“The DCEU hasn’t failed...completely. There is no doubt about it. Wonder Woman hasn’t failed. Justice League may not fail. Warner Brother may not fail. If something embodied by some of the worst action movies ever made can bounce back with this much confidence, then it might just succeed. The DCEU is not dead yet.” ...I wrote that back in June with a feeling of optimism that could only be inspired by a genuine mythmaking exercise of the skill of Wonder Woman. I was a dumbass. Justice League is not only the worst superhero blockbuster of the year, it is a Batman and Robin level disaster of such hysterical proportions that unlike Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice it doesn’t inspire anger but more pity. That movie was trying. Justice League is so thinly sketched out that it compels one to realize that the only thing that motivates it creatively seems to be not being Batman v Superman. It doesn’t seem to matter if this movie was good, it only seems to matter that it existed. That it was a big movie that brought all of these characters together. There’s a tableau of all the characters standing across a CGI background late in the game of this movie that appears and all I felt was embarrassment. This wasn’t a team, this was a group of characters crushed together out of financial necessity, and it is sickening. It is this same horrifying crushing sense that basically defines the entire film. All of the characters, all of the special effects, all of the development just seems crushed in for no reason. This film was supposed to be three hours long and I’d gratefully want to see that version because at two hours, this is horribly uninvolving and just too light. Batman v Superman had the same problem, but it went on for three hours and that was because all of the scenes were terribly apathetic. Justice League feels apathetic because it is cut down too much. There are so many characters repeating lines that are supposed to be character arcs, almost like the movie doesn’t understand what develops characters. It just keeps chugging ahead. It doesn’t help that the cinematography is consistently kneecapping anything that could connect us to a scene. For most part the film is like staring at an image that claims to be symmetrical but never really is. Its distorting and confusing and matched up with the otherwise horrifying digital compositing, the film devolves into looking like a Justice League cartoon rather than an actual Justice League movie. The actors have nothing to hang a performance on either. Ben Affleck should be better in this film but any of the halfway interesting character that he made in Batman v Superman disappears within the nothingness that is his character in this movie. The same goes for Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, so compelling in her own feature, here sadly and suddenly not. Ray Fischer, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Diane Lane, Amy Adams, J.K. Simmons, and HENRY CAVILL all show up, and none of them can manage to make any of this drivel compelling. In fact, while CAVILL acts like the more traditional optimistic Superman that he should have been from the beginning, it just feels so incredibly stupid because the director and writers don’t know how to frame this optimism, which doesn’t contrast with anything else in the movie very well. I’ve waited four movies for Superman to actually grow up and it turns out the best way for him to do so to them was just die. That’s so horrible, horrible character work and SUPERMAN showing up fully formed is just as much of a stupid move as putting a halfway decent, if somewhat nostalgic, Danny Elfman score in the movie but not letting the audience hear it over the sound mix. The DCEU has failed. The rest will fail. There’s so much wrong with this movie that it forces one in the moment to laugh at the startling incompetence on display, but then slowly fall into a stupor predicated on the failings of this film, and many failures there are. This is a horrifying experience, an empty myth, a film categorized by finally showing us the correct version of a character so ingrained in culture that his last two films were superficially contextualized by that ingrained ness and him in his full form still sucks. Justice League is a bad movie, so bad that unlike its predecessor, it doesn't even deserve to be taken apart. GOODBYE DCEU.
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After seeing two incredibly disturbing body horror pictures (that I can’t write about yet), one might not expect to find too much disturbing in the trappings of a drama such as The Florida Project. That is simply not the case. Walking out of The Florida Project, I felt sick. I felt like in some way it was my fault that things like this happen and in some way it is all our faults that stories like this exist. That’s the mastery of The Florida Project right there, it opens your eyes to the reality that our actions, our classes don’t exist in a vacuum, but rather that in the most beautiful place in the world, the ruthless dichotomy of haves and have-nots can still exist. The Florida Project takes place at the Magic Castle motel, just a mile from Disneyworld in Florida. The place is a rundown project, full of broken dreams and managed by Bobby (Willem Dafoe). Yet there is still some light. Moni and her six-year-old friends occupy the space, beaming from ear to ear as they attempt to conquer their childhood days by playing, loving and ignoring the affluence and degradation that surrounds them. They’re children ignorant of their surroundings, representatives of the childishness that comes hand in hand with ignoring the harsh realities that The Florida Project presents. And harsh they are. For its two hour runtime, The Florida Project comes out swinging with almost every aspect of its production. The mere fact that it takes place a mile from DisneyWorld, holds striking political connotations that could warrant an entire book...that I’m going to attempt to sum up right here. The Florida Project is itself a microcosm of a predominant political idea that separates the haves from the have-nots and Disney is the key to all of it. Walt Disney, and the brand that he perpetuated supported the rich white class family, which was again championed by political administrations of the 80’s, that allowed for the development of that group of people but also the disadvantage of other communities such as poorer white communities and the African American community. This connotation brings the poverty of The Florida Project to a disturbing end, with DisneyWorld and everything that it represents almost taunting the people working at the bottom. Sean Baker, a smart director by many, many, respects, also allows this taunting to take an auditory form, with helicopters taking off from the resorts acting as a constant reminder of what others have and what these people want. It all makes you consider the why of these people’s situations, and that can be found pretty explicitly in the text of the film. In the acting, in the dialogue, in the influence of one character on the other. It may be surprising to hear young actress Brooklynn Prince throwing out f-bombs and the b-word, as her little no more than ten self, but it also makes the environmental shaping of the children especially clear. That being said, who shapes the adults is a more difficult question. Moni’s mother, Hailey (Bria Vinante, in a performance so heartbreaking that it makes you feel nauseous) acts quite unprofessionally, but as we can see from her kid, she probably grew up that way and was shaped by the environment around her. Her way of acting isn’t met with understanding or respect, it is simply antagonized and that makes the movie all the more human and crushing. Willem Dafoe really brings the A game though and his character is one of the most tragic figures in modern film. He insists that he will be able to fix things, and you can see him trying to fix the disputes, but he’s too behind the curve. He’s too unaware or unable to keep up with everything. He says he’ll fix a bed bug mattress but he instead throws it out, unable to deal with it. He says he’ll fix the ice machine, but again he throws it away. He promises at the end of the film, to fix some dryers but you know he never will. The Florida Project may be bleak, but its human and in that humanity there can be found a soul. The smile of a child, happy to be alive. The smile of her mother, happy to find friendship. The smile of the landlord, finally having a human moment with a person over a cigarette. You may walk out of The Florida Project, disturbed and upset, but there’s no denying that it is just about perfect. 10 out of 10 |
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |