Superheroes!

But why can’t they hire real hairdressers? His white bits look like somebody glued on some white hair onto a dark-haired wig.

And I guess the white bits moving around are just to signal that we’re in a different part of the Multiverse now?

Still, bad wig in this universe, too.

My theory is still that Disney half-asses scenes like this on purpose: When everything looks fake, they can cut down on spending on the big actions scenes. Because then they don’t stick out like sore thumbs. But I’d prefer that, if the normal non-action scenes could look better. Instead everything is half-assed greenscreen and CGI like this.

Wigstock.

Uhm uhm. This seems awfully abrupt, doesn’t it? I mean, Wanda can rewrite reality, so she’s set. So why this sudden total heel turn?

And the entire Multiverse thing — I see the attraction for people writing movies, because you can do fun stuff like in the third Spider-Man movie, having the different Spider-Man actors meet. But long term, it just lowers the stake of absolutely everything: If you blow up one universe, then there’s another you can go to, and if you fix one universe, there’s an infinite number of universes where things went wrong. So it just makes nothing matter — bad or good.

Hey, it’s… Ash!

I’d forgotten that Sam Raimi did this — and I’m surprised that Disney let him after running the Spider-Man franchise into the ground back when.

Can Raimi do the same with the “Marvel Cinematic Universe”!?!

OK, I’ve started zoning out because this is kinda dull. But I have to give Raimi props for the special effects — this movie does look better than most Marvel movies, and I was a bit unfair at the start there.

Ah right:

Raimi reportedly began shooting with only a half-finished script, and it shows.

It does — it’s like nothing is happening in this movies, except for people running around.

Man, that’s a lot of fan service. Which I approve of!

Oh man, still half to go.

MAKE IT STOP IT”S SO BORING

But I kinda want to see how this ends. I wonder how pissed off Elizabeth Olsen was with this movie. It seemed like it squandered a pretty interesting character arc for… nothing. Perhaps they’re gonna put in a And Now She’s Nice Again (i.e., the Sylar move) at the end?

OK, I withdraw the nice things I said about the CGI.

Sometimes the subtitles are way way off.

Well, that was really boring. It’s like… nothing of interest happened, and the only new thing we “learned” about the MCU was the dreamwalking thing, and it was totally lame. They wanted a movie that followed up from Wandavision and the Spider-Multiverse thing, and they forgot to actually write it? And instead they just started filming a bunch of “neat” scenes?

So while I was bored out of my skull watching this, a couple of the scenes were, indeed, pretty neat, so I’m upping my throw of the die to:

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Sam Raimi. 2022. ⚁

Nobody is as Bogart as Bogart.

Huh… it’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie with Bogie? *ponder* I’ve mostly seen hoiti-toiti films lately — did Bogie miss out on all those films?

I’ve missed him, I realise now.

I’ve seen this before, of course, but it’s been a minute. And I’ve recently seen Ray’s first three movies, and they all stunk. But this is as good as I vaguely remember.

This is so noir. All those sharp shadows everywhere, the meta qualities, and the cynicism pervading everything.

That’s some suit.

Ray is really subtle with the dick jokes.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Anyway… the first hour of this film is just kinda perfect. And then the last third alternates between boredom and exasperation — when it’s clear that Dix Steele is a psychopath, it’s not really interesting whether he killed Mildred or not. The excitement is then in whether Laurel can get away from him without getting killed or not, and that’s exasperating, because she’s just not trying that hard.

So the tragedy the film seems to be going for — with the resolution to the murder mystery that arrives too late to make a difference — dissipates completely. Instead Laurel getting out of the movie alive is the happy ending, which negates the tragedy I think Ray was going for with the end of the relationship.

*time passes*

I’m now watching one of the extras on the disc here, and Ray explains how they first shot this film with a totally different ending: Bogie kills Laurel, and the cops burst into the apt (which was Ray’s first Hollywood apt) and arrest him. But as he explains — romances (and marriages) don’t have to end in violence! (Gloria Grahame, who plays Laurel, had just divorced Ray, but nobody on set knew that yet.) “This is a very personal film.”

That certainly… puts another twist on the entire thing.

In a Lonely Place. Nicholas Ray. 1950. ⚄

This is the third and final movie in the Apu series (which started with Pather Panchali, which is usually on the Top 100 Films Ever lists).

Well, this seems like a perfectly nice “optimistic young man goes to the big city and gets his hopes dashed (before (presumably) becoming a famous author or something)” kind of film, but…

Nice bokeh.

This is a really sweet movie — it kinda reminds me of Italian cinema from around the same time? I mean, the slightly abrupt changes from comedic buffoonery (how Apu got married, for instance) to the good-natured scenes of domestic comedy… it works, but also feels like well-trodden ground.

It’s hard to stop smiling while watching this movie, is what I’m saying.

But if he’s following the set tropes, I’m guessing something horrible is going to happen about now? I’m guessing a childbirth death? (I mean, I’m only guessing that the wife is pregnant (or indeed has ever had sex) — they said “I guess you want to be with your parents at a time like this”.)

Indian movies take prudery to another level altogether.

Here it comes, here it comes…

*sigh*

I mean, I always hope I’m wrong about directors following these templates…

But now the budding author has learned about love and loss, so his journey can continue on. I mean, that’s what’s important, after all.

(Yes, I’m dissing a 1959 film for doing the Sensible Pixie Dream Wife plot.)

Oh, the baby survived? This is the first mention of a baby (or the possibility thereof) in the film at all.

OOPS SPOILERS

The plot is very childish — the magical wedding, the “ooh, if my wife died, I’d be so sad and deep”, etc. But plot schmot, who cares: It’s a very enjoyable movie on a scene to scene basis (looks great; good actors), and that’s what’s important, after all.

It does drag towards the end.

The World of Apu. Satyajit Ray. 1959. ⚃