Supergirl

 

Movie Review: Supergirl

A new week another new movie release. This time it comes in the form of DC’s latest superhero entry, Supergirl starring Milly Alcock of House of the Dragon fame.

Truth bomb.

I’ve never been a fan of any of the limited iterations of Supergirl that I’ve seen. So, why did I even bother going? I asked myself that very question as I got a last-minute ticket. Morbid curiosity I suppose. I figured, what the hell, I had a freebie ticket to use, the time, and I actually enjoyed James Gunn’s Superman reboot. So, once again I ventured out to the movie theater, open minded to see what geeky delights awaited me.

(Record scratch)

And that’s where I hit the wall.

Hard.

I’m sure Supergirl is going to make bank. I’m sure it will garner a sequel. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who will watch and really enjoy it. I’m just not one of them. I just couldn’t get into it and felt zero connection/interest to anything that unfolded on the screen. 

It very well may be that my lack of comic book knowledge/lore is the problem and that’s why I just couldn’t get into this one. While there’s nothing inherently bad overall, Supergirl was too random for me to sink my teeth into as it were. 

An unestablished character who made a random cameo in a previous film is doing her best Emo drunken sorority sister impression on some random planet, begrudgingly teams up with some random kid from some random family that had an unfortunate encounter with some random baddies over some random highly regarded weaponry and they seek revenge/a cure. More random planets are visited. Random unestablished/underdeveloped characters are met along the way, randomly living/dying/facilitating to a predictable end.

Supergirl comes across as superhero meets Star Wars meets Mad Max Fury Road with a dash of The Princess Bride/Game of Thrones/Kill Bill thrown in for good measure. The end result left me...I’m not sure what to call it. I wasn’t apathetic so much as disengaged? Disinterested? Detached? Some mixture of all three? Ultimately, I simply didn’t care.

I didn’t care about the action, the story, and certainly not any of the characters. 

Even the soundtrack did nothing for me. 

Not having any credit scenes to latch onto and sense of what's ahead?  Didn't care beyond wasting time not getting to the bathroom sooner (those small drinks aren't that small). Hell, now that I think about it, I actually didn't really look at the credits as so much "sit" through them and that's not me at all.

For a movie running a mere hour forty-seven minutes Supergirl felt so much longer sitting there. In a large theater that was 3/4 full it was dead quiet the entire film. No talking, no laughing, nothing. Zero audience energy or vibe as if I was the only one there, without the thrill of having a theater completely to myself. It was kind of unnerving.

I feel like technically the movie is fine/solid but for whatever reason it did nothing for me beyond get me out of the house for a couple of hours to enjoy someone else’s AC on an 110° day and snacks I shouldn't have been eating.

So, if you made it this far, I apologize but I’m gonna have to disappoint and file Supergirl as one of those rare films I can’t even begin to rate. I didn’t get anything out of it one way or another beyond a successful inaugural run of my new snack hoodie and time out of the house.  

If you do check this one out, please drop some comments to let me know your thoughts, impressions, and tell me what I’m missing on this one. It's really bothering me how much this one just washed over me leaving no impression.

Supergirl get a N/A rating from me.

#Supergirl

Toy Story 5

 

It’s been 30 years, yes, 30, since Pixar took the world by storm with the original Toy Story the first fully digitally animated film. This week, Disney/Pixar returned to the franchise and released its fourth sequel, Toy Story 5. 

Normally, I’d be waiting with bated breath to check this one out, but really not liking the fourth film I went into this one with a great deal of apprehension and only a modicum of hope for a better viewer experience. Something I was seriously doubting when the woman next to me only stopped talking when the movie began because texting and scrolling through her phone was her new priority. 

Absolutely fitting given the tech takeover theme of the movie. She totally missed that part by the way.

Anywho. 

Moving on.

Overall, at the end of the day, I found Toy Story 5 more enjoyable film than Toy Story 4 but it’s still a pale comparison to 1 - 3. TS5, is a course correction for certain. There’s a concerted attempt to recapture the spirit, themes, relationships, and heart of the first three films while still building on those introduced in the fourth. The effort is a bit of a mixed bad but succeeds more than it fails.

The first third of the film is a bit mid and while nostalgia carries you through the story lays there and I found myself waiting for something to really cling to and get me invested. Thankfully the film slowly but surely gets better and more engaging around the halfway mark and finished fairly strong.

Unlike any of the previous films, Toy Story 5 switches focus and is all about Jessie reducing everyone else to supporting characters. While it’s comforting to see so many aspects of Jessie’s story retold, it feels a bit unnecessary to rehash so much from such a well-developed character and doesn’t leave much room for more growth. 

In fact, once again, most of the characters are done dirty having lost the growth they’ve gained in previous films, getting glossed over, underutilized, or rendered inconsequential in order to drive the plot in a lazy, contrived, instead of organic way. 

One of the driving tenets of Pixar over the years which has made many of their films so beloved was the basic story above all storytelling. First and foremost, everything served the story, moved it forward, was true to the characters. Toy Story 5 feels like someone missed or ignored that memo. Lots of scenes/aspects of the film are fun, cute, enjoyable individually, but really don’t serve the film in its entirety beyond easy plot devices or something fun, cute, and enjoyable yet irrelevant to the story.

I think that’s the biggest issue for this film across the board. There isn’t much here that we haven’t seen and felt in previous films that was done with better execution, heart, and emotion.

Toy Story 5 is a beautifully animated, visually stunning, hit and miss humorous, muddle that will make you smile, overall entertains, but will have you wanting to rewatch the original trilogy more than anything else. It's not a bad film, but it's one that definitely makes me wish they'd had stopped the sequels when they originally intended and that they don't feel the need to make any more.

I’ve been flip flopping on rating this one for over 24 hours now and am still largely undecided. However, I don't want to put any more thought into it so I’m giving Toy Story 5 an unsettled 6.5 - 7. Probably a higher rating than I should, but I’m going with emotion over reason today.

#ToyStory5

Disclosure Day

Movie Review: Disclosure Day

Temperatures are starting to rise not only ushering in the need to take refuge indoors but anticipation of this summer’s movie offerings. This week Steven Spielberg returns to his sci-fi roots with Disclosure Day a film touted to be closer to truth than fiction by the man himself. 

Unlike E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Disclosure Day is more of a rejection of traditional “sci-fi” films in that the question isn’t are we alone in the universe but whether the truth of that answer belongs to everyone and would that knowledge finally unite humanity and repair our broken society or destroy it once and for all.

Disclosure Day unfolds like an X-File. Question upon question from the onset, many slowly answered over the film’s two-hour twenty-five-minute runtime, others glossed over, and a few left unaddressed and open for thought and debate. This alone will no doubt make this film divisive and unsatisfactory for some viewers. 

I for one don’t count myself among them.

Yes, I spent a good chunk of the film asking myself what the hell was going on. Who’s this? Who are they? Are these the “bad” guys of the “good” guys? Who should I trust? Why? And so on and so forth. I enjoyed trying to “piece” together the story and enjoyed the discovery of where things were going. 

The questioning is everything in this film for both the characters and the audience. So, if you aren't one to enjoy not being spoon fed a narrative every step of the way, you're not going to enjoy this one. You have to do a bit of work for this one and things are open ended.

There are nicely placed references, familiar tropes, humor, thrilling action, another sweeping/moving John Williams score that's subtle but enhances, quality visual effects, gorgeous cinematography, first-rate acting and characterization.

Speaking of acting and characterization. 

Emily Blunt. 

Wow does this woman deliver the goods. A chef’s kiss performance from start to finish. She’s definitely the glue that holds this film together and elevates it to new heights. Colin Firth and Colman Domingo bring the gravitas in their powerhouse performances that makes their game of chess shine bright. Eve Hewson, Josh O'Connor, and Henry Lloyd-Hughes keep things grounded and engaging.  

Disclosure Day is unique in approach, dropping us into the film in the middle of the third act, continuing on as a sustained chase through to the end, forcing the audience to try to catch up. It’s entertaining, well-paced, thought provoking, unsettling, imaginative, artistic, and grounded. It challenges the viewer in the best way possible and is a worthy opus to Spielberg’s extraterrestrial exploration.

I enjoyed Disclosure Day and it gets a solid 8.5 - 9 from me.

#DisclosureDay