Suicide Squad, or Squad 1 (2016) -- 6

Let’s call this "Squad 1."

1. "SS" is too Nazi
2. "Suicide" is too Emo
3. "Squad" is representative of the movie's theme.
4. "Skwad" is too much an in-joke for nerds to be fairly used in a regular review.
5. "1" is in anticipation that the DC comics extended universe demands sequels (and reddit rumors back that up)

So Cartoon. Much Bugs Bunny. Many Love.

So, Squad 1 evokes too many things in my little heart and brain to contain in one opinionated recap, so this is a short/sweet overview, and then, as they flesh out, I'll post topic-specific reviews.

Professional reviewers hate it, but the box office speaks for itself -- either nerds are now mainstream, or the main stream is getting nerdier. Squad 1 is enough of a success there will surely be more of them.

Full Disclosure: My wedding registry was full of Suicide Squad and Harley Quinn comics, but I understand a lot of what the professional movie viewers are saying: Squad 1 was not the greatest movie. Story and character motivation ranged from the extreme cliche to unbelievable. While the pacing is pretty smooth, it easily could have been better. The plot doesn't have many holes, but it doesn't make the most sense either -- and the ending is simply infeasible. The suspension of disbelief is totally snapped by Enchantress being defeated. If you believe the things you learn in the first half of the movie, she should be unbeatable by conventional weapons. Sorry Harley and Deadshot, your trickery and grenades should not be able to stop her.

Most of the skew-iffy stuff could have easily been fixed with simple one-liners here and there. I expect better from that much money and that many talented folks. Even considering the rumor that they reshot a bunch of scenes as late as Feb. 2016, that’s bad mgmt, not a good excuse. At best, David Ayer and his 10 Producers were negligent in planning; at worst, they just don't have a grip on how to direct a comic book movie.

On the other hand, people who were expecting a soulful drama are dumb. Just because Ayer also wrote and directed Fury, Sabotage, and End of Watch, does not mean Squad 1 was going to explore PTSD or alcoholism. That's like saying Kenneth Branaugh's Thor should have had the weight of Hamlet. DUMB. I'm looking at you Variety & Peter Debruge. It's an ensemble action hero movie about villains....by design it's unpredictable. But, I get it -- even by action movie standards, this was kind of a directorial mess.

"Your movie will not make $1M when I'm through with it!"

That said, reviewers may just feel betrayed by Squad 1. They are used to their power and infamy of calling and killing movies. Truly, they are like movie villains themselves. I wonder if they start looking like Dr Evil, sitting in the dark constantly, maniacally plotting revenge on some director or writer for slighting them at a Hefner party in front of a Bunny...

But I digress. Phenomenal trailers kept all of us rapt the past year. Nerds and writers alike, all bought into these glittering action-trains portraying a full fledged world, a tongue-in-cheek spray paint darkness, and story-telling without plot-spoiling. These were things of editing beauty. More than quick shots crammed together, they were rhythmically choreographed, and so well executed that the heart of the story was injected right into our eyeballs. So, we were suckered into thinking Squad 1 would be great, not just an action movie with colorful characters, but a thing of creative grace and savage beauty.

This built up two expectations: 1) the storytelling and execution would be amazing, and 2) there would be a lot of Joker. This first was quickly destroyed by the reasons detailed above, but the second is interesting. The trailers and production rumors make Joker out to be the main baddie, and he ain’t. So many assholes were butt hurt that they’d predicted one thing, and another happened. That is good work on the park of Ayer and his 10 producers.

Even without it being a soulful drama (seriously, Debruge, wtf) or as greased-leather-slick as Deadpool, we're all hooked on the potential of Squads 2, 3, and 4 that Ayer -- or whomever -- can go as low-budget and gritty or as high-SFX and glossy as they like and we will go see it.

Another point reviewers agree upon is an abundance of sexism and racism. Which may be just as dumb. This ensemble cast is an american diversity wet dream. Half the cast are women. Half the cast is not white. We have leading black, latino, asian squad members, plus a host of both dot and feather indians, black, asian, and latino faces in the supporting cast. It's like the feminists and the Pro-Race-Diversity people (we can’t call them "racists" … is there a real title for this?) were waiting for the first possible movie where gender and race diversity appears so they can say it's not enough. Of course it's not enough, it’s a GD movie, not a real cultural shift or support from Congress and police forces.

Beyond editing and sexism/racism, Squad 1 is pretty normal… The camera work and direction are standard. Nothing too outstandingly bad or good about how the scenes are sewn together, though there is some over-devotion to Margot Robbie's ass (I can only find three) but the comics play this up a bunch… so… I vote “appropriate to character.”

Notice Power Girl's exasperated 'tude.

Butts are funny. Harley is Funny. Ergo, Harley uses Butts.

 If you disagree, how bout you do some readin’ (you won't regret it!)
 The pacing is not bad. In fact, it's pretty good in comparison to some X-Men Apocalypse movies I've seen recently.

What sets this movie apart, stylistically, is the art direction. Brandt Gordon's day-glo palace of gore drenches every minute of digital media with visual joy. From color palette to backdrop to visual details on every character and wall  -- this art direction is out of this world. Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson called it "ugly."  If you were color blind and live in a Manhattan Ivory Tower, then I empathize. I hope Harley gets to beat you to death in the next movie.

Whose heart didn't break when Talia says goodbye to Bane?

What interests me is that Squad 1 exists at all. Our real world is portrayed by TV and internet news outlets as relentlessly dark -- a patch-work of terror and Corrupt Billionaires Running For President. Unfortunately, I guess art imitates life since we’ve just be swallowing Zack Snyder's unflinchingly morose Batman saga. It's no wonder that eventually audiences grow attuned to this darker aesthetic. When normal happy ppl like myself can react so violently against a white-washed rich-ppl-club member writing a review of a comic book movie, you know it's time for a villain-centric story.

Further, the story itself is started revolving and the Haves and the Have Nots in the Dark Knight Returns. When I watched Bane cut off the island of Manhattan, I was rooting for him. He and Talia were definitely onto something so devotedly followed in Fight Club -- not just “damn the man,” but a structured plan to actually damn the man. There’s a lotta sympathy for that in our post-Occupy Wallstreet era. The characters in Squad 1 are all damned by the man, and it’s easy to feel a lot of sympathy for them even though we know they’re villains. We are an audience who "need them bad." And that's why Suicide Squad is awesome.

  

Underworld

I saw it twice in cinema, right before I moved to the states. If I could look like any woman, it would be Kate Beckinsale. She is a rare combo of long/lean and still perfectly curvy. Like Giselle and Scar-Jo had a perfect clone and poured her into Trinity's outfit from Matrix1. Never mind that Selene uses 8 magic sunlight bullets for every 1 she actually needs or hits with. What was that with their being priceless?

That's me.

Billy says he would too. It's good we have similar
taste. Luckily, he thinks I actually look like the suck-up hench-vampire, Erika, played by Sophia Myles, whom I did for Halloween one year.

Remember when thin eyebrows were what girls plucked for, and when every boy went out for shiny black trench coats. Ah, those were they days. When vampires were decadent killers. They were pale and angry, not masturbatory stalkers.

There's something to be said for milking that part of the human psyche with fantasy characters

Underworld was the first serious badass movie that was anywhere near as cool as The Matrix. Underworld melds the green color filters, steamy alleys and grimy NY apts, over-exaggerated reflexes, with Anne Rice  classic mythology, Marilyn Manson music video imagery (not to mention a Queen of the Damned type of soundtrack), plus some weird science (no, not Weird Science). Bullets made from sunlight and quicksilver that bonds with blood. It adds in Xmen bullet-from-skull removal, Blade type intricacy of weird metal-scroll-work, Event Horizon blood-work, even a good Buffy back hand from time to time. The three main characters all having the same Gavin Rosdale haircut with that classic "wet look" coined in St Elmos Fire.

It even has a couple of movie firsts/bests: it was the first time I saw someone's neck get crunched, and some ones face get sliced. And to this day it's best Werewolf transformation I've ever seen. The crunching, the scary realism, how little they look like either wolves or humans.

It's one of those SFX cult movies that pulls together all the favorite nuggets into one glorious bonanza.

And it has more great narratives than most are crazy enough to plum for: Conspiracy Theory, Dynastic/Devoted Son, 2 fully developed Forbidden Love stories, and a great Frankenstein narrative. Thank goodness it (also like The Matrix) has two vapid follow ups, or the writers wouldn't even know what to do next.

While it goes out on some creative vamp limbs, it's kept in great control with offhand empathy like Selene's "You've taken a good knock to the head" to Michael. The fact that the whole war is

Michael Sheen, so poignant.

explained in two understandable lines from Lucien: "we were the day light guardians of the vampires. I was born into servitude." It's brilliant, and understated.

On that writing note, lets consider some great characters.

1. Craven, who conspires with the Lycans for personal gain, and then betrays the (wholly sympathetic) leader out petty fear and insult
2. Erika, who is so self servin' she doesn't even see where the interests cross each other.
3. Viktor, who stands up to his sociopathic principals in understandable ways, and strangles a Lycan with his bare hands. Oh, and he has a broad sword. 
4. Lucien, owner of the secondary FL, and cuts off his own tat in order to prove his death. 
5. Kahn, the devoted head of security and Q character. 

Writers Len Wiseman and  Kevin Grevioux don't mince arond too much with over or under editing or explanation. There's mention of "coven" and "Viktor" and "Amelia" and threats about past events -- but who knows how past. For a kid growing up on the XFiles this was cinematic broccoli. 

Add in killer acting performances by that guy from Lock Stock, Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen, and you have yourself my favorite vampire movie ever. This is one moment I just can't avoid the bias. It has plot holes and I don't wanna hear it. This movie is beautiful.

Biggest disappointment: The death of Amelia. She's mentioned with

Why, Amelia, why....?

reverence by so many other characters that you know she's a consummate badass. But she's only on screen for two heart beats before a single Lycan pounces on the roof of the train car, and we're just supposed to assume her and the whole entourage were not good enough at killing Lycans to  get through this? At the very least, that necklace of hers is made of silver, so the Lycans couldn't have bitten through it. I'm just saying, Amelia, you're wearing a malleable boomerang/ninja star there. I don't believe she should have died.

The Avengers

I'm confused by The Avengers. I can't tell if I've seen them all, or not. Generally, I can out nerd some of the nerdiest fellows in a software design company (where I spend most of my days) and can shoot a nerf gun better, and have well formed opinions on why the gatling feature on nerf just does not work. I went three days trying to remember the word "tauntaun" and almost cried because I couldn't finish, in my head, a throwaway line of Han Solo "Then I'll ride out on _______!"

But I can't remember if there are three Avengers movies already out... is this the fourth? Why are people calling Black Widow "a whore"? Did she bang anyone yet? As far as I remember there was some camraderie between her and Hawkeye, but nothing really sexual. She kissed Captain America on an escalator, but that was a classic spy move, and she didn't make "a move" on him at all after the fact.

Was that in the third one?

No! Clearly, duh, that was Winter Soldier..

Silly poet, flix are for nerds!  For, I am wise and learned in the ways of the nerd, but I have never actually passed. Stick me in a comic book shop, and every clerk, even the goth/hipster chick who looks like me knows that.

It doesn't matter anyway. The Avengers movies are made for me, not the nerds. They are blockbusters which don't force glaring cliche, but unroll inevitably through them -- to the point where you don't even notice they are cliches.

This one, whatever it is in sequence, will be getting my money. It's colorful, and I love Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson. If Robert Downey Jr. hosted the home shopping network, I'd be broke. I dislike that lady playing Hill; she's not a military leader, she's a stick. Or a segue: Can't be gotten rid of, and mechanically always there. 

The Year of Magical Thinking

I cannot finish reading this.

It appeared, with its gorgeous blue-green spine with simple black, serif type on my shelf one day my friend cleaned her apartment in summer. We drank much vinho verde in those days, and she liked to show the world her control over it by swapping the placement of shelves and tables, choosing meticulously where each should interact with another. She designed her own feng shui, and this day on the porch in the sunshine and our thin dresses, she pulled open a scrolled drawer full of books. She bade me take all of them, and they have been sitting now on my shelves for 6 months.

On a night of uncharacteristic insomnia, this spine looked like the best possible thing to make the hours worth something.

It scared the shit out of me. 

Wolf of Wall Street

Remember when Titanic came out, and we all took a collective breath to make it through 3 entire hours. When we exhaled it was with amazement we'd survived. Three hours -- really? Not since the audacity of  Zulus and Ben Hurs have we sat through things like that. And for Ben Hur and Gone with the Wind, we actually had civilized intermissions.

I don't think if Wolf had had an intermission I wouldn't just duck into the nearest theatre playing Catching Fire instead of returning.

There are
only so many ways you can glorify something without it becoming actually boring. Even if it is colorful, well-soundtracked, equal parts short and long shots, brilliant acting, titties, drugs, hot cars... I mean There are some seriously brilliant scenes here. The tag team dwarf launching scenes, for example, introduce how over the top and immoral the lifestyle framed in the movie is. Then, flashback to see how the narrator (interesting Annie Hall style amalgam of voice over narrations add fun texture throughout) started. Much like Tim Robbins' character in the Hudsucker Proxy. So sweet, so innocent, so full of vim for the world.  a couple half hearted fall-to-sin scenes later, we have the board of this fun/deplorable company going through the contracts of hiring the dwarves.

The scenes are well linked. The back and forth of the story telling follows an intuitive meandering this close to the beginning. Unfortunately, the writing loses its way about halfway through and the narration falls out right around where act two should start to seriously grip you, and twist your heart strings.

Instead you get a lack luster quilt of cliche bullet points of how "boring" life is without drugs and endless hookers. Fair enough, but the fascination with the loods lifestyle is so overpowering that maybe the writers, directors, producers didn't want to give it up any more than the character. The reluctance to leave the flying pharmacy of fun over plays the same jokes so much that they over-lap in a succession that would be mind numbing if the ending had seemed as sincere as the funland. Unfortunately, that effect is not pulled off, and somewhere around the end of hour two (beginning of act 2) you look around the theatre and are amazed you are still here, and the story has barely begun.

Ie. it becomes dull. There is no third act to reward the audience for its time spent. There is no sympathy for the Wolf as he sips alcohol free beer, or almost dies on his yacht, or get arrested, or looks sad in teaching people to be salesmen. Either the story has failed to elicit this from me, or I want this guy to persevere in his wolfy ways.

Seriously, his problem solving, and ingenuity early in the film led me to believe he could have defeated the FBI and gone out in a blaze of Dillinger-esque glory if only he had stuck to it. But, no, he wimps out and betrays himself and best friend in a whiny hole of inept self-pity.

Ug.

Watch at home, cheaply on Netflix with lots of tasty beer and a couple friends.

It's Not True! Not Only God Forgives!

Think he'll use those fists?
Think that lens flare is going to save his soul?

Seriously, human beings will forgive a lot. I know this, because the movie Only God Forgives is an atrocious pan through beautiful colors and lighting, a la David Lynch. Glancing through the chat boards on the film's IMDB page, however, reveals the sympathetic souls who deem this an instant classic doomed to the hatreds of short-sighted contemporaries and small-minded poop skulls who hate on slow, twisted, violent movies with no sympathetic characters and nary point of interest in sight.

Which is how most people seem to feel about the Danish-French-Thai flick improbably starring a dreamy American man in the Thai drug world. Open minded viewers can see the feasibility of Ryan Gosling being the son of Kristin Scott Thomas, but not the brother of Tom Burke. Normal viewers can see the feasibility of massive drug cartels in Thailand, but not so much the super white guy running it. Artsy viewers get stuck on the sets and lighting, letting the atmosphere (which is, indeed, brilliant) lull them into thinking the drawn out scenes are equally well-executed.

The problem is not that scenes are slow, and dialog minimal. The words coming out of these characters' mouths are great: they're, articulate of both plot and character development, and fun to hear. Kristin Scott Thomas' opening monologue is killer, albeit 2 lines long.

Her mother character is exactly Lady Macbeth meets Donatella Versace -- if such a creature were the single mom and head of an international drug operation. I want to see this character in other situations, ruling different underworlds, fucking with other people's lives.

Similarly, the brothers are engrossing manifestations of how bad individuals can be. The writing pits them not against, but away from each other, as though they both spring from mom's twisted womb, one anal retentive, one anal expulsive, and both unable to relate sexually to anyone in the real world.

Which is where the wrongness starts. Of course one is a rapist/murderer, the other a possibly impotent lock-box. However, there is nothing else to illustrate this. There's a whole boxing ring set with dozens of fighters and bookies to play with -- untouched. You're in Bangkok, don't try to tell me there isn't crazy dog fighting, snake-blood-drinking, trafficking, hostel busting, beach combing, boat using, fun going on. Not even mentioned or shown. The scenes that could fill those lousy minutes of Ryan Gosling looking at his own hands or improbably hallucinating about hallways are innumerable. The best we get is a shoot out in a noodle shop, and some guy's arm sliced off with a machete near a train.

Nope.

Which leads me to the second major thing wrong with this flick. The stylization of the sets, dialog, and totally uptight blocking go so overboard that they blur together and make each scene mockable rather than tense. The only scene for which is actually works is after Gosling brings his hot hooker to meet his Macbeth Mommy for dinner. KS Thomas throttles the scene, Gosling lights her cigarette automatically, and the hooker shows improbably rational, and emotionally stable spunk. For her efforts Gosling makes her strip in an alley way to put her in her place. Yep. It's crazy good at showing all their POVs on life (even though the hooker's isn't believable).

Unfortunately, everything else is dulled into a glam-grunge morass of boredom.

You can see how well these shots are put together.
Too bad nothing is done with them.

Third: the cop. The story is pretty neat, if cliche. Dirty Harry with machete takes unorthodox, and unprecedentedly violent measures to restore the spirit of the law. There's even a sweet training-with-machete-at-dawn scene to show how serene this guy is. But, uh, there are also too many Lynchian kareoke scenes where all audience members sit like statues. That's alot of screen time to tell your audience just one thing. We get it. He's revered and artistic. Use those scenes for another thing or three. Have his safe kareoke spot threatened by some improbable but reciprocal hallucinations of Gosling. Build us a relationship between these adversaries. If director/writer Refn doesn't want to go that route, fine, there are other things you can do, don't just glut your screen with repetitive crap.

Ug. That's why it's bad. Not because "it's slow". Not because it's too violent or too sexually twisted. Because it has a shimmer of idea and fails to express it adequately in the medium the creator has chosen.

Casino Royale

One of my best friends named her baby Vesper. There was a little release to accompany the naming of this new human to the effect of "our beautiful daughter is peaceful and sacred like an evening prayer". I know differently.

Aubergine and I were living together when the first blond Bond burst into the world, shattering the hopes of critics to harp on their same boring lines about corny sexism and crappy tech that never quite actualizes like Star Trek manages. We watched it in the theatre -- we were poor, so this was a big deal. Then she watched it with her mountain man of a fiance (now husband, and proud pappa of two micro-Aubergines).

Just from this simple plot of real life you can draw your own conclusion about why the second small copy of my friend is named Vesper.

This conclusion is just how good Casino Royale is.

And it's not for too many reasons. And few of them have to do with the believability of the physics in the film,  the stupidly over exposed color palette, or the overt exposition of how to play poker, or the idea that none of those rich guys playing poker wouldn't immediately google the hell out of Bond's ostensible alibi and find him to not really exist, and then kill him for his money. If google had existed when Ian Fleming wrote the book, this would have been a plot twist to remember I'm sure. Instead, the screenplay just plugs 15 Sony Vaios, 25 Sony Ericsson phones, and the 1 cursory defibrillator in an Aston Martin and calls it a day on adjusting to the cyber-crazy world of 2006.

Which are all obvious, and funny when you're not attaching to the plot and characters. What makes it is the development of Bond as a character. How he kills his first person. How M doubted his mental state and ability to do the job. Why he becomes a sexaholic. How the first perfect Bond-tini was made, and why he's so damned attached to it. And then... there's Craig himself. He's the craggy, rogueish answer to Pierce Brosnan's slick-to-the-point-of-being-a-skeeze Bond. He brings the franchise back to a place of credibility instead of heightened unattainbility, and therefore gives all us lovers of the underdog and anti-hero something satisfying to hang onto.

One major catalyst of this is his babe. While I love Pussy Galore, and her free spirited use of airplanes, she made a total of three facial expressions. By comparison, Eva Green oughtta be given an Oscar.

She is not only a capable actress (watch her weirdo indie flicks) but she is stunning in a way that incorporates freckles and unusual facial structure. In many scenes, she doesn't even wear makeup. Halle Berry was born looking air brushed perfect, it's not her fault of course that she's so goddamned perfect, but that perfection does not lend an air of believable to anyone's action-flick.*

 Most importantly for the film though, is the writing. She has a whole back story that doesn't involve, but does challenge, Bond. The plot uses two book end points of exposition for this, a touching death scene that convincingly builds the Bond character and over-arching themes, and most poignantly, shows just how emotionally involved each kill in a Bond flick should actually be.

Instead of simply shooting and stabbing through the film Vesper must aid Bond in killing some goons, and  is rewarded with a whole touching shower scene to reflect on it (forcing the audience to acknowledge that murder is not actually easy). The best part is the supposedly funny one-liner the next morning: "even dead people have their uses" where the audience is given, for the first time ever, a chance to see how Bond deals with the bodies. While it is clever for subtly uncovering a villain, and does illicit a chuckle, this particular balcony scene chills the audience, confirming the tenderness of the shower scene.

Overall, the plot could easily have been de-Bond-ified and filmed as an Atonement or Brick-like movie and taken seriously by the critics.

Which is to say, quite good.






*I'm not here to say action flicks should be believable. Simply pointing out differences between some entertaining, but infeasible films.