Baywatch (2017)

Summer Quinn: Did you just, uh, look at my boobs?
Matt Brody: I… was not my intention. I didn’t, uh, stare directly at them.
Summer Quinn: You’re looking at them right now.
Matt Brody: Now I did, because you’re talking about them.

Short: Eye candy-slanted towards the ladies, bawdy jokes, and nothing else. Nothing.

Long: I'm glad I was trapped on a plane for this. I would have stopped watching if I had really had a serious choice. Basically, I think Baywatch was destined to be rebooted. The formula is crazy simple. The expectations of the target audience  are low. Quality acting talent is not a prerequisite, and filming is cheap; No CGI. No difficult sequences. Any beach will do. Any back office or standard location will do. Cheap.  Oh and you don't need quality writers.  B+ grad is AOK.  So, in someways Baywatch was a perfect movie. It aspired to very little and met or even exceed expectations. (because they were very low.) Know thyself -An Baywatch clearly did.

Point 1: The Rock was clearly the best actor in this nonsense. Not even close. Give him a little more acting respect please.
Point 2: Zac Efron is too jacked now. It's strange and gross- this is personal opinion.

1.7 out 5 

Wonder Woman (2017)

Diana: This is Ares!

Short: Wonder Woman is leaps and bounds better than its predecessors in the DC Universe. Finally, a DC feature that understands that violence is actually the least interesting part of a story.

Long: I can't say that Wonder Woman was an excellent "Hero pic". It doesn't break the mold. But, it is a serious step forward for Zach Synder-esque sludge and for female led features. I do think that it is a double standard at least in terms of storytelling, casting, writing that a woman hero must be "attractive"; but I attribute this as certain parts, believability (especially given that the story is set in 1918), economic incentives, and social inertia. My own thoughts on progress bend towards radical/structural equality.  Chris Pine was acceptable, a little unbelievable, -but with a fun sacrifice. What didn't make Wonder Woman a home-run for me was the final battle with Ares. It lost all sense of space, time, and meaning in addition to the design of Ares missing the mark. It made me only think of Prof. Lupin as a slag wagon.

2.98 out of 5 stars.  

Sydney White (2007)

Lenny: Did they really make you sing Celine Dion?

Short:  Don't. Just don't. I watched this and this now makes me part of the problem.

Long: So Sydney White (SW) is basically a rebuke to originality and a cliche wrapped in banality and soaked in stock bromide. Yet here it is. It exists. It had producers, actors, musicians who all worked to make something that has so clearly been done before. I cannot exactly say why. The strange thing about having now watched it on Netflix is to consider that SW is just as out of date now as it was to my own college experience 10 years ago. (Go MAC!!) My really only thought was that there was some idea that if they made a Snow White illusion into a 15 year old girl's expectations of what going to college would be like and threw in Revenge of the Nerds for -ya know- its morals. Yup.

2.0 out of 5. 

*oh and I would like to actually praise Jeremy Howard for a shining performance. IMDB

The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015)

"Get on the grass. You're a fellow." -Prof. Hardy

Quick:  Simple story telling does little justice to a rather wondrous tale.  Capable acting by Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, and Toby Jones carry the narrative, but there is little in the way of memorable character development or moments for pause.

Abstract: Why oh why would a movie about such beauty to be found in math shy away from really delving into its subject; math? I would wager that the audience that wants to see a movie about a mathematician from 100 years ago is a little less concerned with the story and more with appreciating the elegant beauty of numbers, harmonics, and equilibrium. Most movies with any amount of math go this route. It may be so as to not tax the brains of the writers, or it also might be that audiences do just truly hate math that much.

3.1415/5 See it, but don't look to hard for engaging substance. 

Baahubali: The Conclusion (2017)

Sivagami: This is my order. And, my order is the law.

Quick: A savage if drawn out conclusion/prologue culminating in intergenerational revenge. Satisfying in a don't think too hard about it kind of way.

Introspection: Imagine if they had released The Lord of the Rings movies with the Return of the King first, then Fellowship of The Ring, then all 3 Hobbit movies, and concluded with The Two Towers.  That's what it feels like to watch Bahubali 2: The Conclusion -even more so if you did not see part 1. *Spoiler* The reveal that Bahubali has a son and that his son is instantaneously grown and played by the same actor is just too much.  It is true that taking segments of story and placing them out of chronological order can be a boon to story telling and make the experience more enjoyable for the audience as they are privilege to future/past information that characters are not. Unfortunately, for Bahubali, this use is a giant fail.

Score: 2.8 out of 5 stars- Again I recommend it as a way to improve one's understanding of Indian (Tamil) cinema, but I wouldn't watch it for its other qualities -maybe the hair.

I want to give a special shout out to Nassar.  -I've been seeing him everywhere across Southern Indian films of late and I think he is excellent. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0621937/

Bahubali: The Beginning (2015)

"I did." -Kattappa (in reference to who killed Bahubali's father -also name Bahubali.)

FYI: Watching the 2 parts of Bahubali should be done in order, but that doesn't make the timelines choices of the creators any less jarring. Alas, this is only a review of part 1. (I unfortunately watched part 2 first and without subtitles, which biases my review.) 

Quick: For the uninitiated an Indian movie can be jarring; songs out of no where, allusions you don't understand, motivations that seem unclear, iconic imagery that lacks pull, etc. While I aspire to be culturally attuned, I cannot say that I took Bahubali into my heart. It came off as a colorful, 80's esque action film with big plot holes and bewildering substance. But it was fun. I really did enjoy the music and the hair. The hair was spectacular.

Thoughts: My big thought upon watching ":The Beginning" was how masculinity is showcased differently in different cultures and at different times. My own response is that I don't particularly identify with the musclebound machismo with a mullet style of man that is presented as the paragon for the many different kinds of Indians. It was like watching Conan: The Barbarian, Commando, and He-Man, but from an Indian perspective and with dancing (and 30 years in the future.). I do find it odd that the movie expects me to accept that Bahubali is royal because of his crazy strength, wit, dance moves, swagger, and incorruptibility. This fact is presented in a manner as to be an, "of course". This may fit into larger narratives to which I have no knowledge, but this immediately broke my suspension of disbelief and moved Bahubali into the realm of farce. I laughed. Often. I don't think I was supposed to.

Thought Experiment: I see that these kinds of films will be some part of the future of global cinema. How will Western markets/cultures react as India/China start pushing their soft power out for the masses? How will it change what I think of as masculinity, and those that grow up behind me?

Score: 2.4/5 I'd say see it. Learn something. Embrace things you don't quite understand. 

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Captain Glover: "All I saw was a skinny kid. I didn't know who you were. You've done more than any other man could've done in the service of his country. Now, I've never been more wrong about someone in my life, and I hope one day you can forgive me."


The Short of It: if you are only going to watch one WWII movie make sure it isn't Hacksaw Ridge. It meets technical requirements but delivers on very little.

The Long of It: I am beginning to misunderstand why we keep going back to WWII for movies. Why? Why not stories of other American wars? -assuming you just need to make a war movie. Spanish American war? WWI? Korean War? American incursions into Mexico in the early 1900's? Why WWII?

Part of me thinks that producers and financiers are simply biased towards stories from the last age of "heroes". It may also be that this was the last war where it was agreed by most reasonable people who was good and who was bad. Yet this doesn't explain why we keep getting WWII movies. There are so many. It goes on and on and on. We keep making them. In 2017 -72 years after VE and VJ days, there appears to still be a market for WWII. We as a society will move on when we do, but my tipping point has been reached.

As to Hacksaw Ridge, I thought Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn, and Hugo Weaving were miscast. Each one took some risks in their performances; drawl, trauma, and aggression, but each was ultimately unrewarding. I understand this as based on a true story, but I thought the portrayal of the conflict of conscience honestly a little boring and more than a little played out. Single-man standing up to THE MAN has been done.

I know that Mel Gibson was the director here, but I disagreed with a number of his choices in terms of shot selection and the how he chose to create dramatic tension.

1.9/5: Watch a different WWII movie if at all possible.