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So we saw our first movie back in theaters a week or so ago (Werewolves Within), and then the other day we caught Black Widow, and then we just watched Tomorrow War on amazon. Spouse LOVES to watch movies and has no standards. He's really missed going to the theater. After we see the movie we tear into it - unless it was so meh there's not much interesting to discuss.
Werewolves Within - solid B+
Really happy we caught this movie as our first back in theaters. It's not a perfect movie - it feels a little forced to start and the humor has jokes that aren't going to age well. It reminded me of The Burbs or Arachnophobia. But the cast was really fun and there were some laugh out loud parts and clever bits. They managed to spotlight our current cultural dilemma stirred up by the pandemic in a sort of fable. So it's the perfect movie for the moment. I don't know how well it will age, but right now it felt like exactly the movie I wanted to see.
Black Widow - B+
I thought the first 80% or so of the movie was well done. I was having fun, the action scenes were on point, the plot was chugging along and I didn't feel insulted or pandered to. But it failed to deliver on the promise it was building up. It lacked a good emotional payoff to match the setup. I found myself wishing they'd given Black Widow a series like Scarlett Witch, Falcon, Loki, etc., because they've done amazing things in a series format with really interesting, unexpected plots and given such dimension and character growth to supporting characters. I think the standard blockbuster movie format is limiting and Black Widow suffered for it. I would have really really liked to see a Black Widow/Hawkeye series, maybe about what happened in Budapest. But we got this instead.
I thought Black Widow was a better movie than Wonder Woman or WW 84, if you're going for the "girl action lead" angle. WW was a solid B for me (WW 84 probably a C-). WW suffered from some silly dumb, and I didn't like how preoccupied it was with WW's physical attractiveness. Gal Gadot makes a near-perfect WW, but due to her obvious beauty and the superhero nature of the character, she's not allowed to look ugly or really suffer. I find that hard to connect with. On the other side of the spectrum there's Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde and Mad Max. Atomic Blonde was an A for me - fight scenes were brutal and the actress was allowed to look realistically injured and unattractive and tired. Charlize Theron has such a presence she can look beat up with a black eye and it doesn't diminish her. I don't know how she does it. For me personally, I want to see a female action hero depicted with that kind of inner grit. So Atomic Blonde sets the high bar for "girl action lead" movies for me.
Black Widow is in the middle ground between Wonder Woman and Atomic Blonde. They let Scarlett have some good fight scenes and they are careful to avoid sexualizing her/the other female characters, which I do appreciate. There's no tired sexual assault threat scene - bravo. But, sadly, it also feels like nobody had a really good grasp of what they wanted the character development for Black Widow to be. She kinda ended up half baked. Spouse made up a better version of her "triumph" scene than what ended up in the movie while we were sitting around having a coffee afterward. A few small changes would have made all the difference.
I liked Black Widow better than Captain Marvel, because Captain Marvel also got a version of the Wonder Woman rah-rah-girl treatment. Part of the problem with female action leads is that by nature of the movie making process they suffer from being molded to be acceptable to men. What is acceptable to men is what is praised. And I think there's a lot of men that are terrified of the cold reality of femininity - or more like their own insecurity in relation to women. Women are walking talking terrible truths about masculine weakness. The average man is more physically strong than the average women. But I think men are desperate to hide the fact that the average women is more emotionally strong than the average man. They change the yardstick to hide it, decide what counts and what doesn't, but that doesn't erase the truth and they know it. Insecure men are emotionally weak compared to women. And I think the majority of men, on their own without a family or partner to validate them, are deeply insecure.
So if you have an industry that is controlled by insecure men, making movies intended for an insecure male audience, they're only going to allow female action leads to take on roles and depictions they don't find too scary. They are not going to allow the truth of a real feminine hero, because it won't be appealing. So the female characters that end up on the screen get defined by their physical attractiveness, by sympathetic victimhood via trauma (perpetrated by Bad Men), by their romantic (hetero) storylines, by their mothering, child protective nature (why is WW always rescuing random children, for example, or why is that one little girl character in Captain Marvel exists - because women and children go together like peanut butter and jam, amirite?) or by their ties to paternal father figures. A woman defeating men in heroics in defense of a child is acceptable. A woman defeating men in heroics in search of a lost father is acceptable. A woman defeating men in heroics for her (hetero) lover is acceptable. But her limits are preset by a definition of femininity that is rubberstamped by men. Otherwise, she is a villain, and villains lose.
So I find Atomic Blonde really interesting because it is a rare action movie with a female lead that gets close to existing as the independent true feminine. Charlize Theron is gorgeous and stylish, but she's allowed to show physical ugly damage after fights. She isn't defined by hetero romantic storyline. She's smart and takes initiative and has no fear of mixing it up. There's no family/child angle to tie her to an obvious emotional weakness. It is a rarity.
I think Black Widow aspires to that level, but just because how the character has been defined in earlier movies and the nature of superhero movies, the attempt must ring hollow. The character cannot be genuine. She is obsessed with her own redemption because that is her "softness" and that's what men want to focus on. I wanted to see Black Widow pull something like Clint Eastwood's character in Unforgiven, where he eventually slips back into his old dark self and becomes a monster in service of a goal. I wanted to see Black Widow put on her ultra scary cold bitch self. The true feminine, the feminine that exists outside of men. Not the hamstrung version. But they never allow her to do that (partially because then she would not fit back into her overall Avengers movie arc).
Black Widow is like watching an impressive gymnastics routine executed with precision, but then ... the athlete doesn't stick the landing, and you're left wondering what the scores might have been.
Tomorrow War - D- for Dumb
It's not a good sign when spouse and I are making squinty faces and crabby grumpy noises in the first ten minutes. I like Chris Pratt, and I liked the cast (it's got the same guy who played the lead in Werewolves Within). I thought the creature design was outstanding. The plot is unfortunately riddled with stupid. Like, they invent time travel, but what they do with it makes no sense whatsoever. After the first ten minutes it's just one steaming helping of nonsense after another. We had major issues with the tactics of fighting the aliens, and spouse was grousing about the firearms. Decent tactics can hide a multitude of sins - like in Battle Los Angeles. Not a great movie, but at least the soldiers felt like soldiers. A bit of intelligence and strategy would have gone a long ways to forgive the plot. Do not expect any of that in Tomorrow War. Frankly it makes Pacific Rim and Edge of Tomorrow seem like works of towering genius.
We also got a dvd of the newish Robin Hood (2018) a while back. It was awful. I am unsure which is the worse movie, Tomorrow War or Robin Hood (2018). Prob Robin Hood. I get screwing up time travel, but how do you mess up the story of Robin Hood? Better yet, how do you mess up Robin Hood worse than Russel Crowe's version? They found a way. It's so terrible I can't even recommend watching it for rubbernecking value.