Opening in theaters today...
Superman--It's excellent, so a certain poet has told us, to have a giant's strength, but tyrannous to use it like a giant. Before James Gunn's Superman has started, the title character (David Corenswet) has pre-emptively interceded to stop the invasion of one country by another, without causalities and in near-certainty that in so doing he has prevented murder and oppression. It's obvious to him that he's done the right thing, but even so, his action strikes some as overbearing, and public opinion of the Man of Steel shifts.
This is all connected, it turns out, to the scheming of Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) to neutralize Superman and consolidate sanctioned power. Superman ends up imprisoned and subjected to torture by kryptonite in an interdimensional "pocket universe" run by Lex. Clark Kent's girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and her colleagues at the Daily Planet are on the case, as, with varying degrees of urgency, are Superman's pals in "The Justice Gang."
Best of all, he's got a dog on his side. Krypto, introduced in the comics in 1955, finally gets a proper live action screen treatment here, in a vivid CGI rendering. As in the comics, Gunn depicts the superdog as a sweet-natured and well-intentioned but not always well-behaved creature; he could use a PetSmart obedience class. But he's still a good boy.
Gunn's achievement with this new movie is considerable. The writer-director has managed to make a version that feels original and imaginative, but also authentic; it truly looks and feels like Superman, as much as the George Reeves or Christopher Reeve or Kirk Alyn films or any earlier versions. It's not a perfect movie by a long shot, but it's bold and fun and cheerfully messy; its virtues far outweigh its faults.
Gunn also explores some stimulating ideas here, as if in response to anyone who might wonder if this superficially naive American myth has anything left to teach us. Among these themes is the question--always relevant to interventionist-minded America--of whether omnipotence, even if it was possible and even if it was linked to genuinely good intentions, would inevitably lead to correct action.
It's hard, as it is so often with comic-book and fantasy films these days, not to read contemporary allegorical significance into them. In his spite and resentful envy, Lex seems a lot like our current president; on the other hand, in his calculated efforts to take over our military-industrial power structure, he also seems quite a lot like our current president's biggest donor. As played by Hoult, however, he's more appealing than either of them.
Hoult's performance is one of many in what feels like a truly ensemble cast. Corenswet is one of the few actors to play this role who are at least as charming as Superman as he is in Clark Kent drag. Gunn's attempt to give an explanation as to why nobody sees through Superman's transparent disguise is unnecessary, however; it's just an accepted convention, like a Shakespearean heroine undetectably disguising herself as a boy.
Brosnahan may be the sexiest of all Lois Lanes, or at least since Phyllis Coates back in the first season of the TV show, and she's plucky and loyal and lovable too. Skyler Gisondo makes a fine, competent Jimmy Olsen, Wendell Pierce gets little screen time as Perry White but feels right, and Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Hall are touchingly more rustic than usual as Clark's Smallville parents. On the superhero side, Edi Gathegi is a hoot as a dour, taciturn Mister Terrific; so is Nathan Fillion as a dyspeptic, self-impressed Green Lantern (of the Guy Gardner vintage).
This Superman is overambitious, and more than a little uneven. What I liked least about it was the pocket universe. It gets the movie in over its head, front-loading Lex with too much power. If he can puncture and fracture space and time like this, why should he worry about getting the government's permission for anything?
My distaste for this device goes beyond this point of plausibility, though. If anyone's asking (no one seems to be) I would invite superhero flicks to take a nice long break from dimensional portals, and time/space rifts and alternate universes (except with Dr. Strange, of course; that's his shtick). Also, from crumbling buildings. Enough with the crumbling buildings. It's time to shake off that post-9/11 mentality.
What I liked best about the movie, however, is what it isn't: It isn't "dark." It isn't brooding, or gritty, or cynical. The title character isn't, in the usual sense, cool; Superman uses words like "golly" and "gosh" and Gunn doesn't seem to mean it as camp, or to be more than gently mocking his hero. Even Lois rolls her eyes at Clark's guilelessness here, but he's unperturbed, and so was I, as a viewer. It's taken this genre a long time to work its way around to the idea that being an unabashed, unapologetic good guy is truly punk rock. But it's been worth the trip.
Sorry, Baby--Agnes, a young professor, lives alone in a farmhouse in the Massachusetts woods. It could be the setting for an old-school scary movie, but this film is about a more appallingly common sort of horror.
As the movie starts, Agnes (Eva Victor) is welcoming her best friend and former roomie Lydie (Naomie Ackie) for a visit. The two share a blankie on the couch and catch up on their lives, talking with hilarity about the follies of sex. They're having fun, but it's clear that something heavy from the past hangs in the air. Gradually, in chapters that flash back and forward, we learn what it is: Agnes is a survivor of sexual assault.
Written and directed by star Victor, Sorry, Baby is a spectacular debut, restrained and economical yet emotionally intense, poignant yet frequently funny, unpredictable yet believable from beginning to end. Again and again, Victor catches us off guard, using suggestion and distance to get across an outrage, or undercutting misery with quiet but insistent comedy, or with the unexpected restorative grace of a "really good sandwich."
Agnes is a tour de force role, and Victor is devastatingly good, one minute displaying crisp comic timing, another the depths of psychological distress. The supporting cast is mostly for support, but Ackie is a pleasure as usual. Lucas Hedges is serviceable as the neighbor guy that helps Agnes start rebuilding trust, and John Carroll Lynch, reliable as ever, has an excellent scene as the stranger with the sandwich. As a rabidly competitive professional rival to Agnes, Kelly McCormack may seem a little caricatured, but probably less so if you've spent much time around academics.
Victor seems determined not to let the movie be oppressive; to give full measure to the crime that it's depicting but also to the beauty and joy that Agnes takes in life in spite of her trauma and loss. We see her teaching a lit class, and get a hint of her love of and skill at what she does. We see her find a kitten in the street, and how this relationship jolts her soul awake. Somehow all this makes the crime against her more infuriating, not less.
The sequence at the end that explains the title suggests that Agnes may find the hovering, solicitous worry of her friends almost as much of a burden as what's she's suffered. No doubt that's a common feeling for survivors, but I couldn't help it; the movie made me feel the same way her friends do.
Somewhere, perhaps, some other critic may be writing a dissent, feeling a more graphic, less tacit dramatization of sexual abuse is called for. Maybe they're right. But it's hard for me to imagine a movie that generated more understanding of the impact of sexual abuse on a victim. It's one of the best films of the year.