Appreciate you writing this. Testament to your type of reviewing and basic sensibilities, i’d now happily see any/all of these movies and I didn’t see a single movie in for the last 5 years. I have two small kids and date nights are generally dinner out with a sitter and then come home and watch a movie once kids are asleep. This list gives me a bunch of exciting releases to look forward to this upcoming year.
CGI is abused so much in cinema these days. I recall watching something on YouTube that noted the CGI in Terminator 2 still looks great (for the most part) and I agree. The scene where the T1000 shatters into pieces after being frozen is fantastic. You can bet there was a huge team working on that to make it look good. Terminator 2 these days would look like shit, with ridiculous explosions and buildings disintegrating everywhere.
Part of the reason that the CGI in T2 works so well is that there’s very little of it! I’m going from memory here so I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure the effect of the T-1000 freezing and shattering was 100% practical.
I'm oddly heartened by how many commenters found the unsubtitled Spanish of West Side Story off-putting. I get that it's true to the Spanglish spoken by real Puerto Rican immigrants, but honestly it makes the movie pretty unintelligible if you yourself don't speak the language. And it's clear that the film is actively trolling the audience on this front: everyone in the movie (the Jets, the cops, Anita) are constantly demanding that the Sharks speak English, and they comply briefly, but two lines later it's back to Spanish.
You can call it a "bold and pointed choice" as A.A. Dowd does in his review, but it's like Nolan and his increasingly incomprehensible dialogue being drowned out by the score: at the end of the day filmmakers need to be asking themselves how important it is that their audience is able to understand what is being said.
I don't want to keep harping on this point, but I do have one more thing to say: if you're like me and you grew up here you probably learned Spanish as a second language in school, y pues, si hablas un poquito, puedes entenderla, más o menos. But this film is about **immigrants**, and if you're like my friend who I watched this with, who came to America from China and doesn't speak a lick of Spanish, you kinda get the feeling that the film wasn't made for him and doesn't care whether he liked it one way or the other, and that does feel a little ironic to me.
Spot on ! it oddly also basically identifies the audience with the Anglo side, which to my mind kind of misses the point...
I'd note parenthetically that barely a single one of the actors playing those "Puerto Rican immigrants" is either Puerto Rican or an immigrant, but it's ok because they are all "Latinx" as the producers proudly bragged again and again and again (including the star role who is half Colombian half Polish-and it seems at least third generation American- which we are supposed to take as a a huge advance and historical righting of wrongs by the stark contrast to the previous actress in this role who was the daughter of Russian immigrants...)
Maybe some day Matt could write about the incredibly superficial way (like to the point that it should really be insulting) Hollywood manages to treat subjects with any sort of Latin American connection even while loudly congratulating itself for its enlightened attitude. (The hype about "Maya and the Three" was the one that really broke me on this subject -- Netflix fell over itself bragging about all the Latino star power for the show, but the story is explicitly set in *pre-Columbian* America and, AFAICT, none of the leads self-identifies as being Native American to any meaningful degree! And the dialogue communicates to us that we're watching a show set in ancient Mesoamerica by being peppered with Spanish. It would be like making a show that's specifically supposed to be about Celtic Britain, casting mostly Italians in it, and having the characters speak partially in Latin!)
As another example among many, look at the flack James Franco got for being cast as Fidel Castro (especially from John Leguizamo), despite Franco being a reasonable match for Castro's ethnic background (not that it should matter much). To be fair though, Leguizamo just says these things in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.
This is fun! I liked it a lot. More people should talk about movies because movies are good.
Slight correction, Jim Cameron uses motion capture, not stop motion. Stop motion is what Ray Harryhausen, Henry Selick, and sometimes Wes Anderson do. Motion capture is dots and computers, stop motion is puppets and still cameras.
Great list, generally, and even more evidence that I really ought to get around to Tár.
That having been said, I thought Love and Thunder was awful. Abysmal. It was kind of a kick in the face to Ragnarok, which balanced (a ton of) comedy very well with the storyline, whereas I thought L&T just looked like Waititi completely let off his leash, unedited, with a result that seemed like it couldn’t decide whether it was trying to capture the magic of Ragnarok or trash it for humorous effect. The storyline and effects were half-baked at best (and the CGI goat scream was cringy the first time, let alone the 5th).
Compare all of this to Waititi’s earlier work, and I think it’s pretty clear how much he benefits from working within the constraints of a smaller budget and some good editing. Hunt for the Wilderpeople and What We Do in the Shadows are amazing little films with a ton of heart that balance humor with genuine commitment to the storyline, even when it gets absurd. Ragnarok had glimpses of that same throughline. Love and Thunder never did.
Agree! The 2(?) minute montage with the kids near the end is amazing, but everything else was mostly bad. If it wasn't a MCU movie, it would be an after thought that nobody saw...which is the worst thing about the MCU. It rewards blah movies with enough cash to keep going.
Yes. I don't think it changes the aesthetic nature of the prose - a beautiful sentence is a beautiful sentence - but it changes the aesthetic gestalt of the work. For example, the identity of the author can be the difference between an honest and open memoir and a well-crafted lie. Both can be admired, but for different reasons.
For me, the recent trend in films, especially "serious" films like Tar," is to focus a lot of attention on the filmmaking and much less on the story. (Actually, I think the same is true of a lot of contemporary newspaper and magazine feature writing.) Too bad -- I think a film should tell a story so that the audience can be engaged and, if possible, lose yourself in it. Instead, we get many films (like Tar, also Glass Onion, many others) that constantly focus the audience's attention on this or that cinematic effect, which as often as not increases confusion rather than clarity. So my nomination for best film of the year is The Duke -- a really terrific satirical comedy, perhaps the only movie in recent decades that follows the great tradition of Ealing comedies from the 1950s England. Beautifully done, beautifully cast, with a point of view about British society. Not highly promoted, but who cares?
I watch too little contemporary stuff to generalize too much. But my experience has been similar. Artists seem both more self-absorbed in showing off their craft, and also more in thrall to their hardcore fanbase, at the cost of storytelling that appeals to, well, me. I wonder if that is what Prestige art is.
Interesting there’s no mention of what a great year this was for horror movies. I thought Smile was really good. Barbarian didn’t totally stick the landing but parts were really well done.
I am with Matt about horror movies, but also because I get nightmares. I finally watched Get Out and Midsommar, during daytime obvious. Get Out was fun and interesting, but I didn't think it was as much a horror as a psychological thriller. Midsommar was bad and just creepy and not at all scary, probably because I didn't care about any of the characters (neither did they).
There are some thriller/suspense entries with horror elements that I can appreciate, e.g. Peele's "Get Out." But your typical slasher/chain saw/zombie flick just seems gross, and I don't understand wanting to subject oneself to it.
Here’s why Love & Thunder didn’t work for me like Ragnarok did. In Ragnarok there’s a funny planet (where Jeff Goldblum is king) and a serious planet (Asgard). So the funny stuff in no way feels like it’s undermining the serious stuff, and when Thor comes back to Asgard he’s ready to complete the hero’s journey. In L&T, on the other hand, every scene is at risk of being undercut by some Waititi irreverence. For instance, we need to think Gorr is a serious bad dude, so Sif gets her arm cut off by him…but there Thor is, joking about her severed arm. If the movie was just a send-up that would be fine, but the Jane stuff and the kid stuff is supposed to be straight. It’s just a mess, unfortunately.
GOTG 1 was the best mixture of the serious&fun. Ragnorak did it well too. Goldblum was great and the Thor & Hulk conversations were funny. Hulk like fire; Thor like water. The ending was a bit corny. L&T basically just made Thor a joke. As Hulk said “Thor sad”. Waititi made him sad in a pathetic kind of way.
I think it’s not coincidental to this that Ragnarok’s script and story was primarily written by two of Marvel’s steadier in-house hands and then handed to Waititi to make his own thing out of, but L&T was his from story to script to final cut.
Sometimes a bit of aesthetic restraint and editorial feedback is helpful. Waititi is a talented guy but he seems to do best in situations where he has to bounce off a few other people rather than completely getting his own way.
This is so right. It’s useful to juxtapose Thor: Ragnarok, Thor: Love and Thunder and Jojo Rabbit to understand how Waititi blew it with T:L&T. It’s the whipsawing between over-the-top burlesque and (literally) deadly serious. The oscillations are just too big and too frequent. In T:R and JR the down beats resonate (heh) because they’re jarring to the light and fun tone. You have a gnawing sense that the narrative is unsafe. Something really bad could happen between the smiles. It has power. As Matt points out correctly, T:L&T isn’t trying to get you to smile for the most part, it wants you to eye roll at the absurdity. But the down beats aren’t chords in T:L&T, it’s the pianist slamming his fists on the keyboard. Then right back to the ridiculous. And back and forth until you can’t stay emotionally engaged. It doesn’t work, which is pretty much what Waititi admits in hindsight. Oh, well.
I can't find it now, so it's possible I misread it. I recall thinking at the time that it was impressive for such a high profile director to acknowledge a misfire.
I'm a ~ MCU fan. My wife more so. Love & Thunder was one of the worst movies we've seen. It was a struggle to finish. The best part was the Matt Damon cameo and that's not saying much.
If you thought L&T was a struggle (and I agree: some good bits but they all mostly served to remind me how much better Ragnarok was) I can’t strongly enough urge you to stay far away from Multiverse of Madness, which I sadly suspect is going to end up regarded at the moment when Sam Raimi completely ran out of talent.
I don't think he ran out of talent per se, his style just hasn't evolved at all in 40 years. There were so many clear "Sam Raimi" moments it almost felt like a parody.
That was basically my thought as well. I think maybe Waititi intended to juxtapose the very comedic surface level stuff with the actual plot developments being very serious (Thor's lost his brother, his dad, his whole planet, failed to stop Thanos, is quite depressed at the start of Endgame, and now loses Jane) but to me it just didn't work.
Interesting, I didn't even see that, but you're probably right about what he was going for. I get that the MCU is for kids, but they rarely seem to really deal with the sheer amount of trauma most of their characters would be dealing with. (Wandavision being the exception that proves the rule).
I couldn't help but think of that when Drax and Mantis were flying over Hollywood in the GoTG Holiday Special (which was excellent!). The joke was that Drax forgot to turn on the invisibility cloak, but I can hardly imagine how horrified people who had just been through "the blip" would be at the sight of more aliens coming!
I can't imagine a more likely way for the world to become fascist (i.e. movie version of Starship Troopers) than the blip. Humanity discovers its not alone and there are extremely advanced alien civilizations out there that can destroy us! We must use all powers of the state to advance so that it can never happen again!
Alas, my runaway favorite of 2022 didn't make the cut - Nope! That was a delightfully wierd and interesting movie. Tbh I didn't watch most of Matt's list so maybe it has steeper competition than I think, but I'm convinced Jordan Peele is the best director in the game right now.
After spending so much time defending Matt from fools and radicals in the Twitter-verse, I feel betrayed by this shockingly Bad Take on Thor: Love & Thunder! That movie was BAD. I like Guns N Roses LESS today because of how bad that movie was. (Christian Bale did a fine job though.)
It’s a surprisingly uncommon take but honestly I think that post-Endgame Marvel Studios has a had a total meltdown on the Quality Control front. Shang Chi was mid-tier acceptable and it’s by far the best of the post-snap movies. Love and Thunder was a lazy mess, Wakanda Forever was a flop-sweat mess, Multiverse of Madness was shockingly incompetent, and Eternals may have actually killed Chloe Zhao’s career. You can grade a lot of these movies on a curve due to COVID and other ambient circumstances but at this point my default stance is to just wait for them to show up on Disney+ — the argument for spending $25-50/head to risk getting Covid in a theater just doesn’t wash.
(I’m making a bit of an exemption for the Spider-Man movies since they’re a co-production with Sony but even there the general trend has not been great and it seems like Tom Holland and Zendaya are done with the project.)
I had genuinely forgotten about Black Widow, which I think encapsulates the problem. I appreciated that they tried to make things right with Scarlett Johansson after finally booting Perlmutter, but the quality level of the movie itself was as highly variable as Ray Winstone's attempt at a Russian accent.
"Another nice touch, I thought, was the decision to use untranslated German when Lydia is speaking during rehearsal."
I am an American who lives in Berlin. During high school I spent a year at a Gymnasium in Hamburg, and then I spent another year at Freie Universität. I *adore* Cate Blanchett and think she's brilliant. HOWEVER, I heard her speaking German on the Late Show, and I thought her German was abysmal. She did what a lot of novices do, which is to speed up somewhat in order to prove their fluency, in the process doing themselves no favors: https://youtu.be/qVQnDN2zAkw?t=339
If someone approached me and starting speaking like that, I'd say, "Please slow down, ma'am. I am having trouble following you with that thick British accent."
I understand that it's a mean thing to say, but them's the facts. Extraordinarily talented actor, though.
I absolutely adore this comments section being filled both with people whining about Matt's praise for not translating some German in Tar AND ALSO people taking shots at his side comment about excluding women directors in lists of best films. Stay golden Slow Boring
Appreciate you writing this. Testament to your type of reviewing and basic sensibilities, i’d now happily see any/all of these movies and I didn’t see a single movie in for the last 5 years. I have two small kids and date nights are generally dinner out with a sitter and then come home and watch a movie once kids are asleep. This list gives me a bunch of exciting releases to look forward to this upcoming year.
really great piece, probably made easier to enjoy because i didn’t disagree with anything you wrote!
There are many things wrong with James Cameron the director. But his technical gifts are undeniable.
CGI is abused so much in cinema these days. I recall watching something on YouTube that noted the CGI in Terminator 2 still looks great (for the most part) and I agree. The scene where the T1000 shatters into pieces after being frozen is fantastic. You can bet there was a huge team working on that to make it look good. Terminator 2 these days would look like shit, with ridiculous explosions and buildings disintegrating everywhere.
Part of the reason that the CGI in T2 works so well is that there’s very little of it! I’m going from memory here so I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure the effect of the T-1000 freezing and shattering was 100% practical.
I'm oddly heartened by how many commenters found the unsubtitled Spanish of West Side Story off-putting. I get that it's true to the Spanglish spoken by real Puerto Rican immigrants, but honestly it makes the movie pretty unintelligible if you yourself don't speak the language. And it's clear that the film is actively trolling the audience on this front: everyone in the movie (the Jets, the cops, Anita) are constantly demanding that the Sharks speak English, and they comply briefly, but two lines later it's back to Spanish.
You can call it a "bold and pointed choice" as A.A. Dowd does in his review, but it's like Nolan and his increasingly incomprehensible dialogue being drowned out by the score: at the end of the day filmmakers need to be asking themselves how important it is that their audience is able to understand what is being said.
I don't want to keep harping on this point, but I do have one more thing to say: if you're like me and you grew up here you probably learned Spanish as a second language in school, y pues, si hablas un poquito, puedes entenderla, más o menos. But this film is about **immigrants**, and if you're like my friend who I watched this with, who came to America from China and doesn't speak a lick of Spanish, you kinda get the feeling that the film wasn't made for him and doesn't care whether he liked it one way or the other, and that does feel a little ironic to me.
Spot on ! it oddly also basically identifies the audience with the Anglo side, which to my mind kind of misses the point...
I'd note parenthetically that barely a single one of the actors playing those "Puerto Rican immigrants" is either Puerto Rican or an immigrant, but it's ok because they are all "Latinx" as the producers proudly bragged again and again and again (including the star role who is half Colombian half Polish-and it seems at least third generation American- which we are supposed to take as a a huge advance and historical righting of wrongs by the stark contrast to the previous actress in this role who was the daughter of Russian immigrants...)
Maybe some day Matt could write about the incredibly superficial way (like to the point that it should really be insulting) Hollywood manages to treat subjects with any sort of Latin American connection even while loudly congratulating itself for its enlightened attitude. (The hype about "Maya and the Three" was the one that really broke me on this subject -- Netflix fell over itself bragging about all the Latino star power for the show, but the story is explicitly set in *pre-Columbian* America and, AFAICT, none of the leads self-identifies as being Native American to any meaningful degree! And the dialogue communicates to us that we're watching a show set in ancient Mesoamerica by being peppered with Spanish. It would be like making a show that's specifically supposed to be about Celtic Britain, casting mostly Italians in it, and having the characters speak partially in Latin!)
As another example among many, look at the flack James Franco got for being cast as Fidel Castro (especially from John Leguizamo), despite Franco being a reasonable match for Castro's ethnic background (not that it should matter much). To be fair though, Leguizamo just says these things in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.
This is fun! I liked it a lot. More people should talk about movies because movies are good.
Slight correction, Jim Cameron uses motion capture, not stop motion. Stop motion is what Ray Harryhausen, Henry Selick, and sometimes Wes Anderson do. Motion capture is dots and computers, stop motion is puppets and still cameras.
Can’t wait for 2023’s movies!
Great list, generally, and even more evidence that I really ought to get around to Tár.
That having been said, I thought Love and Thunder was awful. Abysmal. It was kind of a kick in the face to Ragnarok, which balanced (a ton of) comedy very well with the storyline, whereas I thought L&T just looked like Waititi completely let off his leash, unedited, with a result that seemed like it couldn’t decide whether it was trying to capture the magic of Ragnarok or trash it for humorous effect. The storyline and effects were half-baked at best (and the CGI goat scream was cringy the first time, let alone the 5th).
Compare all of this to Waititi’s earlier work, and I think it’s pretty clear how much he benefits from working within the constraints of a smaller budget and some good editing. Hunt for the Wilderpeople and What We Do in the Shadows are amazing little films with a ton of heart that balance humor with genuine commitment to the storyline, even when it gets absurd. Ragnarok had glimpses of that same throughline. Love and Thunder never did.
Strongly seconded. There were a bunch of interesting ideas kicking around in there but they just did not cohere at all into a watchable movie.
Agree! The 2(?) minute montage with the kids near the end is amazing, but everything else was mostly bad. If it wasn't a MCU movie, it would be an after thought that nobody saw...which is the worst thing about the MCU. It rewards blah movies with enough cash to keep going.
Yes. I don't think it changes the aesthetic nature of the prose - a beautiful sentence is a beautiful sentence - but it changes the aesthetic gestalt of the work. For example, the identity of the author can be the difference between an honest and open memoir and a well-crafted lie. Both can be admired, but for different reasons.
I like these picks! Do you have a list of general movie recommendations anywhere? Or similar yearly movie lists from past years?
https://letterboxd.com/myglesias/films/
For me, the recent trend in films, especially "serious" films like Tar," is to focus a lot of attention on the filmmaking and much less on the story. (Actually, I think the same is true of a lot of contemporary newspaper and magazine feature writing.) Too bad -- I think a film should tell a story so that the audience can be engaged and, if possible, lose yourself in it. Instead, we get many films (like Tar, also Glass Onion, many others) that constantly focus the audience's attention on this or that cinematic effect, which as often as not increases confusion rather than clarity. So my nomination for best film of the year is The Duke -- a really terrific satirical comedy, perhaps the only movie in recent decades that follows the great tradition of Ealing comedies from the 1950s England. Beautifully done, beautifully cast, with a point of view about British society. Not highly promoted, but who cares?
I can’t stand idly by with you criticizing Glass Onion. That movie was fecking entertaining and definitely had a lose-yourself quality.
I watch too little contemporary stuff to generalize too much. But my experience has been similar. Artists seem both more self-absorbed in showing off their craft, and also more in thrall to their hardcore fanbase, at the cost of storytelling that appeals to, well, me. I wonder if that is what Prestige art is.
Interesting there’s no mention of what a great year this was for horror movies. I thought Smile was really good. Barbarian didn’t totally stick the landing but parts were really well done.
I am with Matt about horror movies, but also because I get nightmares. I finally watched Get Out and Midsommar, during daytime obvious. Get Out was fun and interesting, but I didn't think it was as much a horror as a psychological thriller. Midsommar was bad and just creepy and not at all scary, probably because I didn't care about any of the characters (neither did they).
This is me being out of touch with society but I just don't like horror movies.
"...I just don't like horror movies."
Yup, cosigned.
There are some thriller/suspense entries with horror elements that I can appreciate, e.g. Peele's "Get Out." But your typical slasher/chain saw/zombie flick just seems gross, and I don't understand wanting to subject oneself to it.
I’m with you there. I liked them as a teenager, but after being in combat zones, gratuitous violence lost all appeal for me.
Of all the genres not to like that’s the one that makes the most sense.
Here’s why Love & Thunder didn’t work for me like Ragnarok did. In Ragnarok there’s a funny planet (where Jeff Goldblum is king) and a serious planet (Asgard). So the funny stuff in no way feels like it’s undermining the serious stuff, and when Thor comes back to Asgard he’s ready to complete the hero’s journey. In L&T, on the other hand, every scene is at risk of being undercut by some Waititi irreverence. For instance, we need to think Gorr is a serious bad dude, so Sif gets her arm cut off by him…but there Thor is, joking about her severed arm. If the movie was just a send-up that would be fine, but the Jane stuff and the kid stuff is supposed to be straight. It’s just a mess, unfortunately.
GOTG 1 was the best mixture of the serious&fun. Ragnorak did it well too. Goldblum was great and the Thor & Hulk conversations were funny. Hulk like fire; Thor like water. The ending was a bit corny. L&T basically just made Thor a joke. As Hulk said “Thor sad”. Waititi made him sad in a pathetic kind of way.
I think it’s not coincidental to this that Ragnarok’s script and story was primarily written by two of Marvel’s steadier in-house hands and then handed to Waititi to make his own thing out of, but L&T was his from story to script to final cut.
Sometimes a bit of aesthetic restraint and editorial feedback is helpful. Waititi is a talented guy but he seems to do best in situations where he has to bounce off a few other people rather than completely getting his own way.
This is so right. It’s useful to juxtapose Thor: Ragnarok, Thor: Love and Thunder and Jojo Rabbit to understand how Waititi blew it with T:L&T. It’s the whipsawing between over-the-top burlesque and (literally) deadly serious. The oscillations are just too big and too frequent. In T:R and JR the down beats resonate (heh) because they’re jarring to the light and fun tone. You have a gnawing sense that the narrative is unsafe. Something really bad could happen between the smiles. It has power. As Matt points out correctly, T:L&T isn’t trying to get you to smile for the most part, it wants you to eye roll at the absurdity. But the down beats aren’t chords in T:L&T, it’s the pianist slamming his fists on the keyboard. Then right back to the ridiculous. And back and forth until you can’t stay emotionally engaged. It doesn’t work, which is pretty much what Waititi admits in hindsight. Oh, well.
Where did he admit that? Not doubting--genuinely curious!
I can't find it now, so it's possible I misread it. I recall thinking at the time that it was impressive for such a high profile director to acknowledge a misfire.
If you do happen to find it, please come back and post — I’d be very curious to read it!
I'm a ~ MCU fan. My wife more so. Love & Thunder was one of the worst movies we've seen. It was a struggle to finish. The best part was the Matt Damon cameo and that's not saying much.
If you thought L&T was a struggle (and I agree: some good bits but they all mostly served to remind me how much better Ragnarok was) I can’t strongly enough urge you to stay far away from Multiverse of Madness, which I sadly suspect is going to end up regarded at the moment when Sam Raimi completely ran out of talent.
I don't think he ran out of talent per se, his style just hasn't evolved at all in 40 years. There were so many clear "Sam Raimi" moments it almost felt like a parody.
AFAICT, Rami fanboys rationalize any reported issues with "Multiverse" by blaming the PG-13 rating.
Is the idea there that he could have even more deeply done a retread of his earlier, better movies if he’d been allowed to have more gore?
They tend not to get that far into specifics.
That was basically my thought as well. I think maybe Waititi intended to juxtapose the very comedic surface level stuff with the actual plot developments being very serious (Thor's lost his brother, his dad, his whole planet, failed to stop Thanos, is quite depressed at the start of Endgame, and now loses Jane) but to me it just didn't work.
Interesting, I didn't even see that, but you're probably right about what he was going for. I get that the MCU is for kids, but they rarely seem to really deal with the sheer amount of trauma most of their characters would be dealing with. (Wandavision being the exception that proves the rule).
I couldn't help but think of that when Drax and Mantis were flying over Hollywood in the GoTG Holiday Special (which was excellent!). The joke was that Drax forgot to turn on the invisibility cloak, but I can hardly imagine how horrified people who had just been through "the blip" would be at the sight of more aliens coming!
I can't imagine a more likely way for the world to become fascist (i.e. movie version of Starship Troopers) than the blip. Humanity discovers its not alone and there are extremely advanced alien civilizations out there that can destroy us! We must use all powers of the state to advance so that it can never happen again!
Alas, my runaway favorite of 2022 didn't make the cut - Nope! That was a delightfully wierd and interesting movie. Tbh I didn't watch most of Matt's list so maybe it has steeper competition than I think, but I'm convinced Jordan Peele is the best director in the game right now.
My hot take is that NOPE is Jordan Peele's best movie (will not elaborate on this).
After spending so much time defending Matt from fools and radicals in the Twitter-verse, I feel betrayed by this shockingly Bad Take on Thor: Love & Thunder! That movie was BAD. I like Guns N Roses LESS today because of how bad that movie was. (Christian Bale did a fine job though.)
It’s a surprisingly uncommon take but honestly I think that post-Endgame Marvel Studios has a had a total meltdown on the Quality Control front. Shang Chi was mid-tier acceptable and it’s by far the best of the post-snap movies. Love and Thunder was a lazy mess, Wakanda Forever was a flop-sweat mess, Multiverse of Madness was shockingly incompetent, and Eternals may have actually killed Chloe Zhao’s career. You can grade a lot of these movies on a curve due to COVID and other ambient circumstances but at this point my default stance is to just wait for them to show up on Disney+ — the argument for spending $25-50/head to risk getting Covid in a theater just doesn’t wash.
(I’m making a bit of an exemption for the Spider-Man movies since they’re a co-production with Sony but even there the general trend has not been great and it seems like Tom Holland and Zendaya are done with the project.)
"Shang Chi['s] . . . by far the best of the post-snap movies."
Parsing this carefully, I guess I can rationalize it because "Black Widow," while part of Phase 4, is technically a pre-snap movie.
I had genuinely forgotten about Black Widow, which I think encapsulates the problem. I appreciated that they tried to make things right with Scarlett Johansson after finally booting Perlmutter, but the quality level of the movie itself was as highly variable as Ray Winstone's attempt at a Russian accent.
Christian Bale was the best thing in that movie and it's shame his one big turn in the MCU had to be such an otherwise mediocre film.
"Another nice touch, I thought, was the decision to use untranslated German when Lydia is speaking during rehearsal."
I am an American who lives in Berlin. During high school I spent a year at a Gymnasium in Hamburg, and then I spent another year at Freie Universität. I *adore* Cate Blanchett and think she's brilliant. HOWEVER, I heard her speaking German on the Late Show, and I thought her German was abysmal. She did what a lot of novices do, which is to speed up somewhat in order to prove their fluency, in the process doing themselves no favors: https://youtu.be/qVQnDN2zAkw?t=339
If someone approached me and starting speaking like that, I'd say, "Please slow down, ma'am. I am having trouble following you with that thick British accent."
I understand that it's a mean thing to say, but them's the facts. Extraordinarily talented actor, though.
I absolutely adore this comments section being filled both with people whining about Matt's praise for not translating some German in Tar AND ALSO people taking shots at his side comment about excluding women directors in lists of best films. Stay golden Slow Boring