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“This is where I’m from, but you’re where I belong.” Paddington in Peru and Captain America: Brave New World

27 February 2025

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Advanced warning, this will be a short one. I admit, I escaped to the movie theater today, my place of comfort and retreat, while mover men clambered all around our house packing up all of our worldly possessions. (Side note: today and tomorrow are vacation days for me, although given all that activity it’s hardly what I would call a rejuvenating 48 hours.)

Yesterday, I stayed in the house on conference calls, while the movers were doing their work, and I just couldn’t take it again today. I’m so excited about the future, but it feels like the end of an era to be honest, watching as 20+ years of beloved possessions are packed away by very nice, but complete strangers, seeing a house we have loved so much look increasingly like a war zone. Plus, if one more worker came around the corner and said to me, “Gosh, there sure is a lot more stuff than was in the estimate,” I was likely to scream bloody murder.

So how did I pass the time? By catching up with a double feature of sequel entries in beloved franchises, two films that are perfectly serviceable, completely entertaining, but don’t hold the luster of their predecessors: Paddington in Peru and Captain America: Brave New World.

Surprising no one who has seen the previous two Paddington films, that one was the stronger entry here. It doesn’t quite have the arch, scruffy wit of its forebears, but it still retains all of the warmth and sweetness. I may have cried some ugly tears at the end. It could simply be from exhaustion with this move, but I was deeply affected as Paddington rediscovered his roots in deepest, darkest Peru. The little CGI bear is ably supported by a wonderful cast, including new additions, Olivia Colman, as a literal singing, slightly devious nun and Antonio Banderas, as a non-singing, slightly devious boat captain. Both have a hell of a time, chewing every bit of scenery in their wake, and it works very well.

But the secret weapon of these films remains Paddington, so winsomely voiced by Ben Whishaw. All it takes is one melty glance from the little bear and the film has you in the palm of its hand. When Paddington explains to his adopted human family – The Browns – “This is where I’m from [Peru], but you’re where I belong,” I dare your heart not to pang. It’s worth your time if looking for a late February escape.

Captain America: Brave New World is fine, but seems like a shadow of the superhero spy, clockwork genius of Captain America: Winter Soldier or even Captain America: Civil War. Brave New World fills in all the expected story beats smoothly, but still feels like a diet soda, full of fizz and empty calories. The cast is uniformly excellent and deserves a better script, notably, a gruff and flinty Harrison Ford – is there any other kind of Harrison Ford at this point? Anthony Mackie is terrific as the new Captain America, full of steely swagger and enough side-eyed bewilderment to keep his character interesting. I hope the Marvel machine makes better use of him in the future.

I should also admit that I had to field about four work calls and two calls from the movers during Brave New World so it’s quite possible I missed something integral to the plot, but it says something about the film that every time I returned it didn’t feel like I’d actually missed much at all.

“Sometimes not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.” Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom AND Wonka

3 January 2024

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“Sometimes not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.” – Aquaman’s dad Tom Curry (Temuera Morrison)

“Every good thing in this world started with a dream.” – Willy Wonka’s unnamed mother (Sally Hawkins)

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, contrary to popular reports, is not a bad movie. It’s not a very good movie either. But it is fun and good-hearted in the spirit of big dumb blockbusters from the mid-80s. Director James Wan continues the day-glo world-building from its predecessor.

Wonka, contrary to popular reports, is not a great movie. It’s not a bad movie either. But it is fun and good-hearted in the spirit of big dumb musicals from the late 60s and mid-70s. Director Paul King continues the day-glo world-building from its predecessor.

(Sensing a theme here?)

What both films do really well is explore the ideas of legacy and familial love, both the family you are born into and your “found” family. I would say Wonka does a better job of that than the Aquaman sequel, but taken together (as I did in a post-New Year’s double feature), the films send a loving message about leaning on (and lifting up) friends and family to make the best of a tricky situation … be it preventing a glowy-eyed supervillain from destroying the earth through global warming or a chocolate cartel fixing the prices of yummy confections and driving all competitors out of business. (You can guess which challenge goes with which movie!)

Interestingly, if I had my druthers, I would have suggested some choose-your-own-adventure mashup of the two respective casts. Jason Momoa with his wild child ways actually would have made a far more effective Willy Wonka than the slight, safe Timothée Chalamet. Chalamet is perfectly serviceable as a reedy-voiced song and dance man (Wonka is a musical … Aquaman not so much), but he’s missing the malevolent, unpredictable glee of, say, Gene Wilder who so notably originated the role of Willy Wonka waaaaay back in 1971. Chalamet looks the part and has a (pun-intended) goopy sweetness, but he never delivers that electric charge of creative madness the character requires. Momoa on the other hand nails creative madness on a routine trip to the grocery store.

And then I might swap Patrick Wilson, who plays Aquaman’s ne’er-do-well brother Orm, in for Aquaman himself. Wilson is far more interesting than he’s ever given credit. He looks like he’s carved out of cream cheese (to quote Steel Magnolias) but he has the comic timing and gravitas of someone trained for the Broadway stage (twice Tony-nominated no less!) that would bring some classic zing to the King of the Seas IMHO.

Both films benefit from strong ensemble work, and, like some zany repertory road show, I’d mix and match any and all performers across the films: Sally Hawkins vs. Nicole Kidman as fretting but steely matriarchs in Wonka and Aquaman respectively; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II vs. Paterson Joseph as smoldering but surly baddies Black Manta and Slugworth; Olivia Colman vs. Randall Park for lightly malevolent comic relief; Martin Short vs. Hugh Grant for the “wait, why are THEY in this?” stunt casting (one’s an Oompa Loompa and the other a … fish-man mafia don?). You get the gist.

Oh, and ironically, Aquaman’s totally tubular, synth-rich score by Rupert Gregson-Williams is a smidge more compelling than the songs for Wonka, an actual musical, as composed by The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon. That said, I wouldn’t mind seeing/hearing Wonka’s catchy “Scrub, Scrub” being performed by Aquaman’s CGI deep ocean denizens Topo, the crabby scene stealing cephalopod, and Storm, the majestic bioluminescent seahorse. And Wonka director Paul King does wring a new heartbreaking context from classic Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newley cut “Pure Imagination” toward the conclusion of the prequel. (I’m not crying. You’re crying.)

At this point, anyone reading this “review” has likely given up making head nor (fish) tails of it all. And that’s rather how I feel after having watched both Warner Brothers Discovery flicks. They are fine, fun, decent holiday diversions with enough good in each for you to roll out of bed in your sweatpants and spend an afternoon escaping January’s grey malaise. Both will play far better on a big screen as each film seems to be set-designed by Salvador Dali after raiding a Toys R Us while hopped up on Pixie Stix.

Before we begin our annual slog through Oscar-bait films that *may* be lurking in a theatre near you or are now more likely hidden on some streaming by-way that requires a pricey subscription and/or password you’ve forgotten, go have some big dumb fun at the movies. That’s why we all really love cinema, if we’re truly being honest, Scorsese be damned.

“Perfect. We’ll make a killer of you yet.” The Favourite and Vice

26 December 2018

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“Beware the quiet man.” – proverb that opens the film Vice

Oh, this special and lovely historical moment we are currently surviving, with volatile, temperamental, ill-informed leadership surrounded by hangers-on who benefit more from chaos than peace. You’d think we’d learn from the mistakes of our forebears. Hell, you’d think we’d learn from the mistakes of a decade-or-so ago. Nope. Nada. Nyet.

Blessed be when Hollywood gets something right, and did they ever with the one-two punch of The Favourite and Vice. In essence, these fact-based films tell two versions of the same tale: a sweet-natured autocrat (The Restoration-era’s Queen Anne and post-9/11 President George W. Bush, respectively) whose ineptitude is compensated for/manipulated by courtesans (Sarah Churchill and Abigail Hill and Dick and Lynne Cheney, also respectively) whose Machiavellian desires for power belie a self-satisfied surety that their intentions are noble (even when the outcomes are clearly suspect).

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Both flicks embrace a surreal cinematic visual and aural language as well (in The Favourite, fish-eye lens cinematography, discordant musical queues, and what appears to be hip-hop choreography; in Vice, fourth-wall busting asides, Shakespearean soliloquies, and omniscient narrators) to make abundantly clear that The Favourite and Vice are intended as allegorical cautionary tales for a present-day society that has utterly run off the rails.

“The word is about, there’s something evolving; whatever may come, the world keeps revolving. They say the next big thing is here, that the revolution’s near, but to me it seems quite clear, that it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.” – Shirley Bassey and Propellerheads, “History Repeating.”

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

“Perfect. We’ll make a killer of you yet.” – Sarah Churchill/Lady Marlboro (Rachel Weisz) in The Favourite

The Favourite. So well-acted  and so damn visceral. You can practically smell the powdered wigs … and copious amounts of onscreen vomit. That said, the three leads – Olivia Colman (oh, she’s a freaking lead!), Emma Stone (La La Land, Birdman), and Rachel Weisz (best I’ve EVER liked her) – tear up the screen in a post-feminist, 18th-century-period-piece take-down of patriarchy …working from a twenty-year-old (!) script by Deborah Davis. If there ever was a movie that showed the hell women go through (and sometimes put each other through) when they darn well know how the world SHOULD be run (and nobody will listen), this is it.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Director Yorgos Lanthimos stages an insular and haunting court where palace intrigue is as cruel as it is serendipitous. Lady Marlboro (Weisz) rules the palace and Queen Anne’s (Colman’s) heart with kid-gloved fists, a dominatrix with a heart of gold who manages the day-to-day royal operations as a means toward ultimately setting foreign policy and other matters of state.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Into this delicate spider-web wanders Marlboro’s wide-eyed cousin Abigail (Stone), whose guilelessness is as phony as the rouge on her cheeks. I won’t spoil the fun, but the wit and wisdom in the performances and in the script and the sheer lack of vanity throughout are unlike anything we’ve seen onscreen in quite a while.

And Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: First Class) holds his own with this remarkable trio as Robert Harley, a parliamentarian who finds himself the happy beneficiary of the political blow-back from this unlikeliest of love triangles.

“I’m still the lady I was. In my heart.” – Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) in The Favourite

I wasn’t a huge fan of Adam McKay’s previous biodramedy The Big Short (which just tried too damn hard and was too cute by half for my tastes), but I LOVE its follow-up Vice. A little Macbeth, a bit of Richard III, a smidge of Hee Haw, and a smattering of Mad Magazine.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Christian Bale (American Hustle, The Dark Knight) and Amy Adams (Big Eyes, Man of Steel) are perfection as Dick and Lynne Cheney, the calculating, power-hungry duo at the center of a decades-old political machine that prizes cash over humanity. But the film is never cruel, offering a kind of grudging appreciation for the audacity of their unified if calloused accomplishment.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The supporting cast is pretty damn excellent as well with dynamic character turns by Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards) as George W. Bush, Steve Carell (Beautiful Boy) as Donald Rumsfeld, and Tyler Perry (Madea) as Colin Powell. The Cheney family is rounded out by American Horror Story mainstays Alison Pill and Lily Rabe as Mary and Liz Cheney. Naomi Watts (Insurgent) and Alfred Molina (The Front Runner) pop up in delightful, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos as Jiminy-Cricket-esque commentators (a FOX News anchor and a snooty steakhouse waiter, respectively) on the Shakespearean intrigue that is afoot.

“I will not lie, and THAT is love.” – Sarah Churchill/Lady Marlboro (Rachel Weisz) in The Favourite

 

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

It may seem a strange recommendation to suggest that you should spend your remaining holiday free-time with such a dubious cast of characters … but you should. Both films are not only crackerjack, award-caliber entertainments, but they are essential viewing as collective warning against repeating the sins of both the distant and the immediate past. Don’t miss either film, and, if you’re truly feeling ambitious, and perhaps a bit masochistic, take them in as a double-feature.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.