Wow. They start this off with six minutes of leaden exposition, all of which seems totally superfluous: They’re saying there’s a McGuffin and a hero waiting.

Yee-haw

Man, that was a bad CGI fight scene. It was like nothing had any mass. Even if they used the old “have no lighting” trick to have less visible things to animate, it still looked bad.

They’re the Justice Society? Is this Earth-2, then? Perhaps that was just in the olden dayes…

I’m not hating this. I mean, as super-hero movies go, I’ve seen a lot worse.

Sad Rock.

It’s very on the nose.

But I guess Black Adam is gonna fight Justice Society for a bit and then become buddies? What does that do to global stability?

This is pretty entertaining. It’s a kinda confused movie — it doesn’t seem to have much rhythm or throughline, but it’s occasionally charming. And there was one scene that had me laughing out loud, which is more than most super-hero movies.

And the CGI really isn’t that bad. The fight scenes are 97% CGI, which makes them boring to look at (who wants to watch a video game run through?), but they look better than Marvel CGI, for instance.

This was like a ⚂ until the last third, and then things become crushingly boring. There were kinda sorta slightly interesting bits — nothing big or clevery but at least something — and then the last third is just one big, mostly humourless fight scene.

So let’s go with:

Black Adam. Jaume Collet-Serra. 2022. ⚁

I’m really sceptical towards all Norwegian movies that are supposed to be comedies. The last few decades, the absolutely only form of humour that’s acceptable in Norway seems to be cringe humour, and that’s just not my thing.

So I’ve avoided this movie, because I thought it was supposed to be funny.

Neeerds!

I dunno. This is well-made, and it’s fun to see all these places in Oslo and go “oh, there!”, but… it could be snappier? It feels like about a third of the running time could easily have been cut. So far.

But I was wrong! There’s not that much cringe humour. Fortunately. It’s more… satirical. Brutal take-downs and absurdities.

It’s constantly low level witty.

It’s a somewhat frustrating movie. There are scenes where I go “this is totally magical” and I’m thinking Trier is the new Bergman or something, but then the next scene is like… nothing.

Great performances, very pretty cinematography, boring music. So:

The Worst Person in the World. Joachim Trier. 2021. ⚃

This is very high concept — the Bob Hope character has bet 10K that he won’t tell a lie for 24 hours (because he wants to help the Paulette Goddard character double her money), and hi-jinx ensue.

And they’re very high jinx! It’s a good silly premise, and they really lean into it.

I’m really impressed by the level on these Bob Hope movies — it’s all veteran Hollywood directors, and they really know what makes a comedy movie tick.

Heh, it’s the perfect ending — this guy saves everything.

It’s a really fun movie. It’s not quite perfect? There could be more gags beyond Bob Hope doing his thing, but it’s really good. Perhaps it’s really more of a ⚃ movie, but I’m going with:

Nothing But the Truth. Elliott Nugent. 1941. ⚄