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REVIEW – Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse in BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE.

There’s so many ways this could have gone spectacularly wrong. Decades-later sequels are a mixed bag, and before this I couldn’t remember the last Tim Burton movie I loved. So I’m happy to report this was an absolute blast. Thirty-some years following the events of the original ’88 film, former goth teen Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is the host of a cheesy ghost-hunting talk show and the mother of her own surly teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega from WEDNESDAY, also a Burton project). When Lydia’s father passes away (in spectacularly silly and horrible fashion, depicted in delightful stop-motion animation), she, Astrid, her artist stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and her awful TV producer boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux) head up to Winter River and the Deetzs’ house from the first film for the funeral. The funeral, thanks to Rory’s machinations, soon gives way to a proposed wedding, and in trying to avoid it, a once-skeptical Astrid finds herself ensnared in a trap that may leave her in the afterlife for all eternity without even being dead. With no other good options, Lydia summons skeezy bio-exorcist Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) to try and rescue her. He’ll gladly help out in exchange for the same thing he wanted last time — Lydia’s hand in marriage.

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REVIEW – Alien Romulus

Cailee Spaeny in ALIEN ROMULUS.

Fede Alvarez’s remix of the Alien films so far and direct sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 original is a perfectly serviceable thriller, just as tense, creepy, and damp as you’d want an ALIEN film to be — but it probably goes maybe two or three direct references/callbacks/swipes too far, especially given that we had a theatrical rerelease of that original less an four months ago.

The story: ever-present evil mega corporation Weyland-Yutani extends the work contract of poor working class brunette Rain (Cailee Spaeny), who just wants to get off the godawful always-dark colony planet she lives on with her “brother” Andy (David Jonsson), a glitchy android her father saved from the scrap pile. This sudden and arbitrary contract extension leaves her quite vulnerable to a proposition made by her ex Tyler (Archie Renaux): join him and his family as they investigate and steal a derelict Weyland-Yutani ship in orbit which can get them to more hospitable climes and a better life. The ship, however, turns out to be a derelict space station where experiments were taking place on samples of a very familiar hostile life form.

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REVIEW – Deadpool & Wolverine

Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE.

Somehow even more foul-mouthed and in-jokey than I’d expected, though by-and-large I don’t think it hurts the movie or its narrative? Not that I could actually tell, of course, steeped as I am in this stuff — when my mom asked why so-and-so was in this movie (filling in that blank would probably constitute a spoiler), I immediately had the answer, one that your average filmgoer, EHH, probably wouldn’t have. Though sometimes the profanity does get a LITTLE hat-on-a-hat.

Anyway, yes, let’s try the spoiler-lite version of the plot: Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) has given up on the hero/merc gig, no longer romping around in the red suit and is instead wearing a toupee and selling cars with his pal from the 2nd movie, Dennis (Rob Delaney). But soon fortune smiles on ol’ Wade, sort of, when he is whisked away to the TVA — again, I *think* the movie imparts enough knowledge of how this works without watching the Disney+ LOKI show, but how the hell would I know for sure? — by agents under the command of Paradox (the extremely smarmy Matthew Macfadyen) and a choice is offered. With the life he’s been reminded he still loves, even if it hasn’t gone the way he wanted, threatened, Deadpool hops across time streams and grabs the first multiversal Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, in his TENTH live action appearance as the Canadian berserker) he can honestly get his hands on in order to try and prevent, let’s say, a great undoing.

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REVIEW – Poor Things

Willem Dafoe (with heavy prosthesis) and Emma Stone in POOR THINGS.

Yorgos Lanthimos (THE FAVOURITE)’s latest is an off-kilter FRANKENSTEIN riff (based on a 1992 novel) set in a very Terry Gilliam-esque steampunk Victorian age. Bella Baxter (Emma Stone, brilliantly taking us on quite a journey) is a woman reanimated as part of a twisted experiment by dangerously curious scar-faced surgeon Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe playing even-tempered and analytical). When we, alongside Godwin’s eager student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), first meet Bella she has the mind of a toddling child, but her knowledge and curiosity grow quickly; her desires both intellectual and, uhh, *otherwise* (there’s quite a bit of R-rated sex in this flick) drive her to flee from Godwin & Max into the arms of Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, doing QUITE the plummy accent), a ridiculous debauched cad who she has an awfully good time seeing the world with until she outgrows him and he starts aggressively trying to keep her in the “box” he thinks she should fit into. Her inexperience leads her to both challenge society’s goofy norms and trip up in ways that a more cynical mind would avoid — but she and the ethos of the tale clearly don’t have a lot of use for cynicism. A charmingly rambling, beautifully crafted experience of a film with standout performances that well deserve the award nominations received. That said, I generally have a soft spot for the genre of “woman escapes the control/narrow expectations of the men who made her,” so your mileage may vary.

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REVIEW – Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Jason Momoa and Yahya Abdul-Mateen battling it out in AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM.

So ends Warners’ first foray into a connected theatrical superhero universe, with Jason Momoa‘s brawny sea bro, already embracing his new roles as a husband (to Amber Heard‘s Mera, who’s in more of the movie than you’d think based on the marketing, but is mostly here for a gag or two, a big emotional reaction or two, and to save Arthur’s butt a couple more times) and father (“villains threaten Aquaman’s baby” is, as I recall, one of THE classic pre-Crisis Aquaman stories), having to also learn how to actually be a leader. Seeing the NEXT step in his journey? Highly unlikely. The bulk of the plot concerns Yahya Abdul-Mateen‘s Black Manta’s quest to get the vengeance he swore at the end of the first movie; in seeking out Atlantean artifacts to facilitate this end, he acquires a spooky, obviously evil trident that is a remnant of the titular kingdom. I was surprised to see Randall Park turn up early on as a scientist helping Manta in this hunt; Park’s in, like, pretty much the whole movie, and his nervous charm helps make the tedious first twenty-to-thirty minutes bearable. It feels like there used to be a coherent first act to this thing that, in order to beat it down to about two hours, got chopped into ribbons, so all that remains are vignettes intercut with Manta’s plot. That said, once Manta and his crew get the wherewithal to attack Atlantis, the movie starts moving and turns into a reasonably entertaining science-fantasy adventure. Does Aquaman ride a giant seahorse? Yes. Does he talk to fish at a key moment to take out a threat? Absolutely. Are they trying a bit too hard to do a THOR: THE DARK WORLD thing here with Patrick Wilson‘s Orm freed and forced to team up with Arthur to fight a mutual foe, except that Patrick Wilson has absolutely none of Tom Hiddleston’s considerable charm? Oh god, yes — in fact, the movie ends on a note that is absolutely the last scene of two additional Marvel flicks smashed together. Bit cringe-inducing, that. But between that rough opening stretch and that deja vu-inducing final scene, there’s some fun stuff in here. I’ve seen superhero movie train wrecks; this isn’t one of them. However, absolutely inessential viewing. If you got a gift card this holiday season and have a couple hours to kill, Atlantis still looks real pretty up on the big screen, but other than that, it probably won’t hurt to wait for it to turn up on Max.