Quick Reviews: Sea Beasts, Asgardian Clowns, and Silver Teeth
Tuesday, July 26, 2022 at 9:00AM 
To try and catch up, another round of quickie reviews, one of which (Thor Love and Thunder) is quite belated primarily by way of 'if you don't have anything nice to say...' But the other two movies are good so let's get started...
THE SEA BEAST
This marks the fourth animated picture from director Chris Williams (Bolt, Big Hero 6, Moana). Perhaps everyone should start learning his name since his movies have been consistently solid to very good. Some of us critics got an early peek at The Sea Beast showing about 20-25 minutes of the picture a month or two ago. Though visually impressive, it felt a bit disjointed. I mistook it for a few random scenes as tease but as it turns out it was just the first 20 minutes. The structure is a bit odd at first, jumping from a flashback at sea, to story time at an orphanage, to a thwarted sea battle, back to land, and then back out to sea again. But once all five main characters are assembled (three naval hunters, one stowaway orphan girl, and "Red" the titular character) the movie begins to take off. Which is basically where we left off in our "sneak peek". As it turns out the rest of the movie is better (they absolutely should've cut the first 20 minutes by half or more since you could've worked most of the back story and character intros economically into a few lines of dialogue and clever visual asides. Though the story beats once we're at sea and in pursuit of the titular character and the resulting character arcs won't surprise anyone who has ever seen an animated movie, they work and you end up caring for everyone!
Bonus points: A lot of contemporary animated movies mistake "being a celebrity" with "having an interesting or evocative speaking voice". We're pleased to report that The Sea Beast dodges this problem altogether. The quartet of principles including Zaris-Angel Hator, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Jared Harris, are all doing fine voice work and it was especially pleasureable to listen to lead Karl Urban's singular voice all throughout the movie without every fourth word being "c**t" as it is with his starring role on The Boys. B
The Sea Beast is currently streaming on Netflix.
THOR LOVE & THUNDER
What happened here? Taiki Waititi's Thor Ragnarok was such a gleefully colorful course-corrective to the bad films preceeding it that Marvel's worst movie franchise, which had always taken itself too seriously, suddenly had us wishing for a fourth round! The lession: Be careful what you wish for. Thor Love & Thunder commits the frequent sequel sin of doubling up on everything that went over well the last time, which means non-stop goofing (rather than a lighter tone), Thor becoming even more of a himbo buffoon, and even another round of cameos of famous actors playing Asgardian thespians reenacting a previous Thor film. The resulting tone is so sloppily winking and unserious that it feels grotesque given the new story context since this one literally kicks off with child starvation, a denouncement of god, and a fatal cancer diagnosis.
Christian Bale is the only actor who comes out with his dignity intact as the villainous Gorr, the God Butcher. He's such a strong movie star that he can virtually create his own movie within a movie; His is far superior to the one you're actually watching). Natalie Portman, who can be an astonishing actress with good direction, is totally abandoned by Waititi's class clown urges and embarrasses herself trying to marry the tone of her character arc with the constant one-liners and especially her in-movie attempts at a catch phrase. All the while she and Thor himself Chris Hemsworth continue in vain to look for the romantic chemistry they still haven't found after three films together.
More crimes await! Love and Thunder is continually gaudy and cheap looking despite a gargantuan budget. The action sequences (save one which has a strong visual concept) lack any panache or tensio since no rules govern anyone's cosmic powers here, and they change depending on whatever the battle / scene needs. Just about the only things that work, ironically, are the two most riskily obnoxious bits: Russell Crowe's pompous cameo as Zeus, and two magical screaming goats. That animal duo is one of those rare bad jokes that miraculously gets funnier the more times you hear it. D+
Thor Love and Thunder is still in theaters but will come to Disney+ soon (probably by late August or early September)
THE CURSED
Contrary to its SEO unfriendly title, this werewolf movie is not a generic supernatural horror flick. The original title Eight for Silver is a more evocative description of what the film actually proves to be, even if the story does revolve around a curse. In the late 19th century, a group of gypsies curse a town during their own brutal slaughter by the locals who have rejected their very legit claims on the land. The curse is of the lycanthropic variety hence the "silver" in the original title. The film comes from British writer/director/cinematographer Sean Ellis (Anthropoid, Metro Manila) who was Oscar-nominated for his short film Cashback back in 2004.
Boyd Holbrook stars as a pathologist who is brought to the cursed town to investigate when one child goes missing and another turns up dead gruesomely mauled by savage beast. That is, of course, just the beginning of the troubles. Though The Cursed is burdened with a distracting extranneous framing device (which surely reads better on the page), the story beats inside that frame are compelling. There might not be much emotional range given a lack of levity in any sequence (it's all dour and haunted) and a lack of distinct charactizations, but you don't have to be great at everything to make a good film. The Cursed does boast an impressive command of atmosphere and both minor and major scares. It's also very handsomely costumed by Oscar-nominated Madeline Fontaine (Jackie, Amélie). Recommended strongly for horror fans since it offers just enough of a tweak on the werewolf genre to conjure up a couple of unsettling surprises. B
The Cursed, which had a theatrical run in early 2022, began streaming this past weekend on Hulu.
Reviews, The Sea Beast, Thor: Love and Thunder
Reader Comments (6)
The new Thor movie, to me, was a lot like Elvis: I understand the critiques, I don’t even necessarily disagree with all of them, but I also can’t deny that in the moment of watching it in the theater, it just clicked for me. Personal mileage may vary, of course, and I realize that “superhero” is becoming a four-letter word in some circles, but I had to throw in at least one voice of mild dissent. This Thor movie worked for me (helped, I know, by the fact that I hadn’t seen a trailer since the first one), and there were two distinct moments during the movie when I just sat there, mouth open, wide grin on my face, in slight disbelief that I had seen what I just saw. For me, it was a fun time at the movies, and while I can recognize and acknowledge the counterarguments, again, it worked (really, really well) for me.
I loved Thor: Love and Thunder and I think mostly every single reviewer bashing it, didn't get the movie at all... Waititi juggles - echoing Monty Python's Life of Brian - with the contradictions of religion, and how we perceive it, but he also double dips on it and brings a satire that directly aims at influencers and celebrities, vanity itself... everything, is build up to that, and Zeus over-extended showing off of his skills with its lightning, is one of the funniest and finest meta-jokes that Waititi brings, underlining how these new "celebrities" overstay their welcome, overrate themselves and are totally disconnected with reality and even how they are actually perceived (Kardashians, anyone, for example?). And Waititi doesn't forget to make the movie, fun. It's multilayered, fun, thought-provoking and at the same time poignant... but Waititi, as usual, risks and walk the tightrope, knowing perfectly, his film may be completely misunderstood by those unwilling to take comedy (satire) seriously...
I actually enjoyed Love & Thunder. It was fun and entertaining while also playing into the subject of idol worship and its many fallacies. Yes, it is flawed as the script is messy while I felt the character of Lady Sif was extremely underused which is why I hope she gets her own Disney+ show. I also enjoyed seeing Natalie Portman be really funny as she looked like she was having a ball as I also enjoyed what Christian Bale and Tessa Thompson did in the film while Chris Hemsworth is solid as usual. My favorite performance in the entire film is Russell Crowe.
Never in my life did I expect him to make me laugh so fucking hard. From that awful accent he does to the way he walks in his little skirt. That was fucking bonkers as he must've had the time of his life and show a side of himself I didn't think was ever possible.
I'm with Jesus Alonso here on these comments about the ideas of religion and faith. I think Taika wanted to create something that is a commentary on celebrity and how disconnected they are.
It does have me thinking what will happen soon as it relates to Zeus where I think he's going to call in his brothers in Poseidon and Hades only to be confronted by Loki who warns them that whatever battle they're going to have with the Avengers. They will lose as he will also call them out on their bullshit as well as having his own revelations about being a God and just piss Zeus off big time while using his gift of mischief to defeat Zeus and become part of the Avengers.
Jesus, void, oprtramark -- i am genuinelly happy you all enjoyed it and see worth in it. And while i can accept some of these arguments (and some of them are quite compelling) why did it have to be so ugly looking? I'm trying to recall the last time I saw a very very very expensive movie look this cheap and tacky and rushed andd i'm coming up blank.
well, it is actually "on character", Nathaniel, with the purpouse of the satire... it fits with the fake luxury of theme parks (Asgard's pun, including the distasteful on purpouse joke about the ice cream shop recalling the Infinity Gauntlet and the snap), and the "Olympus of celebrities", with Zeus outfit almost taken from a cheap peplum (and the hilarious way Russell Crowe gets down the stairs, underlines the tone.. the joke about not being invited to the orgy wasn't repetitive to me, but actually deep and not overplay, about the endogamic nature of celebrities of any kind, the need for approval). It is noted almost everywhere, that when the film gets serious (Gorr) the film looks fantastic in visuals and production design, and of course that's made also on purpouse, to enhance the contrast between what actually matters (note also how the ending of Jane Foster's character arch is shot), and what is hollow, and drowned in self-destroying vanity... it's no wonder that they repeat the joke about the theatre actors re-enacting the last adventure of Thor, from the previous film... in Ragnarok, it was out of Loki's vanity rewritting "The Dark World" in his own benefit, while in Love & Thunder is Valkyrie actually reanacting Raganrok as entertainment for the masses who are the main source of business for New Asgard, with that moment, Waititi reminds the audience what was the ending point of the previous film, plus introduces us to the new reality of Asgard as a Theme Park...embracing Earth's capitalism and its atrocious consequences over original cultures. In case anyone forgot about it, Waititi is of maori origin, and certainly the maori culture has been mainstreamed till exhaustation on media and on their lands, as a tourist attraction, so he knows very well, what he is satirizing...
Jesus -- i guess i disagree that the film always looks fantastic in the Gorr sequences. It definitely looks "better" than in the other sequences but that's relative. The whole thing looked cheap / rushed and no amount of "well, it's satire" should be able to excuse subpar visual effects especially when your company now monopolizes that realm of entertainment. I also cant excuse building a narrative around a romance that has not had any chemistry whatsoever for three films. At that point just write around the romance if you cant escape it contractually, but don't play into it!
anyway.I do not like Waititi's execution of the satire/ comedy and I definitely don't believe he's thought through how to satirize something he's actually invested in / being paid to also deliver to atudiences while also marrying it with a cancer storyline.