'The Odyssey' A Review

The Odyssey is a period action/adventure movie an adaptation of the epic poem by Homer. Odysseus(Matt Damon) helps to sack Troy via the Trojan Horse and then sets of to return home with his men but loses his way. His wife Penelope(Anne Hathaway) waits in Ithaca for his return, surrounded by mustache twirling suitors insisting he is dead.

Damon, Hathaway, Tom Holland, and Robert Pattinson are miscast, the inconsistent and emotionally thin script don't help them out, they're not bad but it's clear they're are all taking different approaches, feel like they are in different movies, the performances overall just don't really mesh, aren't cohesive. The supporting cast is full of big names, all are fun to see, but not all are successful. Samantha Morton gives the most successful performance in the most interesting scene of the movie. Lupita Nyong'o is wonderful but her appearance is brief. Himesh Patel brings some much needed emotional reality. Benny Safdie's appearance is bizarre and jarring, Charlize Theron isn't given enough to do. It's just odd, with all this talent, with all these names, the acting in aggregate is mostly forgettable and bland.

To be fair it seems clear the acting nor the story is really the focus here, it's the production and in that respect the movie is revelatory. The costuming, the Göransson score, the set design- all are incredible. Rich expansive visuals explode in every shot. The non-linear structure and the frequent cutting seem to be a necessity of shooting on IMAX rather than motivated in any way by the narrative. The ending involves some incredibly shoehorned moralizing but the commentary is such a stretch it doesn't even come across as totally cogent.

A spectacular spectacle with nothing much under the hood.

Currently in theaters.

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'Fountain Of Youth' A Review

Fountain Of Youth is an action/adventure movie in the mold of Indiana Jones and National Treasure but decidedly not family friendly given the staggering body count. Estranged siblings Luke(John Krasinski) and Charlotte(Natalie Portman) reconnect in the search for the titular FoY for vague and suspect rich guy Owen(Domhnall Gleeson). 

Krasinski, gods love him, has never and will never escape Jim from The Office. Much like Seinfeld he got rich and famous from playing a character close to himself and the reality is, beyond that, he has no real range or ability. Here he is miscast and his attempts at wise-cracking adventurer come across like a walking sexual harassment lawsuit. Portman is the better, more well-rounded actor, but she struggles as well trying to make her paper thin baffling character make any kind of believable sense. The script obviously sucks and reads like an AI was prompted "DaVinci Code with assault weapons" but most of the supporting cast is better able to, at least, have fun and be watchable- Gleeson, Laz Alonso, and Carmen Ejogo are all solid but underused.

The budget was huge so it looks pretty good with some on location shooting and a fair amount of practical stunt work and minimal CGI. The soundtrack is pretty Gen X cringe and the costumes are, across the board, pretty laughable. All-in-all an extremely odd, derivative, catastrophic waste of money and continues director Guy Richie's wildly inconsistent later career.

Perhaps containing some perverse pleasure in the schadenfreude arena but unequivocally a bad movie.

Currently streaming on Apple+.

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'Paddington In Peru' A Review

Paddington In Peru is an adventure-comedy movie, the third in the Paddington series. Paddington returns to his home in Peru, with the Browns in toe, worried about his Aunt Lucy.

Ben Whishaw as the voice of Paddington maintains his affable charm but doesn't bring anything particularly new. The same is true of the returning cast save for the, kind of jarring, casting swap of Sally Hawkins for Emily Mortimer, Hawkins evidently wanted to move on but her presence is missed here. As with the previous two Paddington films the real fun is had by the A-list guest stars in this case Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas, who both give it 100% and are having a blast. A solid cast if lacking some of the spontaneity and spark of the predecessors.

The production is solid but there's more CGI here and less of an opportunity for the fun, intricate set pieces which made Paddington and Paddington 2 great. The script is successful, the journey has a continuity of style and feeling with the 'franchise' but it all just feels like a bit of a reach, a bit forced. It's not bad by any means, it's fun and entertaining and plucks at the heart strings but with how good the series has been so far this definitely does not top in anyway what has gone before. Maybe that's an unfair yardstick to measure this by but it's impossible not to compare.

Pleasant, pleasing, but perhaps too formulaic and in the shadow of its own success.

Currently in theaters.

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'The Return' A Review

The Return is a historical drama an adaptation of the final part of Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus(Ralph Finnes) washes up on the shores of his homeland to discover it in ruins and his wife Penelope(Juliette Binoche) beset by leering, reprobate suitors and his ineffectual son Telemachus(Charlie Plummer) under threat.

Finnes and Binoche are consummate talents and make something mildly diverting out of this mostly boring, misguided, pedantic script. Plummer is borderline unwatchable and seems wildly uncomfortable, whether a result of the period setting or the clunky script, who's to say, regardless he's bad. The rest of the supporting cast don't make much of an impression and they're given no assistance by the script or direction.

The locations are beautiful and appropriate, the costuming period, but the real issue is the adaptation of the source material. In the first, the end of Odysseus's journey simply doesn't have the same impact having not experienced it, the movie, kind of from conception, is destined to come up short. In the second, the Odyssey is an epic with magic and gods and monsters and adventure and here there is a baffling attempt to make it realistic. Like, director Uberto Pasolini seems to be focused on genuinely investigating Odysseus's PTSD, which I guess fair, but the execution just clearly misses the point entirely. None of the grandness of Odysseus's experience is conveyed, there's no sense of its depth or texture, no sense of its otherworldlyness. Which may be unfair, criticizing it for what its not so taking it on its own merits as a grounded ancient Greek period piece about the cost of war it just never really comes together, never delivers fully on action or emotion.

Two of our greatest actors make something watchable out of something that otherwise wouldn't be.

Currently available to rent on most VOD platforms.

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'Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny' A Review

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny is an adventure movie, the 5th installment in the Indiana Jones series. The movie opens in a flashback to 1944 Indy(Harrison Ford) and his buddy Basil Shaw(Toby Jones) are captured by Nazi's in their attempts to recover stolen antiquities. As they escape they encounter Nazi physicist Jürgen Voller who they relieve of half of the titular Dial. Flashfoward to 1969, Indy is retiring as a professor and estranged from his wife Marion. His goddaughter Helena Shaw(Phoebe Waller-Bridge) comes calling asking about the dial, they are then pursued by the CIA and Voller and his thugs. A global pursuit ensues.

Ford is comfortable and magnetic back in the role, he gives it the commitment and dignity needed to make this more than a simple nostalgia grab. Waller-Bridge is miscast, she plays the role like a deviation of Fleabag and the self-involved naturalism doesn't really play and the script doesn't help(aside from an effective emotional scene right at the end). The supporting cast all have pretty thinly drawn characters which isn't necessarily a problem but paired with a convoluted protracted plot, in total, other than Ford there's not much to latch into here.

Visually the movie is sufficient but there's an over-reliance on obvious green screen, the de-aging during the flashback is fine but still this technology isn't particularly convincing and certainly begs the question why bother. The action sequences aren't really inspired or impressive and the attempts at injecting stakes and emotion into the classic Indiana Jones mcguffin mostly fail.

Not Crystal Skull level but overlong, confused, and not particularly engaging.

Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.

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