Three Films Make A Post: The tide is turning.

Aquaman – Lost Kingdom (2023): Even though I’m not writing about the current crop of superhero movies all that often, I haven’t jumped on the superhero hate train, and “superhero fatigue” just fatigues me.

However, most everything bad you’ve read about this second Aquaman movie is unfortunately true. For much of its running time, this doesn’t feel like a proper, finished movie from a big studio at all, but the rough cut of something that doesn’t appear to even have had a finished script, with characters just dropping in and out of the plot for no good reason, no dramatic arc, and an absolute inability to sell the film’s tonal shifts; actually, I don’t even see attempts at selling them, for James Wan has apparently not just decided to direct this as if it were a TV movie, but given up on doing his job completely.

Making matters worse are special effects that often appear to simply not be finished, with many a scene that takes place in what looks like raw sets you’d find in 80’s Doctor Who serial instead of intricate greenscreen work. It’s just a complete train wreck of a movie, and not even an entertaining one.

The Marvels (2023): Also much maligned is this second Captain Marvel movie directed by Nia DaCosta. Here, I really can’t see the problems I’m supposed to notice. Sure, the film can get silly as all get-out, but most of the time, its jokes are actually funny and imaginative, and the script has no trouble shifting from this to the more serious stuff.

Unlike certain parts of the internet, I also enjoy watching a superhero movie carried by a trio of women where the male characters simply aren’t terribly important without the film making much of a thing of it one way or the other (call it the Claremont approach). But then, I am a simple man.

Detective vs Sleuths aka 神探大戰 (2022): If you’re like me, you’re missing classic Hong Kong cinema rather badly. As this extremely energetic mix of action movie and twisty thriller suggests, classic Hong Kong filmmakers do so as well, so long time Johnnie To cohort Wai Ka Fai’s film isn’t just a big damn action movie that follows many of the rules of modern blockbuster cinema to perfection and with considerable verve, but that also contains more winks and nods towards the tradition of post-80s Hong Kong cinema than you can shake a stick at, some of them very subtle, others very obvious indeed. Lau Ching-Wan playing another Mad Detective really is only the beginning there, and before the film is through, we’ll even have gone through a moment of baby juggling.

That all of this works as an absurd but absolutely riveting action film of the highest order instead of sinking into some kind of retro mire is a particularly wonderful achievement.

Three Films Make A Post: Say It.

Candyman (2021): For its first two thirds, I was all in with Nia DaCosta’s sequel to Bernard Rose’s masterpiece. There’s strong acting, interesting conceptual decisions when it comes to the nature of Candyman as a myth, exposition done via awesome shadow puppet animation, and some heavily moody and macabre filmmaking that turns rote killings (quite appropriately) into art. Sure, from time to time, the film does tend to wear its politics on its sleeves a bit too much if you’ve ever heard of the concept of subtlety or complexity, but not in a way that isn’t also rather appropriate to the material, like it or not.

Alas, the third act is a total mess where having characters being responsible for their own doom, or even just making actual decisions is sacrificed on the altar of the plot twist, and where the film we were watching until then becomes overwhelmed by the pointless need to tie it in tighter with the original Candyman, which does rob the film we are actually watching of much of the power it had until then.

There’s Someone Inside Your House (2021): Warning, I’m going to spoil the identity of the killer here. So, to my taste, this rework of teen slasher tropes for the woke era and Netflix as directed by Patrick Brice does woke horror (this is a genre now, surely) rather more effectively than Candyman does, particularly since it doesn’t go off the rails during its third act quite as much but escalates dramatically and emotionally, using the way it has fleshed out its character tropes in the first two acts to connect characters and audience. Which, obviously, makes its climax emotionally and dramatically much more satisfying than one in which the main characters get to do sod all. On the way, there are some fine and clever ideas on how to fuse classic teen horror tropes with modern sensibilities, and some nicely staged suspense. The only element that did tend to irritate me is the identity of the killer, who is of course the psychologically messed up white rich kid who hates his (totally hateable) father, or rather, that the film seems to argue that growing up rich somehow robs one of one’s humanity so much, one isn’t allowed to have emotional damage, which does mar a film that otherwise is all about compassion and understanding for damage and guilt by being total bullshit.

Black as Night (2021): Keeping with woke teen horror, this Amazon and Blumhouse teens versus vampires in New Orleans film (starring Asjha Cooper who is one of the secondary leads of There’s Someone) as directed by Maritte Lee Go is a fun enough time. The sense of place is quite strong, its political ideas are slightly more complicated than those of There’s will turn out in the end, and some of the vampire lore and set pieces are pretty neatly conceived too.

It is, however, a bit of a flabby movie even with a length of less than ninety minutes. So expect awkward things like the film suddenly adding some good vampires to the mix shortly before the climax only to do very little of consequence with them.