Stuff I Watched in February

The Marvels:  Like most people I didn't see this in a theater.  I watched it on Disney+ on Super Bowl Sunday instead.  It became clear then that this was not "superhero movie fatigue" so much as "shitty superhero movie fatigue."  This was a pretty doomed project from the start by taking Captain Marvel, who did well in her debut movie in 2019 but hadn't been seen outside two cookie scenes since Endgame, and pairing her with Ms. Marvel (from that 2022 TV show) and Monica Rambeau, who was like the fifth most important character in WandaVision back in 2021.

At less than 2 hours there's really not much time to essentially introduce two new characters (mostly to each other) plus another disposable villain.  The story doesn't do them any favors by literally copying the main plot of Spaceballs.  Like Dark Helmet, the Kree villain is trying to steal atmosphere (also water and sunlight) from other planets to save her own.  A "quantum bracelet" like Ms. Marvel's can somehow do this scientifically impossible thing.  Like when James Bond ripped off Austin Powers 3 in SPECTRE, it's pathetic for a "real" movie to rip off a parody.

And the alien "cat" Goose is pregnant and laying eggs, because we needed to waste a few minutes with this.  The payoff is the "cats" help to evacuate the Earth space station.  Though since Valkyrie had used the Bifrost to beam a bunch of Skrull to Earth earlier, why didn't they just call her up?  Or Dr. Strange/Wong who could have magicked them to Earth.

There's a lot of stuff that was poorly set up in advance and poorly executed in the present.  I'm not sure the actress playing Ms. Marvel was really ready for a big feature film but then most of her early screen time is screaming and/or crying.  Monica Rambeau is better but her heroic sacrifice doesn't mean much since the character previously had about 10 minutes of screen time when she wasn't in some weird fake TV show.  Then there's another lame, disposable villain and aliens who are all humanoid rejects from an early Star Trek or Dr. Who.  There's just so little to like about this.  After Ant-Man 3, Eternals, and Wakanda Forever, the bloom is really off the MCU rose. (2/5) (Fun Facts:  One cookie scene has Ms. Marvel meeting Kate Bishop to start some kind of Young Avengers team with...Ant-Man's daughter?  Ironheart?  Hulk's son?  They don't have a lot of sidekicks to work with so I'm not sure who else they have.  The other cookie scene has Monica in the Fox X-Menverse with crappy regular Kelsey Grammar Beast replaced by crappier CGI Kelsey Grammar Beast.  Since it's a parallel universe it's not adding the X-Men to the MCU; we'll have to see what happens in Deadpool 3 with that.  One crappy alien race mostly communicates in song, which gave Brie Larson a chance to sing, which she did early in her career.)

Across the Spider-Verse:  It's hard for sequels to eclipse the original, but if this doesn't do that it comes really close.  There is definitely an Empire Strikes Back vibe here as the end is not Happily Ever After.  Like Empire, our hero--Miles Morales--finds out some unpleasant things and is nearly killed by in this case many relatives.

Six months or so after the previous movie, Miles is trying to juggle being Spider-Man and being a regular teen.  But then he meets a sorta ridiculous new enemy called "the Spot" who has the power to create portals between locations.  When the Spot is beaten, he escapes and vows to gain enough power to defeat Spider-Man.  Meanwhile, Gwen Stacey (Spider-Gwen, Ghost-Spider, Spider-Woman, or whatever) has joined a team of Spideys from around the multiverse and goes to visit Miles.  He follows her back to their headquarters and then something happens that puts Miles on the run and puts Gwen into the position of having to choose between her friend and her duty.

Overall it's just about everything The Marvels wasn't.  There were fun parts, especially with all the different versions of Spiders, but serious parts that actually meant something because the characters were actually developed.  There are stakes that aren't ridiculously taken from a parody movie.  The Spot isn't a great villain but in a way he isn't the real villain of the piece.  I would have liked to learn more about Miguel O'Hara (aka Spider-Man 2099); while I haven't read a ton of the comics I'm a little familiar with it.  The comics character is sorta like Batman Beyond, or Batman Beyond is like him, whichever happened first.  Anyway, maybe that will happen in the third movie.  I am definitely here for that. (4/5) (Fun Facts:  Obviously there are tons and tons of Easter eggs when they show the various different Spideys.  Besides animation they work in some Legos--appropriate since it's produced by the directors of The Lego Movie--and live action clips from the movies.  There's even a live action Donald Glover as a Prowler in the multiverse headquarters.  It is widely known that Glover wanted to play Miles Morales but was too old before anything could happen, so there's a little nod to that when he meets Miles.  Most of the alternate Spideys from the last movie aren't really seen much until the end of the movie; hopefully the next movie will feature the return of Nic Cage as Spider-Noir and John Mulvaney as Spider-Ham.  Fact:  There are no cookie scenes, which seemed weird.  You'd think Sony would have put something in there for Madame Web or another project.)

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968):  I was writing a story about an art heist, which I thought was the premise of this, though I think that's the 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan as Crown.  This is about a bank robbery in Boston with Steve McQueen as businessman Thomas Crown.  He cunningly manipulates a bunch of out-of-town businessmen to pull off a heist despite never having met each other.  The last one takes the money to a cemetery, where Crown picks it up and then deposits it into a Swiss account to pay the other guys over time.  Why does he do this?  Kicks, mostly.  In an early scene he seems to be doing well enough in business.  He just needs the excitement and challenge.

Faye Dunaway is the insurance agent who zeroes in on him and falls in love with him.  She tries to engineer a surrender for Crown so he can work out a deal, but things get complicated.  For the most part I enjoyed it, though the theme song is annoying but mostly it bugged me that Dunaway's character seemed to figure out who Crown was based on nothing more than looking at a picture.  Since they didn't establish that she's psychic, it made no sense that just a picture could tell her he was responsible.  Similarly, she figures out most of the caper without any kind of actual evidence.  It was a pretty weak setup.  Otherwise it's worth watching if you like heist movies. (3/5)

Bullitt:  Tubi brought this up after the previous Steve McQueen movie.  I had heard about the famous chase scene but never watched it.  So what the hell, I watched the movie.  I don't know if it was really the first to establish a lot of tropes used later, but Steve McQueen is Lieutenant Bullitt, who plays by his own rules, is usually hungover, and has a cool car.  Unlike some later movies like the Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon movies, his captain doesn't scream about his wild card shenanigans and stuff.

A mob guy is trying to turn state's evidence and Bullitt is assigned to protect him, but doesn't.  He then tries to hunt down the killers, who also killed his partner.  Robert Vaughn plays the DA who wants to make a big name for himself with this case and will serve up Bullitt to the press and Feds if the shit hits the fan.  There's also a token love interest played by Jacqueline Bisset.

As for the famous chase scene, it's good if you like that kind of thing.  I'm not a big fan of car chases in movies.  Even good ones like Bullitt or Ronin don't leave the actors a lot to do and all it really contributes to the story is whether the good guy catches the bad guys then or not.  Chase scenes in general are just kinda lame to me because there's a lot of physical action but no real emotional action.  Sex scenes are usually the same way.  What I really wondered was why these two old guys have a cool Dodge Charger muscle car.  The one guy looks like an accountant who should have a sensible sedan or station wagon.  I guess that would have made it too easy for Bullitt then. 

Otherwise the movie is a good action story that really inspired movies for the next 55 years.  (3/5)

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999):  Since this wasn't on streaming except Cinemax, I bought an old DVD because I did still want to watch it and that was about as cheap as renting it from Amazon or Vudu.  I didn't really learn a ton about art theft, which was what got me interested in the first place.  Still, this was a good remake that has some similarities but a lot of differences.

The obvious difference is that Crown steals a valuable Monet in the beginning instead of robbing a bank.  He does this by hiring a crew of Romanians to stage a robbery.  Then he helps to thwart that and in the confusion, makes off with the Monet.  Rene Russo plays the insurance agent who  tries to find who did it.  Unlike the original, she uses a little more actual detective work, like finding out Crown had previously bought some Monets at auction.  Denis Leary plays the cop she partners with who would like to bed her if she weren't so into Crown.  There's also a young woman who seems to be Crown's mistress--seems to be, wink.

This version of the movie focuses a bit more on Russo's character than Pierce Brosnan's Crown.  But as before, while she starts off just looking to bust Crown, she starts to fall for him.  There are a few more twists and turns and a happier ending.  Overall it's an improvement on an original that was also good. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts:  There's an instrumental version of the original's theme song and Sting sings a cover of it over the closing credits, which is an upgrade.  Faye Dunaway has a small role as Crown's therapist.)

The Truth About Charlie:  I watched this back in 2002-2003 when it came out on DVD and generally liked it.  Recently on the Rifftrax app they added their riff of the 1963 movie Charade, on which this movie was based, so since this wasn't streaming I bought a used copy.  Overall I don't think I liked this as much as back then but it's not bad.

Like Charade, this was sort of an off-brand Hitchcock movie.  Regina Lampert (Thandiwe Newton) comes home from a trip, ready to divorce her husband Charles only to find Charlie has disappeared and sold everything in their Paris apartment.  Three of Charlie's former associates get after her to find out what Charlie did with some diamonds he stole from them.  She's helped by a guy going by different names (Mark Wahlberg) who seems to be working both sides.  And there's also a government agent after the money (Tim Robbins) who wants Regina's help.  There are some twists and turns then before the final showdown.  

In some ways this improves on the original in being a little less cheesy.  Thandiwe Newton holds her own in the Audrey Hepburn role, though it's hard to replace such an iconic actress.  Mark Wahlberg is mostly a downgrade from Cary Grant except obviously he was a lot younger than Grant was to make the romance with Regina more believable.  I'm not sure if Robbins was trying to do a sort of Boston accent or a Walter Matthau imitation (Matthau being the original actor in Charade) but it wasn't really great.  The bad guys are softened a little to the point the female one seems to have a crush on Regina.  They were not really great replacements for George Kennedy and James Coburn.  And it's too bad they didn't include the maybe not extremely famous scene at Charlie's funeral where each bad guy storms in to make sure Charlie is really dead and not faking.  But at least they kept the way that Charlie conceals the money he took, which was pretty neat.  An old woman is added as Charlie's mother which didn't really add a lot.

The strangest thing is that while this was based on Charade, director Jonathan Demme uses a lot of references to Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, including the eponymous piano player showing up to do a couple of musical numbers.  It made it a little odd unless you really like French "New Wave" movies, which obviously I haven't really watched.  Anyway, having watched the original a couple of times, I mostly like that better. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  I remember watching it the first time and being really impressed with Thandiwe Newton and thinking she should get some good roles out of this.  Other than a part in Chronicles of Riddick, not a lot happened for her though until Westworld almost 15 years later.)