Reviews

Now with Justice League uniting the dark Avengers, Warner Bros. attempts to unite the gods of man, the Amazons, the Atlanteans, the cybernetic world, electric currents (?) and the overseer of those gods, resulting in a joyless action sequence display.

First off, the new team members sway too far from their source material: The Flash's superpower is supposed to be superspeed alone, no electrical currents included as depicted here. Aquaman never once talks to fish, his signature superpower, his only attention seekers going straight to his pecs. The method of bringing Superman back to life (not spoiling anything by the way) makes no sense. Plus, Batman's technology lacks the creativity of his previous versions.

Although, the introductions are sure-fire crowd pleasers, especially Wonder Woman's opening fight to remove a bomb from a public building. The Flash gets a neat intro too as he doodles on an unsuspecting rude guy's face in a millisecond, and right before meeting his father in prison. Like the Flash, Cyborg's backstory also starts off empathetic as his father Cyrus cares little about his son's now monstrous state. Then once Superman comes back, he forgets his identity, leading to a heated entertaining battle against the newly united fivesome.

Yet in the end, the memory of the experience lasts much shorter than Wonder Woman did. The midway directing replacement of Joss Whedon shows as rock music blares at the most inappropriate moments, similarly, Zack Snyder's initiation shows with the dreadful CGI that equals early 2000's graphics.

The screen writing most hurts the cinematic universe as the subplots jump everywhere with no surprises aside from the appalling Captain Obvious dialogue. Superman never properly meets the men in the new league, one Hera might bristle over due to how Wonder Woman's status as the sole female voice is overlooked.

In fact, what happened to the whole family concept? I mean, Batman and Superman both have parent issues, Wonder Woman has mommy issues, Flash and Cyborg both have daddy issues, so what about Aquaman's parental issues? His lack of attention consequently makes the walking fish man's story arc the most incomplete, since we don't see him again until a half hour after his introduction. To make the nitpicks more aggravating: Exposition repeats itself three times each until the final moments literally spoon-feed the message as if everything contained some deeper meaning. Honestly, the scriptwriting nitpick list tops the mass of Jupiter.

I now wish this movie was entirely animated, mainly to cover up the dreadful acting. The cast clearly reads off cue cards half the time, the other half of the time they pause too often, supposedly struggling to remember their lines. Henry Cavill in particular continues his reputation as a horrible, terrible performer... why bring him back? Why? They even needed to CGI his moustache away—just further evidence that Superman should STAY dead.

Justice League in general seems to worship the flesh more so than the spirit, as every actor, yes, EVERY ACTOR, looks gorgeous, even after a tread through Hades in the climax. After his resurrection, Superman's hair, skin, and six-pack still look flawless without a sign of decomposition. The same especially goes to the staging of Gal Gadot: she wears leather tight pants, her booty framed to fill up the screen. Heck, her skirt barely even covers her butt cheeks! Meanwhile, the Flash, the skinny Jewish boy, covers his entire body under a high-tech suit, and Cyborg must survive off machinery to replace his permanently damaged African American body, as if race and religion weren't body- shamed enough.

I'm now mortified to call these guys "superheroes," as they do nothing besides thwart whomever blocks their path to pride. Bruce tries to tell Diana about how she brings out people's better selves, but with the physical violence she resorts to, she does the complete opposite. They're all teaching girls to publicly sexualize themselves, which could cause men to rape them. They're all teaching boys to overwork their muscles, which could cause them to fall into heart failure by steroids or exhaustion. I have no recollection of hearing the word "hero" in this heap; so now comics avoid rescuing a cat from on top of a tree to celebrate an ideal fantasy where you can feel more powerful than God himself. At the same time, Justice League wants you to lower your submission to worship DC's nonexistent gods, who stand for anything but truth, justice, and the American way.

At first, Goodbye Christopher Robin delightfully captures your memories in the Hundred Acre Wood. The boy you know as Christopher Robin hosts a stuffed animal tea party in the morning, then he and his father follow their own tracks in the snow in the afternoon, and before supper, brilliant red balloons are used in an attempt to float up a tree, just like what the bear of very little brain did to obtain some honey. The woods that host these adventures appears alive with its golden sunbeams in the summer, and nostalgic as the boy imagines snowflakes falling upwards in the winter. This feature even parallels the book's illustrations as various visual effects transition between scenes with a sketch over the live actions.

As these stimulators spark your memories, screenwriters Frank Cottrell Boyce and Simon Vaughan make you rethink whatever you think you know about Winnie-the-Pooh. The author, a WWI veteran, is no Mother Goose himself, as his writing process consists of flashbacks to his time in service, perhaps due to post-traumatic stress disorder. Hence, he prefers life in the lonely countryside to raise his son, Billy.

Yeah, hate to burst your bubble—the real Christopher Robin never even went by that name, but Billy instead… after his mother's broken expectation of wanting a girl. So, his mother resorted to the stuffed animals she bought for him as a means of communication, which explains why he spent so much time with them: he only wanted his mommy. But because she kept letting his hair grow long and dressed him in classic Mary Janes, he never met her expectations. As she left home to enjoy her riches in the party crowd, and the father traveled for inspiration, the nanny was left the one in charge, leaving his childhood awfully confused. The confusion cut even deeper once the published books turned him into a household name, one about his nonexistent identity.

The script contains several good revisions about the famous ball of stuff n' fluff; it mentions how the author, Alan Alexander Milne, the protagonist, spent his time writing in the battlefields, and grasps your intrigue with other little-known facts, such as the strange origin behind the name "Winnie-the-Pooh." Other elements translate quite well onto the visual medium, like Billy watching penguins swim at the zoo and the private birthday band mother arranges for her son—you can tell the producers committed to the truth.

Most of the cast display great dedication, including Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) as the careless mother, but more so Alex Lawther (The Imitation Game), who plays Billy in his older years. Lawther helped me to feel a bit sorry for the real Billy's past, even some in the audience were steamy-eyed by the end. Plus, one older woman sounded flabbergasted after she overheard me telling my Mom I found the experience "okay."

Yeah, sorry. After all the wondrous charm, Goodbye Christopher Robin still turns out just "okay."

First off, as most child actors tend to be, the boy they got to play young Billy has no talent, clearly cast because of his cheek-pinching cuteness. Director Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn, Woman in Gold) put no brains behind the heart he put into the production's sugary aroma; he relied on the boy's cuteness rather than staged tension to force in drama. The scenes' pacing either runs too slow or too fast, as evidenced by some pathetic arguments where nobody even bothers to raise their voices. Instead, moments get rushed, even leaving a ten-year time jump that takes you a second longer than intended to figure out.

One of the main issues to the poor direction is that the screenwriters mainly resorted to cliché ideas with no subtext behind the speakers' words. There are so many other distracting details; the nanny triggers quite a few of those, mainly due to her inauthentic Irish accent. She leads Billy in a prayer each night, which really just proves a missed chance to show how the family's religious background affected his spiritual condition over the years. Outside the family home, the book's readers constantly declare how Pooh revived international happiness after the war, so maybe it would have been appropriate to see a distinction in the people's mentality before and after Pooh hit bookstore shelves?

Ultimately, everyone involved behind this project seemed confused about the core audience. How do I know? Well, many of the pre-trailer ads at my screening starred cute little kids and animals, and the fifty-five and older crowd filled most of the audience seats. This movie had no reason to be family entertainment; it certainly added no effect on its box office returns, as it earned a pathetic $57,917 on its opening weekend. After all, nobody in today's mobile age gives a hoot about Winnie-the-Pooh; at the same time, the grownups may find Curtis' effort too cutesy without enough story to resolve the mother's carelessness toward her son.

Honestly, the books will delight you more than Goodbye Christopher Robin attempts.

The art house may not always be your go-to place for a good time out, particularly amidst the summer blockbuster season, but let me say: it often draws paths to the answers of whatever life questions you may regularly ponder. Although A Ghost Story falls into the category of "love it or hate it," please know that it came from A24, the remarkable independent studio which brought us life-changing works about the inner human spirit, such as Ex Machina, Room, The Lobster, Swiss Army Man, and Moonlight. Now, they did it again with this almost silent film that exploits its tiny sixty-member cast and crew.

The director/editor David Lowery (Pete's Dragon) has proved his mastery over both of his responsibilities; he follows what more experimental filmmakers do nowadays, and utilizes long uninterrupted shots to its greatest power. The camera seldom moves as it lingers on the small moments for an uncomfortable length of time—the moments he chooses to linger on supposedly communicate nothing, calling us to wait in anticipation.

Lowery can truly make each frame tell its own story under its 4:3 aspect ratio, the corners rounded off, as if watching a hopeless widow's Instagram story. You could literally watch it on your phone for the compatibility of its visual style! He stated before how he "wanted to make something small and tiny and handmade," (Filmmaker Magazine) and he well and beyond fulfills what he hinted at, as he creates such a cold environment inside the claustrophobic house the weary spirit refuses to leave. Especially in the large-scale moments, such as a walk in the grassy plain, Lowery keeps things as intimate as possible.

The ghost's simple design intrigues the senses: the familiar white bedsheet with holes cut in for the eyes creates some hauntingly surreal imagery. Nobody can see him there under the sheets from his hospital deathbed other than us the spectators, turning the already unsettling vision of a white strolling figure all the more eerie.

You can for certain love the accompanying musical score by Daniel Hart, (The Exorcist TV series) whose work echoes against itself as if the purpose of music could never be understood until you croaked. I highly recommend buying the soundtrack.

However, like other new directors given a limited $100,000 budget, several issues still blare hot amidst the triumphs. Spoilers out of the way, the third act features time travel elements that receive too little time spent on sensical explanations. Its "open to interpretation" story gets too carried away with itself for public appeal. The ethnical casting decisions also causes distance between reality, as explorations of the limited cultural space are brilliant, yet Whitewashed: an Americanized Mexican family structure comes to mind, as well as a tribe of savage Native Americans. Likewise, two White drop-dead gorgeous celebrity A-listers play the lead roles, and barely any information is communicated about what these two lovers think of one another.

Rather, the aftermath of the death triggers the most empathy. If you have ever been in love or felt in love, the silent loneliness each individual faces will deeply resonate. The eerie nature of a widow being watched by her dead husband skyrockets in sorrow; you too want their wants due to actions rather than words.

The two leads, both together and apart, allow you to feel as hollow as the spirit on the poster. The husband, played by Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Manchester by the Sea) wears the cotton sheet throughout 95% of the runtime, stunningly sad in posture just by staring with his misty nonexistent eyes. As for the wife, played by Rooney Mara, (Carol, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) you feel her pain just by her eating a full pie until she pukes. When close up, she has no need to give a dramatic cry-face to express your tears as she listens to her former-husband's original music.

Lowery understands his craft in blocking actors, with strict emphasis on posture, such as when the live husband cuddles his wife in bed or strokes her sobbing body with his cloaked, disembodied hand. He can generate the most out of each performance, even if one of them only exists to spill out philosophies around the theme.

Lowery has demonstrated his ultimate strength as a director in constructing this effective, nonpreachy message. It helps you reconsider the importance of letting others know the impact of their legacy before breathing one last time, so they won't resort to imagining a miserable afterlife most everyone in the world fears.