Walking into ‘The Nun II’ bored, leaving more bored

Posted on November 13, 2023 by reelentropy
This is a genuinely cool haunting moment. I would like more of this in a movie that is actually about these types of things instead of just them just popping up every 20 minutes or so. Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

2/10 I walk into The Nun II bored with myself and wanting deliberately to take this movie more seriously than it deserves. The idea behind this nun character is that the image is the scary thing, that merely a nun who looks scary is a perverse enough and a strange enough thing to pose questions to a person’s faith. Clearly, this is not a series for people who went to Catholic school. But! Film is a visual medium, the image is the important thing, so in theory, this could be a solid basis for a movie.

That’s as far as this effort is going to go, because “in theory” is the only way The Nun II could be considered a decent movie.

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A sharp upgrade for ‘Equalizer’ series in third outing

Posted on November 13, 2023 by reelentropy
Shiny. This is the type of lighting that gives Equalizer 3 its unique bite. Images courtesy Sony Pictures Releasing.

8/10 In The Equalizer 3, Sony pays for Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua’s three-month Italian vacation.

OK, that’s my joke – this movie is actually pretty good.

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‘Get the film fucking done’ – Q&A with ‘Fuzzy Head’ filmmaker Wendy McColm

Posted on October 22, 2023 by reelentropy

I met filmmaker Wendy McColm volunteering at the Oak Cliff Film Festival in 2018 where they screened her debut, Birds Without Feathers. Wisely hanging around on her social media, I got the opportunity a few years later to consult on various edits of her next film, Fuzzy Head, which, after a stop-and-start production over the course of the pandemic, brought her back to Dallas to screen at the 2023 Oak Cliff Film Festival and is finally heading to streaming services this Tuesday, Oct. 24.

Fuzzy Head, a highly Lynchian voyage into the psyche, is one of the riskiest films I’ve ever seen. McColm, who writes, directs, edits, produces, color-corrects and designs sound, also stars as Marla, a young woman who flees into the desert after she may or may not have killed her abusive mother. The self-suspecting murder mystery plays out over a broken timeline and fantasy sequences as Marla is propelled through her guilt and the lingering self-blame from her childhood.

I’m enraptured every time I see it, and the day of its Oak Cliff premier, I find myself going over prior versions in the morning before I leave for the theater, but there are still new details to enjoy when I get to see the final cut on the big screen. McColm hovers by the stairs going in and out of the theater, seemingly wanting to both see and not see a film that is personal, often too personal, now playing for a packed house of more than 100 strangers. Late in the evening, after the headlining restoration of 1925’s The Lost World lets out, McColm and I steal away to the back of the empty Texas Theatre, where I talk with her about the emotion and memory driving the film.

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Analyzing the long, bizarre advertisement of ‘Gran Turismo’ as if it’s a real film

Posted on October 19, 2023 by reelentropy
Promotional material with Mardenborough holding a racing helmet in one hand and a Playstation controller in the other. Images courtesy Sony Pictures Releasing.

2/10 Gran Turismo is a screaming torrent of baffling filmmaking decisions that seem half-thought out at best, but more like they weren’t actual filmmaking decisions. It’s bizarre plot points that screech by, not cars – the cameramen seem almost to not know where the cars are in many racing shots – so don’t expect even that level of basic entertainment value from it. Most of its intrigue is for the odd version of history it presents, like Sony shouting out a non-sequitor about its own standing into the mid-August void.

The film is based on the true story of Welsh race car driver Jann Mardenborough – so based on this true story that, in some markets, it’s been released with a full title Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story. In practice, this has lead to a mixture of media with both titles, making it seem like the movie doesn’t care about its own title.

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‘Blue Beetle,’ the DCEU’s death rattle

Posted on October 19, 2023 by reelentropy
They really needed this cleaver to be cooler than it is, didn’t they. Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Warner Bros. began development on Blue Beetle in November 2018 after Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians had spent eight collective weeks at the top of the box office, each accompanied by weeks on end of stories about how the market of non-white American filmgoers remains largely untapped. By my counting, that made it the 17th movie “in development” at the time for the DCEU, which was arguably already dead by this point, and it’s a small miracle that it’s the eighth of that group that made it to theaters. The film adapted for several company-wide changes in direction, most notably being greenlit as a direct-to-streaming project and then being reassigned for theatrical release, the same change that famously killed Batgirl.

It’s the saddest thing that underneath all the ambition that does shine through, the film still falters under the weight of the DCEU’s history. It wants to be something new and exciting, but it can’t, because it’s buried under Warner Bros.’ battered, terrified-to-fail understanding of a 2023 superhero movie, a skittish attempt to be completely unobjectionable.

Well, it’s not like it was some kind of masterpiece anyway.

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