Category: Movies (Page 1 of 2)

John Cena seems like he could be another Arnold Schwarzenegger.  A big meat lunk who can do action believably, but is smart and self-aware enough that he can do drama and comedy.

Freelance isn’t a great movie, but it is good.  It’s a bodyguard-in-a-dangerous-country movie.  John Cena does a great job with the action.  He has good timing and can deliver the dry wit convincingly. 

Alison Brie may have peaked on Community.  She owned the part of Annie.  In Freelance, there are dozens of actresses who could have been the aggressive journalist.

Christian Slater is always worth watching. 

Freelance doesn’t seem to be available for free on any streaming service, but if it come up, it’s worth watching.  6.5/10

Everyone knows that the replacement women of the MCU have been a disaster, but nobody is supposed to point that out.

It doesn’t matter that the female characters have been in the comic books for decades nor does it matter that they are women.  They are just insufferable.

In 2011, when Thor was released, Natalie Portman was a drag and had no chemistry with Chris Hemsworth.  Kat Dennings had much more on-screen charisma.  This was way before the M-She-U, and Portman had already worn out her welcome.

In 2021, when the Hawkeye TV show aired, Hailee Steinfeld was so juvenile and impetuous, watching the show was a tedious chore.  Florence Pugh saved the show.

Tatiana Maslany was incredible in Orphan Black.  If you haven’t seen it, she plays something like eight different characters, all clones and all distinct.  The viewer could tell which character she was portraying without her even speaking.  I thought I could watch her in anything, but She-Hulk was about as bad as a TV show can get.

It isn’t the fault of the actresses.  The writers didn’t just decide to introduce female characters, but thought that tearing down and discrediting the men was the way to do it.  The audience doesn’t have to be particularly attentive or knowledgeable to notice that the MCU hates men.

The Critical Drinker explains it in his review of The Marvels.

I am not happy that Disney destroyed the MCU franchise, but I am pleased to see the company get hammered for taking such a divisive and hateful approach to an established portion of our pop culture.

I’m not proud of the immense schadenfruede that comes from The Marvels being beaten at the box office by Five Nights at Freddy’s, a movie with a budget of $20 million.

Other MCU movies are on the schedule, but not as many or very soon.  It will be interesting to see if Disney fires anyone or changes direction. 

Because it was talked about so much when it came out, I decided to watch Barbie to see for myself.

It’s an easy watch.  Margot Robbie, as Barbie, is gorgeous, dresses cute and doesn’t say anything objectionable.  Almost everything she says is vacuous.  Ryan Gosling, as Ken, is fun and dumb.  It isn’t clear why Michael Cera, as Allen, is even in the movie.  He pops up occasionally and does stuff, but if Ken is a fantasy man and Barbie is a fantasy woman, what is Allen?  An incell?  Gay?  I don’t know.

The important humans are a mom and her daughter.  America Ferrera is the mom and self-described as weird and dark and crazy.  Ariana Greenblatt is the daughter and is a marxist eco-feminist.  She is exceedingly tedious to be around.  Nothing she says makes any sense.

If Barbie is a message movie, the idea is so muddled, it doesn’t feel like preaching.  I expected it to be a girl-boss movie, like everything coming out of Disney.  It isn’t that.  If anything, it’s a feminist parody. 

At the start of the movie, Barbieland is like purgatory.  Kens are treated like appliances designed to fuel Barbie’s ego.  Barbies all have self-esteem titles like president, doctor and Nobel Prize winner, without having accomplished anything.  It is so superficial, it’s like an island of fembots and appliances.  This dystopia argues for not letting women be in charge of anything.

The real world refutes the entire idea of a patriarchy.  Ken reads leftist books thinking that he can be or do anything because he is a man, but nothing works like that in the real world.  For Ken, being treated like a human, rather than an appliance, is so gratifying, he goes back to Barbieland and turns that into a patriarchy. 

The Patriarchy Land is actually engaging and fun for everyone.  Barbies and Kens are having a good time flirting and partying with each other.  Crazy Mom and Margot Barbie hate this happy world.

Crazy Mom gives a speech about how pathetic and incompetent she is, and motivates a couple of oddballs in Patriarchy Land to help brainwash Barbies back to the vacuous life.

When the Barbies get brainwashed, the Kens are kind, attentive and helpful to the Barbies who are acting helpless.  When the Barbies and Kens are apparently getting along, the Barbies emotionally manipulate the Kens into going to war with each other.  That distraction will allow the Barbies to take back the fantasy land.

The message seems to be that women can’t accomplish anything by themselves, but need shady manipulation to get men to do what they want.

After the Kens tussle, Barbies take back everything, and the movie completely lost focus.  It was like  Lincoln freed the slaves and the Civil War was settled by a dance number.  Barbies didn’t want Barbieland to go back to the way it was, but weren’t prepared to grant Kens full citizenship and representation.  Kens weren’t sure who they were now that they weren’t appliances anymore.  Like freeing the slaves and then telling them to compete in a free market economy with no transition phase. 

They didn’t seem to know how to end the movie, so Barbie became a real woman.  Everything up to this point made it seem like women in the real world lived with impossible expectations.  Based on the logic of the movie, the only reason Barbie would want to be a real woman is because she looked like Margot Robbie.

It’s a fun movie and each viewer can make up and support any message they want.  7.5/10.