Friday 3 September 2021

Summer Movie Mini-Review Roundup, Part Two (including Shang-Chi & The Legend Of The Ten Rings)

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non-Functional.

Although cinemas have only just started to reopen as mass vaccination takes the edge off the COVID pandemic, there has been no shortage of movies of all shapes and sizes to watch over the past months. From comic book blockbusters like The Suicide Squad or Black Widow, to more niche genre pieces like Censor or Pig, there has been a satisfying variety of offerings compared to more traditional cinematic summers, which tend to be dominated by major studio releases alone.

Rather than review each individually, these round-ups comprise short reviews of several films released to UK viewers over the past few months. The reviews in Part Two are The Suicide Squad, The Green Knight, Zola, Free Guy, Gunpowder Milkshake, Pig and Shang-Chi & The Legend Of The Ten Rings. Part One, published last Monday, comprised Black Widow, Another Round, Reminiscence, Censor, Jungle Cruise and Old.
 
THE SUICIDE SQUAD: David Ayers' Suicide Squad is among the most lamented of DC's ill-fated attempts to construct a cinematic universe to rival that of Marvel. Ayers' movie was heavily re-edited by the studio and turned into a feature-length trailer of sorts, with obnoxiously on-the-nose needle drops and incoherent editing, mangling what was never likely to have been a strong story into an unintelligible trainwreck. James Gunn's take on the material is, thankfully, stronger than that first attempt, but still feels like a pasted-together collection of scenes in lieu of an actual story. Characters seem chosen more for their jokey premises than any sort of purpose, and attempts to bring some of Gunn's Guardians Of The Galaxy verve to material nowhere near substantial enough to provide the foundations needed for the irreverent and edgy-within-studio-guidelines tone to be satisfying. The quality of each individual scene is over the place, roughly levelling out between stuff that works and stuff that doesn't. Margot Robbie's Harley remains less entertaining than any of her movies think she is, while the waste of Peter Capaldi is a crime. It's better than its predecessor, but shares more of its failings than it would like to admit. Polka Dot Man is pretty great, though. [ 5 ]
 
THE GREEN KNIGHT: Adaptations of Arthurian legend have rarely been either creatively or financially successful, reaching a nadir with Guy Ritchie's abrasively obnoxious King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword in 2017. There are many reasons why these adaptations continue to fail, some distinct to the individual projects, others more universal. The story of King Arthur, for one, is tiresomely overfamiliar, while attempts at 'modernisation' by using contemporary language and attitudes misses the point entirely. Nobody connects with these tales on the basis of aesthetics, but the universal human stories within them. Conveying their meaning to modern audiences in a relatable way is what can make an adaptation sing; forcing in modern lingo and politics stink of insincerity and desperation. David Lowery's The Green Knight gets almost everything right. Firstly, it's a story from Arthurian Legend which isn't centred around Arthur: considering the depth of fascinating stories in the canon, it's amazing filmmakers have fallen back for so long on just the one comparatively bland one. Secondly, while Gawain And The Green Knight has resisted attempts to impose a concrete meaning on it, Lowery funnels the motifs of the story and the themes of Arthurian canon as a whole to evoke ideas as meaningful today as they ever have been. What does it mean to live an honourable life, to be a good man? Like the original story, he embraces the characters' flaws while taking the ending in a very different direction. This is a movie so rich in ideas and imagery, steeped in history and mythology, that it defies the 'short review' format. The performances are uniformly excellent (even if Alicia Vikander's accent is a bit wobbly), the score hauntingly ethereal, and while the occasional use of brash colour filters remains a tiresome trend, it is at least true to the original material where colour carries great meaning. It is as outstanding a film in its own right as it is a fascinating and distinctive adaptation of a tantalisingly untapped well of mythological storytelling. [ 8 ]
 
ZOLA: Going from a movie which does justice to the scope and humanity of a mythology which has endured for centuries to one based on a Twitter thread sounds like it should be the opening of a paragraph condemning the vapidity of social media culture, but in a sense both The Green Knight and Zola are coming from a similar place: the ability of compelling storytelling to allow readers to relate to unfamiliar people, voices and cultures through shared feelings and experiences. The Twitter thread in question concerned a pole dancer to travel for a night at a supposedly lucrative club in Florida, only to find herself trapped in a very dangerous situation. Zola's scope is considerably more limited than The Green Knight and while Janicza Bravo directs with flair, she never quite captures the voice which made Aziah King's original thread so gripping. Nor does the film contend with the complexity that King herself was almost certainly exaggerating or lying: a late-game point-of-view switch is more for comedic purposes than exploring the potential of an unreliable narrator. The story itself makes for an effective little thriller, but the lack of an impactful ending is felt more keenly on film and for all the visual flash and glances towards ideas about race and social and cultural underclasses, it winds up feeling a bit thin. Using the tweet thread as a starting point rather than keeping slavishly faithful might have been a wiser decision, but Zola is a well-made and engaging film within the boundaries it sets itself. [ 6 ]
 
 
FREE GUY: If The Rock has somehow kept the same persona fresh for his entire acting career, Ryan Reynolds is finding it a lot harder to keep his Deadpool bit interesting despite that movie only coming out in 2016. Although spun in a more innocent, naive direction this time around, with Reynolds playing a non-player character in a violent multiplayer game who discovers the nature of his existence, the cadence of his delivery and exaggerated goofiness are unmistakeably inflected through his Deadpool performances. That was getting tiresome by Deadpool 2 and is only moreso here, feeling forced where The Rock's persona feels natural. Jodie Comer is the likeable standout, and not just because she's stuck between a coasting Reynolds and an utterly insufferable Taika Waititi, playing the head of a major development studio as a whiny manchild. There are moments when the movie hits a certain stride, excavating a few mild chuckles and competent sight gags, while the fanservice can be amusing despite Reynolds' incessant nodding to the audience and the sickly aftertaste of corporate synergy. Its core gaming audience will likely be distracted by how little the movie understands the basics of how games and game development work, while everyone else will just see familiar spins on old material, from the lead actor and everywhere else. If nothing else, it is at least an improvement on Ready Player One. [ 5 ]
 
GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE: Few movies exemplify the banality of movies as 'content' rather than 'art' like Gunpowder Milkshake, which feels manufactured for no reason other than to add a title to a release schedule. The story, derivative and without purpose or ambition, stitches together Luc Besson tropes of the female assassin betrayed by her superiors and the child in tow to a dangerous adult. Where Besson, for his flaws, gives his movies a European flavour all his own, Gunpowder Milkshake leans into the already exhausted stylistic trend of a neon-lit 80s aesthetic. This look has no relation to the story and like the movie, exists only as imitation. The stacked cast put in as much effort as the material demands, which is little, with the exception of Karen Gillen, who gives it her all but is derailed by a distractingly shaky American accent. While the movie comes up with a few moments of originality, such as the protagonist's arms being disabled at a key moment, it otherwise never rises above being a sub-par rehash of (slightly) better movies, nor does it want to. That it tries to cover its tracks with an 'ironic', winking tone, implying its lousiness is intentional B-movie homage rather than laziness and contempt for its viewers, does not help. [ 4 ]

PIG: Pig's trailers promised another entry into the tiresomely self-aware canon of Nicolas Cage schlock, riffing on John Wick as a farmer goes looking for the people who attacked him and stole his beloved truffle pig, yet the movie itself is a meditative treatise on loss, thwarted dreams and grief. Where Cage has consciously turned himself into a parody in recent years, Pig marks an overdue reminder of what an outstanding and nuanced actor he can be when choosing material which genuinely challenges him. Physically, he does very little, yet conveys much with small looks and minor vocal inflections. The film is at its weakest when trying to reconcile its premise with the more thoughtful experience it wants to be, at once showing the audience it knows how silly its story sounds while also trying to deliver something unexpected. It never goes overboard by any stretch (though an underground fighting ring pushing the limits) and its emphasis on Cage using understanding and kindness to get what he wants from people rather than violence keeps the character work enthralling, even if David Knell painfully overplays one big moment of grief around the midpoint. The movie really comes together for its final act, though, with a climax which is quiet, meaningful and lands a softly optimistic note beneath the melancholy. [ 7 ]

SHANG-CHI & THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS: Marvel films have tended to improve the further they get from everyday American reality, be that space in Guardians Of The Galaxy or Wakanda in Black Panther. Shang-Chi is rife with the studio's usual shortcomings - characters who speak in platitudes, intrusive quips and contrived comic interludes, a plot built around set-pieces rather than telling a story, a final battle substituting dramatic stakes and physical action for CGI visual noise - but its indebtedness to Asian cinema of all strokes (wuxia, Hong Kong gangster movies, kung-fu, etc) at least gives it a specific flavour, even if it has few original ideas to call its own. The martial arts give the fight scenes more heft and zip than usual, albeit diminished by greenscreen and excessive editing. Simu Liu is fine in that Chris Evans-y way of having enough charisma to be likeable without suggesting any sort of personality, albeit with Shang lacking even the ethos which gave Steve Rogers a whisper of definition, but it's Tony Leung who carries the best stretches of the film with a performance of real gravitas in a familiar role (powerful man corrupted by grief). Awkwafina's merits can only be judged by one's tolerance for Awkwafina, specifically how often you can endure the forceful use of the word 'bro'. The score folds into the background, as it does on most Marvel movies, and the excessive number of cameos from other movies (not to mention the prolonged apologising for Iron Man 3, even if the framing is interesting) feel like insecurity on the studio's part about fans accepting the film's place in the MCU. For all that it is utterly unsurprising and a mélange of Asian cinematic clichés, it is a marginal improvement on Marvel's usual fare: at least those clichés are coming from somewhere other than in-house. [ 6 ]

 

OTHER ARTICLES YOU MAY ENJOY