Flashier, Shinier Knives Are Out For Superficial Fun in GLASS ONION

Streaming on Netflix starting tomorrow, 12/23:

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY

(Dir. Rian Johnson, 2022)

For the follow-up to his 2019 resurrection of the all-star comic whodunit, KNIVES OUT, Rian Johnson does what is expected in a sequel – he goes much bigger with a glitzier production, a flashier ensemble, and a much more convoluted premise. To hold it all together, the only returning cast member, Daniel Craig, brings back his absurd southern accent to reprise the role of the dapper, self-satisfied private detective Benoit Blanc, for his new film series after stepping out of the shoes of 007. 

 

Craig’s Blanc this time finds himself on a private island compound in Greece named the Glass Onion (actually Spetses, a Greek island in the Peloponnese) owned by smarmy tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton). The occasion is Miles’ murder mystery party weekend to which he invited his best friends including Connecticut governor Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn) scientist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.) former model turned fashion designer Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), Twitch streamer Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), and his girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline). 

 

But Miles didn’t invite Blanc, who infiltrated the garish get-together at the lavish doomed art deco palace with Mile’s prized Porsche displayed on a rooftop, and an art collection starring the real Mona Lisa on loan from the Lourve, to assist Helen Brand (Janelle Monáe) in investigating the death of her sister, Miles's ex-business partner Cassandra “Andi” Brand, whose passing hasn’t been reported yet. You see, Cassandra sued Miles but lost the company to him, so Blanc believes she was killed by one of the friends/party guests who perjured in their testimony during the lawsuit. Got that? 

 

Blanc disrupts Miles’ murder mystery play plans, and the night dissolves into a group hangout, which itself gets disrupted by a real murder, which I won’t spoil. Then the convolutions really flare up with over-the-top acting (by everybody), gunplay, motivation-revealing flashbacks, and a lot of third act destruction that finds Johnson recalling less his oft-cited inspiration, Herbert Ross’s 1973 all-star whodunit, THE LAST OF SHEILA, and more the overly broad set-piece smash-ups in the Steven Spielberg mega flop 1941 (1979), and Richard Benjamin’s THE MONEY PIT (1985), especially in the lack of laughs department.

 

The look of the movie, courtesy of Johnson’s longtime cinematographer Steve Yedlin, does pop, but I can’t say it’s any more stellar than the visuals on such likewise travel setting porn like HBO’s The White Lotus. It’s a fitting comparison, because these KNIVES OUT Netflix productions feel more like TV than genuine cinema - and I saw a theatrical screening.

 

GLASS ONION is surface level entertainment; a piece of superficial fun that goes by smoothly, but very little of it will stick in the mind later. One of its most memorable, and amusing moments is simply a shot of Craig making an entrance at the pool in striped swimwear. This got a bigger laugh than any of the dialogue or anything else in the entire film, and it says a lot that it’s one of the only things I can really recall later. 

 

That pretty much sums up Johnson’s second KNIVES OUT MYSTERY - it’s engaging enough in the moment, but you’ll won’t be left with much cinematic nourishment afterward. A third film, in which Craig will again star, is set to follow, so, even if its way less substantial than his previous gig, at least he’s got this fluffy, fun but ultimately forgettable franchise to run with. 

More later...

AVATAR 2: Immersive AF Imagery, Un-Immersive AF Story

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

(Dir. James Cameron, 2022)

In the 13 years since AVATAR grossed billions, won Oscars and became one of the biggest movies ever, I’ve never heard anybody say that they couldn’t wait for a sequel. Have you? I mean, despite its brand, James Cameron’s blue people utopian epic appears to have no real fanbase. Whenever I see it posted about on social media, the comments are usually negative; when my film buff friends in my feeds post pictures of their movie memorabilia, I never see any AVATAR stuff; and in all my conversations about movies in the dozen years, I’ve never heard any interest, or speculation about what would happen in a follow-up.

But here we are, after years of Cameron hammering away on unleashing a further franchise, with the second entry in the saga, AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. But will it be an event movie with anything near the power of the first one’s release in December, 2009? Doubtfully, although I bet it’ll sill make major bank, because while it’s visually a stunning achievement with some of the most immersive cinematic 3D imagery I’ve ever experienced, it has one of the most un-immersive narratives I’ve ever experienced as well. In other words, ATWOW is a beautifully packaged big-ass bore.

Essentially, Cameron, co-writing with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (who wrote the recent run of PLANET OF THE APES movies), has fashioned exactly the AVATAR sequel that one would expect beat-by-beat with Sam Worthington reprising his role as U.S.-marine-turned-tall-lanky-blue-alien Jake Sully, fighting to protect Pandora from another attack by who they call the “Sky People.”

Our blue lead, Worthington, and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) now with obnoxiously precocious - god, I hate when they hiss - kids (Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), and a scruffy blonde human hang-around named Spider (Jack Champion), have to relocate after the evil clichéd Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), brings the RDA (the fictional Resources Development Administration) down on their Na’vi land to colonize and exploit the movie’s McGuffin (the Unobtanium for now!), a chemical that can halt aging (“it just stops it!” somebody says in an example of the screenplay’s sparkling banter).

The bulk of the film’s often unbearable middle third involves the blue fam assimilating with the aquatic green reef people that live on the Pandoran shores. That’s where we get a lot of pretentious talk about respecting the liquid life ‘n such. The closest to entertained, and maybe a little touched, I was during these strained sequences, came from a subplot involving the second-oldest son’s friendship with a whale-like sea creature, but even that was over-earnestly tinged with cringe.

The green people of the Metkayina tribe, are headed by Cliff Curtis as Tonowari, and an unrecognizable Kate Winslet (first time ever in motion capture!) as Ronal, who help bring some gravitas to the ham-fisted dialogue that clunks through the meticulously crafted set-pieces, but like everything else, are merely additional decoration.

Sigourney Weaver returns in a weird way as a different character – Jake and Neytiri’s pregnant teenage daughter, Kiri – which I don’t want to understand, and there are human cameos by Giovanni Ribisi, Edie Falco, and Brendan Cowell, but the most wasted performance has to by Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) as a corrupted biologist who has one good line (“That’s why I drink”).

Way before the halfway mark through three hours and 15 minutes, AVATAR 2 loses its eye-popping power, and morphs into a slog that I couldn’t shake no matter what the spectacle-ambitious Cameron kept throwing at me. Amazing effects, and innovative state of the art designs just can’t disguise what a profoundly unengaging, and just plain uninteresting experience this long-gestating, little-enthused about sequel is. 

ATWOW was the first film in ages that I had to wear 3D glasses for (at a damn Lie-MAX too), and I think I’m deciding now that I’m not gonna do the same for AVATARs 3, 4, and 5 (due in 2024, 2026, and 2028). Maybe I’ll feel different in a few years, but right now, I’m pretty done with all this expensive blue blather.

More later...

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER Is More A Mourning Companion Than A True Sequel

Opening this evening at every multiplex in the multiverse:

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER
(Dir. Ryan Coogler, 2022)

The MCU (the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that is if your living situation has been living under a rock for the last quarter of a century) is such a propelling machine that not even the death of the lead actor of one of the biggest hits in the franchise will halt any production going forward. Of course, I’m talking about Chadwick Boseman, whose untimely demise in 2020, changed the course of the series as his performance as T'Challa / Black Panther was largely the reason the first installment earned over 1.3 billion at the box office, was hailed as one of the best films of the MCU, and was the first superhero film to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

But the 2018 BLACK PANTHER was very rich with other elements that scored with audiences so the idea that a sequel could build on the world of Wakanda (the fictional technogically advanced African nation that’s home to T’Challa and his family), particularly in the role of the sister of our dearly departed, Princess Shuri, played by Letitia Wright. Wright, who also reprised Shuri in two AVENGERS entries, INFINITY WAR and ENDGAME, unsurprisingly has been upgraded to the star in this go round as anybody can guess she ends up donning the shiny, black and purple panther suit, and helmet herself to take on the title.

Also returning are Lupita Nyong’o as T’Challa’s River Tribe War Dog lover, Nakia; Danai Gurira as Okoye, general of the all female fight forces, the Dora Milaje; Angela Bassett as Ramonda, The Queen Mother of Wakanda, Winston Duke as T’Challa’s former challenger, M’Baku; and, well, I’ll just stop there and say that it looks like every major player from the first one is back, even Michael B. Jordan puts in a welcome cameo as N’Jadaka, the main antagonist in the original.

After a Marvel Studios opening logo fashioned as a stunning, emotional tribute with multiple images of Boseman filling up the onlines of the company’s letters, we are taken into an emotional emergency sequence in progress in which we witness Shuri been shaken by the death of her brother by some unspecified disease (it sure wasn’t the colon cancer that took the actor in real life). The first chunk of the film is a very somber, and thoughtful mediation on grief as T’Challa’s family and friends attempt to move on but the shadow of their fallen king and protector looms large over them and the movie as a whole.

But there is a plot here involving the powerful metal Vibranium, the series undeniable McGuffin, and how the whole world wants it including this film’s adversary, Namor (Tenoch Huerta) The king of Talokan, an ancient civilization of underwater dwelling people. Caught up in this is MIT student Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), and another welcome reprise: Martin Freeman as CIA agent, Everett Ross, who has some awkward scenes that don’t quite gel with another Marvel veteran Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who is basically a slight variation of her hateful Veep character.

Over the course of its two hours and forty minute running time, there are the big noisy (the volume at the press screening I attended was particularly loud) action sequences – this time concerning yet another bombastic bridge-set battle, and a ginormous finale ocean-set battle, but the quieter, contemplative moments of mourning are what the movie’s really about. 

Wright’s Shuri carries WAKANDA FOREVER with her spunk driven to fill the space left behind by her brother, with her genuine sadness over the loss coming to surface throughout her heartfelt performance. As the movie is bookended by visual memorial tributes made out of choice shots of Boseman, and so much of it focusing on the grief surrounding T’Challa’s death, it felt more like more like a mourning companion to the original BLACK PANTHER than a true sequel to me, but on that level it mostly works that to its benefit. It’s like the action scenes could’ve been completely cut, and a straight super hero drama could be fashioned from the footage, and it’ll probably have the same intended impact.

It may fall short of being a completely satisfying follow-up, but this glorified BLACK PANTHER epilogue of sorts does fall in line with the rest of Phase four of the MCU, being that it’s a serviceable entry as the 30th film in the franchise. Meaning it will be devoured, and spit out by the hardcore, seen and disposed by the casual fans, and ignored by the rest of the movie-going public, who apparently are the minority as these super hero movies are still dominating the big screen landscape. Until that changes, at least there’s some real emotion, and sentimentality in a project like this to inject some soul, and a heart, and an African drum beat to Disney and Marvel’s never stopping movie machine when its most needed.

More later...