Merry Little Batman - A very cute holiday adventure mostly starring 8-year-old Damian Wayne learning to be a tiny Batman. They mostly used the villain character designs from the Burton/Schumacher live-action Batman movies, which was an odd choice but it goes with the level of seriousness involved. And whoever did the soundtrack loves British punk music. Cute, entertaining; don’t think too hard about it.
We rewatched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves with Babywulf (who loved it) and also watched all the DVD extras. The best bit from those is Justice Smith talking about how he came with creative hand motions for all his spells to see how the VFX guys would draw the magic around them, and it cuts to the head VFX guy just looking long-suffering. But it’s also clear how much the creators cared about D&D and making the movie fun. I hope they get a sequel.
The Marvels - For all the usual “worst movie ever” bullcrap in the reviews, this was pretty good. Ms. Marvel got the memo and was having a great time. At 90 minutes, this was much less bloated than most of the other recent fare. I’d argue it was a little repetitive to Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel (it assumes you’ve watched those and WandaVision so you know the characters and what’s going on, but still repeats many of the jokes) but still fun, because Nick Fury herding cats and Kamala’s parents being ridiculous but loving is never not fun. And regarding the stinger, I would LOVE to see Kamala, Kate Bishop, Cassie Lang, and Yelena doing Young Avengers nonsense, but I don’t think it’ll actually happen.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - This was a delight, full of great lines and Easter Eggs for longtime fans...right up to the point it became clear it was only half a movie, despite how long it was. Yes, I’m going to watch the third one regardless, but I’m going to be salty about it.
Poor Things – “What the fuck was that?” Okay, what it was is a modern retelling of Frankenstein, where the original novel was really gay (Mary Shelley was the original “fanfic writer with a queer friend circle”), but this is very, very straight. And terrified of feminism but convinced it’s inevitable. It gets a horror-movie ending where the monster wins and society is cowed before her, but the monster is feminism. Ah, well. Emma Stone acted the hell out of it and Mark Ruffalo seems to have had a really good time.
Madame Web - I went out of my way to see this because the “usual suspects” on the internet were declaring it the worst Marvel movie ever (which they do any time there’s a prominent female character or a character of color, which this has in abundance). It is, in fact, pretty terrible. There was a rumor this was a test of an AI-written script: This was waaaay too coherent (despite being formulaic) to have been written by AI. I might accept that it was "written" by AI and "edited" (read: basically thrown out and re-written from the bare bones) by underpaid humans. But my guess is that it was written by a committee, under-directed, then badly edited. There are some genuinely good actors in this film, but their performances smack of being given a terrible script that had been rewritten eight times since the table read and then filming everything in a week so the footage could be rushed off to the CGI artists. Except off-brand evil Spider-Man. He's a genuinely terrible actor.
We rewatched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves with Babywulf (who loved it) and also watched all the DVD extras. The best bit from those is Justice Smith talking about how he came with creative hand motions for all his spells to see how the VFX guys would draw the magic around them, and it cuts to the head VFX guy just looking long-suffering. But it’s also clear how much the creators cared about D&D and making the movie fun. I hope they get a sequel.
The Marvels - For all the usual “worst movie ever” bullcrap in the reviews, this was pretty good. Ms. Marvel got the memo and was having a great time. At 90 minutes, this was much less bloated than most of the other recent fare. I’d argue it was a little repetitive to Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel (it assumes you’ve watched those and WandaVision so you know the characters and what’s going on, but still repeats many of the jokes) but still fun, because Nick Fury herding cats and Kamala’s parents being ridiculous but loving is never not fun. And regarding the stinger, I would LOVE to see Kamala, Kate Bishop, Cassie Lang, and Yelena doing Young Avengers nonsense, but I don’t think it’ll actually happen.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - This was a delight, full of great lines and Easter Eggs for longtime fans...right up to the point it became clear it was only half a movie, despite how long it was. Yes, I’m going to watch the third one regardless, but I’m going to be salty about it.
Poor Things – “What the fuck was that?” Okay, what it was is a modern retelling of Frankenstein, where the original novel was really gay (Mary Shelley was the original “fanfic writer with a queer friend circle”), but this is very, very straight. And terrified of feminism but convinced it’s inevitable. It gets a horror-movie ending where the monster wins and society is cowed before her, but the monster is feminism. Ah, well. Emma Stone acted the hell out of it and Mark Ruffalo seems to have had a really good time.
Madame Web - I went out of my way to see this because the “usual suspects” on the internet were declaring it the worst Marvel movie ever (which they do any time there’s a prominent female character or a character of color, which this has in abundance). It is, in fact, pretty terrible. There was a rumor this was a test of an AI-written script: This was waaaay too coherent (despite being formulaic) to have been written by AI. I might accept that it was "written" by AI and "edited" (read: basically thrown out and re-written from the bare bones) by underpaid humans. But my guess is that it was written by a committee, under-directed, then badly edited. There are some genuinely good actors in this film, but their performances smack of being given a terrible script that had been rewritten eight times since the table read and then filming everything in a week so the footage could be rushed off to the CGI artists. Except off-brand evil Spider-Man. He's a genuinely terrible actor.
Not a good person.
