Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: How to Contain Your Dragon

Jeremy BeckReviews
Simu Liu in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings could have been a damn good comic-book movie, if only it hadn’t been about the Ten Rings. Neatly ornamented circlets that flash blue-and-purple lightning, these conjoined jewels vest their bearer with cosmic power, which is cool for him but unfortunate for us. I’m sure that blasting bolts of deadly energy from your wrists is an efficient method of laying waste to your enemies; visually speaking, it’s a drag, and so is this film’s prologue, which appears poised to squander the great Tony Leung—saddling him with lank hair and medieval armor, then watching as he magically vaults over and slices through an entire opposing army. He’s lord of the blings, and his growling invulnerability initially marks him as yet another tedious Marvel villain.

Happily, the Ten Rings factor little into Shang-Chi, at least until its predictably torpid climax. Even the tired prologue is something of a feint, seeing as how it’s followed by a second preamble, this one far more elegant. Flashing forward a thousand-odd years to 1996, it finds Leung’s heavy, Xu Wenwu, newly shorn and stumbling into a pastoral grove, where he trades balletic blows with his future wife, Ying Li (Fala Chen); their graceful combat, as much a dance as a fight, recalls the stylish wirework of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And for most of its runtime, Shang-Chi aspires to that level of intimacy and fluidity, eschewing CGI pyrotechnics and globe-altering stakes in favor of taut action and clenched family drama. Read More

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Candyman: Mirror, Mirror, Time to Maul

Jeremy BeckReviews
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in Candyman

The premise of Candyman has always struck me as a peculiar illustration of risk versus reward. Most supernatural summonings involve some sort of Faustian bargain; sure, the heroes of Bedazzled, The Picture of Dorian Grey, and Rosemary’s Baby all sold their souls (or their son), but they at least got something out of it. Here, the lore is far less complicated, and commensurately less appetizing: Say the name “Candyman” five times while looking into the mirror, and his reflection will appear… and will promptly kill you. To me, such a proposition is in no way enticing. At least the dude in Mephisto can claim to have been duped; if you want to blame someone for getting your throat sliced open by Candyman, all you need to do is look in the mirror.

To its credit, this new Candyman, which was directed by Nia DaCosta from a script she wrote with Win Rosenfeld and modern horror impresario Jordan Peele, is at least partly aware of this absurdity; when one character learns of the legend, she understandably asks, “Who would do that?” followed by a very funny smash cut to a gaggle of vapid high school girls commencing the ritual. In any event, narrative plausibility is not DaCosta’s concern. She’s more interested in fusing the visceral with the political—in making a spine-chilling horror movie that doubles as a trenchant commentary on Black life in contemporary America. She isn’t entirely successful. As a metaphorical text, Candyman is admirable but awkward, struggling to vibrate with its desired resonance. But as a fright fest, it’s pretty good—not exactly scary, but engrossing and polished. There’s plenty of poise to go along with the blood. Read More

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Original Screenplay Weekend! On Annette, Reminiscence, and the Night House

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Rebecca Hall in The Night House; Rebecca Ferguson and Hugh Jackman in Reminiscence; Adam Driver in Annette

Some original screenplays are more original than others. Last week, for example, I reviewed Disney’s Free Guy, a jumbled, weirdly fascinating action comedy that prides itself on not being based on any existing intellectual property, then spins an entire film from references to (and rip-offs of) other intellectual properties. I was happy to see Free Guy perform well (it’s now spawning a sequel, naturally), if only because I want studios to keep making original movies. As if by magic, this past weekend featured the release of three such pictures, a veritable bonanza of novel #content. (Technically there were four, but I failed to make time for Martin Campbell’s The Protégé.) None is a perfect film—in fact, all three have considerable problems—but my disappointment is tempered by my enthusiasm for their very existence. I didn’t love any of these movies, but I did love that I was able to watch them.

Of the trio, The Night House is the most conventional, which isn’t to say it’s typical. Directed by David Bruckner from a script by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, it’s a ruminative ghost story that’s less interested in freaking you out than pulling you in. Its heroine, a high school English teacher named Beth (a fantastic Rebecca Hall), isn’t just the frightened resident of a haunted house; she’s also a little bit scary herself. An early scene, in which she calmly shames a grade-grubbing parent into stunned silence, reveals her capacity for blunt anger, while a night out with colleagues quickly turns into an unhappy hour where busybodies tiptoe around a powder keg. Read More

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Free Guy: Leveling Up, One Cross-Promotion at a Time

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ryan Reynolds in "Free Guy"

Once you acknowledge that it’s creatively bankrupt, Free Guy becomes a reasonably diverting time at the movies. It’s a work of benevolent fraud, like an identity thief who steals your credit card and then buys you some cool shit before jetting off to Cancun. It’s also a fascinating document for where it sits in today’s precarious blockbuster landscape: a big-budget original screenplay that nonetheless feels awkwardly bootstrapped to the superior pictures it’s imitating. It’s an original copy—an organic movie with a synthetic soul.

Free Guy was technically directed by the journeyman Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Real Steel), but its true authorship is corporate. It’s being distributed under the banner of “20th Century Studios”, which means it was initially developed at Fox before that company was acquired by Disney, the insatiable commercial behemoth that currently owns roughly 98% of the market share. The film’s first trailer, which premiered back during the Before Times of December 2019, winkingly ridiculed the Mouse House’s penchant for recycling old hits (“from the studio that brought you Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King… twice”), but Free Guy occupies a curious double-zone; even as it’s trumpeting its original bona fides at every turn, it’s continually leveraging its preexisting brand in the hope of launching yet another merchandise-friendly franchise. Read More

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The Suicide Squad: I Think I’m Gonna Thrill Myself

Jeremy BeckReviews
John Cena in Idris Elba in The Suicide Squad

What makes a good superhero movie? Given the routine onslaught of costumed crusaders at the multiplex, the question seems pertinent. It also seems irrelevant, as the discourse surrounding the genre’s overall merits—a perpetual battle between triumphant, weirdly hostile fans (comics rule, deal with it!) and bitter, exasperated detractors (get a life, nerds!)—tends to feel preprogrammed, regardless of the particular installment at issue. But even if all superhero flicks are the same, some are less the same than others. And The Suicide Squad, the entertaining and ridiculous sequel/reboot/standalone/whatever from James Gunn, possesses an unusually keen understanding of how such films should work. Funny, colorful, and only occasionally tedious, it keys in on two fundamental truths: Superheroes are comedians, and superheroes are psychopaths.

It’s easy to miss that second one, as popular culture tends to connote masked vigilantism with virtuous qualities: responsibility, integrity, sacrifice. (They’re called superheroes, after all.) The job’s less savory aspects—the constant deception, the maniacal narcissism, the extralegal beatdowns—tend to be secondary considerations, or obstacles of self-doubt that the protagonist must hurdle en route to saving the world and getting the girl. One nice thing about The Suicide Squad is that it scarcely bothers to imbue its demented warriors with any righteousness or internal conflict. Instead, their motivations are squarely selfish; most of them are convicts, and they agree to participate in the obligatory searching and rescuing in exchange for years being shaved off their prison sentences. And of course, if any of them misbehaves or goes off mission, then their no-nonsense director, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, all business), will remotely detonate the explosive charge embedded in their skull. Read More

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