Quickies to Catch Up (pt 2): Female led thrillers and CG beasts in battle
Friday, June 25, 2021 at 7:42PM by Nathaniel R
In an attempt to clear our cache of notes and fill out that review page for 2021, we're addressing movies we didn't get around to discussing in full for your commenting pleasure. Better late than never! As we were typing these Luca emerged but it's so good it deserves one big post or several little ones before the Oscars so more on that soon. If you missed part one of this review catch-up, that's here. After the jump brief thoughts on four films: Godzilla vs Kong, Mortal Kombat, Those Who Wish Me Dead, and The Woman in the Window...
GODZILLA VS KONG (Adam Wingard) and MORTAL KOMBAT (Simon McQuoid)
You can tell how desperate audiences and critics were for some good big-screen spectacle movies with how relatively warmly both of these films are received since neither of them are much good. Godzilla vs Kong employs a lot of fine actors doing very obvious paycheck-only work -- nobody is even half as affecting within the entire running time as, say, Juliette Binoche was in a single closeup in the first movie. The plot, too, is straight up hooey. Mortal Kombat is even worse on both fronts. The actors feel more invested but have less to play and are not, maybe, as default gifted. But the plot is the true villain as you can literally reduce the narrative to a commercial for a future franchise. The prologue, which is all about preparing for the "Mortal Kombat" tournament, ends up being... the entire movie! Godzilla vs Kong at least has two surprisingly strong all CG action sequences between its titular iconic beasties to its credit. It's hard to make this viewer care when an action scene is entirely CG with no actors present but this film managed it twice, once with an inventive ocean battle and the second time with a more traditional, destroy a city while duking it out mayhem. The action sequences are stronger than in Godzilla: King of Monsters (2019) but nothing in the new film can match the beauty of Mothra or the fierceness of Ghidora from the earlier film so demerits for that. Mortal Kombat doesn't have many visual thrills and has a visibly smaller budget but a few individual beats within the fight setpieces are gorey fun if you're into that. I'm not so I struggled but I can recognize a great action beat when I see it, even if I'm not enjoying it. GvK: C; MK: D+
THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (Taylor Sheridan)
One of those rare movies that starts terribly yet defies the out-of-the-gate stumble to get much better as it goes along (we call that the Juno effect though there are other examples). Curiously its lamest element throughout is the protagonist, which is not something one can often say about Angelina Jolie films given her super-sized charisma. She was basically made in a lab with the only instructions being "MOVIE STAR". Here she plays Hannah, a good time loving daredevil firefighter who has been saddled with a watchtower type position, after freezing up and not being able to save a few kids in a mammoth forest fire. Nothing about Hannah really works with Jolie uncharacteristically stiff as if the time away from headlining movies -- we've only had Maleficent Mistress of Evil in the past six years -- has temporarily deprived her of her gifts. Thankfully the film around her is lean and mean as non-spectacle action movies should always be. Sheridan has already proven himself as a gifted screenwriter in the dramatic thriller genre (Hell or High Water, Sicario) and though this isn't as strong as his underrated previous film, Wind River, it's still a worthwhile watch. The cast is good, too: Nicolas Hoult and Adian Gillen are truly threatening antagonists; Jon Bernthal and Medina Senghore are solidly compelling as a hard-to-kill spouses who are friends of Hannahs; and 15 year old Australian actor Finn Little is remarkable and best in show as the suddenly orphaned child who the baddies wish dead. B/B-
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (Joe Wright)
Joe Wright's career is confusing, isn't it? He has stylishly directed ravishing costume dramas (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina), a now underrated but back then overrated war drama (Darkest Hour), and a violent actioner (Hanna). He's got a large enough filmography to command respect but he doesn't seem to get it (still no Oscar noms despite Oscar noms for his movies). Perhaps the problem is that when his films don't work, they really don't work (Pan, The Soloist) and critics get the knives out. His latest arrived with the stench of the latter group after many delays but in truth it's not that bad -- or at least it's an interesting failure! Amy Adams is solid in the leading role of Anna Fox, an agoraphic psychiatrist, who believes she's witnessed the murder of her chatty neighbor Jane (Julianne Moore). The supporting cast appear to be enjoying themselves which always helps (especially Fred Hechinger from Eighth Grade who lives across the street and Wyatt Russell who is Anna's tenant) but they are largely underused. You're supposed to trust Anna's instincts which is easy to do since she's Amy Adams. At the same time, to sustain narrative tension, you're also supposed to doubt her sanity since something is clearly haunting her --cue mysterious flashback shots of snow. Anna has obviously watched Rear Window way too many times and Wright clues you into her lazy cinephila with split diopter shots of old classics playing on the television while she sleeps or worries or wanders about her (enormous) townhouse. It's a fun recurring visual motif but also damning because this movie can't measure up to the classics it references. C+
P.S. Who would you define as the titular character in Woman in the Window: Amy or Julianne?
Reader Comments (6)
The humans, save for the little girl, were absolutely pointless in GODZILLA VS KONG. But the monster fight action was great fun.
MORTAL KOMBAT was both better (the men were hot) and worse (what plot what movie what) than I expected.
Great brief write-up on Joe Wright's filmography. He has done some of my FAVORITE films and some of the worst movies. I wouldn't put WOMAN IN THE WOMAN as one of his worsts, but it's not good. It just felt so... flat and dour.
I usually dread seeing Jennifer Jason Leigh's name listed in the cast of a film, since my nickname for her is The Black Hole of Acting, but I was shocked at how barely she registers in The Woman in the Window. Seriously wasted. Well, they all are (Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, Anthony Mackie, Tracy Letts) except Adams and Hechinger.
Amy still delivers a gobsmacking performance in Woman in the Window, bur Julianne was so wasted there!
Pauline Kael once wrote about a performance early in a film that was so super-charged you knew it would be the actor'sonly scene in the movie. That's about how I felt about Julianne Moore's scene with Amy Adams at the top of Woman in the Window -- it was certainly alive, but so out-there I knew the character would be gone soon.
These are two of my favorite actresses, so I enjoyed their interplay, and I'm a pretty soft touch for thrillers like these...but the film fairly well went to hell after that, with all dramatic tension relying on the withholding of information/lack of explanation, which is not my favorite style. It's not unwatchable, but generally silly.
I had the strangest reaction to Mortal Kombat, which was that even though I didn’t like the movie very much at all, I somehow came away thinking the series they were clearly trying to establish has the potential to be good. It’s probably exactly what you said: the movie felt like an extended trailer. On its own, it’s not good. But as a setup for a potential franchise, it could have been a lot worse, I suppose. So I guess I didn’t think it was fully bad so much as totally unnecessary. The story—what little there was of it, anyway—could have been condensed to the first half of a better film.
But I will say I was at least glad to see a franchise blockbuster that didn’t undercut every scene with lame jokes or that self-aware sense of irony that defines too many recent action movies. Sure, it can definitely come across as hokey, but at this point I’d take hokeyness in my action movies over irony. It’s still not good, but it at least has a feeling of earnestness that I find is missing in most modern movies of its type. Maybe that’s why I’m remaining open to the series to follow despite not liking this first installment.
I'm hoping they'll get everything right with the MK sequel. I thought there was a lot of fun and some real beautiful visuals in that film. The cast was ALL IN and you can tell which made it fun for me to watch. Creating a new character as an audience surrogate was understandable but a huge miss for me (and most fans). But yeah, my thoughts leaving were WHERES THE DAMN TOURNAMENT? Joe Taslim, Josh Lawson and Max Huang for the win tho.