‘Godland’

Posted on May 18, 2023 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Janus Films.

10/10 Godland, the Danish/Icelandic masterpiece that rounded major 2022 festivals and immediately raised writer/director Hlynur Pálmason into an international filmmaker to watch, is one of those movies that’s barley worth analyzing because it’s so obviously perfect on the surface. It’s not particularly revolutionary, there’s nothing this film is saying that hasn’t been said before, but it’s stated simply, inescapably and powerfully, a film that makes the mere act of living on this planet seem like a bittersweet but futile act with ruinous emotional consequences.

Iceland, 1860s- Lutheran priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) is tasked with traveling to Iceland to build and a church and maintain a ministry. Lucas only speaks Danish and seems unable to learn Icelandic, leaving him able to converse only with the translator and none of the Icelandic-speaking laborers who make the voyage with them, and when they arrive on the island, he clashes immediately and constantly with their guide, Ragnar (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson).

The film opens with text stating that it is inspired by the box of seven wet plate photographs taken by a Danish priest which are the first recorded images of Iceland’s southern coast, but this is part of the fiction. No such ambrotypes exist.

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‘Paint’ is one of my new favorite movies

Posted on May 18, 2023 by reelentropy
Images courtesy IFC Films.

10/10 Paint is so funny I almost choked on my popcorn and died several times while watching it, but there’s nothing funny about how well-made it is. This is a beautiful, almost haunting film about personal stagnation, longing and missed opportunity.

I’m completely serious, this is a new “desert island” movie for me.

Burlington, Vermont- Carl Nargle (Owen Wilson), a painter modeled on Bob Ross, has hosted PBS Burlington’s highest-rated afternoon show “Paint with Carl Nargle” for nearly 30 years. Nargle is a man stuck in time in every conceivable way and more, known around town for the perm he’s worn for nearly 30 years and the custom orange van with no brakes or rearview mirrors that he’s driven for nearly 30 years. He dreams to one day have his work featured in the Burlington Museum of Art, and after hearing the director was looking for a painting of Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest peak that overlooks Burlington, he has spent every one of his broadcast hours painting the mighty Mount Mansfield.

Nargle’s life and career begin to unravel when the struggling studio hires a new painter, Ambrosia (Ciara Renée), to take up a second hour, who quickly overtakes him in popularity. The unwelcome change spurs Nargle to reexamine what’s important in his life and even his human nature itself on an emotional journey that’s been in the making for nearly 30 years.

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Deliberately overthinking ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ to play out the fantasy that someone is paying me to do this

Posted on May 18, 2023 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Universal Pictures.

8/10 The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a manmade horror beyond my comprehension – not as an assessment of quality, but as a fact about its nature. As far as man-made horrors go, it’s pretty high-quality.

Brooklyn- Mario and Luigi (Chris Pratt and Charlie Day) struggle to start a plumbing business out of a cramped New York apartment with their extended family of first-generation Italian immigrants. The brothers rush to the scene of a water main break, hoping to seize a chance to save Brooklyn, but they descend deeper and deeper into the sewer in search of the break and are eventually sucked into a warp pipe. The pair are thrust into a brewing war as the evil Koopa king Bowser (Jack Black), who rules the Dark Lands, is launching an invasion of all local territories in order to win the heart of the Mushroom Kingdom’s ruler, Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy).

The movie begs a lot of questions about its own existence, but it begs them by demonstrating a lot of really solid answers. Maybe they aren’t the right answers, but there’s a consistent, observable thought process behind this movie. 

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Steel yourself for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’

Posted on May 6, 2023 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

7/10 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is more intense than it is good. It’s very well made and there’s a lot of value that you wouldn’t be expecting as a natural extension of the series, but plenty of people are going to be disappointed in this.

Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), a superpowered artificial being created by an artificially designed race called the Sovereign, crashes into the Guardians of the Galaxy’s headquarters in Knowhere to kidnap Rocket (Bradley Cooper). The other guardians fight him off, but Rocket is critically injured, with an estimated 48 hours to live without medical assistance, which they can’t give him because of a kill switch embedded in his heart by the people who surgically altered him that will go off if anyone unauthorized opens him up for surgery. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and the rest of the guardians take off toward a desperate faceoff with the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), creator of Rocket, the Sovereign and countless other races hoping to find override codes so they can save Rocket.

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There’s ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ movies now?

Posted on May 4, 2023 by reelentropy
The movie spends a lot of its time in these fantastic spaces relaxing over a beer. It really helps bring the vibe of gameplay down into the story world. Images courtesy Paramount Pictures.

7/10 Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is fast and fun, much better than it has any right to be. The quote is “a great movie is three great scenes and no bad ones,” and there isn’t anything in this movie that sticks out too far in a bad way, so I guess that’s high praise.

The Forgotten Realms- Bard Edgin Darvis and barbarian Holga Kilgore (Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez) have lazed for two years at the Revel’s End arctic prison after their last job went sour. They bust out and head for Neverwinter, where their old crew’s rogue Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) has set himself up as the lord, only to learn not only did he intentionally betray them and align himself with an apocalyptic cult of necromancers for power, but he has their daughter. The pair brings a new crew together to knock over the upcoming High Sun Games, a gladiatorial competition that Fitzwilliam has staked much of his lordship on.

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