Category: Adventure

Water, Water Everywhere

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – 2022 – PG13

As a kid growing up in the 1960s, comic books were a huge part of my summer reading pleasure, but I was a total DC fan, Superman my hero, Aquaman runner-up. Marvel did not figure in the mix which explains why I missed the genesis of Wakanda in July 1966’s Fantastic Four. Black Panther was a complete unknown to me until the film was released in 2018 and lit up the Academy Awards, nominated for seven, winning three, and the first superhero movie ever to receive Best Picture nomination. So when the sequel, Wakanda Forever was released, it was a must-see on my list. 

What worked: The opening tribute to Chadwick Boseman was creative and touching. Boseman won international accolades for playing the Black Panther, tragically dying in 2020 after battling colon cancer since 2016, unbeknownst to the Marvel universe.  A film featuring the strength and courage of women is a timely balance to the concurrently released Harvey Weinstein exposé She Said and the narcissistic #MeToo saga TÁR. Angela Bassett (Queen Ramonda), Letitia Wright (Princess Shuri), Lupita Nyong’o (T’Challa’s lover and spy Nakia),  Danai Gurira (General Okoye) and Dominique Thorne (MIT student Riri Williams) create a formidable female team as they take on a new undersea enemy. And therein lies what didn’t work.

This new enemy is the Vibranium rich underwater kingdom of Talokan led by King Namor, a feathered serpent god. Vibranium, formed from a meteorite collision with Earth, is the strongest metal in the world, rare and extremely expensive, an asset Wakanda, thinking it only theirs, hid for years. King Namor talks Princess Shuri into a tour of Talokan and meeting the blue-skinned water-breathing superhumans which he has protected from discovery for centuries. Carrying a grudge towards  “the surface world” for enslaving the Maya, Namor proposes an alliance with Wakanda to torch this surface world but  threatens to first annihilate Wakanda if they refuse. Call me pollyanna but harboring bitterness for five centuries seems excessive. Why not wreck havoc and revenge after maybe 100 years rather than 500? Why wait? And Namor threatening to destroy Wakanda, a civilization with which Talokan shares similar roots, treasures and challenges, feels arbitrary and contrived. Two powerful, intelligent nations with common interests, common identities and no historic or contemporary conflicts between each other, now wage an absurd war that consumes the (very, very long) movie. So much water. So much mayhem.

Queen Ramonda faces some United Nations type interrogation about hoarding vibranium.  And then the CIA and Navy Seals use a vibranium-detecting machine to locate a deposit in the Atlantic. And then Namor intercepts and wipes them out. And then Namor  demands that Shuri, who kidnaps Riri for her own protection, to return Riri, who made the machine for a school project, to Talokan for execution. Whew! Oh, and then there is the heart-shaped herb pressed into magical action. Oh, and so is the Midnight Angel armor. And then, and then, and then…..too long, too convoluted, too nonsensical. Film editing apparently is out. Snooze. Sigh. Oh, and then my final comment: don’t leave before the credits roll or you will miss the groundwork for Wakanda the sequel. Sigh.

Great Balls of Fire!

Top Gun: Maverick – 2022 – PG13

Curbing my enthusiasm was not in the cards when I heard TG2 would be released on my June 2020 birthday! Girls night out! Top Gun hats for party favors! And then came Covid, pandemic, quarantine. Grounded! Instead I celebrated with a small group of intrepid, socially distanced friends for a backyard projection of the 1986 original. When the sequel was finally released this summer, two years later than expected and 36 years after cult favorites Maverick, Iceman and Goose roared overhead and buzzed the control tower, true confessions, it felt a tiny bit anticlimactic. Tiny. But once settled into the theater, everything was right with the sky and I even did my best to drum the sparse, docile crowd into a Super Hornet jet frenzy with cheers and applause. The film is a blast, full of ridiculous human drama and a military mission straight from Star Wars, but such loud fun!

Two gripes though: one, the whole Rooster-son-of-tragically-killed-TG1-Goose grudge storyline detracted from the ensemble of characters. Too much unnecessary tension. Two, ghosting Charlie (Kelly McGillis) with Penny (Jennifer Connelly) as Maverick’s TG2 new love interest might make sense from a casting point of view but I needed Charlie to minimally make a cameo! Boo! However, kudos to the producers for Iceman Val Kilmer’s inclusion. He is one of my all time favorite actors (Doc Holliday in Tombstone, epic!) who, surviving throat cancer, needed AI technology and archival audio for his voice to be recreated. The exchange between Cruise and Kilmer made me absolutely verklempt.

All in all, locked and loaded with superb action, defying stunts, booms and blasts, gasps and laughs….buckle up for an emotional and aerial big screen adventure. EXACTLY why I go to the movies! Now, if I could just figure out how to buzz the projection room! Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!

Bond Bust

No Time to Die – 2021 – PG13

First of all, I’m not a James Bond aficionado, my most vivid memory will show my age: a sleek woman covered in gold, unfortunately dead from the dreaded “skin suffocation” revealed five plus decades ago in Goldfinger, 007’s third movie. That said, let me offer a few reflections on installment #25, No Time to Die. My summary comment and accompanying suggestion is this: settle down and watch 2015’s Spectre in order to prepare for this 2021 storyline. Otherwise you risk spending the entire 163 minute run time wondering what, who and why—like I did. Until I got home and read a few reviews I thought Spectre was an incognito character, only to be illuminated that it’s a long established (genesis 1965’s  Thunderball) international criminal organization, Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. Then there is the mayhem at Vesper’s tomb, a pivotal plot moment that, without any prior context, I puzzled over the chaos to the point of dozing off. If I don’t know the characters it’s a stretch to care and, apparently for me, stay awake. Admittedly my reclining heated theater lounge chair didn’t help. After ho-humming through the human carnage from bombs, guns, knives and car chases across Italy, Cuba and London, my more alert moments were in Norway when young Madeleine witnesses the murder of her mother by bad boy Safin (Rami Malek) in a failed attempt to kill Madeleine’s bad guy father. Definitely broke the big screen ice. I also perked up in Jamaica where James (Daniel Craig) retires to a life of isolated, fishing bliss only to be talked back into global spy action by the British Secret Service’s new 007, Nomi (Lashana Lynch), and Bond’s reconnection with grown up Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) after a five year hiatus since a sadly severed love affair. A sweet Norwegian surprise is tucked away. The charming revelation awaits but, but, but….the Madeline/James rekindled romance is too May-December for me. Not quite dirty old man but a tiny bit ewwww. The finalé is staged at an abandoned World War 2 submarine base on an island between Japan and Russia, Safin’s eve of destruction nanobot headquarters. The destiny of untold millions of humans are at stake. Shocking. Positively shocking.  Can Bond open the silo doors to enable a missile strike and save humanity? What do you think? Uh……fill in the obvious blank. Relax and relish the epic annihilation. What’s in 007’s cinematic future? This film will leave you wondering. No concrete ideas to offer except whoever or whatever’s next, without a doubt the name’s Bond. James Bond.

Birds of a Feather Fight Together

Birds of Prey – 2020 – R

The last time I was motivated by a movie to go total badass was in 1969. True confession, right after seeing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I started shooting up the parking lot with my imaginary six-guns while scanning the shopping center for a bank to rob. Forgive me, I was young and impressionable. Five decades later, leaving the theater after watching Birds of Prey, I started practicing spins, kicks and jabs walking to my car. Good thing there was no one near the theater to head butt or leg sweep or Karate Kid Crane Kick! Forgive me, I’m old and impressionable.

Females dominate Birds of Prey. It is written, directed, and produced by women; features a ridiculously brilliant soundtrack that includes 15 exclusive new tracks, all from female artists; and stars five diverse women who clearly relish their roles. Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) exudes the confidence and sheer brassiness of a reigning D.C. moll except she’s on her own. Jilted by Joker, her madman oasis of security is now a mirage and maniacal Gotham City revenge-seekers are gleefully closing in for the kill. Most of the film is Harley thrashing these foes with cartwheeling, catapulting, take-no-prisoner maneuvers until she’s sadly sold out by her one and only friend, Doc, the elderly owner of a Chinese restaurant who delivers Harley into the hands of psychopathic crime boss, Black Mask (Ewan McGregor). Her life literally hanging in the balance, Harley is one knife slice away from losing face before she cuts a deal to recover a prized diamond that landed in the possession of teenage pickpocket extraordinaire Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco). Cassie lives in the same tenement as Harley, mostly exiled to the stairwell escaping abusive foster care. Harley offers Cassie a semblance of sisterhood, the first revealing peek at Harley’s liberated joker-less heart.

Cue three other colorful female characters that, with Harley and Cassie, dominate the last part of the film, a female quintet of empowerment and redemption. Helena Bertinelli, aka Huntress “The Crossbow Killer” (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is out to even the score with Gotham mafia men who executed her family when she was a child. Dinah Lance, soulful lounge singer, aka Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) is about to find her voice after turning away silent one too many times as her bar boss, Black Mask, sexually assaults female patrons. Gotham City detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), done losing hard-earned recognition to a police force ruled by misogyny, crosses over to embrace her feminist wild side. Uniting these five as Birds of Prey is the common purpose of reaping righteous havoc on the villains of Gotham, bringing a testosterone track record of destruction, perversion and exploitation to a deliciously satisfying, rip-roaring, raucous end.

The most compelling moments of this comic-book-come-to-life movie were two occasions when self-interest prevailed over friendship. First Harley confronts Doc and then Cassandra confronts Harley about trading their lives to Black Mask for personal gain. Doc listens, shrugs, pockets his bounty and drives off. Harley tries to blow Cassie off with a ho hum, “I’m just a horrible person” but clearly is affected at a level that will ultimately be revealed late in the film. Definitely worth the wait.

Don’t shy away from this movie or misjudge it as gaudy graphic novel schlock because you will miss an entertaining cinematic bonanza. The music is a blast. The action is crazy fun! The bad guys lose, the good gals win. The fight sequences outrageous, outlandish and awesome. The female cast, after months of training and practice, performed most of the fight scenes themselves, no stunt doubles need apply. Definitely time to enroll in a martial arts class! Who’s with me?! 

Ducks, Dubs & Duds

Dolittle – 2020 – PG

When my granddaughter was four years old we went to see How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and about five minutes in she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Nana, I think this is a boy movie.” Well, ditto to Dolittle. It’s definitely a children’s film and has everything a small fry audience, especially packed with boys, enjoys: farts, poop, burps, spit, vomit and gorilla mooning. How about this for a crowd pleaser, “Something smells wrong, and that’s coming from a guy who loves the smell of butts,” blurts Dolittle’s scruffy dog. But brace yourself for this spoiler: Dolittle diagnoses a female dragon with constipation, so to unclog her system he reaches up her rear and pulls a bunch of eclectic junk out, from human bones to a giant leek to bagpipes. Anal animation. Sigh. Can you imagine a Dr. Dolittle-themed birthday party? It puts a new spin on that childhood rite of passage “playing doctor.”

Then there’s Robert Downey Junior who stayed in character by simply playing himself. His irascible, unkempt, unappealing self. By the end of the film he’s graduated from unkempt to merely disheveled. A little of RDJ goes a long way and Dolittle is a lot! And please no Scottish brogue ever again. Fingernails across a chalkboard preferable. Stick with Ironman.

The film was shelved in 2019 and then pushed back into production, infused with millions more until it maxed out at a bloated, obscene $175 million budget. Universal execs said no más and a hot mess is what we get. Besides banal toilet humor and RDJ’s Scottish For Dummies delivery, we get dialogue so poorly dubbed that it doesn’t match the menagerie‘s mouths, bad technical post-production lip-sync, bird beak speak that looks like an amateur hour tape delay…$175 million…how does that even happen?

Dolittle lived up to it’s title, doing little for my entertainment value but then I’m old and female. For me it was like watching a 100 minute Aflac commercial. In the space of two months we inherit Cats and Dolittle as the new Hollywood standard, the metric to measure flops, fiascos and failures. The stuff of memories. Go see Dolittle just so someday we can all look back and say, “By god, we were there.”

The End of an Epic

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – 2019 – PG13

All good things must come to an end. It’s been 42 years since Han, Leia and Luke, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2 launched a cultural phenomenon that to this day sees closet shelves and dresser drawers across America stuffed with lightsabers, stormtroopers and droids. Collectibles! Some day, we all hope, they will be worth a fortune and augment our retirement. My son, born in 1977, grew up paralleling the Star Wars universe. Remember Boba Fett?  The most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy once went missing in our household. To restore order to our universe we immediately went shopping. Being the pre-Amazon Prime era, it required firing the car up and ransacking Wards, Sears, Mervyn’s and Toys “R” Us until we finally lucked out at a K-Mart 20 miles away! The force was with us.

Star Wars ultimate finale, The Rise of Skywalker, concludes the epic triple trilogy that started a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Jedi Rey and First Order Commander Kylo Ren (Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver) Resistance fighter pilot Poe and Stormtrooper drop-out Finn (Oscar Isaac, John Boyega) wage a winner-take-all intergalactic scavenger hunt, the prize, a free universe. Rey and Ren dominate the film, blasting and battling each other (to the point of tedium) across the galaxy. Ren was not as maniacal as in the Force Awakens. I spotted a soft spot early on but had to wait until the finale of the finale to see if my hunch would bear fruit, last man standing, Ben or Ren? Redemption or revenge? No spoiler here but you won’t be disappointed. Rey matches Ren’s zealotry, lightsabership and scowls from dunes to oceans, islands to planets. Their ocean battle alone incredible. Death Stars rise and fall but worth the wait is when the most famous X-Wing in Star Wars lore makes a majestic reappearance. Just wow! Bringing a roar from my theater crowd is the scene following Poe’s reassurance, “We’ve got friends out there. They’ll come if they know there’s hope.” Look up! The Resistance meets the Empire, once and for all. For me, the absolute best moment of the movie. 

There are lots of loose ends left for Star Wars aficionados to debate for years. The Rise of Skywalker couldn’t possibly get it all figured out or the movie would play more as exhausting eulogy than culminating trilogy. To love this four decade saga is to live comfortably with ambiguity. A blockbuster’s impact on pop culture is measured by the millions of water cooler arguments, opinions and observations that fill social media and social gatherings for common consideration and consumption. That’s the fun of it. Let’s test it out. I wasn’t thrilled with the ending, but then I’m a biology matters kind of person. Luke (Skywalker himself) disagrees, “Some things are stronger than blood.” What do you think? Let it rip. Above all else, yesterday, tomorrow and four decades hence, let’s lay claim to what’s most important, “The Force brought us together.” Thanks for that reminder Finn. And may the force be with you all!

Trading Places

Jumanji: The Next Level – 2019 – PG13

Let’s get right to it. The best parts of this movie are the marauding,snarling baboons and stampeding attack ostriches. The scenery, from desert to mountains, is gorgeous. I came right home and starting researching affordable forest homes. Danny DeVito (Eddie) and Danny Glover (Milo) are the next best thing since Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon and that’s saying something since it’s been 51 years since the Odd Couple. The whole trading around avatars was disconcerting. DeVito’s voice coming through a young woman’s body was creepy. Glover as a black horse with retractable wings and speaking horse language was far-fetched even for a fantasy. At least it was a cut above Mr. Ed because Mouse (Kevin Hart), bilingual in English/Equine, capably translated. A horse is a horse of course of course. Not always. It might be Danny Glover.

It would have helped if I’d queued up and reviewed the second film, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) so I could have oriented myself faster to the video game parallel universe. I felt exactly like clueless geezers Milo and Eddie trying to make sense of being sucked into a broken game console and dropped as avatars into Jumanji, “Huh?” Well, since I’m spouting off about 1968’s Odd Couple and 1961’s Mr. Ed, I guess I am a geezer. “Huh?” Reality check. Sigh. The film mixes and matches genders, races, and ages. Instant Fountain of Youth for some and surprise, surprise, overnight Golden Years for others. All together now, trade! I always dreamed of being a flying horse.

If you’re a Jumanji fan, definitely see it. If you’re not versed in supernatural board games, but still want a dose of fantasy you might want to see Frozen 2 instead. Or, maybe just stay home and play a video game.

Getting the Willies

Gemini Man – 2019


Will Smith carved a forever fan heart into my movie loving spirit with his “Welcome to earth” alien knockout scene in 1996’s ID4 Independence Day. Happily in Gemini Man I get not one, but two Wills, 23-year old cloned Junior, the top gun mercenary of the bad guys, and 51-year Harry Brogan, the top gun assassin of the good guys. A third Will crops up later but doesn’t get much air time before a newly united Harry and Junior snuff him out. Shades of Whack-a-Will. Junior, the bad guys’ mercenary is sent on a mission to kill his DNA donor dad, Harry. Of course, neither donor nor son know this test tube genesis story at the first or second round of assassin mayhem as the Wills chase and fight each other across three continents. Then the good guys and bad guys switch roles asking the audience to entertain a philosophic interlude between popcorn refills: What if it were possible to breed emotionless, conscious-free, combat-perfect clones in order to save the lives of American servicemen and women? The august and dignified UK, we’re reminded, started it all with Dolly the cloned sheep. Why stop at sheep or pigs, why not create the flawless soldier? All heads turn to Junior. What about him? Well? Well? Fortunately we weren’t held captive in the philosophy of ethics movie class for too long before we were back dodging grenades, reloading Uzis, and careening, cartwheeling and somersaulting across sky, earth and water, finally plummeting to the catacomb depths landing in skull piles. It is the face-to-face, mano-a-clono encounter that pivots the story from science to humanity, from head to heart. The last 30 minutes of this nearly two hour film presents haunting moments of moral decision and indecision, choices between loyalty and integrity, duty and decency. Don’t worry, the human insights are framed in the midst of a barrage of clever special effects and tumultuous action. No softness dare compromise blazing bullets and broken glass. No sir! But, trust me, the deeper questions don’t fade away in the grenade smoke. You be the Gemini judge. 

A Journey Home

Abominable – 2019


If I were too hard on a $5 Tuesday matinee, animated kids movie, I would be forced to assign myself to the curmudgeon critic category. So, I’ll focus on Abominable’s pluses. Writer-director, Jill Culton, is the first-ever woman to solo direct an animated film with a female lead so I was witness to history for a mere $5. The beauty and splendor of China kept my eyes mostly open through the absolutely predictable plot. Everest, the captured baby Yeti, escapes a Shanghai lab, is relentlessly tracked by evil researchers and fortuitously hooks up with a trio of likable city teens who help defy the hunters. We meet independent, headstrong Yi who is grieving the death of her father, hip and trendy ladies’ man Jin, and chubby, rough and tumble Peng. These three kind of, kind of not friends accompany big-eyed, fluffy, snowkid Everest across China to his Himalayan home. This journey includes two memorable scenes of elegant, creative cinematography: a goldenrod field of flowers forms into a massive wave that slowly rises up and crashes down with the crescendo of a tsunami, and a billowing and flowing river of koi-like clouds swimming upstream across the sky. Along the way, Yi plays her father’s violin like a virtuoso, striking a synchronistic chord with nature that elicits pure enchantment. All pluses. It’s a sweet movie, definitely made for kids, no adult innuendo or subplots lurk at any level. The filmmakers skip over anything the least bit gnarly. The ‘how‘ of the death of Yi’s father and the ‘why’ of the respectful but strained relationship between Yi, mom and grandma are left to our imagination. Kumbaya hugs come at the end so I guess that’s enough. Then to quibble a tiny bit, how did the kids hop scotch through rivers, forests and mountains without so much as a jacket? At least they could have shivered once or twice. Ah, retreat to suspending belief. The magic of movies.  For sure, for sure, for sure stay all the way through the credits. There is an instant “Abominable, the Sequel,” roll out that will reward your patience and send you from the theater with a smug smile for anyone who up and left at movie’s end. 

Cosmos Heart of Darkness

Ad Astra – 2019

Ad Astra, Latin “to the stars” foreshadows the celestial ambitions of a film aiming for the stars but in celluloid reality, is locked into our gravity-bound solar system, destination Neptune. Brad Pitt, suiting up as stoic (wooden), impassive (dull), invincible astronaut, Major Roy McBride, ditched his charm and traded in his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood charisma for monotone utterances and blank, vacant stares in this sci fi version of Apocalypse Now. Roy is a troubled, solitary man on a perilous interplanetary journey to eradicate a madman, Captain Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), Roy’s estranged father. Earth is edging dangerously close to doomsday and the senior McBride, who disappeared into deep space years before on the Lima Project, a mission seeking intelligent life, is identified as the mad mastermind. Cue the son to undertake a classified bounty hunter journey from Earth to the Moon to Mars to Neptune to find his father and save the planet.  Captain McBride goes from fallen hero to celestial villain. We the audience hitch a ride on this laborious journey where we witness crowded shopping moon malls, space punk pirates, a catapulting lunar rover chase, a deranged attack baboon, gaudy interstellar “Comfort Rooms,” meteorite dodge ball and a Neptune nuclear tsunami. Choose your thrill. Strapped in between the malls and meteorites is a tedious storyline stab at deconstructing the psychological baggage Roy is packing from planet to planet. Oh, ok, got it. It’s about father-son stuff. Oh, wait. It’s about husband-wife stuff. No, no. It’s about self and soul and spirit stuff. It’s about love. It’s about life. Oh, good grief! Stop already! Can we just rewind to the killer baboon? For a sci fi space thriller, it’s stodgy and slow. For a relational drama, it’s thin on insights and thick on “stuff.” For an inspirational message about human transformation, it’s not. It is meandering, dry, dreary and dark. The film tried too hard to be a monumental, profound, psychological, sensory odyssey through time, space and self.  But, instead it spiraled out of control, coming off as so dense and opaque, that it dimmed any hope I had to engage. Consequently, I was neither disturbed nor inspired. I didn’t care. Myself, I suggest skipping Ad Astra and renting Apocalypse Now.