caper with ease, and none of these people are believably related to each other – Driver and Tatum sure don’t look or act like brothers, nor do Craig and the two hayseeds (Brian Gleeson and Jack Quaid) who are supposed to be his kin. Still, there were some amusing moments, and I appreciate the effort by Soderbergh to do a variation on his OCEAN’S ELEVEN movies, even if I’m not a fan of those either.

So that’s the summer of 2017 at the movies. One could argue that a season that boasts the likes of BABY DRIVER, DUNKIRK, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, WONDER WOMAN, and THE BIG SICK can’t be completely written off, but that’s only six films out of over 40, so sadly they weren’t enough to save the summer from sucking. The fall, where historically the films get better, can’t come soon enough.

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WONDER WOMAN Does The Iconic Superheroine Justice

Now playing at multiplexes everywhere:

WONDER WOMAN (Dir. Patty Jenkins, 2017)

It’s no secret that the implementation of the DC Extended Universe hasn’t been a critical success so far. The first three entries – MAN OF STEEL, BATMAN V. SUPERMAN, and SUICIDE SQUAD – have been chaotic fiascos with cluttered storylines, mishandled mythology, and poorly drawn characters that it was near impossible to care about.

But there was the glimmer of light that was the introduction of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in B V S, and that gave hope that her solo movie, opening today, would be the first actually good movie of the DCEU.

Well, that hope has been satisfied as WONDER WOMAN is a wonderful (sorry, couldn’t resist) crowd pleaser that breathes new life into the franchise. A radiant Gadot owns the screen as the iconic superhero, bringing kick-ass charisma, fearless finesse, and a knowing wit to her role. She’s joined by Chris Pine, trading his Starfleet Captain attire for a U.S. Army Air Force Captain uniform, as Steve Trevor, who crashes his plane near the island of Themyscira, the land of the Amazons, while being chased by German soldiers.

Before this, we see little Diana (as played at different ages by Lilly Aspell and Emily Carey) training with her aunt, General Antiope (Robin Wright, who’s having a great week with this and season five of House of Cards dropping on Netflix), in secret as her mother, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Neilsen) disapproves.

Fully grown and ready to rumble, Diana rescues Steve from drowning, fights the attacking Germans, then travels with Steve to find Ares the Greek god of War, who she thinks is responsible for World War I.

Diana and Steve travel to London, where he gives the film’s McGuffin – a notebook which he stole from German chemist Dr. Maru aka Doctor Poison (Elena Anaya), which has chemical formulas for gasses powerful enough to destroy gas masks – to Sir Patrick Morgan (David Thewlis) of the Imperial War Cabinet.

After getting outfitted in proper period dress with the help of Steve’s secretary (the British Office’s Lucy Davis making the comic most of her limited screentime) the duo travel to the frontline with a ragtag crew, including Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, and Eugene Brave Rock, that reminded me of the scrappy rebel team that was assembled for the heist in ROGUE ONE.

Diana believes that the sinister General Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston) is Ares so she aims to kill him, but she doesn’t realize that this is one of those movies that has a secret bad guy in it to provide a third act twist.

With her shield, bullet-proof bracelets, and lasso of truth (not to mention her “God Killer” sword), Wonder Woman fights her way through gunfire, explosions, and all the spectacle that you’d come to expect from a summer blockbuster, but with an energy and gusto that stands up to some of Marvel’s best action sequences. The dark, gritty textures of the film’s look (courtesy of cinematographer Matthew Jensen), also give the proceedings gravitas that compares favorably with their comic book movie competitors.

One of my only complaints is that at two hours and 20 minutes is a bit too long. A few scenes drag and could’ve been cut down with no loss of narrative, but as it is an origin story, I bet the filmmakers thought its epic length was justified.

But Gadot and Pine’s palpable chemistry, which has an element of screwball in their between action set-piece banter, keeps the film's formula flowing for the most part. 

It’s great that WONDER WOMAN was directed by a woman, Patty Jenkins, partly because it would just feel wrong if it wasn’t, but really because judging by her filmography (MONSTER, episodes of Arrested Development, The Killing) she’s much more talented than Zach Snyder, who’s to blame for two of the aforementioned epic fails of the DCEU, but to be fair, Snyder did co-contribute to this film’s story. 

Wonder Woman will return in the next DC entry, JUSTICE LEAGUE, due out later this year, but since Snyder is helming that, my expectations are very low. I’m betting that Jenkins does the iconic superheroine a lot better justice here.

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