Director: James Wan
Writers: David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Will Beall, Geoff Johns
Stars: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: Arthur Curry learns that he is the heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis and must step forward to lead his people and be a hero to the world.

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I’ve had high hopes for an Aquaman movie since it was announced that Jason Momoa would be portraying the character in the DCEU. I’ve been a fan of Momoa’s since his Stargate Atlantis days, so I know he’s perfectly capable of being an entertaining action star with great hair. Aquaman was better than I expected, it didn’t let me down entirely, but it still wasn’t quite as awesome as I hoped.

Aquaman tells the story of Arthur Curry and his journey to embrace who he is. Half Atlantean, half human, a child of the land and the sea. The film has two antagonists; Orm (Patrick Wilson), Arthur’s half-brother and current king of Atlantis, and Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen), a high-tech pirate seeking vengeance. The movie also features Mera (Amber Heard), who we saw for a brief cameo in Justice League. We also have Willem Dafoe, who plays Vulko, an Atlantean mentor type character. Nicole Kidman is Queen Atlanna, Arthur Curry’s Atlantean mother. Nicole Kidman was a great casting choice, probably one of my favorite additions to the DCEU. She is the only woman who is tall enough, bad ass enough, and has the right hair to convincingly portray Jason Momoa’s mother.

There are a lot of great things about this film. The first thing I need to mention is how gorgeous it is. Atlantis is amazing. They managed to illustrate the scale of this underwater civilization and how established it is and imply centuries of history. There are multiple kingdoms with different looks, a variety of sea creatures, and a cool take on Atlantean advanced technology. The music was equally awesome, Rupert Gregson-Williams does a fantastic job. The score just added to the epic feel of the film and gave a distinct theme to each main character. They were also able to take some of the campy, easily made fun of things traditional to Aquaman, and make them fit into the movie. Specifically, the makeover they gave his traditional orange and green suit and how they utilized and made fun of his ability to talk to fish. The underwater effects were also nicely done. The movement of the Atlantean characters and an underwater voice filter were nice touches.

Now on to the things I didn’t like… A big problem for me was Aquaman’s pacing- the movie was too long. At almost two and a half hours, it could have done with some editing, especially in one of the fight scenes. I thought that Black Manta’s character was mostly unnecessary. I loved basically everything about him, Yahya Abdul-Mateen was amazing, but this movie only needed one antagonist and suffered by trying to fit in both. This movie also falls into that “show all the cool bits in the trailer” category. Two of the most visually stunning shots in the movie were prominent in the trailers. It would have been great to have left those as surprises for the theater. I also had the pleasure of seeing this movie with my brother, home from the Army for the holidays. Immediately after leaving the theater he started rambling about the film’s weapons and technical issues (he always does that), such as shooting off grenade launchers in a room full of torpedoes on a submerged submarine. But even with those implausible things or bad decisions, he still enjoyed the movie. I also noticed quite a few references to The Little Mermaid. Not necessarily a negative, just something I observed. I’m not sure if that was intentional, accidental, or just because I watched that movie a million times as a kid and it’s permanently embedded in my brain. It doesn’t help that Cyborg actually calls Aquaman “Little Mermaid” in Justice League. Even with its faults, this movie is definitely one of the best DC has put out in a while, save for maybe Wonder Woman. It’s good to be able to publicly declare I enjoyed a movie made by DC again without fear of ridicule.

Aquaman is the fun action-packed, adventure movie we’ve sorely been needing from the DCEU. I’m happy with how they developed the character and hope to see more of him. I highly recommend you see this on the big screen.

Overall Grade: B-

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Hear our podcast review on an up coming Extra Film episode!

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Director: Rob Marshall
Writers: David Magee, Rob Marshall, John DeLuca, P.L. Travers (based upon the “Mary Poppins” stories by)
Stars: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw

Synopsis: Decades after her original visit, the magical nanny returns to help the Banks siblings and Michael’s children through a difficult time in their lives.

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Growing up, there were two musicals I watched more than just about any other films. One was Singing in the Rain and the other was the original Mary Poppins. Both films but especially Mary Poppins, are films that I know almost every word of dialogue and every song, and thus shaped me into someone that takes this genre very serious because of the films that shaped me when I was young and what a musical is supposed to do. Never in my life would I have imagined that Disney would bring us back to 17 Cherry Tree Lane and give us a film that was worthy of standing tall with the original film but that is exactly what director Rob Marshall has done. With Mary Poppins Returns, we are a given one of the most delightful films of the year, Rob Marshall’s best film since his Oscar winning film Chicago, and a films that’s message and tone are exactly what we need right now in the world we live in.

Mary Poppins Returns picks up 25 years after the events of the original, with Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) and his three children (Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, Joel Dawson) living in the house that he and his sister Jane (Emily Mortimer) grew up in. London, along with the rest of the world, are going to tough times in the 1930’s, and thus it is hard for Michael and his family to keep their beloved home and keep everything together since the passing of Michael’s wife. Michael is told by the bank that he needs to pay back the loan he owes the bank otherwise the bank will take the house, thus leading things to start falling apart once again for the Banks family. Michael’s kids are different than he and Jane were when they were kids, in that they have lived a harder life because of losing a parent and thus have to be a little more grown up to help their father, their aunt and their maid Ellen (Julie Walters) around the house. With all of this gloom and doom coming to pass over the Bank’s family, in from the clouds returns the world’s most famous nanny of all time, Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt). She proclaims to have returned “to look after the Banks children” but she has once again come to try and save this family from the world around them and their own personal struggles as well. With the assistance of a new companion, a lamp lighter named Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda), Mary Poppins gives Michael’s children, along with Michael and Jane again, reason to have hope and a reason to carry on in tough times.

Of course there are tons of adventures that Mary and Jack take the kids on and they are filled with so much delight and fun that you wish you were going on them with them in physical form rather than just seeing it with your own eyes. My favorite involves going into a bowl, much like the first one where Mary takes Michael and Jane in the drawing with Bert. This is where, just like the first one, the filmmakers really get to shine, using that amazing classic Disney animation along with the live action to make something extremely entertaining. This whole sequence, along with the entire film, works because of the music from Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who nail all of musical numbers with so many fun and engaging lyrics that go great with the dance sequences that Marshall and his team put together.

But I assume that most of you are here to find out one of the big questions surrounding the film, does Blunt come close to being anywhere near as good as the original Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews? The answer to that question is complicated because while this is very much the same Mary Poppins that Andrews played in the original, Blunt gives the character a little bit of a different spine thus making the character her own. Blunt, who worked with Marshall in his last film Into the Woods, shines the brightest in the film that she does something that Andrews did do a lot in the original, which was even when she wasn’t on the screen, you still felt her presence and wanted to see more of Mary Poppins ASAP. But just like the original, Mary Poppins has to have a great companion to help her introduce the children to their adventures, thus leading us to Jack played by Lin Manuel Miranda. Miranda, known as the creator of the most popular musical on the planet in Hamilton, gives a great performance and has fantastic on screen chemistry with Blunt where all their musical numbers together work perfectly. He is not as strong as Dick Van Dyke was in the original but he does a pretty damn good job and you can tell he is having a ball playing this part. The highlight of the film is where they sing the song “A Cover is Not the Book”, where it is a mixture of some of the fun of the original, with a splash of Chicago, mixed with a little of Miranda’s Hamilton, making a sequence that is one of the best of 2018.

There are some minor problems within the film, one involving the banks plot and the character intentions of Colin Firth’s Wilkins and Meryl Streep’s performance as Cousin Topy. It’s not very clear why Wilkins wants to take the home of the Banks family but this film does need a bad guy and Firth plays it good enough and the payoff the whole plotline is very much worth it for the surprise in the end. And while the song the song Streep does sing is very fun, it’s also a bit distracting considering the thick accent she chooses to use, thus making it the most distracting scene in the film. Beyond those two minor complaints, the film is “practically perfect in every way” and by the end of the film, it’s message is one that is exactly what we need in the world right now, in that “there is no way to go but up.” One can only hope that we get to return to this universe down the road and spend another lovely holiday with Mary Poppins and all these wonderful characters.

Overall Grade: A-

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Hear our podcast review on Episode 305!

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Director: Brady Corbet
Writers: Brady Corbet
Stars: Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Raffey Cassidy

Synopsis: An unusual set of circumstances brings unexpected success to a pop star.

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“I don’t even know what that was supposed to be.” This is what my boyfriend said to me after I showed him the trailer for Vox Lux when it was first released last month. I was befuddled. Mystified. Kinda angry. Who cares? It’s Natalie Portman. Playing a wildly over the top pop star. In a time where A Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody are dominating the box office. I was all in from the get go. Then, as I walked out of the theater, I couldn’t help but wonder to myself, “What was that supposed to be?”

In the days following my viewing experience, I’ve been trying to figure out if Vox Lux is the wildly complicated, thought-provoking kind of movie that takes days or weeks of pondering and multiple rewatches to truly enjoy, or if it was just a smorgasbord of awards bait nonsense that wasn’t even worth the initial two hours it took to watch the damn thing. To its credit, I’m leaning more towards the former and am looking forward to testing this theory with multiple rewatches in the future. I think the indecision in this regard, though, stems from the very intentional emotional distance writer/director Brady Corbet keeps between the audience and the narrative. This distance is obvious from the opening scene of the film which depicts a very graphic and upsetting act of terrorism. The scene plays out largely as a methodical series of images used to communicate facts rather than emotions, not unlike news stories covering real-life horrifying events. The movie itself is even framed as a documentary, which feels simultaneously like a tongue-in-cheek reference to the ever-popular musical biopic genre and a very effective technique to maintain emotional distance from these characters.

While talking about the emotional distance this movie creates, it’s important to note that Vox Lux isn’t so much a story focusing on our protagonist, Celeste, as it is a hyperbolic allegory about a generation’s loss of proverbial innocence. It’s a heady premise but I’m not entirely convinced Corbet succeeds in delivering the promise of that premise. The overstated images and characters don’t quite mix with the understated themes, and the emotional distance makes it difficult to find any dark humor in the story, and even harder to discern if any was intended to be found in the first place.

Despite my confusion and indecision regarding the themes and overall message of this movie, I have to admit that Corbet surrounded himself with such an excellent team that it was very easy to sit back and enjoy the spectacle without worrying too much about what I was watching until the movie ended. For as much as I love Portman and was excited to see her singing and dancing as a Lady Gaga-esque pop star, Raffey Cassidy absolutely stole the show as Young Celeste / Albertine and I wish the Sia-written and Cassidy-performed song “Wrapped Up” was a contender for Best Original Song because it was amazing, not just as a stand-alone song but as an integral piece of the narrative and the film as a whole. Also, with the emotional distance created in the script, the weight of eliciting emotional responses often fell to the cinematographer and the editor (Lol Crawley and Matthew Hannam, respectively), and both spectacularly delivered.

In sum, Vox Lux was an emotionally confusing, exhausting, thought-provoking bundle of talent with amazing music, spectacular costumes, and some of the best editing I’ve seen all year. It’s a bit of a mixed bag and I can’t recommend it to just anyone, but I really wish more people were going out and seeing it. If you like Natalie Portman, pop music, social commentaries, dark humor, and/or cynicism, or if you just can’t stand movies like A Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody, then this one’s for you — see it while you can, because I don’t think it’ll be in theaters for much longer.

Overall Grade: ???

Grade Rating for script: a solid B that will undoubtedly either go up to an A or down to a C upon multiple viewings

Grade Rating if you ignore the script: A

Total grade rating (for now): A-

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Hear our podcast review on Extra Film soon!

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