Movie Review

Great female camaraderie is not enough to make The Marvels a success

When Avengers: Endgame bowed to great reviews and even greater box office numbers in 2019, absolutely no one would have said at the time that Marvel Studios was in trouble. But thanks to the pandemic in 2020 and a lack of a unifying force that was the Avengers, only a few of the subsequent nine films have felt on par with the best Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, and most have been outright bad.

The Marvels might be the least anticipated MCU movie yet, both because recent history has taught fans to lower their expectations, and because it’s a mish-mash of characters from multiple Marvel properties who have not previously interacted. Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) remains the big name, having had her own 2019 movie and a big part in Endgame.

She’s joined by Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), last seen taking on Scarlet Witch in WandaVision, and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), who starred in her own Disney+ series. Through a series of events too convoluted to explain properly, the three superheroes wind up with their powers entangled, instantly switching them out for each other when one of them attempts to use a certain power.

The big bad is Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), who … well, it doesn’t really matter that much. Suffice it to say that she has a long-standing beef with Captain Marvel, finds a power that levels the playing field between her and the Marvels, and sets out to become even more powerful and exact revenge.

Written and directed by Nia DaCosta, and co-written by Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik, the film can be judged on two elements. The first and most successful is the camaraderie between the three main characters/actors. No matter what inane thing they’re required to do, the trio has a chemistry together that makes them enjoyable to watch, with Kamala’s unceasing positivity one of the film’s high points.

The story, though, leaves much to be desired. The body-switching, or whatever you want to call it, gets confusing the more frenetic a scene becomes. With that and other elements, it often feels like the filmmakers are just making up the rules as they go and hoping no one will notice the holes. The conflict between the Marvels and Dar-Benn is so similar to other Marvel movies that it feels like they just copied and pasted previous scripts.

And even though the same problem has existed for a while in MCU movies, making the movie with 99 percent CGI has an extreme distancing effect. There is just no way to get invested in what the heroes are trying to do when everything around them is fake. And since their powers amount to little more than glowing hands, none of the effects are exciting, either.

The frustrating thing is that Larson, Parris, and Villani actually do make for a solid team. If you ignore the superhero stuff, each of them has some standout moments and, if the movie had allowed it more, emotional connections. Ashton makes for a decent villain, but the film doesn’t give her much to work with, and in the end her character feels generic.

It’s difficult to know where the MCU goes from here, as the actors strike and a major actor in serious legal trouble has thrown another wrench in their overall plans. The Marvels is neither bad enough to spell doom for the whole enterprise nor good enough to be considered a savior. But so-so just won’t cut it in this day and age of blockbuster movies.

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The Marvels opens in theaters on November 10.

Photo by Laura Radford / courtesy of Marvel Studios

Iman Vellani, Brie Larson, and Teyonnah Parris in The Marvels

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig searches for elusive new bond in audacious film Queer

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig searches for elusive new bond in audacious film Queer