Rating Movies: Grumpy Bulldog v Tony Laplume: The Final Showdown!

 A couple of weeks ago, Laplume finally did his list of 2022 entries so I could compare mine and his.  For now anyway it is the final entry of this.  I had the bulk of his entries, though a few either went to a streaming service I didn't have or I just didn't care to watch them.  Unlike the 2021 entry, Laplume didn't really have any smaller movies that sounded interesting enough to go find them.

2022 was when things really got "back to normal" for the movie industry.  Batman, Dr. Strange, Avatar, and Tom Cruise were all back in a big way.  There were also costly misfires like Jared Leto's Morbius or the Rock's Black Adam.  The latter pretty much ensured the new management at DC wouldn't continue their failed "cinematic universe."

So let's get into it!

The Batman (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: As unlikely as this is for me to believe, there are now two visionary depictions of Batman in the movies, The Dark Knight and The Batman.  By the final act, in which Batman realizes his idea of "being vengeance" ended up sending the wrong message, and instead choosing to rescue people in broad daylight, that's a quantum shift in the legacy of the character.  This is the kind of thing that matters when deciding to make yet another Batman movie.  Tim Burton's Batman made it okay to take the character seriously, and now Christopher Nolan and Matt Reeves have built on that, which to my mind makes it the most important film of the year.  The idea of the superhero has been one of the leading concepts of the past hundred years of pop culture.  Still done best with this one.

Me:

The Batman:  I meant to get around to watching this for a while but I didn't finally do it until Boxing Day.  I had enough confidence that I bought it sight unseen for about $4 after credits.  I was (mostly) not disappointed.  It takes more cues from the Nolan movies than the Burton ones as it's a grittier, more realistic Gotham.  The story is like if you took Year One, Hush, and a few other comics stories and put them in a blender.  Like the Tom Holland Spider-Man, they dispensed with the origin, probably figuring we've seen that enough already.  So this is in Year Two, where Batman and Lt. Gordon are trying to fight crime.  But then a new villain called the Riddler starts killing prominent people and leaving clues to a deep, dark secret, one that might even implicate the Waynes.  In trying to track down the Riddler, Batman meets Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman--though again we never use that name--and they team up, which includes some kissing.  

While I liked it, I have a few criticisms.  First, I don't know what Batman's armor is made of, but there's no way anything in current existence could get shot the number of times it does and survive.  Second, the final act is kind of a letdown as it involves a manmade natural disaster and Batman facing a bunch of randos, which kind of diminishes the stakes; this also drags a bit.  Third, there's not a ton of development to Alfred or Gordon.  Still, it's not enough to really bring it down too much. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts:  Like the Nolan movies, this was partially shot in Chicago and heavily hints we'll see the Joker in the sequel.  Near the end Batman injects himself with something green to give him a boost; was this Venom and does this hint we could see Bane in a future movie?  And if we see Bane, might we get Azrael too?  Unlikely, but I can dream...)

Everything Everywhere All At Once (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: That this somehow actually won the Best Picture at the Oscars is a kind of miracle, but it's such an interesting and insightful movie, hopefully more people actually watch it as a result.

Me:

Everything Everywhere All At Once:  I was interested in watching this but it's one of those that was hard to see because it was expensive to rent and then it went to Showtime, which I didn't have.  Until there was a sale on Showtime so I signed up for a month to watch this.  

Basically it's about the multiverse and Michelle Yeoh and her daughter wage a battle with a lot of crazy shit going on like people with hot dog fingers or a universe where instead of Ratatouille there's Raccacoonie, which I would be into seeing a full movie of.  As entertaining as a lot of it is, it went on a little too long and there's no huge revelation.  Basically just love everyone and enjoy the moment and stuff like that.  I mean, I guess it could be worse:  you could have hot dogs for fingers or be a piñata or some fucked-up thing.  So that's something. (3.5/5)

Nope (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: Jordan Peele earned himself the title of auteur with Get Out, but owns it with this ambitious meditation on strange phenomena (and other matters).

Me:

Nope:  Was this as good as Jordan Peele's previous movie Get Out?  Nope.  Was it as bad as similar movies like Signs or Feeders?  Nope.  Was Steven Yuen's cowboy theme park owner character necessary?  Nope.  Was Keith David used enough?  Nope.  Am I going to do the whole review like this?  Nope.

Daniel Kaluuya returns as a horse trainer in California whose ranch is terrorized by a UFO.  Along with his sister, an electronics clerk from Fry's (apparently in California they have that; the ones I visited in Phoenix were just grocery stores), and a filmmaker played by the great Michael Wincott, he tries to find proof of alien life and to stop the UFO.  There's an OK twist about what the UFO is but the last act of the movie is mostly because of characters acting irrationally.  While not a bad movie, it's not great either.  Maybe next time Peele should have a little less control of the production; it's hard to write, produce, and direct a great movie on your own. (3/5)

Top Gun: Maverick (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: Probably the single most telling success story of the year, one very view would have seen coming just a few years earlier, when it seemed Tom Cruise's popular career was over.  Instead he turns in a true classic sequel to one of his earliest and biggest hits.  This is how you know the death of cinema was greatly exaggerated.

Me:

Top Gun: Maverick:  Like Ghostbusters Afterlife, this trades on a lot of nostalgia.  Basically 35 years later (or 30 years later as they keep saying for some reason) Maverick is testing an awesome plane called the Darkstar when he finds a Green Lantern ring gets called back to the Top Gun school to train elite pilots for a dangerous mission, one of whom is Goose's son, who should be like 40 now, but apparently not.  And there's a bar owner named Penny played by Jennifer Connelly, who was 15 when the first movie came out.  Somehow she knows Maverick...because we need a love interest and Kelly McGillis is gross now.  (To me that is a pretty huge upgrade, even if Connelly is 52 now.)

The mission against "the enemy," is pretty obviously modeled after the original Star Wars.  I mean, they have to fly along a narrow canyon with anti-aircraft and fighters protecting it to hit a very difficult target.  And in the end someone even pulls a Han Solo in the most obvious development ever.  It wasn't a bad movie but again there's so much that's so calculated to touch people's nostalgia buttons that if you aren't a fan it really doesn't work as well. 

And like Ghostbusters Afterlife you can see how calculated it all is.  I mean they use some of the same music, same props, photos, same homoerotic sports on the beach, playing "Great Balls of Fire" in the bar, and flying an F-14 fighter at the end; it's not clever winking so much as smashing you over the head with a hammer and shouting, "Hey, remember what was cool about that movie 35 years ago?!"  Then there's the faceless "Enemy" with their unnamed "5th-generation fighters" because if we used a real country it might hurt the international box office.  Also why while there's one female pilot, there are no gay characters, at least not that I recall.  And what was the point of Ed Harris as Admiral Cain?  He was there at the start to close down the Darkstar program, but he didn't come back later to gain respect for Maverick or anything; they could have used a much lesser actor for that role.  I'm just saying.  (3/5)

Bullet Train (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: In college, at least when I went, there was an obsession with obtaining posters to plaster dorm walls, and one of the themes from the selections would be cult cinema.  I can't imagine Bullet Train not obtaining that status.  Brad Pitt had a whole renaissance year in 2022, and this was its peak.

Me:

Bullet Train:  This premiered on Netflix a few days before my subscription was going to expire so I barely got a chance to watch it.  Brad Pitt is "Ladybug," a criminal-for-hire who's supposed to snag a briefcase off a bullet train going from Tokyo to Kyoto.  It seems easy, right?  Too easy and soon things go tits up as there are other assassins aboard the train and soon the body count rises as apparently Japanese trains have no security or anything.  Directed by David Leitch of John Wick and Deadpool 2 fame, it's the kind of movie with a lot of style and little substance.  But it's a fun ride for the most part and near the end some of the coincidences are explained.  If you like Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movies then you'd probably enjoy it so long as you don't try to poke holes in the plot. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  there are a few cameos by the likes of Channing Tatum and Ryan Reynolds and probably a couple I didn't recognize.  Michael Shannon plays "the White Death" but if this had been made 15 years earlier I bet the part would have gone to David Carradine of Kung-Fu fame--and then infamy for how he died.)

The Outfit (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: After Waiting for the Barbarians, I became a fan of Mark Rylance, who pulls off another success with this unexpected suspense drama.

Me:

The Outfit:  I'm pretty sure one of Donald Westlake's Parker novels had this title, but this is not that.  This is about an English tailor (Mark Rylance) who comes to Chicago in the 1950s and almost immediately his shop becomes a drop for one of the local mobs.  It's kind of similar then to The Drop with James Gandolfini and Tom Hardy, only not in modern day or in New York.  The head gangster's son is screwing the tailor's receptionist and then comes to the shop.  There's a tape (something pretty new at the time) that becomes like the McGuffin along with the son himself and people die.  Then there are twists and turns.  I thought maybe a couple more twists than were necessary, but the last couple help to explain why a simple tailor can do what he does.  Since everything takes place in the tailor's shop (or slightly outside) this really has the feel of a play more than a film, so you're not missing much if you didn't see it the week or so it might have been in theaters.  Still, it was tense and well-acted, and with the twists you never quite knew what was coming.  I watched it on Prime Video, but by now it might not be "free" there, though I'm sure it's streaming to rent other places.  (4/5) (Fun Fact:  in movies especially there's this "rule" about if you show a gun early you have to use it later.  When they early on talked about the tailor's shears, I knew they would be of use later--and they were.  So call them Chekhov's Shears.)

Uncharted (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Made me actually like the pipsqueak who plays the modern Spider-Man.  A solid riff on what will forever be known as the Indiana Jones archetype.

Me:

Uncharted:  I never played the video games, so for me this was just a fun popcorn movie that's basically like a reboot of National Treasure.  Tom Holland is Nathan Drake, whose treasure-hunting brother vanished 10 years ago.  He's recruited by Sully (Mark Wahlberg) to help find a treasure Magellan's crew hid almost 500 years earlier.  And then of course there's someone else trying to get the treasure and searching for clues that takes them to Barcelona and the Philippines.  It's light and fun and silly, so as long as you turn your brain off, it'll amuse you for about 2 hours.  Of course there are mid-mid-credits and mid-credits cookie scenes to set up a sequel. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  I've never played the game, but I have the theme song on an album from Amazon where the London Philharmonic recorded versions of classic video game themes like this one, Super Mario Bros, and Tetris.)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Jim Carrey declared he was done with acting after this.  If he really is, it's not a bad way to go.

Me:

Sonic the Hedgehog 2:  I really liked the first movie, despite I never really played any Sonic games except maybe a demo in Best Buy or Electronics Boutique.  I didn't have high hopes for the sequel because sequels for movies like this are usually not very good.  But the movie managed to exceed my low expectations.  Not really enough to make it better than the first one but at least so that it's not a disaster.  While it brings in Tails and Knuckles, it doesn't try shoving in too many new characters or creating a "cinematic universe" for Sega or creating a "multiverse" or any junk like that.  There's a fairly typical hunt for a MacGuffin--a giant emerald that's sort of like the Infinity Gauntlet.  There's too much scene-chewing Jim Carrey and not really enough James Marsden and his wife but mostly it manages to retain the fun and heart of the first movie.  Knuckles turns out to be a big surprise as I thought he'd just be an evil henchman but he has surprising depth; maybe I should have expected that since he's voiced by Idris Elba.  Michael Bay and the writers of those awful Transformers sequels could have taken a page from this as both Tails and Knuckles actually have something of a character arc.  (3/5) (Fun Fact:  There is an awkward cookie scene to set up an evil Sonic clone or robot or whatever for a third movie.)

Black Adam (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: People with nothing better to do have been having a field day with the box office failure of this one, saying it's the final nail in the coffin of Dwayne Johnson's popular career.  Most of them have barely any notion of what Johnson's career has actually looked like.  Well, anyway, I loved it.  I think it's an astonishing miracle it got made like this at all, much less the fact that it got made only because Johnson took the role.  

Me:

Black Adam:  I finally watched this when I accidentally got a Vudu gift card from the Movie House app instead of an Amazon one.  So this was only $1.  It was worth that at least.  Actually it wasn't bad.  It might have been better if it had focused on Black Adam instead of shoehorning the Justice Society in there.  (Like Eternals, putting the JSA in there just makes you wonder where the hell they were during all the other stuff of the DCU.)  But Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Fate does lend some gravitas to the thing.  The two kids (Cyclone and Atom Smasher) were underdeveloped while they hardly did anything with Hawkman's backstory, which since he's existed since the 40s is pretty intricate by now.  

When they get to Black Adam's real origin story it was a good and touching twist that made me think they should have focused more on that kind of material than setting up sequels and crossovers that likely will never happen.  It also explained why he was so protective of the one kid.  Most of the plot is about Teth Adam being awakened after like 4600 years and fighting Intergang, who have taken over the country of Kahndaq.  There's also a crown that creates the demonic creature Sabbac, who's like an evil version of Shazam.  While the JSA at first try to arrest Black Adam, they have to team up against Sabbac--your basic Peter Griffin Bigger Jaws plot.  If you like superhero movies you'd probably like this and if you don't then you probably won't. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  I was surprised to learn Aldis Hodge plays Hawkman because in the crime caper show Leverage he was always the dorky computer hacker who can't fight and in this movie he's all buff and stuff.  He also has a mansion with an underground lair that a cool plane rises up out of like Charles Xavier.  As most people already know, the cookie scene was the final appearance of Henry Cavill as Superman.  The scene then really contributes nothing; really they should have done something with Zachary Levi's Shazam since he's Black Adam's traditional rival and his movie is the next one up.  They could have done both with the Shazam one as like an end credits cookie scene where maybe he--or Billy Batson--sees something on the news or gets a message from the wizard or something like that.

Ambulance (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: It's kind of hard to believe now, but there was a time when Michael Bay was taken seriously as a filmmaker.  The Criterion Collection even added Armageddon to its highly selective catalog of mostly European cinema and American auteurs.  I haven't always overly interested in his career myself (still have yet to see Armageddon, even!), but I figured if anyone was capable of helping define the cinematic surge that was 2022, it was Bay.  I was right.  Good stuff.

Me:

Ambulance:  Also on Prime Video, this long, long, loooooooong and very dull movie by Michael Bay.  It's like a very, very pale imitation of Speed and Heat and probably a few other movies.  Black Manta from Aquaman and Jake Gyllenhaal (two guys with names I hate trying to spell!) are brothers Will and Danny.  Will joined the Army and got married and had a kid and now his wife has cancer and needs surgery the insurance won't cover.  So he goes to Danny, who robs banks, and just happens to right then have a job he could use help for.  But then things go wrong and they wind up hijacking an ambulance with a female paramedic and a rookie cop who's dying from a gunshot wound.  Then they drive around LA while trying to keep the cop alive, because if he dies they'll go to jail for life...as if the bank robbery, assault, kidnapping, grand theft auto, fleeing the cops, etc wouldn't already land them in prison for a very, very long time.  It's 137 minutes but it felt more like 317 minutes.  Can a movie that's 2/3 a car chase get boring?  Yes.  Yes, it can.  And it does. (1/5) (Fun Fact:  Quoting one of your previous movies--The Rock--in your current movie is not meta; it's just narcissism.  It's not even a well-known quote or anything.)

The Contractor (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: A fine spotlight for Chris Pine, an action as well as character drama that allows him to showcase his strengths in both.

Me:

The Contractor:  A couple people online had praised this movie so when it was on Paramount+ I finally watched it.  Chris Pine is an Army Ranger who's discharged but loses his medical benefits for juicing.  He goes to a friend (Ben Foster) who gets him a job with "the Ranch," a private operation that does off-the-books stuff.  For an upfront payment of $50K, Pine goes to Berlin, where an operation involving a scientist and some kind of vaccine soon goes tits-up.  It was a decent movie, though it felt like a lower budget version of a Bourne movie or something along that line.  It might have been better if it had been a little longer; maybe let him complete a mission or two and then have everything go tits-up.  Still, it's not bad if you like action thrillery movies. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Pine and Foster previously were brothers in the better heist movie Hell or High Water, which Tony Laplume says was written by the guy who created the smash hit Yellowstone and its various prequels.)

Ticket to Paradise (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Nice to see George Clooney show up in something visible again (and it was also a minor hit!).  Not to par with his best movies, but certainly worth watching.  His costar Julia Roberts, she's worth noting probably, too.  Old school Hollywood definitely felt like asserting itself in 2022.

Me:

Ticket to Paradise:  A bland comedy with almost no surprises that really makes you think everyone involved just made it so they could write off a vacation to Bali as a business expense.  George Clooney and Julia Roberts are a divorced couple who've hated each other for 20 years.  Then their daughter meets a cute seaweed farmer in Bali and wants to marry him there.  So the parents go there and decide to work together to break up the wedding.  But guess what?  I'm sure you can guess because as I said, there are no surprises.  Not even at the end.  It was pretty lame and I wouldn't have watched it but it was on Peacock and I could watch it free so whatever. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  I was going to call my story Invitation to Paradise Ticket to Paradise but then I saw a commercial for this movie and changed the title.  Not that it probably would have mattered.  It's not like this made much money.  It probably made less profit than my story.)

Death on the Nile (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I read the book before watching the movie.  Usually I call hogwash the notion that the book is always better than the movie.  But I had a hard time forgetting how enjoyable the book was.  I adore Kenneth Branagh making these movies, though.  

Me:

Death on the Nile:  The sequel to the latest remake of Murder on the Orient Express with Kenneth Branagh as French detective Hercule Poirot.  This begins with the secret origin of Poirot's mustache!  (Seriously.)  It also shows some woman he loved...who really has no bearing on the plot at all.  I mean you might think she'd come back or even be the murderer, but nope, she's not seen again.  There's a lengthy setup as a wealthy star (Gal Gadot) and her new husband take Poirot and a bunch of friends and family on a steamboat up the Nile.  It's almost halfway in when she dies and Poirot starts "investigating" basically by asking everyone questions.  If you want a lot of action there's not much here, just a couple of brief moments of murder and mayhem.  If you like that old-fashioned kind of mystery where the detective gathers everyone together and works out the case verbally then you'll like this.  If you want something action-packed or with more humor like Knives Out, then it's not for you.  I didn't hate it as much as the previous two movies on this list because it's not dumb or extremely dull, just old-fashioned.  I don't think I've read the book to know how accurate it is, but I think it's a good adaptation of the style of an Agatha Christie mystery.  (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Besides Branagh and Gadot, the cast includes Black Panther's Letitia Wright, Oscar winner Annette Bening, Russell Brand in a strangely conservative role, and the now-disgraced Armie Hammer.)

Babylon (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Here's Pitt again.  But it's really mostly just Margot Robbie doing her crazy routine in the most thoroughly old school Hollywood possible.  

Me:

Babylon:  the more apt title might have been:  Degradation in Early Hollywood.  If Marquis de Sade had been able to write about early Hollywood, it might have looked like this.  In the first half-hour we have elephant diarrhea, a golden shower, a pile of coke, tons of nudity, a woman singing about stroking her lover's pussy, and lots more debauchery.  This is in 1926 and we meet the main characters at a movie studio head's party:  Jack (Brad Pitt) is a big star, Nellie (Margot Robbie) is a girl from Jersey who wants to be a star, Manuel immigrated from Spain to work in the magic of movies but is only an assistant, and Sidney is a black jazz musician yet to make it big.  Manuel helps Nellie into the party, where she winds up getting a part in a movie while Jack hires Manuel as his new assistant.  Soon Nellie is a silent movie starlet and Manuel becomes more involved in the business.  But the "talkies" ruin Jack and Nellie's careers while Manuel becomes a studio exec and Sidney becomes a star.  But even success kinda sucks.  At one point, Manuel has to convince Sidney to basically wear black face for the movie he's working on.  The idea being that even though minorities could have money and a title, they still didn't have respect.  The very sluggish ending kills two characters while the other two sink back into obscurity.  For all the debauchery it gets pretty dull.  Not a lot of new ground is covered unless you're not really familiar with Hollywood history. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Tobey Maguire produces the movie and appears as a drug kingpin near the end.)

Thor: Love and Thunder (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: For me a huge step up from Ragnorak, which everyone who saw it loved, and loathed this one.  You never can tell how these things will play out.  Best Thor movie, and very easily so for me.

Me:

Thor Love & Thunder:  As someone who did not like Thor Ragnarok (not for "woke" reasons but because it was just stupid) I didn't expect to like this.  And I didn't!  I didn't hate it as much as I thought I might either.  Mostly it was just meh.  In typical Marvel fashion Thor went with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of Endgame, so now we have to dispose of them quickly because we can't afford to have Chris Pratt and company in the whole movie.  So they're soon gone and Thor is off to find the "God Butcher" who's Christian Bale looking like Sybok's henchman in Star Trek V, only paler.  He has a sword that lets him kill gods and Asgardians are next, so he kidnaps a bunch of kids in "New Asgard" to lure Thor out.  But then there's another Thor who's his old girlfriend, Natalie Portman--and not just previous footage of her like last time.  And some trite bullshit about her battle with cancer, which is why she has Thor's old hammer that somehow reassembled itself.  And Russell Crowe embarrasses himself by looking chubby and doing a bad Italian accent for a Greek god.  And there's a lot of Guns n Roses which to this point I actually enjoyed.  Blah, blah, blah, shit happens.  Maybe someone can explain to me why Christian Bale deserves a happy-ish ending after he murdered tons of people and kidnapped a bunch of kids.  But on the plus side it was nice to see Idris Elba in the final cookie scene.  In the first cookie scene the guy they got as Hercules only has one line and it sucked, so please maybe work on that, Marvel?  I hope the fact this faded from the box office pretty quick will persuade them they don't need to jam another sequel into their busy schedule.  Or that they need to ruin any more of their decent comic book stories with shitty, half-assed adaptations. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  This was the first Thor movie not to feature Loki, just Matt Damon again playing him in a play.)

The Northman (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Cult-like success convinced me to watch.  Generally worth it.

Me:

The Northman:  The way I described this on Facebook was like if you mixed together Hamlet, Beowulf, Gladiator, and maybe a dash of The Lion King.  Like Hamlet you have a price who wants revenge because his uncle killed his father, the king, and married his mother.  Like Beowulf it's set in and around Scandinavia of about the 9th Century.  Like Gladiator, our hero who was someone important is forced to become a slave for the guy he wants to get revenge on.  And like The Lion King the prince at the start is just a kid who loves his daddy, who is grooming him to one day be king when he dies and the kid goes on the run, only instead of a lovable warthog and annoying meerkat teaching him a catchy song, he joins a gang of raiders who mercilessly slaughter men, women, and children.  The grittiness, violence, and gore makes this less than a heroic saga.  Since he butchers numerous innocent people, our "hero" isn't really a hero and the uncle isn't as big of a jerk as he was in Hamlet, though admittedly I've only seen an old German TV version that was on MST3K.  But when the "hero"'s mom drops some truth bombs, it kind of dampens some of our enthusiasm for the prince to get his revenge.  Which I guess is true to that old adage about revenge and digging two graves; though in this movie you'd need a lot more than that. (3.5/5)

The 355 (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: An all-womens all star ensemble led by Jessica Chastain is probably well worth another look down the line despite being savagely dismissed on original release.

Me:

The 355:  This movie came out in theaters in January...and I didn't watch it.  Then it was behind the paywall on Peacock for a while...and I didn't watch it.  Finally it was on Prime Video...and I did watch it!  It's an OK movie.  Like Charlie's Angels meets a Bourne movie.  Jessica Chastain is a CIA agent whose mission to get a computer device that can fuck up all electronics in an area gets derailed and her partner (Sebastian Stan or Bucky of the MCU) is seemingly killed.  She winds up teaming with a German agent (Diane Kruger), a former agent for Great Britain (Lupita Nyong'o), a Colombian psychologist (Penelope Cruz), and a Chinese agent (Bingbing Fan).  There's a bit of effort made to actually giving them some characterization as they try to track down the device.  It's not a bad movie, but not a great one either.  Kind of glaring in this day and age they didn't really try to set up a sequel in the credits. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  The title apparently refers to a female spy for George Washington.  Why was she called "the 355?"  No idea.  The movie was co-written and directed by Simon Kinberg, who also directed Dark Phoenix, which co-starred Jessica Chastain.  Opinion:  I like Jessica Chastain but she's one of those actors who just seems to have a shitty eye for picking scripts.  Or maybe these are the best a woman can get in Hollywood?)

Beast (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Idris Elba in a family drama highlighted by a vicious fight scene at the end with the eponymous lion.

Me:

Beast:  I watched this when it was still streaming "free" on Peacock.  Idris Elba and his two daughters go to South Africa and while they're on a safari with an "anti-poacher" (Sharlto Copley) they're attacked by a lion.  A lion that had its pride wiped out by poachers and is really, really pissed off.  It's the sort of premise that could have been dumb, like that Liam Neeson wolf-punching movie,  but the script helps by not having Idris Elba's doctor/father character turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator or something like that.  It's all kept pretty much realistic.  The end was a little predictable as it was a bit telegraphed.  Chekhov's Lions!  By the time this posts, I'm not sure where this will be streaming, but I'm sure you can rent it. (3.0/5)

Morbius (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: People have no idea how often they're manipulated by studios.  Disney is a terrible offender in this.  They hype up their product, and spread bad vibes for any and all competitors.  This isn't conspiracy.  It doesn't always work, too, especially when no one is really going to see a wide success coming.  But you get things like the constant mindless negativity for Sony's Morbius, which is admittedly already an improbable vehicle.  Better than any of the Blade movies ever were, anyway.  Once the machine gears up, people assume their poor opinions of something were self-generated.  Don't know what to tell ya.  Most of you don't work that hard to generate a reaction.  You agree with the consensus, even when it was somehow there before a movie like this was even released.  That's how it works.

Me:

Morbius:  The "latest" entry in Sony's half-assed cinematic universe.  I put quotes on latest because the movie should have been released in 2020 but was delayed by the pandemic.  Anyway, a lot of people were disappointed with this but like many maligned superhero movies like Fantastic Four or original Justice League it wasn't that terrible.  It wasn't great either.  They basically use a version of the Marvel formula.  Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) has suffered from a debilitating condition since childhood. (Was it a birth defect?  Who are his parents?  Where the hell are they?  Who knows!?) and makes friends at a clinic with a rich kid named Lucian, whom he calls "Milo" after a previous occupant of the bed next to him.  Years later, Morbius uses vampire bat DNA to cure himself, which if you've watched any movies, you know a scientist experimenting on himself is never good.  Predictably he turns into a vampire, but so long as he drinks blood every few hours, he has better-than-normal physical abilities with none of a real vampire's drawbacks.  Milo (one of the Dr. Whos) wants the "cure" and eventually gets it but while Morbius tries not to eat people, Milo becomes a monster who frames Morbius for his crimes.  Eventually they fight.  If it all feels bland and samey, maybe it's because we've seen pretty much the same plot in Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and Ant-Man to name a few and the superhero vampire thing done better in the Blade movies.

What disappointed most people was there was really not much cinematic universe crap in it.  There was an offhand mention of an incident in San Francisco and for some weird reason, Morbius calls himself Venom at one point.  Other than that there's not much until the mid-mid-credits scene when Michael Keaton's Vulture crosses over to the Sonyverse for...reasons and then in the mid-credits scene meets up with Morbius for...other reasons.  You have to think the release delays had to play a role in that as this was supposed to come out before Venom 2 and Spider-Man No Way Home, so it would have been hard to retroactively tie into those without reshooting a bunch of stuff.  Anyway, the movie was basically a flop so we'll probably only see Morbius again in Venom 3 or a Spider-Man movie as a guest star. (2/5) (Fun Speculation:  I'm sure the Rifftrax crew had some fun with Morbius going to Central America to find vampire bats.  See the second "Total Riff-Off" episode called "Demon Bat" where an idiot would-be monster seeker named Richard Terry tries to find a monster bat and comes away with only ordinary vampire bats.  I guess he never thought of trying to inject their DNA in himself.)

Memory (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: A minor though interesting variation in the later Liam Neeson action canon, allowing the reality of his aging to inform some of the drama.

Me:

Memory:  Liam Neeson is a hitman with Alzheimer's and Guy Pearce is an FBI agent in El Paso looking into trafficking...or something.  And their paths cross and I wasn't really interested at all.  I kinda lost track of who was dying and why, but there's a pretty high body count.  It wasn't necessarily a bad movie but both stars and director Martin Campbell have done much better work and mostly it makes me sad they're doing cheap straight-to-streaming stuff. (2/5)

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Laplume)

rating: **

review: I think probably after it lost its original meta plot of Nicolas Cage appearing in a Quentin Tarantino film, I lost most of my actual interest.  But it's still nice that Cage clawed his way back into movie theaters thanks to whatever you want to call the finished results.

Me:

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent:  I rented this for $3 when it was on sale during Amazon Prime Day II since I don't think it had been streaming "free" anywhere.  Anyway, Nic Cage stars as Nick Cage in this movie.  He's invited to a birthday party in Spain and since he needs money, he goes.  The guy throwing the party, Javi, (Pedro Pascal) is a huge fan and wants Nick to do a screenplay he wrote.  Meanwhile, a president's daughter has been kidnapped and the CIA thinks Javi did it, so they recruit Nick to help them find the girl.  Mayhem ensues!  It's kind of like Birdman meets Last Action Hero and Hot Fuzz as by the end Nick is basically parodying his own movies.  The beginning is kind of slow but the end is better as things get up to full speed.  I think it was a little disappointing in that while we know it's not the real Nic Cage, they didn't really lean into how we think of Nic Cage as the crazy dude who married Lisa Marie Presley and burned through millions of dollars on stupid shit.  The wife and kid thing is faker than the shootouts and stuff.  I mean there's only so much suspension of disbelief.  (2.5/5) 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Laplume)

rating: *

review: To me, the definition of insulting is bothering to bring in a collection of cameo characters that you mindlessly slaughter to drive up the threat of the character who isn't even, in the final analysis, the main threat of the movie.  What a truly embarrassing statement on the current state of the MCU.  Astute readers will note I haven't seen all of the recent additions.  I really don't see the point.  Now they're just making it the same as the actual comics.  Which for me have also been widely skippable.  In order to prove their further relevance, they're becoming either further irreverent or mindlessly obsessed with counterfeit legacies.  What joy.

Me:

Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness:  I am not a Dr. Strange fan and while I own the first movie (I bought it used at Big Lots) I hadn't really watched it in a while.  That doesn't matter too much, as long as you remember the bare facts:  Stephen Strange was a surgeon who went out with Christine (Rachel MacAdams) for a while but he was a selfish jerk who wrecked his car, his hands, and his career all at once.  Then he went to Tibet or somewhere like that and learned magic and got the Time Stone that he gave to Thanos for...reasons.  So now a girl named America Chavez shows up being chased by a eyeball/tentacle monster that probably got a lot of guys in Japan excited.  After Strange rescues her, she says another Strange and her were trying to get some book to stop the evil that turns out to be the Scarlet Witch, which only makes sense if you watched or at least heard about WandaVision.  After a fight with the Witch, Strange and America end up in other dimensions before landing in 836, where their Strange is dead and the "Iluminati" are running everything, led by Patrick Stewart's Professor Xavier, Captain Peggy Carter, Black Bolt, Mordo, some other Captain Marvel, and Reed Richards.  In a particularly gruesome scene, the Witch kills all of them, but Strange has a few tricks up his sleeve.  Sam Raimi of the first Spider-Man movies takes over and does a decent job.  While I'm not a Strange fan, it was an OK popcorn movie and the cameos were neat, though there weren't really as many as I would have thought. Did they ever get that Book of Vishanti or whatever?  Maybe I tuned out but wasn't that supposed to be the McGuffin?  But then Strange uses the Darkhold instead.  Maybe I should watch this again sometime.  (3/5) (Fun Facts:  Being a Raimi movie we of course have Danny Elfman doing the soundtrack and the mandatory Bruce Campbell appearance; the cookie scene at the very end with Campbell breaking the fourth wall was pretty funny.  John Krasinski plays Reed Richards and was so good that I want a new Fantastic Four movie like right now.  Make it happen, Kevin Feige!)

Amsterdam (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: The idea of the adult drama has suffered in recent decades as a popular phenomenon, but this David O. Russell all star ensemble is an excellent reminder of just how important it is to the art of film.  I would stack it up with anyone's idea of Hollywood classics.

Me: 

Amsterdam:  Like Babylon that came out last year, this was an ensemble dramedy with a lot of stars and a setting in the early 20th Century.  It also starred Margot Robbie.  And it also flopped.  I don't know where it streamed originally but it came to Hulu so I got a chance to watch it recently.  It's kind of slow before it finally gets to the relevant point, which is an American Nazi plot to overthrow the government.  Hmmm, American fascists trying to overthrow the government.  Sounds kinda similar to something recently, doesn't it?  But to get there you have to sit through like 90 minutes of disjointed rambling involving Christian Bale as a doctor who lost an eye and got messed up in WWI and has since opened an office specializing in protheses and homemade medicines.  John David Washington is his best friend and lawyer.  Then a rich woman (Taylor Swift) wants them to do an autopsy on her father, a retired general, but when they go to tell her the results, she's pushed in front of a car.  Then it sorta turns into an investigation.  This is based on a true story and to prove that the movie does a little comparison of Robert deNiro's General Dillingham with the real-life general with another name.  Anyway, the talent well on this is so deep.  Besides Bale, Washington, Robbie, Swift, and deNiro there's Zoe Saldana, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, and more!  David O Russell favorites Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are missing though, unless they were in uncredited bit parts or something.  Like O Russell's Joy, I think this mononym dramedy was in part a victim of poor marketing that didn't really articulate what the movie was about or the relevance it might have to now.  It probably could have used some trimming early on to get to the relevant part sooner. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Among the many stars is Casey Biggs who played Damar on DS9.  Speculation:  Was Chris Rock presenting at the Oscars because he was in this?)

So there you go, the end of the journey--for now.  There were some agreements and some disagreements--especially on the Dr. Strange one.  Like my brother, Laplume seems to have a bug up his ass about Marvel movies and stuff.  I still like some of them but there are a few not included in these entries (Eternals and Wakanda Forever mostly) that I really didn't like.  I don't know how Laplume can like Spider-Man's multiverse movie and then hate Dr. Strange's.  But whatever.  It's not like he'll come here to defend himself.