Tag: review

Movie review – Fantastic Four: First Steps

The positive buzz to the new film Fantastic Four: First Steps assuaged my resistance to seeing yet another Marvel Movie. As any member of the MMMS (Merry Marvel Marching Society) could tell you, there have been previous FF films that ranged from disappointing to pretty terrible.

An example of the latter is the unreleased Roger Corman film (1994), which I saw on YouTube a decade or so ago. It was so bad that it was mildly entertaining. I thought the 2005 film was pretty pedestrian. The 2007 follow-up has been on my DVD, unwatched for months.

The new film is “set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world.” A reliable source tells me that MARVELS, the miniseries with Alex Ross art, appears to be the primary influence here. What I know for sure is that it worked for me. I got the Earth-828 reference; August 28 is the birthday of FF co-creator Jack Kirby. Whatever the source,  the film’s aesthetic wowed me, leaning into the comics of the 1960s without feeling stuck in the past.

The team

The team’s interaction was interesting. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) feels responsible/guilty for the team’s transformation four years earlier. Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) is the most interesting of the four. Unlike her comic book counterpart in the 1960s, this woman is fierce. She loves and is frustrated by her overthinking husband, Reed.

Sue’s brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) is impulsive but talented. The script gave Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) short shrift, with just a hint of a potential romance. Herbie the Robot was integral to the plot. 

I wondered how the group would, or could, defend Earth from Galactus, the powerful eater of worlds (Ralph Ineson), and his mysterious herald, Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). And there’s a personal complication. It seemed like a credible solution. 

A person who is the biggest FF fan I know has seen the film twice before I’d seen it once. The Rotten Tomatoes score was 86% positive with critics, 92% with fans. I saw it on a hot Tuesday afternoon at Spectrum 8 in Albany. 

I liked the vibe, optimism, and unity of the general public in the film —well, most of the time. However, I’m not sure it was enough to make me watch the sequel. Not incidentally, at least one person in the theater left immediately when the credits started, missing the Four Years Later postlude. I liked the cartoon at the very end of the film.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps Main Theme and more, music by Michael Giacchino. And if you are obsessed – I am not – 47 minutes of BREAKDOWN – Marvel Easter Eggs You Missed!

Movie review: F1

racecars

To my mild surprise, my wife wanted to see the movie F1. I said OK, though it wasn’t high on my list of must-see films. In my time, I’ve avoided many summer blockbusters. We went to the Spectrim 8 Theatre in Albany on a Tuesday afternoon in early July.

F1 did what it set out to do: make you feel like you are riding with these drivers. Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) will drive almost anything, and his old friend Ruben (Javier Bardem) recruits him for his Formula 1 team.

You get sucked into feeling like part of the management and pit crew, trying to ensure that the two team drivers, Sonny and Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), succeed or at least don’t crash and burn. Kate (Kerry Conlon) is central to the team and wants to be taken seriously as the technical director; I liked Conlon in The Banshees of Inisherin. 

Critic Michael Cook wrote: “This is a classic ‘summer and popcorn’ movie. Some beats may feel familiar, but it’s done so well that you overlook some of its problems. It’s a movie worth seeing at the theater to get the full experience.” I agree with that, and the fact that the actors practiced actual driving for several months gave those scenes a feeling of verisimilitude. True Formula 1 fans will grimace at some inconsistencies, but most of the general public may not notice or care.

Pop

Frankly, I enjoyed it on the level that my grandfather McKinley Green and I used to watch Indy car racing on TV when I was growing up. But F1 doesn’t seem like a movie you want to see on television.

When Formula One came to Las Vegas in the story, I was fascinated because I was in that city in 2024 shortly before it was altered to create the track. Businesses near the course, such as restaurants and bars, which could benefit from more people coming in, were thrilled. Ordinary Las Vegans with no monetary benefit tended to be irritable about the inconvenience.

Rotten Tomatoes critics gave the film 83% positive reviews, but it was 97% positive with audiences.

Movie review: Superman (2025)

David Corenswet

I had initially decided not to watch the new movie Superman, in large part because seeing sequels and reboots is exhausting. Also, I’m not a big DC movie fan, having seen the first two Superman movies with Christopher Reeve, and a couple of Batman films, not counting the LEGO pieces.

I did happen across the Justice League movie from 2017, which utterly confounded me. Superman (Henry Cavill) was dead, but he wasn’t. What the heck?

Two things pushed me into seeing the new flick: my wife wanted to see it, remembering fondly the first Christopher Reeve film from 1978. Also, many people on social media suggested that the new movie was too “woke.” I wondered what that possibly meant. So we attended a Wednesday matinee at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany.

I saw many comments from fans thinking that this Superman (David Corenswet) was too physically weak; he even bleeds!  As somebody who’s known comic books for a long time, part of the problem with Superman historically is that he was too darn powerful. If he could change time and fly to different planets at will, what would keep him humble and “human”? It is a statement when you see Superman lose in the movie’s first battle, to be rescued by his robots and the unruly dog Krypto. 

Villainy

This Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) reminded me A LOT of the tech bros who are “too confident about their ability”. This mixed review: “We are living under the whims of real, insane, egomaniacal, profoundly insecure billionaire supervillains… How can any comic book narrative compete with that kind of real-life villainy?” As the writer notes,  “Yeah, it might not be fair to blame Gunn for not having a crystal ball predicting all the nightmare sh*t that’s happened since January while he was writing and filming this movie.” So, I don’t, and the crap coming down in 2025 America makes the film feel “real,” if not prescient. 

I like Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and many of the supporting characters quite a bit.

Much to my surprise, there was a point in the latter quarter of the film when I got emotionally attached. Interestingly, Wendy Pini of Elfquest fame, whom I knew from my FantaCo days, made a cogent observation: 

“What if this new Supes movie is VERY good for boys and men?…  I’ve seen dozens and dozens of comments from [my male friends who are comics industry pros] in my feed, which are universally positive. This movie is creating joy for them. They’re using words like hope, kindness, helpfulness, compassion, and light.”

The film is a bit unbalanced here and a little sloppy there, but I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie. On Rotten Tomatoes, it received 83% positive reviews from critics and 93% positive reviews from audiences.  

 

Movie: Materialists

Melanie and Don’s kid

The saga of seeing the movie Materialists began in late June. I went to see Sinners at the Madison Theatre, but my wife opted to see something presumably less intense, which started and ended a few minutes after my choice. I then went to vote at the nearby Primary Day voting site and came back.

When the theater door for Materialists opened, I waited more than five minutes before calling out to her. Yes, she was in there, and she came out, talking to two women, one of whom she vaguely had met before, still talking about the significance of the film they had just seen.

A week or so later, my wife and I went to the Spectrum 8 Theater in Albany. She was willing to see Materialists again, which is quite unusual. I saw and liked it, but I was having a dreadful time figuring out how to write about it. A part of it may have to do with personal biography.

Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is an excellent matchmaker at an upscale company. She is practically a human dating app. Nine of her matches led couples to the altar. She views relationships like transactions and uses that strategy to calm a skittish bride.

But she is taken aback when the perfect 10 unicorn of a guy, Harry (Pedro Pascal), whom she meets at a wedding she had put together, is interested in her. He seems to check all the boxes and would be the obvious choice.

Lucy even takes him to an Off-Off-Broadway production, where her ex John (Chris Evans) performs. He is the antithesis of a rich guy, working catering jobs between auditions while riding around in his barely roadworthy vehicle.

Not a rom-com

I came across an IMDb review: Materialists was not what I expected.

“It’s been marketed like a rom-com – but honestly? If you’re heading in expecting laughs, you’ll be disappointed. What you get instead is a sharp, quietly melancholic study on modern love, dating, and loneliness in the big city. It’s not so much about romance as it is about emotional bankruptcy – the way ambition, money, and appearances slowly chip away at real connection.” Melancholy, yeah.

So I understand why some folks, looking for a sweet rom-com, might be disappointed. I’ve read that Johnson’s performance was flat, but I think it was dead on. The “real tension[ is] in her. What does she actually want? Love, comfort, validation? Or just a life that looks good on paper?”

This is also why Lucy was so tone deaf when dealing with the bad date one of her clients experienced.

The funniest part of the movie was the clips of the clients noting their attributes and what they were looking for. (I was going to give an example, but it doesn’t read as funny.)

The Rotten Tomatoes reviews were 80% positive with critics and 67% with audiences. All I can say is that I believed these people, especially Lucy. Dakota Johnson, by the way, was the response to a recent JEOPARDY clue. HOLLYWOOD HODGEPODGE $400: She’s the actress seen here with mom Melanie Griffith and grandmother Tippi Hedren.

Oh, I liked the cave people, too, who appeared in the beginning and then the end credits.

Movie review: The Life Of Chuck

based on a Stephen King novella

The description of the movie  The Life of Chuck on IMDb: “A life-affirming, genre-bending story based on Stephen King’s novella about three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles Krantz.” The movie starts with Act Three, and the characters in the film wonder, Who IS this guy, Chuck?

One gets a sense of Chuck as portrayed by four actors: Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, Benjamin Pajak, and Cody Flanagan. It also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Carl Lumbly, Mark Hamill, and Mia Sara as his grandparents, and Karen Gillan as perhaps his last dance partner, who also gave fine performances. 

All that said, I don’t know how to review it without wrecking it utterly. One fan reviewer: “I want to leave my critique relatively vague as I believe the hook of the film works best going in without knowing much.” I did like it a lot. 

Here’s a meh (5/10) fan review on IMDb that actually gets to the crux:  “If you like movies that make you think about life, that make you contemplate existence, you will very much enjoy this. I personally don’t normally go for movies like that… but I would say The Life of Chuck is about as good as they come.”

Untidy

Diane Cameron, whom I know, wrote on Facebook: “Now, if you are the kind of person who needs to know what a work of art means, or what a poem means, or have a satisfying tidy feeling after a movie, skip ‘Chuck’. It will make you crazy. But if you like questions more than answers, and fabulous actors and some great dancing, and maybe to chew on a movie for a few days, then ‘Chuck’ is your next movie.” I’ll buy that. 

Another reviewer wrote, “I left the film feeling a mix of joy and melancholy and appreciated the artistry that brought me there.” This is also true.

 On Rotten Tomatoes, it received an 82% positive rating from critics and an 88% positive rating from fans. Mick LaSalle wrote, “The movie is maudlin and pessimistic and features a mildly sardonic voiceover narration by Nick Offerman that only serves to distance us from the action.” Well, no, on every count.

Ruth Maramis, by contrast, noted: “This poignant existential drama doesn’t just spoon-feed you everything but leaves room for interpretation as we connect its profound themes to our own experiences. Great seeing Hiddleston flaunt his killer dance moves.” Yeah, that.

See it if you’re not looking for tidiness. My wife and I saw The Life Of Chuck at the Spectrum 8 in Albany on the evening of June 27; the theater was 3/4 full. 

Ramblin' with Roger
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