David R. Walker

Archive for December, 2023

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Director: James Wan

Cast: Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Randall Park, Martin Short, Temuera Morrison

Running Time: 2 hours and 4 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

Director James Wan’s highly anticipated sequel to the 2018 smash hit Aquaman is finally here with all the cast reprising their roles including Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Patrick Wilson as King Om, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Mantra, Amber Heard as Mera and Nicole Kidman as mother of both Aquaman and King Om, the luminous Atlanna.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is a fitting farewell film for this last phase of the DC Universe and closing the chapter on the current set of stars in the Justice League. From 2025, there will be a completely reimagined DC Comics Universe with the new Superman film.

The popularity of superhero films have waned after the peak of 2019 with Avengers: End Game and 2022’s excellent Wakanda Forever. Black Adam failed to be impressionable in 2022 but perhaps a reinvention is required in the wake of the new technologically advanced decade of the 2020’s.

Nevertheless, Jason Momoa and Patrick Wilson are excellent as half-brothers, fighting each other while also protecting each other as they battle the evil Black Mantra played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II who plays a convincing villain up until the point when he steals Aquaman’s baby son, Arthur Junior.

Randall Park is brilliant as Dr Stephen Shin who facilitates between being loyal to Black Mantra and then trying to appease Aquaman and the Atlanteans upon first glimpse.

With an overarching theme of ocean conservation, and global warming, James Wan keeps Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom visually splendid with dazzling special effects and light in tone, punctuating the narrative with some perfect humour especially between the two brothers. This superhero film is really about Aquaman rekindling his relationship with his supposedly evil half-brother, which Patrick Wilson plays perfectly.

Amber Heard is back as Mira with bright red hair and Dolph Lundgren plays King Nereus while comic actor Martin Short voices the Kingfish.

With the seven Kingdoms of Atlantis battling each other including the evil lost kingdom, eventually Aquaman as leader learns that kings need to build bridges and not destroys relationships. Even the undersea creatures eventually decide to negotiate with the surface dwellers in a bid to save the planet.

As a fluorescent fantasy adventure film and a fitting end to the narrative arc which started with the Justice League, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is funny, entertaining and action packed showing that Jason Momoa relished the chance to play a lesser known super hero, whose muscular powers were amphibiously flexed.

Entertaining and pure fantasy, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom gets a film rating of 7 out of 10 and is recommended viewing for those that enjoy one last impressive adventure from the receding age of big budget superhero films.

Maestro

Director: Bradley Cooper

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer, Sarah Silverman, Vincenzo Amato, Maya Hawke, Matt Bomer

Running Time: 2 hours and 9 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Please note this film is only available on Netflix

With acclaimed directors Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg acting as executive producers, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro about the extraordinary life of American composer Leonard Bernstein features a deftly performed triple act with multiple Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper (American Sniper, A Star is Born, Silver Linings Playbook) acting as director, writer and as the leading man, ably assisted with Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan (An Education, Promising Young Woman) as Bernstein’s long suffering wife Felicia Montealegre.

Both Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan are absolutely superb in Maestro, binding this film together as they perfectly portray the complex façade of a marriage that the Bernstein’s had, particularly Felicia’s artistic and sacrificial decision to turn a blind eye to her husband’s rampant homosexuality often bringing lover’s home and entertaining them in front of their children.

There is a particularly brilliant scene towards the end of Maestro whereby Leonard and Felicia have a terrible fight in a New York apartment which is overlooking the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, in which the marital veneer is cracked and all the resentment and anger boils over.

Bradley Cooper literally disappears into the role of Leonard Bernstein thanks to the extraordinary makeup by Japanese American prosthetic make up artist Kazo Hiro who won Oscars for Bombshell and Darkest Hour.

Mulligan is excellent as a broadway actress Felicia who takes a decision to put her career on hold while Leonard Bernstein’s musical career flourishes during the 1960’s as he is made musical director for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Leonard Bernstein is an icon in the classical and theatrical music world having penned the music for the Stephen Sondheim hit musical West Side Story and the film score for the Marlon Brando film On The Waterfront.

Bernstein’s sexual relationship with David Oppenheim flamboyantly played by out gay actor Matt Bomer (The Normal Heart, Boys in the Band, The Nice Guys) is comfortably portrayed in Maestro as Bernstein feels nothing at introducing his beloved wife Felicia to his starry eyed gay lover.

At the heart of this complex artistically compatible marriage is the toll that two creative and volatile parents have on their three children particularly their oldest daughter Jamie Bernstein played by the daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, Maya Hawke (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Asteroid City) who often has to discover through gossip the sexual indiscretions of her father, the world famous conductor Leonard Bernstein.

Essentially, Maestro is an art film and it is filled with beautiful music, talented people and a toweringly famous artistic conductor who was passionate about classical music, conducting and leaving an indelible mark on the canon of America’s 20^th century contribution to the history of music.

Maestro shot in black and white and colour, is a complex and slightly off kilter biopic about an extremely charismatic conductor whose sexual proclivities detonated the marriage in which Felicia was the main casualty. Fortunately, Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan are both excellent as husband and wife in a film which re-examines their relationship in the context of Bernstein’s massive fame and creative contribution, which was both controversial and significant.

Maestro is Bradley Cooper’s languid love letter to Leonard Bernstein, a formidable task to encapsulate in a unconventional biopic which should have been released in theatrical cinemas to attain the full effect.

Featuring highly skilled acting, cinematography and direction, Maestro gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is recommended for viewers that love the music of Leonard Bernstein.

Source material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Bernstein

Wonka

Director: Paul King

Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant, Rowan Atkinson, Keegan-Michael Key, Jim Carter, Sally Hawkins, Matt Lucas, Tom Davis, Calah Lane, Paterson Joseph, Matthew Baynton, Freya Parker, Natasha Rothwell

Running Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Director Paul King’s very 21^st century remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) starring Gene Wilder gets a Christmas shine for the new 2023 version, with the hot young star Timothee Chalamet (Dune, Little Women, The French Dispatch) taking on the part of Willy Wonka in this fantastic remake simply titled Wonka.

Chalamet, who rose to fame in his Oscar nominated role in the gorgeous 2017 film Call Me By Your Name, takes on the hapless, illiterate but slightly naïve Willy Wonka as he journeys as a young man to a magical new city to attempt to start up a Chocolate shop. This Wonka version is pristine with no kinks or crazy mania hidden beneath the depths unlike Johnny Depp’s truly sociopathic portrait of the character and also without the comedic panache of the legendary Gene Wilder.

Wonka is supported by a varied cast including Oscar winner Olivia Colman (The Favourite) as the ruthless landlady Mrs Scrubitt, Calah Lane as the hopeful orphan Noodle and Keegan-Michael Key (Get Out, The Disaster Artist) as the corrupt Chief of police who secretly aids the evil and malignant chocolate cartel comprising of Slugworth played by Paterson Joseph, Prodnose played by Matt Lucas and a wonderful Mathew Baynton as the snobbish Fickelgruber, who absolutely hates the poor.

Wonka starts off beautifully with gorgeous costumes and sets but doesn’t quite sparkle enough until the fortunate arrival of the comedic genius of Hugh Grant (Florence Foster Jenkins, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral) as the chocolate stealing green and orange Oompa-Loompa who is absolutely terrific as the cocktail swirling, suitcase carrying diminutive man who becomes an unlikely ally of Willy Wonka and his delicious dreams.

Hugh Grant with years of cinematic experience literally saves Wonka the film from becoming ordinary, by making that Oompa-Loompa sophisticated, shrewd and witty. A performance which elevates the film so much that the distributors for Warner Brothers had to rework the trailer for Wonka to include the precious scenes between Wonka and the lofty Oompa-Loompa.

Unfortunately, Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine, The Shape of Water) does not have sufficient screen time as Wonka’s beloved mother, which would have created the emotional pull that this film desperately needed.

Calah Lane is enlightening as Noodle the orphan girl who Wonka befriends as she desperately tries to discover her birth mother’s identity while the talented Olivia Colman is suitably hideous as the unscrupulous Mrs Scrubbitt whose performance mirrors that of Helena Bonham Carter as Madame Thenardier in Les Miserables.

Paddington director Paul King ticks all the confectionary boxes to make a highly conventional Wonka which will makes for joyous holiday entertainment but it won’t be remembered as an exceptional musical.

Wonka is a recommended family film and audiences should see it purely for the delightful Hugh Grant who literally saves this fantasy musical from suffering the same fate as Cats.

As a mock Victorian musical Wonka gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is light hearted family entertainment.

May December

Director: Todd Haynes

Cast: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton, Corey Michael Smith, Andrea Frankle, Gabriel Chung, Elizabeth Yu, D. W. Moffett, Kelvin Han Yee

Running Time: 1 hour 57 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Scandal in all its intimacy is what binds a community together in auteur director Todd Haynes fabulous new film May December starring Oscar winners Natalie Portman (Black Swan) and Julianne Moore (Still Alice).

Far From Heaven and Carol director Todd Haynes makes cinema an art form in this stylized and lush melodrama about a Southern tabloid queen Gracie, wonderfully played by Julianne Moore, who becomes the subject matter for a TV film after the sexually adventurous actress Elizabeth comes to interview Gracie and her complicated history.

In a syrupy and toxic screenplay by Samy Burch, which would make Tennessee Williams proud and Truman Capote salivate at the salacious details, May December is gorgeously set in Savannah, Georgia in 2015, twenty years after a tawdry scandal erupted when Gracie a 35 year old married woman slept with and got herself pregnant by a 13 year old boy and then went onto marry him when he was of age. Gracie and Joe’s scandalous affair started in the back store room of a rundown pet shop in a strip mall in Savannah and after a bout in prison for sleeping with a minor, Gracie and Joe now twenty years on are welcoming their children back home to Savannah for graduation.

The handsome, strong and silent Joe is beautifully played by Charles Melton who definitely deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor as Melton perfectly encapsulates the psychological state of a man child, a man at 36, but inside still a child, bewildered and confused that he fathered children while he was still a teenage and to a woman almost three times his age.

Joe acts more like a big brother to his three children than a father, while Julianne Moore’s Gracie acts as the scheming and manipulative mother figure micromanaging not only her  young husband but also the wreckage of her past life, as she expertly manoeuvres herself around the penetrating gaze of the ambitious but provocative Elizabeth, a star turn by Natalie Portman who has the acting ability to portray psychologically complex characters as she did in her Oscar winning performance in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan.

Todd Haynes relishes having two powerful female stars as the two opposing main characters, sniping at each with a bitchy relish as they mockingly try to remain friends while both planning ways of exacting revenge on one another. Portman and Moore are superb in this dynamic, eating up men in their way and manipulating both their circumstances to their own maximum and sometimes lustful benefit, like the captivating monarch butterflies that are released into the humid Savannah air.  

Corey Michael Smith (Carol) is electrifying in a few brief scenes as Gracie’s damaged oldest son from her first marriage Georgie who uses the power dynamic between his mother as the subject and Elizabeth as her observer to best serve his own creepy agenda.

Bizarre and strangely uncomfortable, Todd Haynes creates a garish melodrama on contemporary sexual power dynamics in this fascinating film May December whose title in American English is a term which refers to a much older person taking a much younger lover, as tawdry and exhilarating as that can be.

May December is a provocative film, sexy in a slightly off kilter sort of way and gets a film rating of 8 out of 10. Not every viewer will enjoy this film, but those that do will appreciate its compelling originality and its deliberate sneer at the conventional expectations of socially acceptable sexual interactions.