The Writer's Poke

So, at the same time the Tom Holland Spider-Man franchise is going on, there's also this animated multi-verse franchise. The Holland Spider-Man works in the context of what's going on in all the other Marvel movies, and this one is its own separate deal. Of course, right now, the Marvel movies are in "Phase 9" or something like that, and they're all currently into the multiverse theme... but this movie came out in 2018 and I guess offered a sneak-peak at what the multiverse would look like.  This movie's Spider-Man is named Miles Morales (Shameik Moore). One of the ideas forwarded is that anyone can be Spider-Man. That said, the movie still features Peter Parker, but he dies. Then, the multiverse opens, and we get to meet a few other Spiders from other places -- including Spider-Woman (aka Spider-Gwen), Spider-Man Noir, and even Spider-Ham. To say that the movie is non-stop and fast-paced would be an understatement. I still remember watching this one in the th...

Thirteen years before he played Odysseus, Matt Damon was somehow playing Liberace's loveboy, Scott Thorson. As I watched the movie, I was into the story, but I felt like the movie was only scratching the surface, just telling us part of the story. But since the script is based on Thorson's memoirs, that makes sense.  Who was Liberace? Well, I'm still not sure I know, really, but Michael Douglass's performance is amazing. He has the look and mannerisms. Everything about Liberace's relationship with Thorson, and apparently all the boys who came before him, is so incredibly wrong. The age difference, the power difference. Liberace doesn't come off as a "groomer," but he definitely took a vulnerable young man and "trapped" him in, what? A relationship of some sort -- Liberace himself didn't seem to know what he wanted -- to be a dad, a friend, a lover. Somehow, he thought it was okay to be all of the above, but he also must have known what he...

After watching Part 1, I wasn't sure I'd be watching Part 2... but I'm a completionist. I needed to watch it, and to be fair, it was better... and not a horrible conclusion to the series.  1. Too many characters means no character development. They just become "The Amazon Vampires," "The Irish Vampires," etc.  2. Bella's narration. That's new, and I don't like. It's just a lazy way to give quick exposition for everything that's going on. Now, if it's Bella writing down the story for her daughter, I can almost give it a pass, but generally, that kind of voiceover is just weak. 3. Is it creepy that Jacob imprints on Bella's daughter? If he can't have Bella, and Bella's daughter grows up quickly, I guess it's okay. I suppose we should just ask Alice.  At least in Part 2, I don't feel like we're waiting for stuff to happen. The pacing has picked up, and so I was into the story for the most part... nothing dragg...

Is there enough to justify dividing Breaking Dawn into two separate parts? I really wondered this before watching, and after watching, I can safely say, nope.  The film is 2 hours long, but you can break it down into 3 segments -- the wedding, the honeymoon, and the pregnancy. Give each segment, say, 30 minutes, or even if you want to milk one of the segments, milk the pregnancy, I guess, an extra five minutes. But clock the film at 90 minutes.  Anyway, we end up getting a lot of weird shots of Bella (Kristen Stewart). just studying her face -- either we are, or she is, or both. Is she anxious? Is she stressed? Just what is going on in her mind? The camera, I guess, works to "tell us." It lets us know the things we can't hear the characters think. Sometimes the actions or dialogue tell us, too, but it's usually the length of the camera shot. None of those characters have any real depth. It's kind of funny when you watch Bella's "life montage" -- you ...

Is 4 stars generous? Maybe, but I watched all 5 Vacation movies over a weekend, and this one was the only one that really made me consistently laugh. Ed Helms and Christina Applegate do a very good job taking over the lead roles from Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo.  Chase and D'Angelo both have small roles in the film. My first thought was: D'Angelo has aged gracefully, but what in the hell has happened to Chase? The 18 years between Vegas Vacation (1997) and this film haven't been kind to him.  So, the basic premise of this film is the same as the original Vacation (1983): A cross-country to Wally World. The movie acknowledges this with a short "meta" scene. I thought that scene was funny, and I like the Albanian rental car. I thought for sure it could be driven in either direction, but they never showed that. It did come with a rather sus keypad that included quite a few unnecessary options.  Each of the main characters is developed enough to be interestin...

"Scarlett! Look at me! I've loved you more than I've ever loved anyone and I've waited for you longer than I've ever waited for any woman." -- Rhett Butler, Gone with the Wind (1939) Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is not Rhett Butler, but once he sees Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) he's willing to wait. Even if that means waiting a whole month, which he technically does. During that period, he even agrees to do other things that Barbara suggests, such as taking a night class. She "rewards" him in the hallway outside her apartment, but as I say, technically, she forces him to wait a whole month.  (When Scarlett Johanson prepared for her role in this one, I feel like she watched a bunch of Fran Dresser "The Nanny" episodes and followed that up with a few Mariah Carey interviews when she's especially playing up her New York accent.  Other viewers have pointed out the accents, so I won't belabor the point... but man... are they meant to s...

Montag's black. He's not married. Clarisse is an informant, not 16 and not his neighbor. Captain Beatty writes down Goodreads quotes on slips of paper and burns them. He seems conflicted, like he's really not sure which side to be on. I don't mind that this version doesn't "follow the book." It's cool to see that the firefighters rarely burn books. Their job is more to keep the culture pure. What they spend most of their time destroying is knowledge more generally -- hard drives, languages, art, and digital records -- anything they designate as cultural graffiti. Anything that they determine is a threat to peace and stability. The firefighters are also more specifically "American" -- in the film, the border exists, and getting across to Canada seems to be a possible goal. I also noticed that the film is okay borrowing from other sources. It feels like this film borrows ideas and concepts from 1984, among other sources. In other words, the fil...

The movie starts with a montage sequence, with both Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicolle (Scarlett Johansson) telling what they like and appreciate about each other. This seems really cute, until it becomes obvious that there must be a reason that they are saying nice things about one another, and then the film cuts to the couple sitting in a room with a therapist (Robert Smigel). In other words, this was all just an exercise assigned to them by their marriage counselor, with the expressed purpose of reminding them that, at least once upon a time, they liked -- maybe even loved -- one another. And maybe they still do, because all of the stuff they mention is nice, and it remains to be seen why they are at a marriage counselor, or what secrets they're hiding that they didn't want to write down on notebook paper at the shrink's request. Wrong. They aren't at a marriage counselor at all. They are at a mediator, preparing for a separation and amicable(?) divorce. They've w...

How do Monsters learn how to be Monsters? They go to college, of course. In Monsters Inc. (2001), I think we just assume that Monsters intuitively know how to be scary, or they have internships and on-the-job training through simulator training sessions, and so on. The prequel, however, develops the idea that Monsters receive more formal academic training. In fact, going to school to learn how to scare is a very prestigious field -- maybe like going to school to become a lawyer or doctor -- and not everyone that begins the program will finish.  Both Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) fail the program. Mike is book smart, but he's never going to be scary. Sully is naturally scary, but he's not book smart. They apparently meet as freshman, and I point this out solely for the continuity error (in Monsters Inc., Mike mentions that Sully has been jealous of him since 4th grade).  When Mike and Sully are dropped from the program, they have one chance at redemption: They, ...