Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2024.06

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

1. Big Fish (2003) — 8/10
2. Barbie (2023) — 5/10
3. Simon Romang: Charrette! (2022) — 8/10
4. Darkman (1990) — 6/10
5. Bullet Train (1990) — 6/10
6. Last of the Mohicans (1992) — 8/10
7. Mission Impossible II (2000) — 8/10
8. Father Figures (2017) — 5/10
9. Athena (2022) — 5/10
10. Archer: Series Finale (2024) — 9/10

Big Fish (2003) — 8/10

Tim Burton directs this offbeat story (I know, it almost goes without saying) of a couple of generations of a family. Ed Bloom (Ewan McGregor) has a fish story. His son Will (Billy Crudup) tells his story. Ed is married to Sandra (Jessica Lange). Will has just married Josephine (Marion Cotillard). Will tells his father’s story, starting with how he met one-eyed Jenny (Helena Bonham Carter), who has an eyepatch. The neighborhood kids heard that you can see how you’ll die in the reflection of her fake eye.

Will and Josephine visit his dying father (Albert Finney, as older Ed). His doctor is played by Robert Guillaume. Will recalls another of his father’s stories, when he’d spent three years in bed, growing up too quickly. As he aged and finally got out of bed, he became a football, baseball, and basketball star, started his own landscaping business in high school, won science awards, and saved dogs for the fire department.

A giant (Matthew McGrory) comes to town, terrorizing everyone. Ed Bloom goes to the creature’s cave to talk him into leaving his town alone. He meets the giant and teams up with him, to get him out of town, but also to get himself out of town. On their way out of town, they come to a fork in the road. Ed takes the way through the woods, while the giant takes the road. Ed gives the giant his pack for safekeeping. He goes through an increasingly dangerous-looking forest until he gets to a full-fledged town—Specter. He meets Mildred (Missi Pyle) and Beamen (Loudon Wainwright III), who take him to meet the poet Norther Winslow (Steve Buscemi).

Later that night, he sees a lovely naked woman about to be attacked by a snake. He saves her, but she dives away without saying a word or showing her face. The little girl from town says that it was a fish that looks different to every person. At the festival that night, he reveals that he wants to leave the town, despite the amply proportioned women, despite the soft grass, despite the friendly little girl. The townspeople are bewildered—no one’s ever wanted to leave before.

He gets out of town and ended up at the Calloway Circus, run by Amos Calloway (Danny DeVito) with his assistant Mr. Soggybottom (Deep Roy). Karl the giant gets a job and Ed meets his future wife Sandra Templeton. He works at the circus for a while until he finally learns her name from Amos. He starts stalking her to get her to break off her engagement to the guy from his high school who’d almost ended up second banana to him—and he has the nerve to call him a jerk. He gets his ass kicked by that guy, making Sandra change her mind about marrying the bully. Cute trick, Ed. The pity play. Always a good play.

He’s nearly immediately drafted and serves in Vietnam, taking hazardous assignments so that he can get out as quickly as possible. Interesting logic. He crashes into a Vietnamese USO show, steals some secret documents, then teams up with conjoined twins to sneak out of there and back into the U.S. by way of Cuba.

Will confronts his father on all of his fibbing, but his father stands strong and says he is who he is. Will cleans the pond behind the house; a giant fish crests the surface. He startles. At his mother’s behest, he begins to clean out his father’s old office in the shed.

We’re back in the past, with Ed on the road as a traveling salesman. In a Texas bank, he meets Norther Winslow, who’d also left Specter. Norther’s there to rob it. He ropes Ed into the heist, but they discover that the bank had already been robbed. They escape together in a roadster. They part ways, with Norther heading to Wall Street to make millions and Ed going back on the road. Norther sent him $10k of his first million, with which Ed bought a “proper house”, which was a godddamned palace. I honestly can’t tell if people are being facetious anymore.

Will finds a deed to the home of Jenny (the witch). He visits to find out more. She tells a story of how Ed had gotten caught in a rainstorm so bad that his car ended up in a tree, after a flood. He’d ended up in Spectrer again, but this time after it had been hollowed out by speculators. Edward purchases the town of Spectrer to preserve it, using his many connections—Worther, Amos, and so on. He leaves people in their houses. The last house belongs to Jenny, who refuses to sell. He fixes up her house until it’s brand new. She signs the quitclaim deed.

Jenny ends her story, assuring Will that nothing had ever happened, that she’d been the one living in a fairy tale, while Will and his family were “real”.

I kind of liked how fantastical this movie was, how you couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. It spoke to the power of at least a little bit of fantasy to make life worth living.

Barbie (2023) — 5/10

I can’t believe that adults went to this movie and came back to tell everyone how great it was. it is a toy commercial combined with a Bennetton ad. I don’t even think it’s worth it to describe the plot. It’s pretty insipid. I don’t expect it to stray very far from the extremely straightforward Disney story that they just spent ten minutes of exposition on.

There will be more exposition. For example, from the mouths of teenaged girls, who call Barbie a fascist. A bunch of stuff happens before the next soliloquy—this time delivered by the girl’s mother—that sounds like it was a reader letter on Jezebel or Tumblr. They also make sure that no-one misses what happened by repeating it a few times. This is tedious. Is there a point to this film other than spouting risible ideas?

This is much more like a Disney movie. It’s for children, although it’s probably not even appropriate for them. Actual adults have said that this was their favorite movie of the year.

In a huge surprise, the exclusively matriarchal society becomes an exclusively patriarchal society, and then all is right with the world when it’s returned to an exclusively patriarchal society.

Simon Romang: Charrette! (2022) — 8/10

I stumbled across this Swiss stand-up comedian on a French channel and gave it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was able to understand—and that it was funny for me. It helped that he’s from Switzerland, so I could relate to a lot of his topics. The following is a list of the topics, as I understood them.

• Growing up in Valais
• His mother
• His father
• Eating meat
• Trying vegetarianism
• A new-age retreat with 50-year-old shamans
• Growing up in the Steiner school
• Moving to Paris
• Taking part in a dance troupe
• Moving to New York
• Working with John and the Chinese ladies
• Hanging out with Carl Smith
• Falling in love with Emma
• Obama gets elected in 2008
• Back in Apples / Senarclens
• Taking his dad’s place in the local show
• Finishing up on New York, New York

Here’s the trailer:

Charrette! by Simon Romang (YouTube)

Obviously, I watched it in French, with French subtitles. The subtitles didn’t always match what he’s saying, but they’re helpful nonetheless.

Darkman (1990) — 6/10

This is a very, very early superhero movie, directed by Sam Raimi. It tells the story of Dr. Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson), a scientist who’s working on synthetic skin for burn victims. His girlfriend Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand) discovers corruption at the highest levels of city government. This leads to an attack on Westlake, who’s burned horribly and left for dead.

He ends up in the hospital, where he gets surgery that kills his sensory nervous system, but gives him adrenalin-based super-strength. This is pretty low-level superhero stuff, but it is what it is.

Westlake and Julie end up trying to take down the corrupt city-bosses who are trying to take over the city permanently and who disfigured him. They prevail, but Westlake is too psychologically unstable to be able to stay with her—even if she can take his disfigurement. He slips away into the crowd. The end.

Raimi’s fingerprints are all over this movie, making it better than it had any right to be. Even then, though, it still wasn’t great. Since it came out in 1990, it was still nearly exclusively practical effects, which was nice.

Bullet Train (1990) — 6/10

This movie thinks it’s way cuter than it is. It’s one of those dialogue-driven, impossible-to-predict kind of movies trying to be Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. It stars Brad Pitt as some sort of hired agent/killer called Ladybug. There’s Zazie Beetz seemingly unaware that she’s doing a bad job of reprising her Domino role from Deadpool 2 (which was way, way better than this). The movie takes place on a Japanese bullet train. There’s a bunch of betrayal, a few people die, others don’t. Brad Pitt manages to get all the way through, presumably trying to set up a franchise that we can all hope never comes.

Look, it wasn’t terrible but it also wasn’t good. It’s content. I watched it while riding the indoor bike. It’s kind of structured like a video game, with various enemies and bosses, until the grand denouement, where the train derails utterly, killing everyone but Ladybug and a few other people that were deemed worthy of survival.

Last of the Mohicans (1992) — 8/10

Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a white warrior who lives with the Mohicans. He’s kind of the central figure, but Chingachgook (Russell Means) is actually the last Mohican. Honestly, I just really liked the refresher of American history I got when I was growing up. There were Mohawk and Huron scheming against each other. There were the absolutely horrifically racist British commanders and soldiers, who just could not fathom insubordination from anyone that they considered inferior. They were mystified that anyone would be even slightly reluctant to give their life for the crown.

The main baddie is Colonel Edmund Munro (Maurice Roëves), whose two daughters are trapped in the fort he commands, as it is about to be overwhelmed by French troops. Major Heyward (Steven Waddington) can’t see a single reason why Munro’s daughter Cora (Madeleine Stowe) wouldn’t want to marry him. He’s almost as offended by her reluctance / diplomatic refusal as Munro is by the savages’ lack of commitment to dying for the crown.

Magua, a Huron posing as a Mohawk (Wes Studi), agrees to lead Cora, her sister Alice (Jodhi May), and Heyward to safety, but he betrays them in a planned ambush. Magua is a great baddie. They are rescued by Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Chingachgook’s son Uncas (Eric Schweig). Hawkeye and Cora make googley eyes at each other, as do Uncas and Alice.

Munro betrays the local villagers, not allowing them to return to defend their villages. Instead, he demands that they remain and protect the fort. Munro is well-and-truly trapped, though. Hawkeye helps the villagers sneak away from the fort, leaving Munro without enough people to defend it. Once he learns that there is no backup coming in the form of General Webb, he is forced to surrender to the French.

Magua and his fellow Hurons ambush the retreating British and Magua personally slices out Munro’s black heart, right after promising him that he will also kill his two daughters. Magua is relentless and hunts down Hawkeye and co., capturing Core and Alice, while Hawkeye, Chigachgook, and Uncas escape over a waterfall.

Magua takes his three prisoners—Cora, Alice, and Heyward—back to his tribal elder for judgment. It is decided that Heyward will return to the British, that Alice will marry Magua, and that Cora will be burned at the stake. Hawkeye shows up to parley. He offers to take Cora’s place, but he can’t speak Huron or French. Instead, Heyward translates for him into French, which the Huron chief both understands and speaks. Heyward offers himself instead, allowing Hawkeye to leave with Cora. Once he’s gotten away far enough, Hawkeye shoots Heyward to put him out of his misery and to reward him for his selfless final act.

Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas pursue Magua to rescue Alice, but Magua—awesome baddie, remember—throws an over-eager Uncas off a cliff. Alice leaps to her death rather than remain with Magua. That’s gotta hurt. I’m surprised we didn’t see Magua wince in pain at that. Hawkeye and Chingachgook get the drop on Magua, with Chingachgook challenging Magua to and then defeating him in single combat. That means that Magua’s finally dead and that Hawkeye and Cora will live happily ever after, while Chingachgook, now without a son, is the titular last Mohican.

Mission Impossible II (2000) — 8/10

John Woo directed the follow-up to the by-now (if not then) long-running series that Brian DePalma started. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) recruits thief Nyah Hall (Thandiwe Newton), falling for her at the same time. He then nearly immediately meets with his mission commander (Anthony Hopkins), who tells him that Nyah needs to seduce a former lover Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) who’d stolen a lethal and supposedly irreversible poison called Chimera from Dr. Nekhorvich (Rade Serbedzija).

He joins up with his team as Nyah infiltrates Ambrose’s group. Luther Strickell (Ving Rhames) is on board, as is Billy Baird (John Polson). Ambrose meets with McCloy (Brendan Gleeson) about a purchase of Chimera. Ambrose’s right-hand man Hugh Stamp (Richard Roxburgh) is onto them, and the groups tango back and forth. Ambrose knows that Nyah is spying on him, but he lets her, giving her some information, but deliberately misleading the IMF and Ethan Hunt.

The poison turns out to be curable. Nyah gets backed into a corner and injects herself with it, in order to keep Ambrose from getting it. She is still in Ambrose’s hands. He lets her loose in Sydney, Australia, where she would be a viral bomb within 24 hours. This is a grand setup for the final act, where Ethan Hunt almost single-handedly penetrates Ambrose’s fortress and tricks Ambrose’s henchmen into killing Hugh. Spoiler: Hunt uses a lifelike mask, just like he always does.

Ambrose and Hunt go mano a mano and motorcycle a motorcycle with Hunt prevailing. Obviously. Nyah was rescued by Luther (Ving Rhames), obviously. Everyone lives happily ever after. Or, at least, until MI3.

This was a fun romp of an action film, though. Dougray Scott is a good villain. So is Richard Roxburgh.

Father Figures (2017) — 5/10

Peter Reynolds (Ed Helms) is a proctologist with a twin brother Kyle (Owen Wilson). At their mother Helen’s (Glenn Close) wedding to her second husband, they discover that their father isn’t dead—it’s just that she was never sure who he was. She points them in the direction of Terry Bradshaw, who’s delighted to meet long-lost sons. They have a great day together, but soon discover that Bradshaw is almost certainly not their dad. It’s also definitely not Rod Hamilton (Ving Rhames) either, even though he also fondly remembers Helen as a “dick whisperer”.

In the meantime, Kyle finds out that his job and fortunes aren’t as secure as he thought they were. He’s got a kid on the way. He’s also a spectacular idiot. Next, they think that maybe Roland Hunt (J.K. Simmons) is their dad. He’s a stockbroker, living in a grandiose home with his mother (June Squibb). He tells them he’s a repo man, but he’s really a thief. He abandons them to a couple he’s trying to rob, which catches them red-handed. Shots are fired. The boys steal the Ferrari, then run Roland over with it. At the hospital, they discover that they have incompatible blood types. The search continues.

They’re on the way back to the airport from the hospital where they left Roland. At Kyle’s behest, they pick up a hitchhiker (Katt Williams) on the way. They get stuck on a train track, getting their rental plowed to pieces. The cops that show up give them a clue to their next father candidate, Paddy or “Sparkly P”, who turns out to have been a spectacular drug warrior in the 70s and 80s. They get on the road again, drop off the hitchhiker, then head to a pub for dinner. When Kyle’s in the bathroom, Pete hits on a lady at the bar, Sarah (Katie Aselton).

Kyle sleeps in the car, while Pete has a one-night stand. They get to Paddy’s house, where they find him lying in state. They get into a fight with what they think are their brothers. And Pete’s hook-up turns out to possibly be their sister. Paddy’s brother clears things up, giving them their next clue—their childhood cat’s veterinarian Chairman Meow.

They get to the vet’s office and deal with his secretary Ali (Ali Wong), then get a look at Dr. Walter Tinkler (Christopher Walken), who tries to escape. “Death, yes. It comes for us all. Even kitties.” They hit him with a tranquilizer dart, then their mom shows up. She agrees to fill in missing details. Ali tries to get on board with her own trauma, but Walken cuts her off with “Ali, don’t bring your own drum to the concert.”. Helen tells them that she’d adopted them from a woman at the abused-women shelter where she’s worked.

That’s the big reveal. Honestly, it’s not a great movie. I kept watching because of Ed Helms and Owen Wilson, who have pretty good chemistry, and then eventually because of Christopher Walken. I’m glad that I learned the best name for a cat I’ve heard in a while: Chairman Meow.

Athena (2022) — 5/10

The tale starts with Abdel (Dali Benssalah) urging for calm after his younger brother had been found beaten to death by three policemen. His other brother Karim (Sami Slimane) leads a band of rioters to disrupt the press conference, stealing a police van and several weapons before heading back to the banlieue of Athena.

There are long scenes of Karim leading the resistance as the banlieue hunkers down under the oncoming police assault. Inside is also Moktar (Ouassini Embarek), a drug dealer who’s been trapped inside with a large stash. Abdel returns to Athena to attend a memorial service, but there are altercations and further action until he and several residents are kettled and taken into custody by police.

The police ask Abdel for help, but he is not very interested, sneaking back into Athena soon after. Meanwhile, the police advance. Their approach is broken up by the Athena residents, with young officer Jerôme (Anthony Bajon) becoming separated from the others and taken captive. The Athenians send a video of their hostage to the police. Abdel rescues Jerôme from the worst of the rioters, eventually taking refuge with Moktar, who turns out to be his half-brother.

Abdel calls the police to negotiate but they give him the runaround, not particularly interested in what will happen to Jerôme. They insist that the police officers in the video—the ones who’d beaten his brother to death—were not police officers at all, and that they therefore cannot deliver their names, as requested. This turns out to be true, with the entire incident having been manufactured by right-wing agitators. Neither the police nor the rioters were really at fault for the action. It was all a manipulative waste of life and limb for everyone involved—except for the manipulators who’ve managed to anger everyone.

Karim is killed by police in a confrontation from which he refused to back down, and Abdel is killed in an explosion that tears out two floors of the high-rise building. So, the entire family was wiped out, the banlieue of Athena has been partially destroyed, and the police have lost no-one, as Jerôme was safely returned from captivity.

I thought the movie focused a lot more on style than substance and was pretty incoherent. There was no investigation on the part of the police, and the script simply delivered the pat story of the right-wing instigators in the final minutes, for what I suppose they considered to be closure. Many of the actors were chewing the scenery pretty hard, with stylized and long shots panning over them, as they posed moodily.

I watched the movie in French with French subtitles (while riding the indoor bike).

Archer: Series Finale (2024) — 9/10

In this series finale, the gang is on a mission to save themselves from the UN making all international and non-state spy agencies illegal. Lana (Aisha Tyler) is in charge of the agency, Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) is still butt-hurt about it, as well as about being semi-replaced by Zara Khan (Natalie Dew). Cyril (Chris Parnell) is still Cyril, as are Krieger (Lucky Yates), Pam (Amber Nash), and Cheryl (Judy Greer), true to their characters to the last. Ray (Adam Gillette) and Barry (Dave Willis) also get a lot of deserved screen time. Baddies Slater (Christian Slater) and Katya (Ona Grauer) are back for one last rodeo.

Krieger asks Cheryl to solve their money problems by buying out the agency—she is, after, all an heiress with billions—but she refuses because she doesn’t think they’re worth it. This is also one last time for Archer to prove his invincibility. He’s shot, imprisoned, electrocuted, and beaten around by ex-nearly-wife super-robot Katya. Pam gets into a knock-down, drag-out fistfight with Boris, a Russian agent at the Russian club/headquarters that they’re breaking into. We get to see Pam’s tattoo one last time.

“For the Angel of Death
spread his wings on the blast,
and breathed in the face
of the foe as he passed;
and the eyes of the sleepers
waxed deadly and chill,
and their hearts but
once heaved,
and for ever grew still!”

Cyril and Lana discuss their previous relationship in a pretty spicy way,

“Lana: If you knew the amount of lying and cheating and moral compromise being the boss requires, you would all never stop giving me cսnnіlіngսs.
Cyril: Well, if the offer is on the table…
Lana: Oh, no. I dated you, remember? And even that big ass hog of yours didn’t make up for your mouth in more ways than one. You would apologize to the bullet that killed you.
Cyril: Well, I’m sorry for being polite.
Lana: Oh, you just did it again! Jesus Christ!”

In the end, the gang manages to stop Slater and Katya from starting a new cold war—ironic, because, in actual reality, a new one has definitely started—with Archer letting Slater fall to his death, despite Slater offering to tell him who his father is. Katya and Barry merge into a single robotic entity that Archer ends up banging, while all of the others celebrate their victory. The U.N. still votes to make all private spy agencies illegal.

Months later, Sterling Archer is on the run, causing trouble. The world’s spy agencies find Lana to hire her to stop Archer. She knows exactly where he is: he’s in her office with AJ. They agree to play a lucrative game of cat-and-mouse with Archer “out in the cold.” Pam shows up to join Archer as his partner in rogue espionage—utterly unsurprisingly. The end.

I gave it extra points because it is a really good finale for the series. It does a callback to the very first seconds of the first episode, where Archer, as “Duchess”, is being tortured by Boris.