Long Reads

Summer Wars (2009)

So, here’s a little interesting factoid about me. If you ever meet someone from Ireland with the surname “Sharpson”, they are related to me. Like, immediately related. There are, at the time of writing, eight Sharpsons in the entire country. When I was growing up, there was my Dad, my three brothers, and me (my mother being a strong independent woman who refused to change her maiden name even for the sake of boosting the stats). That was it. My grandfather emigrated to Britain from Cyprus and then moved to Ireland in the fifties.

And, along the way, he anglicised his name to Sharpson, a name that had never existed in the country before then. So, we’re what you might call a rare breed.

Now, contrast that with my wife, whose family is as old as the hills, vast as the oceans and ~~mad as~~ lovely, lovely people. I say this not just as a way of banging out an intro to a review of a movie that I don’t really have much to say about other than “it’s good, I enjoyed it”, but to explain why the main character of Summer Wars, Kenji Koiso resonates with me.

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“Just what I had in mind. Everything dead on Earth, except us. A chance for Mother Nature to start again.”

More fool me, I guess.

I went in to this full of kindness and forgiveness in my heart.

I was prepared to embrace this movie like a loving father welcoming back the wayward prodigal. Of course this movie isn’t as bad as everyone says. Of course it’s really a delightfully camp romp. Of course the backlash was just a combination of toxic fanboy insecurity and subtle and not so subtle homophobia.

And this fucking movie turned and sank its fangs into me like a snake in a parable.

Yup. I was wrong. I dunno what I was thinking.

Conventional wisdom is always right and independant thoughts are weird and stupid.

Batman and Robin really is that goddamn bad.

I know, I know. Great to be back here on Planet Sensible. I don’t know why I ever fooled myself into thinking that this movie was So Bad it’s Good rather than regular old So Bad it’s Actually Bad. But rest assured, this is no Rocky Horror Picture Show. This movie is not fun, and it’s not even camp. It’s a grindingly cynical and mechanical attempt to be fun and camp and it fails utterly.

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“I wish that mattered, Janet.”

Alright, firstly I want to discuss a resolution that I’ve made. Like many movie critics (and after eleven years that still feels presumptuous to say, thank you imposter syndrome) I’ve noted that the CGI in Marvel’s recent output has been of inconsistent quality. This inevitably comes across as a criticism of the VFX artists who worked on these films, which is horribly unfair. As has become more and more clear in recent years, the problem is not with the artists but with Disney’s tendency to over-work their artists while micromanaging every visual aspect of their films to the point that the effects teams often have very little time to do their work to the standard they would ideally like. So, I’m no longer going to say “the CGI is shit” in these reviews. Instead I will say “the studio is shit”, just so we all know who’s really at fault here.

Will I have cause to make use of this new paradigm when reviewing Ant-Man 3?

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“You see, I’m both Bruce Wayne and Batman, not because I have to be, now, because I choose to be.”

Well, what totally planned and intentional synergy. It’s Pride month and just in time to talk about how Joel Schumacher made Batman gay.

Amongst many Bat-fans, the Schumacher Batman films are looked on as a dark age and I would argue that, much like the real dark ages, that’s entirely unfair.

Okay, mostly unfair.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Joel Schumacher is a better director than Tim Burton. Objectively, he’s not. Burton’s Batman films (Returns in particular) are beautiful gothic wonderlands. Schumacher’s vision for Gotham, by contrast, is a grimy industrial hellscape inexplicably drenched in garish neon. It’s ugly and weird and gaudy and kinda cheap looking. But ask yourself, is that really such a bad artistic choice for a Batman movie?

In fact…I’m just going to say it, Joel Schumacher came closer to capturing the feel of Bronze Age Batman than just about any other live action director. Doesn’t mean his films are the best necessarily. But I think the man deserves more respect than he gets, i.e., any amount of respect.

But we get ahead of ourselves.

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Hoodwinked! (2005)

I won’t lie guys, that exclamation mark frickin’ terrified me. Unless a movie is a prestigey old-timey musical, an exclamation point has no place in its title. You know what other independently produced CGI movie has an exclamation point in its title?

“They worshiped the dragon who had given authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can wage war against it?”

Fortunately, Hoodwinked! is not as bad as The Abomination and it’s not even the worst movie I’ve reviewed this year (although that is more an indictment of the year than an endorsement of the movie).

So what is Hoodwinked!?

Gah, see, this is the problem with having an exclamation point in the title. It looks like I’m screaming in panic.

Now Hoodwinked! was a movie that I was tangentially aware of. I’d never watched it, but I’d occasionally see it across the crowded room that is the modern animation landscape. And it would wink at me. And I would pretend I hadn’t noticed because it looked like the ugliest fucking Shrek rip-off I had ever seen and there wasn’t enough booze in the world for me to go home with it. But, like anyone who creates content on the internet for long enough, soon enough you find yourself doing things you never would have imagined doing. I watched Hoodwinked!

I have questions.

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“You’re just jealous, because I’m a genuine freak and you have to wear a mask!”

Funny story. Back when my brother and I were doing our YouTube channel we had an impression-off where we had to pull random characters out of a hat.

I pulled “Charlie Kelly from It’s Alway Sunny in Philadelphia” which I had never seen before. However, my flustered confused, panicky, high-pitched rambling attempts managed somehow to translate into a near pitch perfect impression of a character I knew absolutely nothing about.

Segue. Tim Burton’s Batman.

Somehow, despite neither reading, understanding or even particularly liking Batman, Tim Burton’s sensibilities as a director were such a perfect fit for the character that he created probably the most influential depiction that there has ever been.

And it was huge, a box-office, critical and merchandising golden god that conquered all before it. Now, Burton had not enjoyed his time directing that film, so Warner Brothers offered him the one thing no Hollywood director can refuse; pure uncut Grade A coc…I mean, COMPLETE CREATIVE CONTROL.

“Whatever you want, Timmy Baby, you got it. You want to rewrite the script, you rewrite the script. You want Jon Peters demoted to executive producer? We can have him killed if you want ha ha ha! (seriously though, we have ways…). You want Kim Basinger gone? Kim who? Never heard of her. JUST MAKE US ANOTHER BATMAN TIM. JUST DO IT AGAIN, FOR UNCLE WARNER.”

And he did do it again for Uncle Warner, and what he did remains probably the most divisive Batman movie of them all. You probably either love it or hate it, there’s very little inbetween.

Whatever your opinion, I think we can all agree: It’s a Tim Burton movie.

In fact I would argue that it is THE Tim Burton movie.

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John Carter (2012)

Hello everyone. Recently I decided to get back into acting and I’m going to be appearing in a production of Comedy of Errors in two weeks time as Dromio of Ephesus aka the best Dromio.

Dromio of Syracuse is trash and you all know it.

Also, Spouse of Mouse is on a business trip leaving me with two orphans crying plaintively for their mother night and day.

Also, I have a really tight writing deadline to meet this week.

Ergo, review short. Soz.

***

Normally, a film like John Carter is exactly the kind of movie that I dread to review.

It aroused no strong feelings in me. I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. But honestly, the more I watched it the more I realised…this is kinda good? I mean, the elements are really strong. For being a decade old, the effects hold up a lot better than most of what Disney is putting out today.

The cast is full of actors I love or at least have no ill will towards (I like Taylor Kitsch, y’all are just mean). The script is nothing spectacular but perfectly solid. There was clearly a lot of thought and love and creativity and subtle world-building that went into the design of its fictional Martian setting. And there’s some strikingly beautiful cinematography. Like this scene where John Carter is fleeing on horseback across the Arizona Territory pursued by Union Soldiers:

Just gorgeous, old fashioned film-making. There is a lot to like in John Carter.

And yet, and yet…something isn’t working here. Some wheel just ain’t clicking.

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Freddie as FR07 (1992)

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Some of you in the comments have noted that I’ve been a little, shall we say, down on the movies I’ve reviewed this year.

And some of you likewise professed that you enjoyed my review of Batman ’66 purely because it was nice to see me actually praising something for once. I get it, I do. Negativity can be draining.

But, if it helps, this review will be less “negative” than “absolutely incredulous”.

What. The. Fuck. Is. This?

You know what’s weird? I remember seeing trailers for this movie! I remember thinking it looked quite good!

This was not some obscure direct to video release, this was in theatres! With a pretty top-tier cast!

This is not an amateur production, this clearly had a lot of money behind it and was released in the early nineties, an absolute golden age for feature animation where even lesser known (or, to be frank, lesser quality) films still have passionate fanbases of ageing elder millennials desperately clinging to the nostalgia of their fading childhoods in the face of an increasingly bewildering and terrifying present (no judgement, we’re all in the same boat).

And THEN I learned that this is the first and only film written and produced by Jon Acevski, a British businessman who decided to make an animated film based on stories he told his son about his toy frog (his son’s toy frog, I mean. I don’t believe Mr Acevski has a toy frog and if he does it is none of my business). And that’s sweet, that really is.

But…

See, the thing about making movies is, they’re very expensive. And the people who back movies usually give their money to people who have demonstrated at least some competence in their field. But every so often, every so often, someone comes along who has no experience with writing, directing or anything really to do with the film-making process. But they do have money.

And when that happens? Oh, my friends, when that happens. That’s when you get the shit that makes my life worth living.

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“Hand me down… the shark…repellent…Batspray!”

“Inexplicably popular” is a phrase that gets bandied around a lot. There’s plenty of books and movies and so on that achieve monumental success despite being, by any fair assessment, fucking terrible. But what about things that are inexplicably unpopular? What about those works that attract passionate, fiery loathing despite being very, very good indeed?

Because the Adam West Batman series is just the tops. It is genuinely one of the best tv comedies of its decade. It’s smart, it’s funky and it just captures the vibe of the sixties so well.

No, no, no. Not THOSE sixties. THESE sixties.

There, much better.

And yet, for the longest time it felt like the Adam West series was loved by everybody but Batman fans. And sure, having to listen to the millionth tired joke about “BIFF BAM KAPOW!” and shark repellant got real old, real fast, but that wasn’t the show’s fault.

Less forgivable was the frankly toxic level of vitriol that a subset of the Batman fandom had towards this show. Not quite Phantom Menace levels but close. And this rejection of everything that even vaguely resembled Batman ’66 was, I would argue, a big reason why the nineties in comics were so fucking try-hard and asinine, as the medium went through its angsty adolesence loudly proclaiming that comics are ACTUALLY REALLY DARK AND MATURE, MOM.

Thankfully, things seem to have turned a corner. As comics became mainstream and lost their stigma, the show has undergone a reappraisal as younger generations have discovered the series and realised that

a) It’s fucking hilarious.

b) It’s supposed to be fucking hilarious.

c) This shit is meme-tastic.

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“T’Challa was truly noble. Are you going to be like him? Or are you gonna take care of business?”

Goddammit.

Look, how do you think I feel?

No one wanted it this way. Marvel didn’t want to make a Black Panther without Chadwick Boseman, we the audience didn’t want a Black Panther movie without Chadwick Boseman and I certainly don’t want to give a bad review to a Black Panther movie without Chadwick Boseman.

His loss was first and foremost a human tragedy and if this movie succeeds at anything it’s in bringing across just the sheer, crushing grief of everyone involved in this. It’s not a fun time. It should not be a fun time.

Is it a good movie? I’m sorry, no it’s not.

But, it has good moments and I’ll be sure to highlight those.

It also has plenty of flaws and, well, I’ll be mentioning those too. But rest assured, I will feel like a complete asshole.