Category: Review

Barbie, the movie is as much fun as I can recall in years.

Right-wing film critics are screaming that it is a “woke” film,  thus, not worth seeing, which seems a bit Stalinist to me (ideologically impure) and foolish. If any conservatives still have a sense of humor, I hope they will fund or make a movie like this; I’d love to see another.

The movie had me laughing from the opening scene – a takeover on the “dawn of man” sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In the scene, young girls are seen on barren rocks playing with the baby dolls most young women play with. The ominous music gets louder.  Suddenly, they see Barbie and smash all their dolls on the rocks.

The movie takes off from there, and Gerwig does a brilliant job. I’ve never seen a movie as surprising and creative as this one. She puts it all together and then goes much farther.

The movie is beyond “woke,” whatever that means.

It’s also a runaway success, a blockbuster filling theaters worldwide and raking in many millions for Warner Brothers. (Oppenheimer is the other movie I’m aching to see, I plan on seeing it Wednesday.)

Barbie is a feminist movie from beginning to end, and in a sense, intensely political for all of the intelligent and dazzling sets and inside jokes and laughs. It’s all about empowerment, independence, and agency.

Barbie finds her perfect world falling (she is horrified to see her feet are no longer pointed) apart and goes to “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon, formerly of Saturday Night Live) for help.

She is sent out into the world to find the Barbie doll owner, who has entered her consciousness psychically and disturbed the boundaries between  Barbie World and The Real World. This was turning parts of her human.

It’s not supposed to make sense and doesn’t. I wouldn’t waste much time on that. The movie is a wild romp.

Only when she discovers this disturbed but loyal fan will she be able to come home.

She heads for the Real World. She tells one of the first people she meets there that she has no vagina, regular toes, or feet.

The movie then pivots to the central question: can she discover her authentic self and stay in the real world, or will she return to the familiar, colorful, and relatively safe life in Barbie World? Margot Robbie makes a great Barbie (I think. I never owned one.)

The men in the movie are idiots, almost to one. Here Gerwig fails to be as thoughtful as she was in the rest of the film. She doesn’t seem to know how to portray men initially,  intelligently, or persuasively.

To me, that’s a flaw. I know the movie is a comedy not to be taken too seriously, yet it seems very serious and important to me, worthy of being taken seriously.

There is a bizarre scene of newly aggressive  Barbie male dolls (included by a renegade Ken) warring amidst themselves on the eve of a planned takeover of women-run Barbie World. The war of the men suddenly turns into a gay theater dance at the end of a fake ocean.  I wasn’t sure what she was trying to say.

It’s a wild scene that lost me in many ways, but I could hardly stop laughing.

I do have a caution to make.

As much as I loved the movie, this one made me highly conscious about an older white male like me writing authentically about a movie produced and directed by women, filmed and costumed by women, created by women, about women, and primarily featuring women. It’s all about women.

I noticed that Maria got several things I didn’t get or understand. She also loved the movie.

As awesome as it is, I thought the movie lost its discipline at the end and flopped around too much.  That didn’t take away from its originality, humor, and relevance.

I concede that some things about the movie eluded me – like the bizarre and relentless (and hilarious at times)  portrayal of men as dumb, weak, and clueless.  Their clothes were silly too.

The point of this is that men in Barbie’s world are ignored and dismissed as cruelly as women often are.

At one point, Barbie’s muscled companion, Ken, leaves the  Barbie World in pursuit of her for the Real World and discovers that men are all stupid, violent, arrogant, and repulsive. He decides this is what men are supposed to be, not just empty-headed companions. He turns into a power-mad thugs.

He rushes back to Barbie World to take it over and quickly co-ops all the women.

What were they expecting from Director Greta Gerwig? War and Peace? John Wayne? Can Barbie and the other women stop him?

This is not a movie made for men and women.

It’s a women’s story dealing with the most critical issues and difficulties women have faced for so long and still face. There was a lot of genius in the presentation of Barbie, in its beauty, and in the raw and revealing issues they face. Barbies are essential; they affect how young girls feel about themselves.

I highly recommend the movie, and it would make a lot of sense for every girl and woman in America to see it. Men too. There is a lot to talk about. Maria and I are still going at it hours later.

Barbie has played a massive role in the life of young girls and in their perceptions of change, looks, health, and opportunity.

It is suggested in the movie that many Barbies offered positive examples to young girls planning their lives. In the film, Barbie is shocked to find so many young contemporary girls hate her. “We thought we were helping you,” she pleads. And maybe they were.

There are Barbie Presidents and doctors now, but every time we see women making progress, frightened men still seem to rise up to control them – abortion comes to mind. Women’s persecution never seems to stop; thus it never seems old or over. The movie has a timeliness and punch that surprised me.

It’s difficult to watch this movie and forget the horror stories affecting sick and frightened women whose health care has been upended by mostly arrogant and cruel white men in state houses. Women are nowhere near out of the woods; the struggles seem to get uglier.

That sense hangs over the movie, but it does not make it grim or depressing or derail the clever humor.

The movie is billed as a comedy, and hilarious moments and excellent cinematography is scattered throughout it. Will Farrell is a riot as the foolish and panicky CEO of Mattel Toys, the creators of Barbie.

The bottom line is that this is a one-in-a-lifetime movie. I’m not sure I’ll see another like it anytime soon.

It is not a masterpiece; many men will find the portrayals of them sad and pathetic. But women have earned the right to tell their stories; the Barbie phenomenon is one of their significant stories, skillfully and artfully told.

I can’t imagine how Gerwig told this story and made it so funny, but she deserves the big awards. It is a meaningful story with many punches, twists, and meanings, said in the most palatable and entertaining way.

No director I’ve seen makes movies anything like Wes Anderson, and tonight I saw his newest film, Asteroid City, starting just about every important actor in Hollywood, from Tom Hanks to Edward Norton to Scarlett Johannson to Jeff Goldblum to Steve Carrell to Matt Dillon.

I’ve never seen any movie like this, either.

I wouldn’t presume to write a detailed review of this complex, surprising, charming, and curiously moving movie.

I thought the movie was amazing, running the gamic from comic to touching to mournful. It was a movie about the wheel of life, from the absurd to the frustrating to the ridiculously funny to the absurd and sad.

I’ve never seen color in a movie as bright and arresting as in “Asteroid City.” And I couldn’t begin to describe the story line and narrative, if there is one.

It is not a movie for everyone, but a wonderful movie for people who like a film that is surprising, different, entertaining, puzzling, and at times breathtaking—no wonder every big star in Hollywood wants to be in his movies for little or no money.

I saw a lot of people leaving the theater scratching their heads, I saw a lot of people raving about what an incredibly different and exciting movie this enough.

The reviews of the movie are sharply mixed – some call it irritating,  crazy, a dud, and others another brilliant and innovative film. I’m in the last corner.

I can promise you only one thing – you have never seen a movie like this, and are not likely to see another one.

It was one of those gloomy, misty, in-between days, raining, snowing, icing. I decided to put my anxiety about driving in bad weather and drop the worry. I did and drove through hail and rain without a problem at all. Awareness helps. Once I figure out the actual source, I can push it away.

It was beautiful to see the mist on the Vermont mountains – we passed through Vermont on the way to Williamstown, Mass, where we often see movies and eat excellent Mexican food.

I liked The Lost King. So did Maria.

Sally Hawkins was stunning as the commoner who figured out a 500-year-old mystery all by herself and discovered the gravesite of King Richard III. Hawkins was amazing; well worth seeing the movie just for that.  Her ex-husband, played by Steve Coogan, was almost as good.

Richard hasn’t fared well at the hands of the historians. He has been portrayed as a power=mad hunchback who slaughtered two of his new nephews to gain his growth. Filippa didn’t believe any of that, and she was right. Her investigation ended in a parking lot in Leicester.

A few years ago, the Queen gave her an award for serving the monarchy well.

I can’t say it was a great movie; there were all kinds of extraneous schmaltz thrown in as if the story – which gripped the world –  the fantastic tale of Phillippa Langley and her obsession with righting history in the face of endless opposition and jeering from the know-it-alls, wasn’t enough to stand by itself.

This movie reminds us that experts don’t know everything, and sometimes our own intuition can accomplish extraordinary things. This is a monument to trusting ourselves and never giving up.

It is a perfect movie for families, which is getting increasingly rare in the streaming age. Stephen Frears (or the producers) threw in all kinds of superfluous and loopy storylines (the King himself stops by to chat and hangs out with her)  to take no chances, and they kept the movie from being great – Hawkins was that good.

But it’s still very good.

I recommend it, Maria and I both enjoyed seeing it, and there is nothing in there to cause kids (or adults)  any deafening,  angst, or loss of sleep.

The add-on sappiness is not offensive or upsetting. Just annoying. We’re all getting numb to it. We left happy.

Disappointed is a kind way to put my response to this movie. In fairness, two films are strung out interminably together (three hours, 12 minutes), and that was too bad since the whole film would barely fill up a 30-minute cartoon in terms of pace and plot.

One of the movies was good, one was awful.

The first Avatar has almost become a cult religion; people loved it so much. It was original and graphically powerful.

James Cameron liked it so much that he decided to do it again with some snazzier 3-D and high frame rate smoothness technology and gorgeous water scenes.

Cameron spent too much money to make this film, just like a kid in a candy store. The result was boring and leaden.

Avatar 2, The Way Of Water, revisits the Na-Vi (no subtlety, get it?) tribe from Avatar One. These people live happily, even idyllically (the point is to make us feel even worse about the persecution and slaughter of our own Native Americans).

The environmentally sound family of Sully and Neytiri are living in bliss with their children, stepdaughter Jurum and a kind of feral human boy called Spider.

Their beautiful, sappy,  and troubleless existence is shattered by the arrival of an ex-human mutant Marine with someone else’s mind inserted into his brain.  

He was awakened in a Frankenstein way and restored to consciousness as a giant murderous super marine posing as a Na-Vi and sent out to fool and find and kill Neytiri, who has been leading the resistance against the evil Sky-People (you know they are evil because they destroy the environment and torture and kill animals, many times and at great length.)

Cameron has all the time in the world. He blew his budget all the way to Mars. The middle of the movie, if you last that long, is worth the wait.

The color and graphics are mostly stunning, especially in 3-D, which Cameron loves, but it is the technology the rest of Hollywood forgot.

But it was not as stimulating or beautiful as I hoped, and honestly, it was not all that different from the first movie. I guess that one was a bigger shock and hard to top.

The movie is stuffed with all kinds of incomprehensible gibberish, from all the spiritual water chatter (we are one, to fish and plant spirits underwater to the stilted, almost humorous “wise man” voices of the tribe leaders.

I think Cameron thinks the people who come to see his movies are dumb.

In this movie, whales talk (before getting harpooned and torpedoed and the sea itself is full of supernatural powers, but hardly ever seen when they were really needed.

The underwater sequences, which the movie abruptly turns to for yet another hour, are almost worth the rest of the messy, dumb, and nonsensical film.

Frankenstein-of-the sea tries to kill the Na-Vi children but bungles it at least a dozen times before finally nailing one.

The children in that family seem to have one near-death episode a minute.

Even that gets boring. The Marine Monster (he is taller than the other evil human) is in ferocious pursuit on and off throughout the movie, threatening and killing and maiming all the way along.

He is cruel but without any style or menace. I’ll take the Joker any day of the week.

Neytiri is curiously averse to fighting for a resistance leader. At the first sign of trouble, he takes off, leaving the tribe to take care of itself. Forget the destruction of the planet, he says, a dad has to protect his family.

He is no Che Guevera and lacks the superhero personality and steel we have come to know so well. He’s squishy.

And absolutely no one in this movie has a sense of humor, cracks a joke, or has any fun. There is comic relief and wise cracking even the gloomiest Batman movies.

The kids are even grim when they are playing, which is mostly indistinguishable from when they are fleeing for their lives.

The Sully family flees to another island community – “sea” people live there, the newcomers are “forest” people – and ends up in another apparent Eden.

We know this can’t last long, and of course, it doesn’t. Cameron is reminding us to be welcoming and inclusive.  The villagers didn’t get the message. They don’t like “forest” people.

For the next hour of the movie, the bad guys show up with a sea-born armada that would have made the D-Day invasion look like a Church picnic.

Every boat had massive firepower (but dreadful aim) and nobody seemed able to hit what they were shooting at (except for some whales.)

The sea morphed again, this time into the land of a thousand big and loud fires and explosions.

The pristine sea turned into a Gulf Of Mexico oil fire and spill.

I don’t know how many of you out there would enjoy seeing friendly and spiritual giant whales tortured and slaughtered for what seems like yet another hour, but it didn’t work for me. I got squirmy.

I groaned by the end, but there was one more tortuous hour coming,  the eternal final battle scene between the Native Americans (you got it, right, Na-Vi?) and the rich, greedy, vicious humans who can’t wait to butcher people and ruin their culture (get it?)

Almost every one in the movie was killed many times, but they were just kidding. The Sully family had way more than nine lives.

(At this point, Maria stopped watching and meditated for an hour. She didn’t miss a thing.)

In the first Avatar, Cameron moved almost surreally between land to sea-based existence. It was a beautiful, exciting, original triumph, and creative pizz-azz.

Avatar 2 was as vital as a sponge for most of those three-plus hours.

But even the lovely visual underwater images felt flat because Cameron overwhelmed his own movie by spinning out of control and choking it with money and pomposity.

When you are that big and successful (Titanic, Avatar One), nobody can tell you when to stop, so you never do.

The Guardian newspaper’s critic Peter Bradshaw wrote that the “floatingly bland plot  is like a children’s story without the humor, a YA story without the emotional wound, an action thriller without the edge of real excitement.”

Ouch, but true.

Sometimes less is more. Avatar 2 could have lost a couple of those hours and been twice the movie.

This final battle (the ones that pull in 14-year-old boys involved at least a thousand water tanks, boats, planes, robots, greedy and slimy bastards, missiles and torpedoes, and depth charged against a handful of peaceable natives with bows and arrows and flying pterodactyl- like shrieking birds.

I lost count of the twists and turns at the ending; it could have been a movie all it’s own.

Are we over four hours yet?

Half of the movie was candy to look at, and a half was incomprehensible. In trying to make heavy political points and buy the most expensive toys Cameron forgets how to make a good movie.

The message: Humans are ruining the earth, the water is one (whatever that means), and we keep destroying other people’s habits and paradise.

We don’t need to be hit over the head with it. Or maybe we do.

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know this? Cameron had too much money to spend -360 million dollars. It was too much, too long, too loud, too violent, and too stupid.

I know millions worshipped the first Avatar, and I wish I had better news to bring them. Maybe I’m just wrong.

True Avatar fans can only hope.

Steven Speilberg has now proved time and time again that he is one of the great movie directors of all time. Fabelman’s, directed by him and co-written with Tony Kushner (the amazing play Angels In America), is a warm movie, at times beautiful and touching. Still, it will not be a sparkling jewel in his rich legacy.

Maria and I went to see the movie tonight in our favorite funky movie theater in Bennington, Vt.

The movie was inspired by Speilberg’s mother, Leah, who left the family when Spielberg was 21 to be with another man. His mother always supported his movie-making.

Before she died, she agreed to Spielberg making a movie about her life (part one) and about the struggle between people who chose making art instead of the normalcy and security almost every parent and spouse wants them to choose.

The movie is wonderfully acted, especially by Michele Williams, who plays his tortured mother, Mitzi, Seth Rogan, who plays Bennie,  the family friend who loves her and who she loves in return; and Paul Dano, who plays his computer engineer father, who sees his son’s love for movies as a fad and frivolous choice.

Two actors played young Sammy, the Speilberg prototype.

The movie really belongs to Williams.

The Fabelmans is touching and, at times, entertaining, but I thought it was too long by half-hour or more. Judd Hirsch played Sammy’s Uncle Boris, whose schmaltzy Yiddish persona was ridiculous almost to the point of insult.

I left the theater feeling flat. At times, it was just plain boring.

Anti-semitism and Jewishness (part two) was a recurring theme in the movie; I find them confusing and largely irrelevant and distracting.  The Jewish stereotypes were heavy-handed and annoying.

I kept waiting for Sam to start making bigger, better, and more sophisticated movies. But at the movie’s most critical movement, he gave up making any.

This thread has almost nothing to do with Sam’s love of film-making or, as far as we know, Spielberg’s. If it was relevant, nobody explained why.

The film was pockmarked with take-offs from John Ford movies, we find out why at the end. There were a lot of heavy-handed scenes, surprising in a movie made by Spielberg.

Sammy’s geeky and somewhat clueless father moves the family to Northern California from the Southwest in his junior year of high school. Nobody in the family wants to go, and Mitzi is crushed by having to leave Bennie.

The family begins to implode.

At his new school, he is haunted and beaten (of course) by some  anti-semitic California stupid golden boys who taunt him for being Jewish and label him “Bagel-Man.”

Sam struggles with his movie-making as it becomes unwittingly entwined with the collapse of his family – something signaled almost from the opening scene.

I can’t say it was a great movie – Queen and Clint Eastwood have it all over Spielberg when it comes to memoirs or homage films – but it was entertaining and touching at times, safe for children of any age,  sweet and evocative every now and then. Yet it left me flat.

Two hours after watching it, I knew I had to write this mini-review quickly since I already forget what most of the plotline was about.

I’m still not sure what the story’s point is other than to permit Spielberg to honor himself.

The one line I could follow was familiar: story of one brilliant and driven Jewish oddball who worked to the top of Hollywood.