Day: July 12, 2021

I’m always irked when moviegoers react in an overly charitable, overly emotional way to something that’s obviously only so-so.

Example #1: During a screening of Paddington in mid-January 2015, a friend of a name-brand critic wouldn’t stop laughing at the klutzy-bear-causes-physical-chaos jokes (oops, another disaster!). The laughter was so unwarranted and so relentless I almost turned around and glared.

Example #2: There was an older, overweight woman sitting behind me during a 12.8.11 screening of Stephen Daldry‘s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close at LACMA. I distinctly recall how she moaned a couple of times when the film summoned echoes of the 9.11.01 disaster, and how she stood up and cheered when the film ended. I wasn’t a huge fan of this Warner Bros. release, but that woman persuaded me to take an even more negative tack.

Example #3: On 12.5.19 a loud Al Pacino fan ruined a THR “Awards Chat” interview at the DGA with the Irishman costar. (The interviewer was Scott Feinberg.) The guy had to cheer and laugh too loudly and go “ahhh!” and “whoo-whoo!” every time Al shared a funny line or whenever a well-regarded Pacino classic was mentioned. It was awful.

But I hate it even more when audience members are having a rollicking good time while watching a formulaic piece of shit. This happened last night as I watched an 8pm show of Black Widow inside the Century City AMC plex (theatre #10).

I was sitting in the handicapped row, and there were two or three Marvel fans right behind me, and once the comic-relief stuff started (all Marvel films begin to dispense snappy, smart-ass humor starting around the 30-minute mark and then return to it at regular intervals) these guys were laughing too enthusiastically. They were giggling and whooping at damn near everything. Any little quip or side-remark or smart-ass bit, and these guys were all but rolling in the aisles. They squealed with delight when Florence Pugh‘s Yelena asked ScarJo‘s Natasha why she always poses in the middle of a fight, landing close to the ground and flipping her head back.

Mind — these guys were the only ones in the theatre who were laughing loudly, and they were making a difficult experience even worse for everyone, or so I imagined. Did I turn around and glare? No, but I stole a quick glance.

From Todd McCarthy’s Deadline pan, posted on 7.12: “Breathing in the air that the master breathed, staying in his home and becoming saturated with all manner of first-hand Bergman-iana has in no way qualified Bergman Island writer-director Mia Hansen-Love to be mentioned in the same breath as the late Swedish master Ingmar Bergman, much less make a film about his aura and legacy.

“This story of a filmmaking couple — Tony (Tim Roth) and Chris (Vicky Krieps) — who make a pilgrimage to Faro Island to soak in the man’s influence, is a very poor excuse for an homage except as a travelogue. When Woody Allen did it, it was both sincere and very funny.”

In a phrase: “Lazy, unimaginative and incapable of expressing admiration for Bergman in any meaningful way.”

“The first 20 minutes of Bergman Island hold a certain interest simply on a touristic basis. It’s hard to think of any other filmmaker whose home, like those of certain presidents, has become a travel destination. Still, I once made a pilgrimage to Yasujiro Ozu’s grave in Japan; on his tombstone is simply inscribed the word ‘mu,’ which means ‘everything and nothing.’

“’How can I sit here and not feel like a loser?,’ cries Chris in despair as she sizes up Bergman’s body of work, which not only consists of 30-odd scripts and films but also plays and books. Well, you probably can’t, but Chris has to find out the hard way by getting down to work with Tony on a script she’s been thinking about.

“She figures that sitting in Ingmar’s chair and just existing in his lingering aura might be enough to inspire them to unprecedented heights of creativity on their next project. Ahhh, how presumptuous mere creative mortals can be.”

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I’m sorry my Black Widow review is so late in arriving. I only saw it last night, and I’m not even sure I can write anything that won’t bore everyone silly. It opened last Friday and everyone has already moved on, and it was so dreadful to sit through…really. This morning Jordan Ruimy called Black Widow “unwatchable.” He’s not wrong.

It has, at least, a fairly obvious feminist metaphor. Black Widows are a worldwide network of ruthless female assassins, trained in a Russian-organized “red room” program run by Ray Winstone‘s “General Dreykov” with their minds totally controlled in some kind of zombie-ish fashion. The film’s basic focus is on a pair of Black Widow sisters — Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) — whose younger selves we first meet in a 1995 flashback prelude. But the key thing is the discovery of an antidote that can potentially free the Widow army from Dreykov’s chemical control and allow them to self-determine.

So that’s the basic MacGuffin — an elusive but sought-after antidote that allows an army of female warriors to throw off the yoke of male oppression. But of course, Black Widow is about a lot more than that central idea. Unfortunately.

I knew I would suffer through this godawful thing. I knew it would pound and narcotize me to death and suffocate what’s left of my soul, and boy, did it ever. It was serious formulaic torture, but I had to watch it, I felt, and in front of a big-ass screen with a suitably loud WHOMP-THROMP-EERURRP sound system. Once again I sat in the handicapped row, and before the 8 pm show began I was already weakened by 20 minutes of trailer pulp…idiot-level action movies designed to make you vomit and scream. And then, finally…

Directed by Cate Shortland and running 134 minutes, Black Widow begins quietly — that flashback sequence in suburban Ohio. A brief acquaintance with Russian undercover agents Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and Melina Vostokoff (a digitally de-aged Rachel Weisz) and their “surrogate” daughters Natasha (Ever Anderson) and Yelena (Violet McGraw).

I was immediately intrigued by the 13 year-old Anderson, who has a much more interesting face (indications of emotional complexity, soulful eyes) than Johansson and Pugh combined. I was thinking to myself, “Okay, maybe…”

And then Black Widow loses its mind. The family is suddenly armed and loaded and on the run, being chased by weaponized bad guys (U.S. authorities?). They jump on a private plane…or three of them do while Harbour shoots it out — recklessly, absurdly — with the pursuers on the tarmac. Then he ridiculously leaps into the plane wing as he continues to fire, and of course no one gets hit with a bullet as the plane ascends into the darkness…right away I was muttering “this is so infuriating, so friggin’ stupid.”

Marvel is all formula, all pandering, all the time. Except for Avengers: Endgame, Ant Man and Joe Johnston‘s Captain America and maybe one or two others, Marvel films are almost always a gruesome experience. Aimed at American none-too-brights, Marvel films “charm” and “thrill” like hooded executioners. They oppress and suffocate the soul. Head-pounding aggression. Sardonic attitudes.

Poor Ray Winstone, I was thinking…stuck playing another Mr. Big goon. And what’s happened to poor William Hurt? He looks too thin, barely resembles himself.

My head was spinning, screaming. Can I take another 100 minutes of this shit?

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