Superman (2025) Written and directed by James Gunn

 

David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult are the main characters in this first James Gunn outing for DC comics. He does all the right things though the plot is still, like most of these films, over complicated. I like that Superman isn't all powerful and can be hurt and defeated so there are stakes not always present in other versions. I also like how naive he is in many ways, always taking the high road and believing saving lives is more important than politics. I don't think he is wrong and because he is Superman, he can afford to be that way. At one point the people of earth, or at least the city of Metropolis, turn against him because of Lex Luthor on a TV show. I would LOVE to say this is dumb but after seeing how easily people in the United Stated and elsewhere can be fooled into believing the most obvious con jobs, it sadly might ring true. 

There are far too many characters in this film, a DC hallmark but in this case they play well as more background characters and stay in service to the main plot instead of having a million plots and trying to make them all work together. Hoult I think is good but his talent is wasted  in a role that doesn't really bring anything new to the Lex Luthor character. Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern is a fantastic asshole and not like any other green lantern I know of. 

Crytpo the super dog could have been a terrible mistake and he is overused but so well done and I love dogs so much it wasn't a distraction for me. The James Gunn "banter" between characters is sometimes a little much and doesn't always land but again, it's work well enough to keep you engaged. It's no Gardians of the galaxy in that respect. 

I would see a sequel and other films in this new chapter for DC. Maybe they will have the right tone finally but as superhero movies are losing appeal at the moment, it might be a little late. 

Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) directed by Matt Shakman

 I did not have high expectations for this film. The look of it was interesting, an alternative Earth with 1960's aesthetics. Pedro pascal seems a weird choice for tall and angular Reed Richards (Mr. Fantasic) and marvel's superhero offerings seem to have run their course. I was pleasantly surprised. Setting the action on an alternative Earth freed it from endless superhero match ups and the world was pretty cool to look at. All the actors were good in the roles and it avoided most of the pitfalls that have turned me off these CGI spectacle driver films lately. I thought the cast gave some heart to the events and the story and managed to get through the "Reed feels guilt for the accident that transformed them all" we "we are all family" sentiments (well earned in this one) without feeling too trope heavy or superficial. It's not a deep film, it's a good one. Entertaining, light where it needs to be and about people you care about. There is, of course, a big fight at the end with the monstrous Galactus but they use guile and a team effort over just punching and brute force. I will definately watch a second one with this cast. 

Wicked (part 1) (2024) directed by Jon M. Chu

A film adaptation of the first act of the 2003 stage musical by Stephen Schwartz and Holzman, which was loosely based on Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel, itself a reimagining of the Oz books and the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. After being plagues with production issues, mostly due to the COVID pandemic the film was finally released to high acclaim with the public. It tells the back story of the Wicked Witch of the West who was melted by Dorothy in the original story when she threw water on her trying to save here friend the Scarecrow who was on fire. 

I was going to show some comparisons between the book and play and the play and film but that would be very spoilery. Instead suffice it to say the book goes into much more detail, has many more characters, is told from multiple points of view and is much more adult in nature. The film is based closely on the broadway musical and adds and subtracts things to make it more cinematic but doesn't stray all that much. The young which, Alphaba (played by Ariana Grande) is raised an talking animal named Dulcibear which helps support her outrage later in the film when she fights the mistreatment of the talking animals. Michelle Yeoh is in the movie as a sorceress teacher and she makes any role awesome. Everyone else is good as well and the settings and effects are very well done. The songs however were lacking and didn't have any sort of punch or bring anything that a shorter dialog wouldn't have done better in my opinion. 

The book was one of the first to rehabilitate the villain in a fantasy story by giving them a sympathetic back story. It was new at the time but since then has become a trope, one I hate. This movie doesn't take any chances or go nearly as far as the book did with its characters but it does work on many levels. If this is something you are excited to see, please do and I'm sure you will love it. There is a heartfelt centre in here.

Overall, it's fine. I do not regret seeing it but it won't stay with me very long as its still by the numbers, Even if the original book version invented some of the numbers to begin with by sticking with the watered down stage version as inspiration we lose the edge that made the idea so transformative. 

Die Nibelungen (1924) Directed by Fritz Lang

 

Die Nibelungen is a 2 part film, almost 5 hours long, that tells the story Siegfried in the first part who rises to legendary status by killing a dragon on his way to find the love of his life who he has only heard of in a tale told by a story teller in the place he learned to forge swords. By the end of part one he has married and been betrayed by his best friend. The second part is the story of Kriemhild, his wife, taking revenge on her brother the king and everyone else even peripherally involved in the murder. 

I won't spoil too much as even though this film is legendary I don't feel many people have sat through it all - either seeing the first part only (the dragon part) or just seeing clips about it. To be honest I do understand the idea of sitting through a 5 hour silent film seems like a punishment to many people but they are WRONG. This is a prize, an epic fantastic journey with stunning visuals, great performances, effects and sets that will amaze you. 

The pacing is not as fast as a modern film, but so what? Almost every frame is mesmerizing. Siegfried is the iconic muscular, blonde hero who will be copied throughout future films and the story covers a lot of ground from his modest start to his finding of the the treasures of Die Nibelungen in the dwarves underground layer to his epic fight with the dragon after which he bathes in it's blood to become invincible, only to be foiled when I leaf lands on his back blocking the blood and giving him a vulnerable spot. To win the woman of dreams, he helps the king wed his, the formidable Brunhild by using an invisibility device to secretly aid the king to beat her in 3 competitions of strength and battle. Brunhild leaps from one end of the set to the other in a way that today's superheroes could learn from. 

The effects are fantastic. The dragon is a huge puppet controlled by 32 people inside, the castles and landscapes are stylized but also seem like real places. The biggest success is the forest scenes. They are beautifully film with light streaming through the trees and intriguing in their look and structure. And.. they are all fake and inside a studio which seems impossible watching the film. 

Kriemhild's revenge, the second part is all intrigue and battles as she finds favour with a foreign king, marries him and convinces him to help her with her revenge and reclaiming the treasures of Die Nibelungen. 

This is the sort of epic film Lange was famous for before coming the states to escape the nazis and he never made again in the United States. The budget is girnormous and it shows and highlights his attention to every detail. 

7th Voyage of Sinbad. (1958) Directed by Nathan H. Juran

 Ray Harryhaussen and Charles Schneer were had made several films together before making this fantasy/adventure but this film was in colour and had a higher budget. The studio seemed to think "period films" were a risk at the time and didn’t notice the fantasy elements for some reason. Their fears were unfounded, the 650 000$ budget made them 8 million dollars on release worldwide. 

This is, in my opinion of course, the best of the 3 Sinbad films they made together and one of the best they made throughout their careers. The story isn’t complicated or particularly consistent but it is tons of fun and made to show off Harryhaussen’s stop motion monsters in a way that still looks amazing. It took him 11 months to do the animations by himself and showed the world that fantasy films were bankable and could be done in a way that drew you in and didn’t look cheap or unintentionally funny. The creatures in this movie are cool they still are decades and new special effects techniques later. 

There are some clunky bits. The villain is so obviously the bad guy but no one notices for a good part of the film. The heroes also have use of a Genie that could have cut this film in ½ if they just asked him to help a little more. None of this really matters because these plot holes lead to Sinbad fighting a skeleton! A fight between a cyclops and one of the best dragons on film! The plot is just a medium to show off the monsters and that is more than fine. The Bernard Herman score helped bring the action to life and will stick in your head.

This film is rightly credited for inspiring a whole film genre that was done well almost exclusively by Harryhausen and Schneer for the next few decades.  Kerwin Mathews worked with them again, but not on the following Sinbad films, he might have been considered too old as they were made over a decade later but he is a treat to watch and sells the effects scenes like no one who followed him. 

Note: The Sinbad movies were without a doubt a product of their time and I am well aware of that. Women’s roles weren’t very much more than damsels in distress, though all of the main women showed streaks of independence and were crucial to the story. The cast in all the films is almost completely white with rare exception despite being set, in effect, in the Middle East and no one looks like they are Middle Eastern in any way. It’s pretty obvious none of these problems are malicious in any way, just things not thought about in movie making of the time and I could see this trilogy being remade as a streaming series with better plotting in the same storylines with actors that match the locals better and maybe all three strung into one three season storyline with the same Sinbad and  and princess/love interest having more equal roles with modern effects that pay homage to Harryhaussen’s aesthetics. Netflix, Apple TV, whatever I am waiting for your call to develop this idea and bring this character back to modern day thrill seekers! 

Rings of Power (streaming show) season one 2022

 

Season one of the proposed 5 year one BILLION dollar series finally made its way on to my iPad on a recent trip to Boston. The bus ride is long and dull and the perfect time for a lavish escapist TV show. Covering events that predate the Lord of the Rings book series, this story follows the history of how the rings of power, central to those books, came about. While not having any real connection to Peter Jackson's films it does keep a certain continuity of design and tone, though I found the TV show a bit more bloody and violent. 

Production values, acting and story are pretty top notch and well thought out (though I did spot a couple continuity errors) this is without a doubt set up as a serialized TV show in how is laid out and not a movie extended over episodes. The massive budget shows, I was afraid it would look like a video game from the trailers and was pleasantly surprised to see it wasn't over sharpened or over saturated and while stylized, it did manage to have a natural look well combined with a fantasy aesthetic. 

The story mostly centres around elf Galadriel, a powerful force in the Tolkien era, as a warrior dead set on revenge after her brother is killed in the battles again the now missing and presumed dead by most, Sauron. She is a powerful character physically but not the mystical force we see her as later on. Other known characters are included due to the long lives of their races and it gives the series a nice link to the later versions without having to be slavishly tied to them.

For Tolkien fans, you can see the emergence of later characters coming a mile away... sort of. They were smart, I think, to fill this storyline with quite a few red herrings to throw off the fans enough to not be really sure if their assumptions are right. I works to keep the show interesting and exiting as some of the mysteries are revealed while others are left for the next season. Some of the characters seem like jerks and are developed to be anything but over the run of the show and that helps keep things tense as the heroes may not always be right or have all the information they need to see the whole picture. 

Overall it's pretty damn good, they didn't waste the budget or the confidence of Tolkien followers and are creating a nice companion piece to what was already out there. As a rule, I HATE prequels. I don't think we need to fill in every five minutes of what happened between this and that in a franchise as it takes audience participation out of everything and destroys much of the mystery and fun of speculating about things only hinted at. Luckily this was cleverly crafted to avoid the pitfalls of prequels so far. 

The Northman (2022) Directed by Robert Eggers

 

In his third full length film, Eggers was given a substantial budget, over twice his other films, and it shows. It's lovely to look at and meticulously constructed, like his other films. Having more money seems to have added a commercial element I can't quite put my finger on that was absent in previous efforts. The story is fairly cliché, young prince survives the betrayal and murder of his father and swears revenge on the traitor - becoming a savage warrior in the process. He has brought back actors from previous films and added some higher end ones, all of which are great in their roles and obviously wanted to work with him. Ethan Hawke is maybe the weakest in his role as king but when the weakest role is still fantastic, you can't complain. Alexandre Skaesgârd is intense with his body language, psychical presence and wears his anger well throughout as the revenge seeking prince. Bjork has a small role that suits her well, particularly her voice and Nicole Kidman takes on what could have been a forgettable character and gives her life. 

The film was a commercial failure at the box office but I see it having a long life in video  and streaming for years to come and I will buy the BluRaye. Eggers does use original languages but not exclusively so most of the film is in English. The other languages didn't need subtitles to understand what was happening. He is a stickler for original language so the English throughout was unexpected. There was nudity in the film and some sex but nothing terribly explicit. In fact, some of the nudity took me out of the film because while it wasn't exactly "the guy is naked but there is vase in front of his junk" censorship, it wasn't NOT that either. there is a en epic naked sword fight in a volcano that was maybe cropped a little too carefully to hide things which, for me at least, always brings attention to the director hiding something and it's more distracting than seeing a penis briefly. Woman don't get to be quite as modest. It is pretty violent in parts but I wouldn't say any of it is out of place for the story and Eggers does not shy away from things like rape is happening - but he doesn't make it selling point as others might have and I really appreciated that. 

There is some debate on whether or not this is a fantasy film. Maybe. There are fantastical elements but most of them can be easily dismissed as the character's fantasy or the mythic interpretation melting with the real event. I liked an ambiguity and the myth making mixing with the action. 

Not my favourite from Robert Eggers but three great films out of three is a pretty good record! I don't think he is chomping at the bit for more large budgets and frankly he doesn't need them. More frankly, I don't think many films needs the enormous money poured into them.