An embarrassment of witches!
Literally hits the ground running and never stops for a moment. A little Too Much Movie, even though it clocks in at a modest-for-modern-MCU 2 hours. Feels like true comic book storytelling, with all the metatextual thrills and frustrating contrivances that implies. A couple of cameos clearly meant to make the nerds go apeshit barely got a peep out of my opening night crowd. I can't say I'm terribly happy with the pandering choices that were…
*90 minutes* in, during a quiet moment, a woman leaned over to her husband and stage whispered "This is strange!". Then on their way out of the theater she said, "That was weird but good!"
Maybe it was the fantastic trailer that A24 put out, but something is drawing out the normies for this one. It was a surprisingly packed crowd for a Sunday matinee. Mark my words, this thing has legs. We are looking at an instant classic. America has Daniels fever!
...
Oh, what did I think? It was weird... but also, like, really good too!
Whoever introduced Michael Bay to drones deserves a medal. This is a 40 million dollar film that feels like a 100 million dollar film, and a 2 hour picture that feels 4 hours long... in a good way! Takes a killer premise and adds so many wrinkles that the script must have been printed on corduroy. Overflowing with screaming, smashing, and moral equivocation. The MOST movie you are going to see this year.
In retrospect it was utterly criminal that…
Slightly more coherent than the Venom films, even if it similarly feels like it got walked back from an R rating with a couple of hasty edits. A fleeing thug casually drops an f-bomb! Badguy blood repeatedly spatters the screen, but it's so dark it's almost black so it doesn't count!
Hate the toxic monoculture all you like, but there's no denying that Kevin Feige has mastered the art of spinning straw into gold. Meanwhile his peers are still kicking…
I'm beginning to lose faith in short films as a medium. Scraped together a couple million dollars and think you have something to say? Lol, no you fucking don't. 9 times out of 10 it's gonna come off pretentious, or tasteless, or both. At least this one isn't just a glorified demo reel angling for a feature gig as far as I can tell.
Matt Reeves remains an unparalleled visual stylist when it comes to blockbuster action. This film contains possibly one of the greatest car chases ever put to film, as well as a realistic update on a classic Bat-gadget the reveal of which made me literally cheer. This is a fantastic cast giving committed performances, but... this script just suuucks, y'all. When your plot hinges on riddles, you're obligated to hang your hat on a contrivance less stupid than your hero not…
On the one hand, this is a delightful throwback, Emmerich doing what he does best: a big, dumb-as-rocks disaster movie with problematic liberal values leaking out of its ears. On the other, it's maybe too modernized, allowing itself to become overly complicated with a third act exposition dump that weighs things down right when it should be reaching its climax.
But it still knows when to shut up and play the hits: ragtag heroes, family melodrama, comically implausible chase scenes…