KWIF: Blue Beetle (+2)

 KWIF is Kent's Week in Film, but more like Kent's A Few Weeks Ago in Film...KAFWAF?

This Week:
Blue Beetle (2023, d. Angel Manuel Soto - Crave)
Parker (2013, d. Taylor Hackford - AmazonPrime)
Repeat Performance (1947, d. Alfred L. Werker - Criterion Channel)

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Blue Beetle is a back-to-basics superhero origin story with an injection of Texan Mexican-American culture and family values. So, maybe not so basic.

There may not be a massive collective of Blue Beetle ultra-heads out there, but it seems writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer is one of them. The amount of comics-derived Beetle lore he injects into this script, and thus forcing the production to visualize all this madness, is utterly remarkable. As a guy who is one rung down from being a Blue Beetle ultra-fan myself (both Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes are on my top 5 all-time favourite superhero characters list), I delighted in every ounce of it, even when the script makes a few blatant left turns, like introducing Ted Kord's daughter(!?), and shifting the relationship Jaime has with his scarab.

I don't mind what they did with either, but I really wish, in the exploration of what makes Jaime's relationship with his family so special, they also explored what makes his relationship with the scarab so special. In the comics and Young Justice cartoon, the scarab is a super weapon intent on being a super weapon, but Jaime has the ability to keep it under control. Here, the scarab takes a marginally passive role, bending to Jaime's wishes rather quickly, but also acting as advisor to him. It's a less dramatic relationship but the film probably wouldn't work the same way with it being more contentious.  Even still, it doesn't spend enough time with Jaime and the scarab coming to terms with each other (I think about the scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming where Spidey's engaging with his onboard AI and we don't really get a scene like that here).  The alien-ness of the scarab is used a little too sparingly.

I found the humour of the film largely fell pretty flat and was very dependent on screaming (as Toasty pointed out). Given how the film leans in very heavily on these humourous moments for basically the first two acts, it's kind of a shame we're actively yelled at for much of the film's run time. But you know who likes yelling-as-comedy? The kids, if half the animate programming on TV is any indication.

The third act, where many a superhero film falls apart or descends into cgi goop, here is where Blue Beetle triumphs the most, letting all the players in on the action, giving most of them meaningful things to do, and delivering a thematically apt finale. Go Nana! 

I like that this film made little attempt to world build outside of its own neon-drenched El Paso-analog pocket of the DC Universe. A brief mention of Superman and the Flash (and calling Batman a fascist) is more than enough to tell us what world were in. Jaime's not vying for a spot on the Justice League roster, he's just a college grad, deeply in dept, looking for a job, who happens to get an alien bug weapon integrated into his spine. That old saw.

I wish I could downright love that a Blue Beetle movie exists, although I do genuinely appreciate that this one does. I've wanted for years for there to be a Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle movie, hoping it would be a smash success and see little kids wearing the scarab backpack, running and jumping around screaming "I'm Blue Beetle".  This wasn't a big enough hit for that, unfortunately. 

I think the translation of the suit from comics to screen is incredible, and I like the cast, if not all the yelling in their performances. I'm not fully enamoured with the final product but that's at least in part because, as Toasty said, superhero fatigue is real. I think 20 years ago I would have embraced this much more fully...but then Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle didn't exist until 2006 (RIP Keith Giffen). 

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There have been a number of cinematic interpretations of Richard Stark's Parker (Stark being Donald Westlake's pseudonym for his two dozen hardboiled crime novels starring the character of Parker), played by many tough guy actors. Lee Marvin in Point Blank, Jim Brown in The Split, Robert Duvall in The Outfit, and Mel Gibson in Payback, among others. The interesting thing about these previous adaptations of Stark's Parker is that none of them featured the character "Parker". Westlake, it's siad, wouldn't permit use of the character's name unless the studio licensing his work committed to at least three films.

That Jason Statham plays a character named Parker in a film titled Parker, something Westlake's widow agreed to with the producers, somehow seems like a slap in the face to Westlake's wishes.  Maybe it only is in hindsight, given how frustratingly awful the end result is.

I'm no superfan. As I am with most things, I'm an avid tourist, just popping in, absorbing and appreciating some of the experience, without dedicating myself to it.  In this case, just prior to watching Parker I had just finished reading the omnibus of Darwyn Cooke's loving adaptations of a few of Richard Stark's Parker stories. This certainly isn't that.

It's not even that Statham's Parker doesn't at all seem to be the same character I just read, or that Statham's Parker is indistinguishable from almost any other Statham character, or even the unambitious Hollywoodizing of a Parker story (it absolutely stalls out whenever it jumps to Jennifer Lopez's character...not JLos fault, it's the script), it's that Taylor Hackford shoots the goddamn thing like its an episode of NCIS. It's one of the ugliest, sloppiest 30-million dollar production I've seen in a long while. It's got an incredibly stacked support cast (Michael Chiklis, Wendell Pierce, Clifton Collins Jr., Nick Nolte, Patty Lupone, Bobby Cannavale) that all deserve much better than to be treated like tertiary local hires. It's also got a godawful soundtrack that made me feel slightly ill, and horrendous editing that seemed to do nothing to help the story progress with any finesse.

It was very difficult transition going from Cooke's incredible passion project of delicately translating Westlake's stories and characters so precisely and creatively, with a gorgeously illustrated, stylized 50's setting, to this atrocity in which nobody at all seems to care about the quality of the final product.  

Rumour has it Shane Black's attempting a series of Parker stories with Mark Whalberg as the lead. From Black's repertoire, it's clear he can do justice to this material, but I cannot stand Whalberg, and he's an immediate deterrent for me watching a film (even more than Statham, Whalberg's a guy who can't really play anything but the same character over an over). 

Skip it all, go read Cooke's comics (or the original novels).

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From pseudo-noir to actual noir, I recently watched Repeat Performance, a part of Criterion Channel's "Holiday Noir" selections this December. My desire was to get away from Hallmarkies for this year's XMas Advent Calendar, and thought this Noir category would be the perfect distraction. Alas, the "Holiday" of this "Holiday Noir" is New Years Eve, not Christmas.

There are still others to watch, even ones that clearly identify themselves as Christmastime movies, but I chose this one first since it features some timey-wimey shenanigans that are obviously totally in my wheelhouse.

Here Sheila (Joan Lesley) is an actress subjugated by her husband, Barney (Louis Hayward). She winds up shooting him on New Year's Eve in self-defence. She's distraught, and in the process of heading to her play's producer looking for help, she wishes she could do the year over again, and by the time she reaches the top of the stairs, the clock has rewound by a year.  It takes her a while to realize that she is not going mad, and upon returning home, seeing Barney alive, she starts trying to manipulate the timeline, to prevent Barney (a struggling playwright) from meeting Paula (a successful playwright played by Virginia Field ) and having an affair that both kills their marriage and, quite literally, kills one of them. But every effort to change the tides of fortune result in either further cementing the inevitable or maybe even making things worse.

True to Criterion Channel's assessment, Repeat Performance does feel like a prototype for The Twilight Zone complete with an opening voice over narration that sounds similar to (but isn't) Rod Serling. It's a fairly compelling film despite some pretty hammy acting (Hayward leading the charge on that one) and being absolutely drenched in sexism, both outwardly in the story and intrinsically in the script. The whole movie is really not about Sheila trying to stop the events that wind up with her killing Barney, but, instead trying to save her marriage to a drunken, depressed, jealous, washed-up, pathetic man that she inexplicably loves to the point of reversing time to try and save. It's a noir, so it sustains its fatalistic tone pretty well, but it's hard to root for a character who spends an entire year making one big mistake.

I was really hoping at the very end to find that Sheila kills Barney again, heads to the same stairs only to find herself, once again, a year earlier...stuck in a horrific time loop she can't emotionally escape. Alas, it twists the ending into a tale fooling fate, just enough to be quite satisfying.

A fascinatingly terrible story, but a good production overall.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Wrecking Crew

2026, Angel Manuel Soto (Blue Beetle) -- Amazon

I did not enjoy Blue Beetle and all its screaming, and yet I enjoyed this comedy-action movie, even with its screaming & swearing; well, at least for the first two acts. We took a break after the first two acts, because it was my bed time, and came back to a movie that felt it was directed by the man who made Blue Beetle even though I didn't know it was his, until the credits were rolling.

But, what I liked. 

Soto exchanges the Latinx experience for a Hawaiian one, except, of the primary cast, only Jason Momoa has any real Hawaiian heritage, instead having people of New Zealand, Somoa and Fillipino culture, along with some stunt casting of actual Hawaiians as supporting cast. OK, I guess I didn't really like that, but Hollywood wants faces, so at least they took Pacific cultures. Sigh. Anywayz, its a light hearted, action-comedy by way of a murder-mystery with family challenges, and almost followed the format of the grimy detective story, but using suspended cop Jonny Hale (Jason Momoa, Aquaman) and Navy SEAL James (Dave Bautista, Guardians of the Galaxy) investigating the murder of their father Walter, who was a private dick, and a man they both actually loathed.

Jonny and James do not like each other. They are half-brothers and Jonny still resents James for not helping him investigate the murder of his mother when they were teens. Jonny is only back for the funeral, and to annoy James, but he cannot help himself but to start digging into the death, even when warned off by local thugs, and the cops. As Jonny pokes around they add Pika (Jason Batalon, Reginald the Vampire) to the mix, who plays the role of the fat nerdy tech kid. Eventually James is onboard with the investigating, and they even go so far as dressing up as wait staff to infiltrate the local corrupt land developer's party. It does not play well.

Its at this point I realize we are watching an 80s buddy investigator show, like Magnum PI or Simon & Simon except a wee bit more twisted. The half-brothers are constantly arguing, and Jonny's barbs are hilarious, as is his constant Japanese pop-culture references. There are enough one-liners between the two that had me charmed by the characters, especially the supporting cast of the brothers' cousins.

And then it had to go and ruin it with over the top violence. I mean, I know its an action flick, but it starts with the Yakuza attacking the brothers downtown, leading to a number of bystanders dying as the bullets fly. To be fair, the brothers do their best to get people to safety and take out the Bad Guys but... I still hate collateral damage, which is why I hated, utterly HATED the inevitable car chase scene. Its set on a highway, and it grabs the helicopter-vs-car trope and probably ends the lives of at least 50 innocent bystanders in fiery explosions and crashes, adding insult to injury in that the brothers are never held to account for it. We don't even see it make the news! If Yakuza and other corrupt gangsters were slaughtering people in the streets, most movies would at least mention the mobilization of a task force or local anti-terrorist squad. But no, this is just played for bloody, bone crunching, blood spewing, cars-exploding "fun" so the characters could come out of it bloodied & battered. At least we got to see Jonny's ex-GF Valentina (Morena Baccarin, Elevation) do some kick-ass driving.

I have decided to head-canon this movie into a setup for a new Hawaiian-based TV series from Amazon. We've got our Magnum PI reboot and they already had it cross-over with the Hawaii 5-0 reboot, but this new show could come at it from the indigenous experience. We could enjoy the 80s-style re-casting of the main characters but also do some more stunt-casting by having at least one supporting cast member stay in the new show. Maybe Pika.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Blue Beetle

2023, Angel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) -- download

Hey superhero movie directors. I would prefer if you didn't always try to make (Marvel's) The Avengers only to end up making Iron Man 2.

I am not going to do my usual recap of the plot of the movie, not even a fun-panning one, because ... well, I just cannot be bothered. I did not really enjoy this movie, and it all comes down to the expected reason -- superhero movie formula fatigue. While striving to make a superhero movie for the latinx experience in the US and a nostalgic feel for "classic superhero movies", it ends up just feeling like an off-budget movie with lots of money. It has a tenuous connection to the DC Universe at large, and as we know from the Gunn and Safran takeover at DC, it will have little inclusion going forward. Think of this as just another abandoned property like Black Adam was. If you want a really, true to form, superhero movie franchise for the latinx experience, go watch the Sharkboy and Lavagirl movies from Robert Rodriguez which are way more fun.

Why wasn't it fun? Primarily, for me, because it comes from the scream-at-you school of film making. Everybody in the movie is always screaming for one reason or another. Jaime screams when the blue beetle scarab merges with his body. His entire family screams when they see it. The Bad Guy screams when he absorbs the blue beetle energy converting it into red Bad Guy energy to make his own tubes & nanites (???) armour. Jaime's Crazy Uncle screams for many reasons, including the constant destruction of his pickup truck, which strangely continues to function until the plot no longer wants it to. His Nana screams as she slaughters black suited henchmen with her disco light chain gun (?!?!!). His family screams and moans at the death of a key character. The supporting characters scream every time something tense happens. Since the movie is so intent on going from scream scene to scream scene, it gives us lots of stock tense moments to be screamed at.

At this point in the waning golden years of superhero movie making, I am not sure what they can do to make a movie I will enjoy. Not everything needs to be uber-gritty The Batman but I would prefer if they would at least attempt to be as characteristic as that movie. I mean, if you want an example of how to do a movie from a DC character but to stand out from the crowd.... <waves two arms maniacally in the direction of The Batman>. Sure, it draws upon some of its predecessor energy, but it is still so distinct. This movie just felt like someone made a vision board of all the other superhero movies they wanted to be like, tossed in some purple neon synthwave Hotline Miami obsession and flipped through the comics for some names and cute connections. 

KWIF: Companion (+2)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film.

This Week:
Companion (2025, d. Drew Hancock- rental)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972, d. Ronald Neame - HollywoodSuite)
Juggernaut (1974, d. Richard Lester - Amazonprime)

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Toasty warned me that everything  is a spoiler for Companion. The trailer, the synopsis, the bloody poster. Even saying there is a "spoiler" for Companion is a spoiler. It's kind of impossible to really have a big twist for an audience these days that doesn't give it all away.  Audiences are too story-literate and too savvy, they're going to figure these things out pretty quick.  You can't hang a film on a twist, you've got to have something more going on...and I think Companion never really set out to deceive the audience, well, not in the way you think.  So if you don't want to know anything...stop reading now. Skip past this and head down to The Poseidon Adventure review.

Ready?

There are actually a few twists in Companion, only the first of which I will spoil, because it is the most obvious. We first meet Iris (Sophie Thatcher, Yellowjackets) in the grocery store, she has a meet cute with Josh (Jack Quaid, Star Trek: Lower Decks) and Iris' voice over tells us how much it means to her to fall in love, and also reveals that she's going to kill him by the end of the film. 

this is a spoiler

That's not a spoiler.

We next see Iris waking up in the passenger seat of a self-driving car, Josh beside her, venturing down a long driveway to a modernist forest retreat, the home of Russian businessman Sergey (Rupert Friend). Josh's friend Kat (Megan Suri, Never Have I Ever) is Sergey's mistress, and she has invited him, Iris, and their friend Eli (Harvey Guillén, Blue Beetle) and his boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage, Fargo)  for a weekend getaway. Iris is nervous. She doesn't think Josh's friends like her... specifically Kat.

The next morning Iris finds herself alone with Sergey at the lakeside and he propositions her. Next thing we see is Iris in the doorway of the house covered in blood, a knife in her hand, and Josh shuts her down. Yep, Iris is a robot.  Technically a therapy bot ... that you can have sex with. But Iris is unaware that she's a robot until now and it explodes her world.

The twists and tuns here are pretty fun, and thinly allegorical. It's a film that villainizes toxic masculinity and white entitlement for entertainment purposes without really examining its root causes. It's not interested in where this mindset comes from, just that it's awful and needs to go away by violent means if necessary. It also isn't terribly interested in exploring whether the AI's of Companion are sentient or not, and what rights and or freedoms they should have. It's squarely on the side of Iris and she's who we're rooting for. 

The movie tells us who Iris is from very early on. The way Thatcher walks as Iris is very mechanical, very deliberate. There are turns of phrase, like "it's just the way that you're wired", and Josh's pet name for Iris is "Beep-boop".  When they exit the self-driving car, Josh is reminded to thank the car for the drive.  

This isn't M3GAN, or the Terminator or Battlestar Galactica, even. It's a lighthearted romp that plays with the same suspense-horror tropes of "the final girl gets taken to a secluded location and bad things happen" that seems to be a legit subgenre at this point (recent in mind is Blink Twice), as well as the revenge of the abused or manipulated woman (see also Blink Twice). I was also reminded of Fresh, the way it tries to manipulate you into thinking it's a romance, with its opening meet-cute only to give way to its horror tropes  There's no scares to be had. It's not a horror at all, but it is very entertaining, with some stupendous jump cuts that fill in gaps and provide some good gags, and Thatcher is really likeable and easy to root for.  

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It's New Year's Eve. The cruise liner Poseidon is in its final voyage sailing to Italy? Israel? (It's Athens, but you had to look that up).  It is being decommissioned and is on its way to the scrapyard.  It's been delayed a few days, and the representative of the new owners wants full speed ahead, even though the captain (Leslie Nielson) implores him that the ship needs to take on more ballast. But money is burning and the can be replaced.
As the New Year's countdown begins, reports of an earthquake resulting in a tsunami that will, in short time, quite literally flips the ship...because it couldn't take on more ballast.

The captain will have no time for "I told you so" to the corporate overlord. The flip is sudden and violent. The majority of the ship's population was in the ballroom, and they're now Lionel Ritchie-ing it (he means they're now dancing on the ceiling, except, there's no more dancing). There's a battle of the wills as the "rebel Reverend" Scott (Gene Hackman) and the ship's purser plead to the survivors to follow them. The reverend wishes to move the people to the hull ("God wants brave souls, not quitters"), since it's upside down, that is where rescue will come, while the purser implores the people to stay put and wait for rescue.

In the end only a handful of people follow the reverend.  There's the NYC police detective (Ernest Borgnine) and his new bride, a former sex worker (Stella Stevens). There's the elderly married couple on their first vacation since retiring (Shelly Winters and Jack Albertson). There's the teenager and her boat obsessed younger brother (Pamela Sue Martin and Eric Shea).  There's the Scottish waiter (Roddy McDowall), the hippie folk singer (Carol Lynley), and the lifelong confirmed bachelor (Red Buttons). They make their perilous journey, and not everyone is going to survive.

The Poseidon Adventure is an exceptionally well-made but also exceptionally formulaic film. At the time it probably felt pretty fresh, based of the novel of the same name by Paul Gallico, but the conceit of gathering an ensemble and forging through disaster has become so by-the-book that even one of the first ones still seems pretty derivative.

Constant contention between Hackman and Borgnine creates such manufactured and meaningless drama in the face of crises. The weird obsession teen Martin has with forty-something Hackman is illogical. Lynley's hysterical singer and helpless femme is perhaps my least favourite trope in all of cinema, and Button's is at least 30 years older than her and being a gentleman the whole time, but still he's making a move on her.  And poor Winters is really, really not served well here for all her kindness. Plus, Hackman's self-description of himself as a rebel preacher is ..just...a ridiculous moment among many.

And yet, for all its cliches and corny flaws, The Poseidon Adventure remains a cracking adventure that spins its wheels appropriately for the first act, introducing all the players until the disaster hits and then gets moving and only stops to have those quick little motivational heart-to-hearts that these types of movies have to have to deepen the bond between characters.

It's not fine dining, and it's empty calories in the end, but enjoyable in the consumption.

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After The Poseidon Adventure I was looking for another '70's disaster flick, and happened across the alluringly-titled Juggernaut. Unintentionally it turned out to be another cruise liner-centric flick.

In this case, a ship, the Britannic, has sailed out to sea, when its owners receive a call from a man identifying themself as "Juggernaut" notifyies them that many barrels of explosives have been placed on board, timed to explode in 24 hours and booby-trapped in various ways. He demands a ransom, a modest sum of 500,000 pounds, in exchange for which he will give them the designs for deactivating the bombs.  As a show of his skill he sets off two of them.

The story takes place between the ship and land. On the ship we meet many of the crew and passengers (including the captain, Omar Sharif, his mistress Shirley Knight, and the ship's social director played by an absolutely delightful Roy Kinnear, just trying to make lemonade out of lemons) and on land the investigative team from Scotland Yard plus the cruise owners (including Anthony Hopkins and Ian Holm) are dealing with the Juggernaut situation, as he keeps calling with further instructions and taunts.

In a surprisingly visual sequence, the navy air drop a bomb disposal unit into the ocean near the ship, led by Richard Harris. The deactivation sequences are tense, because it's clear the bomb maker is as good, if not better at making bombs than these men are at dismantling them.

It is a film that is two parts procedural and one part civilian drama, and different parts work better at different times. The first act is a little too unassuming, as it sets up the pieces it doesn't really do a great job of providing a hook to the people we're spending time with (there's a seasick mother and her two rambunctious kids who probably could have been largely cut ), and as much as I like the romantic intrigue between Sharif and Knight, it never really makes sense amidst the two more intense aspects of the film.

Even the hunt for Juggernaut is at times underwhelming, in no small part due to the modest direction of Richard Lester (Superman II) and the entire lack of a score. It's a very British film, a bit obsessed with procedure and bureaucracy, and not all that concerned with flash.

But the moment the parachuting sequence happens, Juggernaut announces itself as something much more than a Poseidon Adventure knock-off, and though it is a very deliberate film, it's star-studded cast ultimately delivers a pretty compelling, if subdued thriller.