Cinema Dispatch: Thunderbolts*

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Thunderbolts* and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Jake Schreier

I’ll say this about the Marvel movies. The Superhero Fatigue that everyone brings up is definitely overblown, but there is something a little soulless about the assembly line nature of their productions, and if Phase 5 can be said to have any significant flaw, it really took the shine off of the artistic side of things, as no one seems to have been benefitting from their involvement in them. Perhaps this is why Sinners, which I will be reviewing very soon, has been such a breath of fresh air for critics and audiences alike who are looking for something beyond the movie itself to root for; a story to tell that isn’t just a giant corporation hiring good artists to make perfectly fine products over and over again. Still, it’s hard to argue that the system hasn’t been working just fine for Marvel, and while I don’t know who Jake Schreier is beyond the solid reputation of Robot & Frank, I’m always interested to see what a filmmaker like this can do on the Mouse House’s dime. Is this another great entry in the MCU’s already impressive catalog, or are they desperately scrapping the bottom of the barrel to keep this machine going? Let’s find out!!

It seems that Disney is not the only one who misses the halcyon days of the original Avengers as everyone in the MCU is desperately trying to make that lightning strike twice; none more so than Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) whose company OXE Group has been putting superhero rejects on their payroll and performing secret experiments too horrific to describe. With congress on her heels, no doubt encouraged by the junior congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Valentina needs to wipe the slate clean by destroying all evidence and any witnesses to her crimes which include Black Widow’s sister Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), US Agent John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen); all of whom have done wet work for her and are eminently disposable in her eyes. Things don’t go as planned, however, as these castoffs find just enough common ground to try and work together to stop Valentina and whatever sinister plot she has up her sleeves. What secrets is she so desperate to hide, and do they involve a mysterious guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman), whose presence is a mystery even to himself? What convinced these B-list superheroes to work for such an obvious jerk anyway, and could Yelena’s father The Red Guardian (David Harbour) show them the proper path to being true heroes? Is the whole Losers as Superheroes trope a bit played out at this point, or is it just a sign of the times that our generation relate to losers more than anyone else?

“As they say in the old country, the bootstraps are mightier than the sword!”     “Shut up, dad.”
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Cinema Dispatch: A Minecraft Movie

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

A Minecraft Movie and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Jared Hess

I’m getting too old for this. I’m sure I’ve said that before, but it’s only getting truer with time as the generation after me starts to come into its own. I suppose Minecraft was something of my own generation, but it had never clicked with me back when it was new, and I’m certainly not about to dive back into it now; even if it would bring a bit more insight into what the heck is going on in this movie. Besides, I brought my seventeen-year-old cousin to the theater with me, so he was able to explain quite a few of the references. Now Millennials are no strangers to irreverence and inanity as we grew up with Internet 1.0 and Newgrounds, but rarely has that aspect of our pop culture been put on the big screen; especially with such an exorbitant budget and big name stars. Is there enough juice to squeeze out of this franchise to make an entertaining movie for all ages, or will I finally understand what my grandma went through when I dragged her to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie all those years ago? Let’s find out!!

Stuck in a rut and yearning for more in life, a Man called Steve (Jack Black) ventures into the mines to dig out his destiny, and wouldn’t you know it! He finds a cube that takes him to a land of square shaped geometry and similarly boxy creatures! Some of them are friendly like the villagers and his pet wolf (), but others have bad attitudes such as the pigs from the Netherworld who wish to take over the Overworld where Steve now resides. Seeking to protect his new home, he sends the magic cube to his world so it will stay out of rich of the pigs, and it winds up in the possession of Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa) whose entire personality revolves around a video game tournament he won in the eighties. With the help of the new kid in town Henry (Sebastian Hansen), he haplessly uses the power of the cube to go to the Overworld along with Henry’s sister Natalie (Emma Myers) and the local real estate agent Dawn (Danielle Brooks). Now that the cube is back within the reach of the pigs and their leader Malgosha (Rachel House), these four must unite with Steven and find a way back home to keep the Overworld safe once and for all! Will this call to action turn these misfits into heroes, or will this journey simply reveal how much growing up they still have to do? What wonders does this world contain, and are there enough of them to fill a ninety-minute movie? Wouldn’t the audience for a Minecraft movie much rather see the movie recreated in Minecraft?

“You’ve got to think three steps ahead. We’ll recreate the movie in Minecraft, ONLY using sheep! THIS is how we reach the Gen Alphas!!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Black Bag & Presence

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Steven Soderbergh is one of those directors I just never managed to connect with.  I’ve only seen a handful of his movies, and aside from The Informant, I don’t think I cared much for any of them; not even the one Ocean’s movie I saw that didn’t star Sandra Bullock.  I suppose now is as good a time as any to familiarize myself with his work as he’s put out two movies more or less back-to-back, which is a rather impressive feat, but are they two showstopper movies from a prolific creator, or was the quick turnaround time a bad omen that I should have heeded?  Let’s find out!!

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Black Bag

Black Bag is owned by Focus Features

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

In modern day Britain, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is tasked with finding the identity of a traitor in their midst; a job he’s quite good at, but this time comes with a twist.  Among those suspected of stealing a powerful computer virus is his wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) who is also a British Intelligence Office and could have just as skillfully absconded with the code as anyone else he suspects.  With not only national security but his marriage on the line, can George uncover the traitor’s identity, and will he know what to do with that knowledge once all the evidence falls into place?

I’m having a hard time pinning down my exact thoughts on this movie, which is rather fitting for a story about deceit and subterfuge. I left this movie with more positive thoughts than negative, and yet very little of it comes to mind as standout moments or genuinely interesting ideas. It’s a boilerplate spy thriller with much of its style and panache replaced by banality and authenticity, which ends up being an interesting take on the genre, but also lacks a lot of the thrills and fantasy that draws people to these type of movies in the first place. The movie is bookended by dinner parties, which end up being its most interesting scenes, so it feels like we’re just meandering our way from one to the other; occasionally livened up by an all too brief cameo from Pierce Brosnan. So what is it that gives this otherwise middle of the road movie an inkling of greatness? Well, as James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Austin Powers have proven in the past, a good spy movie can go quite far with a compelling main character, and this gives us not one but two. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender don’t just turn in great performances, but have a phenomenal amount of chemistry with a script that constantly has you guessing as to their motives while hoping for the best outcome. Fassbender in particular manages to turn an aloof and distant character into a font of emotional despair through the strength of his subdued yet extremely vulnerable performance. Blanchett has always been perfect casting for the perfect woman, even in shlock like Borderlands, but the role is elevated through the interactions she has with Fassbender which only invests us further in the outcome of this mystery. Their relationship is the heart of the movie, and it’s where it seems that all the effort has gone into, and while a better movie would have incorporated everything else more elegantly and thoughtfully into the relationship drama, it’s strong enough here that I can more or less ignore everything else. Frankly, with its strong emphasis on our main stars and a relatively modest production, the whole thing comes off like a miniseries that was pitched, rejected, and trimmed down to feature length. It would explain why everything else feels very matter of fact, as well as it’s extremely brisk pace, which feels like we’re only just kicking things into gear by the time it decides to start wrapping things up. I appreciate it’s more modest ambitions up to a point, as the depth of the two main characters is certainly enough of a hook to carry a movie, but the scope feels needlessly bloated for something that works on such an intimate level. Dragging not one but two Bond cameos into this leads me to believe that it wants to be taken seriously as a spy film, so in that respect the movie does fail to meet the goals it has set for itself. Still, it can take some solace in the fact that it did something so right that it’s very easy to ignore everything else it got so wrong.

3.5 out of 5
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Cinema Dispatch: Mickey 17

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Mickey 17 and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Bong Joon-Ho

This has been a tough year for a lot of people, least of all me, as I’ve been severely unmotivated to keep things going around here. This ennui is not helped by the less than stellar slate of movies we’ve gotten so far, some of which I’m gonna try and knock out a few reviews for when I’m feeling up to it, but even amidst the fog of banality, there was a ray of sunshine on the horizon with this latest feature by Bong Joon-Ho starring one of my favorite actors today. With so much going wrong in the world, can this prove to be a bright spot to make things feel a little bit better? Let’s find out!!

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is not living his best life on Earth, and like many of us, decides to travel to try and find himself. Well, that and escape debt collectors with chainsaws, but in any case, he and his buddy Timo (Steven Yeun) queue up to get onboard the Nifilheim which is a ship intended to colonize a distant ice planet run by the overtly sinister Mr. and Mrs. Marshall (Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette) who seem to have given up on making Earth Great Again, and are looking for a do-over in their own little fiefdom in space. Timo gets a spot for being a decent pilot, but since Mickey’s only skill is his desperation to escape, he signs up to be an Expendable; basically a worker bee whose DNA is kept on file and gets printed out whenever the current version of him dies. I suppose dying of solar radiation and maintenance blunders is better than getting a chainsaw to the face, but after four years and sixteen dead copies behind him, he’s found himself in a bit of a rut; especially when the planet turns out to have a bunch of creatures on it that is hindering their colonization efforts.  Still, at least between his immortality and his new girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie), he’s managed to find some stability in his life. That is until he comes back from a particularly nasty day out in the snow and realizes that the crew already declared him dead and printed out the eighteenth Mickey. Not only is this new Mickey kind of a jerk, it’s also against protocol for more than one Expendable to exist at the same time, which could mean his Get Out of Death Free card will be revoked; probably via a bullet to the head or a tumble into the engine’s exhaust pipe. Can Mickey and Mickey work together to keep each other alive and out of sight from the ship’s wrathful captain? What is the Niflheim’s ultimate plan for this new world, and what would it mean for the native species whose home they are invading? I suppose this is the best Mickey could hope for, given who’s in charge. After all, who needs health insurance when you’ve got the ultimate 3D printer?

“The best is that we’ve already killed you so now OSHA standards don’t apply! It’s called Double Jeopardy!”     “Oh yeah, I like that movie. Hey, are my eyeballs supposed to be burning?”
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Cinema Dispatch: The Monkey

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

The Monkey and all the images you see in this review are owned by Neon

Directed by Osgood Perkins

There have been many times that I’ve found myself on the wrong side of history when it comes to movies I’ve reviewed, and while I’m more than happy to like movies that others overlooked, it’s less fun when you’re the one person who just didn’t get a critically acclaimed masterpiece. That’s why I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the trailers for this movie, as Osgood’s last few films didn’t really hit the mark for me and this looked like an easy layup for my goofy sensibilities. Will this horror comedy finally bring me onboard the Osgood Perkins train, or will this be a bigger train wreck than that time he starred in Quigley? Let’s find out!!

As young children, brothers Hal and Bill (Christian Convery) find a mysterious monkey figurine that once belonged to their deadbeat dad. Of course, since this is based on a Stephen King story, the Monkey is no mere toy but a harbinger of doom who brings about gruesome and hilarious death whenever its key is turned and its drums are played. After taking the lives of people they care about, they finally dispose of it in a well and go on about their broken lives for thirty-odd years before it mysteriously reappears, which prompts Bill to call Hall as estranged adults (Theo James) and tell him to get rid of it once and for all. Of course, life hasn’t been all that great for Hal, who’s become a deadbeat dad himself and now needs to spend his last week of custody with his son (Colin O’Brien) finding this toy and dealing with it before it kills everyone in their old hometown. Will Hal mend his relationship with both his son and his brother before the Monkey takes them away from him too? What monstrous force is behind the Monkey’s power, and is there more to be afraid of than just a simple toy? I’ll say this for the little guy; his penchant for unexpected and gory demises certainly gives those Final Destination films a run for their money!

“UGH! All over my glasses!?”
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Cinema Dispatch: Captain America: Brave New World

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Captain America: Brave New World and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Julius Onah

Do you know what’s way more tiresome than another MCU movie? Hearing about how tired people are about there being another MCU movie. Marvel Fatigue jumped the shark a long time ago, and frankly, I see enough movies that there’s always a sizable buffer between each superhero outing so it never feels like the MCU is overstaying its welcome. Still, there have been some missteps in recent years after the one-two-three punch of COVID, the death of Chadwick Bosman, and Jonathan Majors being outed as a predator; all of which threw the entire Post-Endgame roadmap into chaos and left us for six years without a Captain America movie to kick-off Anthony Mackie’s run as the character. Is this a case of better late than never with Mackie proving himself to be just as big a star as Chris Evans, or have all the delays and shakeups at Marvel taken the shine off his coronation? Let’s find out!!

Things have changed quite a bit since The Avengers brought everyone back from The Snap; not the least of which being the election of Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) as President of the United States. With a new Commander in Chief looking to write his name in the history books, he works towards a peace treaty that will allow all nations to mine the precious resources from that Celestial that almost destroyed the world back in The Eternals while also trying to convince Captain America Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) to start a new Avengers Initiative to fend off whatever threats are out there waiting to strike. Sadly, these plans are forced to take a back seat when Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) and several others attending a peace talk at the White House try to assassinate the president. Of course, nothing is as it seems, and Sam is not about to let the government throw his friend back in jail. With the help of the new Falcon Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), the two set about to find out what caused those people to become would be assassins and if there is more to the plan than just the death of a President. Can Sam and Joaquin uncover the truth and save Ross’s plans for peace, or will all this chaos only beget more violence on the global stage? Is Ross being upfront with everything that he knows about this latest threat, or are there secrets so terrible that he would put the world at risk to protect them? I mean, I usually trust Harrison Ford no matter what, but still…

“I’m telling you, they BELONG in a museum.”     “Can we at least keep the Infinity Stones separate from each other? Maybe rotate them out of the display case?”
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Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Best Movies of 2024

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Looking back on a year full of disappointments and heartbreak, both for movies and the wider world itself, it can be difficult to focus on what made it tolerable instead of fixating on our despair, but no year can be perfect, and no year is without great movies to talk about. As we head into an already challenging 2025, let’s remind ourselves of the good that’s still out there and why we go out of our way to see movies in the first place. Let’s get started!

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HONORABLE MENTIONS: Kraven the Hunter & Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Kraven Review; Sonic Review

I’m sure giving these movies any spot on my list will raise a few eyebrows; especially when films like Anora and Challengers didn’t make the cut. I suppose when it comes to Honorable Mentions, I’m far more interested in making a point than just simply listing my eleven and twelve spots. See, everyone has a theory about what’s wrong with Hollywood movies these days, and the two most common answers are unasked for superhero movies as well as banal nostalgic shlock. Sure, Sonic has a built-in audience who will give this decent reviews and solid box office returns, but no one was expecting the movie to be anything more than what you see on the poster, and it’s doubly worse for Kraven which was mocked from its announcement all the way up to release date. For me, both of these exceeded the low expectations put on them; not in an exceptional way, but enough to refute the perceived wisdom of many armchair studio heads. You can’t simply write down a list of rules to follow or tropes to avoid and say that it’s the formula for success, as any competent filmmaker with the passion, the talent, and the faith of the producers can make something that’s genuinely entertaining. Sure, it doesn’t always make you money as Kraven tanked at the box office, but a good movie is always a net positive in the world; even if it means we have an old sounding Shadow the Hedgehog or Aaron Taylor Johnson running around like an awkward cheetah.

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Cinema Dispatch: Top 7 films of 2024 That Need Improvement

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

And so we’ve come to the end of another year on this ridiculous little planet, one that had its high points to be sure, but wasn’t lacking for low ones either. I try to keep these Needs Improvement lists more positive than negative, as the over reliance on antagonism and sheer pig headed ignorance has turned film criticism into just another brand for YouTube shouty-bros, and the last thing I want to do is contribute to the noise. The last twelve months certainly haven’t made it easy to keep an upbeat attitude, but we’re all doing our best in these uncertain times as we take a look at movies that just didn’t quite hit the mark. Let’s get started!!

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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

Full Review

I understand why a lot of Tolkien fans would appreciate this movie despite its faults. Taking it in as a mood piece that lets you slip into this world for a couple more hours is a valid way of enjoying this, but I simply could not get past how dull it was for most of its runtime. It has a solid foundation to tell an interesting story, but the dialogue and the characters let it down. There’s a lack of personality among the cast. Lots of emotions to be sure, but everyone who express them doesn’t feel like they exist outside their current predicament. This is especially problematic for our two leads as the motivations of our villain lack any sort of nuance and our hero feels thin as her stoicism and humility are presented to us in place of a personality; leaving the movie with two blocks of wood with anime eyes to revolve the story around. If it were up to me to make this work, I’d cut the whole thing down to the bone, no more than forty minutes, and make it the grand finale of a Lord of the Rings anthology. Animation collections have worked for The Matrix, Batman, Halo, even that recent Star Wars thing on Disney Plus, so why not for Tolkien? Without having to fill the space of an entire movie, the characters could stay as archetypes and legends whose actions are meant to speak louder than the words coming out of their mouths. The animation and action could be fleshed out to better suit the simplified storyline, and without having to explain as much, the characters can come off as much more proactive in the story. Perhaps my suggestions are more a testament to my own attention span, but there had to be a more interesting story to tell in Middle Earth than that one time there was a very long siege!

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Cinema Dispatch: Nosferatu

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Nosferatu and all the images you see in this review are owned by Focus Features

Directed by Robert Eggers

Robert Eggers has been one of my favorite filmmakers to keep an eye on in recent years with The Witch and The Lighthouse being two of the best films in the last decade, and while The Northman wasn’t everything I had hoped it would be, a remake of Nosferatu seemed like the perfect pairing with such a brilliant filmmaker. The original Nosferatu is one of the first great horror movies in cinema and began a long tradition of filmmakers making knockoffs of popular works to avoid copyright laws, and it was even followed by a remake in 1979 that is somehow even better than the original which leaves Eggers with some sizable shoes to fill even for someone as talented as him. Will this latest attempt to reimaging the terror of Count Orlok prove to be the best one yet, or does the shadow loom too large for any modern filmmaker to get out from under? Let’s find out!!

Thomas and Ellen Hutter (Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp) have only just been married, and yet news has come down from Thomas’s employer that he must go to Transylvania to meet with a very important client in the Carpathian Mountains. This Count Orlok or some such (Bill Skarsgård) is an odd fellow, but Thomas’s boss (Simon McBurney) assures him that a deal like this will make his career, and so he goes off to meet the man in the hopes of giving himself an Ellen a fine start on their life as husband and wife. With Ellen staying at their friends, The Hardings (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Courrin), Thomas makes the treacherous journey that leads him to a world far more sinister and terrifying than he could ever imagine. Of course, there is one person who did imagine it as Ellen has been struck with terrifying nightmares of a mysterious creature that will kill everyone around her, and when she starts to have fits in the middle of the night, The Hardings call in Doctor Sievers (Ralph Ineson) to diagnose the mysterious behavior, and when he is left baffled, he enlists the help of Professor Franz (Willem Dafoe) who seems to think that Ellen is right to be afraid of what is coming. What manner of creature does Thomas find at Orlok’s castle, and can he escape the horrors with his body and soul intact? Why does Ellen have this connected to the dark forces surrounding her home, and can this be used to find salvation from the encroaching darkness? Is it just me, or does this sound just as much like a soap opera as it does a horror film?

I felt the same way when they announced Death Stranding 2.
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Cinema Dispatch: Sonic the Hedgehog 3

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures

Directed by Jeff Fowler

The Sonic movies have been only slightly better than mediocre, but I’ve given them praise where it’s been deserved, and audiences have been more than kind as the films have racked up impressive box office numbers. Certainly small potatoes compared to The Super Mario Bros Movie’s billion dollar haul, but Sonic has been jogging behind my main man Mario for over three decades now and is just happy to be in the conversation. With this third movie, however, it’s time for SEGA and Paramount to find out if the audience that turned out for classic Sonic will stick around for the more modern iteration and all the baggage that comes with it. Will this be another hit for our favorite blue hedgehog, or are parents gonna dip out before they have to explain who Rouge the Bat is to their seven-year-olds? Let’s find out!!

Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles (Ben Schwartz, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, and Idris Elba) are enjoying their life of carefree picnics with their adopted human parents Tom and Maddie (James Marsden and Tika Sumpter), but this idyllic situation comes with a price as GUN will occasionally call these three in to deal with whatever strange mess they’ve gotten into now. The latest disaster that our team is airdropped into is a renegade alien that had been in GUN captivity for the last fifty years but has finally escaped and is ready to exact his vengeance on the world. Said renegade, who seems quite ambivalent to good and evil, is Shadow the Hedgehog (Keanu Reeves) who can teleport, has rocket boots, and can glower with the intensity of a thousand suns. He proves to be far stronger than Sonic Team can handle on their own, so they are forced to recruit Ivo Robotnik and his assistant Stone (Jim Carrey and Lee Majdoub) in order to take down the rebellious hedgehog. What secrets are lurking in Shadow’s tragic backstory that has led him to be such a jerk, and is he right to resent GUN as much as he does? Can Robotnik be trusted to stay on the side of good, especially when his and Shadow’s past are far more intertwined than anyone could have realized? Is there any chance we can just root for the bad guys, because they seem like they’re having a lot of fun in this.

I’d say they should start a boy band, but they’ll just start fighting over who gets to be the tough one.
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