Aquaman (2018)

I remember watching Heroes and thinking how awesome the superpowers were.  People could fly or read minds.  Everything was extremely useful.  No one had a really crappy superpower.  Some of them came close towards the end.  But, there was no one that had, say, the ability to press clothing as their power.  It’s like, “Great.  Hiro can travel through time and Claire can regenerate.  On the bright side, at least I never have to buy an iron.”

I kind of wonder if Aquaman started out as a conversation along those lines.  Don’t get me wrong.  Being able to talk to fish might be cool and all, but I think the novelty might wear off after a while.  I’d also never be able to enjoy salmon again.  I went into the movie wondering what the most recent take on the character would look like.

It looks a lot like National Treasure.  Think about it:  A man of important lineage has to go on a hunt for a special item/set of items while being chased by a bad guy.  If he gets the item, which we know he will, it will alter the course of events, presumably for the better.

That’s basically it.  If you’ve seen the coming attractions, you know the plotline.  Aquaman, a.k.a. Arthur Curry, was born to a land-dwelling father and a sea-dwelling queen.  He eventually has to reconcile his aquatic heritage by defeating his half-brother.  To do so, he must find a special trident.

Sure, there are some great fight scenes and the CGI was at least halfway decent.  (Although, there were a few shots that looked a little off to me.)  Still, it wasn’t a great movie.  It was almost like it was written by a brooding teenager.  The movie wants to be taken seriously, but anyone trying to take the movie seriously is like, “Nope.”

One thing that kept bothering me was Arthur’s trident.  What’s wrong with the trident?  It has five points.  Aren’t tridents, by definition, supposed to have three points?  Every time I saw it, it stood out.  I think it was supposed to look cool or something.

That was the thing. The movie seemed to be all show and spectacle.  There seemed to be very little substance.  The movie was an excuse to string together scenery, CGI and fight scenes.  It was enjoyable, but it was the least enjoyable of the superhero movies so far.  I’m kind of hoping that if Aquaman comes back to the big screen, it’s part of the Justice League.  It’s going to take a while to write a better standalone movie for him.

IMDb page

The Human Stain = A Hint: Shun Mate [The Human Stain (2003)]

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Life is full of difficult decisions. It's also full of foolish mistakes that you wish you could undo.

Anthony Hopkins plays Coleman Silk. He's got a great position at a college that he is said to have taken from being mediocre to being great. One day, he's teaching class. He calls on two students who happen to not be present that day. It's the fifth week of class and Silk can't recall having ever seen them. He asks if any of the students have seen these two mystery people or if they're simply "spooks." He uses the word to mean ghost, but both of the students (both of which are African-American) take great offense at the word, which also has a derogatory use. Despite the fact that Silk couldn't have possibly known what the two students looked like, a hearing is formed. Silk resigns in protest. When he tells his wife what happened, she can't handle the stress; she dies of an aneurysm several hours later. Thus, the story is set in motion.

Silk contacts a reclusive writer, Nathan Zuckerman, who is played by Gary Sinise. Zuckerman encourages Silk to write his own story, but Silk can't get the words right. In the meantime, the two men form a friendship. Silk also meets Faunia Farley at the Post Office where she works. (She also milks cows to pay for rent and has another job at the college where Silk worked.) The two end up sleeping together, which isn't a good idea considering her psychotic and possessive ex-husband, played by Ed Harris.

It took me a while to get into the movie. It had gotten to the point where I was so invested in the movie that I simply watched the rest of it because I didn't have that much time left in the movie. It isn't until the end that you really begin to appreciate it.

It's a very complicated plot. The movie has a lot of flashbacks as Silk tells his story to Zuckerman, but it's not hard to keep track of. The timeline is either pretty evident or becomes evident quickly. You do have to pay attention to the movie. You really can't watch it while doing something else.

There's also a very depressing aspect to it. Silk had a lot of decisions to make and a lot of his choices brought him enemies. "Spook" may have been a poor choice of words, but no one stuck up for him. When it came down to it, he was on his own and a lot of Silk's isolation had to with the decisions he made.

If you think that I've given away too many details, then you haven't seen the movie. There are still a few surprises left for you. Do not take your children to see this movie. There's sex, derogatory terms, violence and all sorts of adult themes. Children couldn't possible understand much of the movie. It's also not for everyone. This isn't a feel-good movie. It's a movie that's going to make you look at certain things and really think about them. 

Official Site (Mirimax)

IMDb page

Birth (2004)

I have this thing for strange movies. Some I honestly like while others I watch simply because they’re strange. There are some like Birth that I watch simply to see how they turn out. They get you interested and don’t let go until a very unusual ending.

The movie opens with a man saying that he doesn’t believe in reincarnation. Next is a man (presumably the same man) jogging. It’s a very simple, powerful scene. It looks like he’s jogging his usual route when all of a sudden, he collapses underneath a bridge. The next scene is a child being born.

Ten years pass since the man dies. The man’s wife, Anna, is getting married again, this time to a man named Joseph. One day, at a party, a ten-year-old boy walks in claiming to be Sean. It turns out his name is actually Sean, but he means Anna’s dead husband Sean. This freaks Anna out a little, but she begins to accept and believe the boy. He seems to know things about Sean, Sr., like where he died.

Most of the people surrounding Anna don’t believe. Anna’s mother is particularly resistant, threatening to call the police at one point. Even if Sean were to prove that he was who he claimed to be, it’s just not right for a woman of Anna’s age to have that kind of a relationship with a child of ten. (I should warn you that there’s a bathtub scene along those lines that may freak people out. It was staged, but it’s still a little freaky.)

Joseph is outright resistant to the idea that Sean is the reincarnation of the deceased. He’s had to wait a long time for Anna and be persistent. It’s understandable that he doesn’t want the boy in his house. After all, here’s this ten-year-old kid that practically walks right in to their lives and almost instantly wins Anna over, whereas he’s had to wait several years just to get her to say yes to a marriage proposal.

But is it even really Sean? The movie goes back and forth several times. Yes, he knows stuff, but he doesn’t know other things. There are also critical facts that the young Sean doesn’t know. He spends the entire movie seemingly convinced that he’s reincarnated, but what does he have to gain? What’s his game? Of all the people that could have been reincarnated and aware of it, why him? Why now?

That was what kept me watching the movie, even though it was slow and a little confusing. I kept waiting for some sort of major revelation, but I never got it. There was no heavy “Oh crap” moment where the entire movie came into focus. It would have been nice.

Don’t get me wrong. The acting was good. Nichole Kidman effectively played a woman that needed to believe. Lauren Bacall was great as a mother who knew that her daughter was digging a hole she might never get out of. But it was too strange a story. Reincarnation is one of those things that some people dismiss as mystic nonsense. I think that many of these people will turn the movie off within a half an hour. I can’t even say that that’s a bad thing.

I kind of wish I hadn’t watched the movie. Having watched it all the way to the end, I didn’t get it. Someone could come up to me and explain it and I probably still wouldn’t get it. I’m not sure what Anna was planning on doing at the end of the movie. Did she finally feel that she was being taken? I can’t recommend this movie.