Tag: 2020

The Reckoning (2020) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Reckoning (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #39

The Reckoning poster

Today’s movie was initially chosen while looking for a newer horror movie in an attempt at doing better at keeping up with recently released films. I only watched a few newer movies in January, so I want to make a stronger effort to keep up. As I was looking around at what’s come out lately, I discovered that writer/director Neil Marshall’s latest, The Reckoning, released on video on demand just a few days ago. My decision was instantly made.

I became a fan of Neil Marshall when I saw Dog Soldiers back around 2002, and I became a huge fan of his after The Descent in 2005. The Descent is still my favorite of his followed closely by Dog Soldiers and Doomsday (I haven’t seen Centurion), but I haven’t been able to add to my Neil-Marshall-movie-rankings list for a very long time. Sure, he directed Hellboy in 2019 (which I enjoyed), but as far as the movies he’s written and directed, he hasn’t put one out since 2010. That is, until The Reckoning debuted last year amid the theater-less world of the pandemic. I’m sad I didn’t get to see Marshall’s latest on the big screen, but I’m overjoyed that I just finished watching it at home! Where does it fall on my list? It doesn’t topple my top two, but given time I think it could fight for the third spot. 

The Reckoning is set in England in 1665 during the England witch trials while the bubonic plague was wreaking havoc across the land. The film follows a woman named Grace whose husband contracts the plague and kills himself to prevent the inevitability that he will pass it along to his wife and baby girl. Grace is then accused of being a witch by the lecherous and conniving squire who owns the land Grace and her family live on, and the rest of the film follows Grace is she is tortured in an attempt to get her confess to entering into a pact with the Devil. Grace’s will is strong, but the mental and physical strains she endures push her will to the breaking point. 

One thing I really enjoy about Neil Marshall is the tone of his movies. He approaches them seriously, but his directness can sometimes be blunt to the point of campiness. I think that’s most apparent in the utter ridiculousness of Doomsday, but I can see bits of it in The Reckoning as well. There’s a scene where the squire that accuses Grace voices his concerns to a bunch of people in a pub, and the whole scene is almost comical in how things quickly escalate. The squire tosses out the bait, end everyone almost immediately chimes in with some variation of “now that you mention it, I saw her once and then a bad thing happened one day so she must be a witch.” Subtlety is thrown out the door, and the idea of mob mentality, something you can build a whole movie around, is summarized in about a minute and a half. It’s great in its own way, and I enjoy it. 

Marshall is also unsubtle with his flair for blood and violence. The Reckoning is a violent movie and there are a few graphicly bloody shots scattered throughout, but I appreciate that it’s not all focused on the torture of Grace. Most of Grace’s torture happens off screen (at least, the physical acts of torture), and we often just see the bloody aftermath. The best/worst of the blood and gore is reserved for the people who really deserve it. Decapitations, crushed heads, multiple stabbings, and more happen on-screen in a way that makes you want to cheer rather than squirm. Mostly. 

I enjoyed the cast as well. Charlotte Kirk plays Grace, and she pulls off a great combination of vulnerability and strength. Steven Waddington is sufficiently scummy as the squire, but the better bad guy in the movie is Sean Pertwee as John Moorcroft, a witch hunter. Pertwee is maybe best known as Alfred in the Gotham TV series, but he’s worked with Neil Marshall before in Dog Soldiers. He also played Smith in one of my favorite outer-space horror movies, Event Horizon. Pertwee has a feeling of proper menace throughout the movie, and I wanted to see Grace get revenge on him more than anyone else. 

The final act of the movie turns into a bit of an action/revenge film, and that’s pretty much what I was hoping for. Again, Neil Marshall is not subtle. The Reckoning is not an A24 arthouse movie about witches, it’s a sometimes campy, often violent genre film about sweet, sweet revenge. Is is historically accurate? Probably not. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely. Hopefully Neil Marshall won’t take another ten years to write and direct another movie. 

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Death of Me A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Death of Me (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #27

Death of Me poster

Today’s movie is Death of Me, a psychological/supernatural horror movie starring Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth (brother of Chris and Liam). The movie was released in October of 2020, and it was recently added to Netflix which is where I watched it. After watching The King of Fighters recently I’ve been on the lookout for more Maggie Q movies that I haven’t seen, so this was an easy choice for my movie of the day. 

Death of Me is about a couple, Christine (Maggie Q) and Neil (Luke Hemsworth), who are vacationing in a small village off the coast of Thailand. Christine and Neil wake up on what is supposed to be their final day on the island with no memory of the previous night and with their rental room in shambles. They don’t have much time to think about what happened as they scramble to catch a ferry to the mainland so they can head home, but when they both discover that their passports are missing, they begin to suspect something is seriously wrong. Christine and Neil then begin to try to piece together the previous night, only to uncover a dark mystery that begins with the couple finding a video on Neil’s phone of him apparently killing Christine. 

From there the movie progresses in a Wicker-Man-esque way with the locals becoming more sinister as they prepare for a local festival. Christine’s health begins to deteriorate and she sees flashes of frightening images, but are the things she’s experiencing real, or are they just hallucinations?  Can she even trust Neil after what she saw on the video? It all builds up to a mostly satisfying climax with more than a little predictability. 

For me, the best part of Death of Me is Maggie Q’s performance. The mystery of the movie feels familiar and is often pretty easy to predict, but Maggie Q helps sell every scene with her mixture of fear, annoyance, and anger. There is one scene late in the movie that I won’t spoil, but it’s a great and surprising moment of Christine having just about enough of the way everyone has been treating her, and she finally decides to do something about it. I’m sure you’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it.

Overall though, I thought Death of Me was just okay. It’s not particularly scary like the cover artwork may lead you to believe, and the mystery doesn’t feel super mysterious to me. The movie feels like it emulates similar plots including the aforementioned Wicker Man (which is actually mentioned in the movie by Neil), but I am glad I kept watching until the end. I was feeling a lot of frustration just like Christine was (well, maybe not just like Christine, but I was getting annoyed with how people were treating her), and seeing Christine lash out was pretty satisfying. I’d say give this a watch is you really enjoy psychological thrillers, but maybe watch the trailer first to get a feel for the tone of the movie.

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Wonder Woman 1984 A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #16

My favorite WW84 poster.

I really don’t know what people want from movies sometimes. I waited a few weeks after its release to see Wonder Woman 1984, and in the meantime I’ve seen mixed reviews for the film at best. It’s currently at 60% on Rotten Tomatoes and hovering around 5.5 on IMDB. There is a fair amount of review bombing going on (which has to be one of the absolute dumbest forms of protest), and some of the nastier reviews seem like they’re just looking for stuff to complain about. Don’t get me wrong, opinions are fine and great, but some opinions are better (and more well reasoned) than others. By all means, have your own opinion and defend it with whatever reasoning you think you should, but Wonder Woman 1984 definitely better than the impression a casual glance at any collection of online reviews might give you. It’s certainly not the best movie ever made (nor is it trying to be), and it’s probably not even as good was Wonder Woman (2017), but it is a fun superhero movie with some touching moments, campy laughs, and admirable performances. I’m not trying to by cynical here though, so I’m just going to leave the rest of the online chatter behind and talk about the movie from the only perspective I really can: my own. 

Wonder Woman 1984 picks up Diana Prince’s (Gal Gadot) story about 65 years after her adventures with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) during World War I. The year is, obviously, 1984, and Diana is living a relatively quiet life working at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. while staying out of the spotlight as best as she can. She’s still helping people by performing heroic deeds as Wonder Woman, but she’s trying to keep that part of her life a secret. Her lives as Diana and Wonder Woman start to cross over when an artifact ends up at the Smithsonian and a newly hired gemologist, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), is tasked with finding out exactly what it is. It ends up being something imbued with great power, and local celebrity/con-man Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) has been searching for it for a very long time. Long story short, Diana, Barbara, and Maxwell all end up receiving certain benefits from the artifact, and those benefits effect them each in different ways. Maxwell, however, is driven to take more and more power, and as he gets what he wants, the entire world starts to pay a heavy price for it. Diana has to stop him, but her own desires and the actions of Barbara stand in her way emotionally and physically. 

The first thing I really love about Wonder Woman 1984 is the fantastic cast. Gal Gadot is just as perfect for Diana Prince now as she was back in the first Wonder Woman movie. She’s always the strongest presence on the screen, and Diana’s character arc is touching and significant. Kristin Wiig is also great as Barbara Minerva. The character of Barbara can come off as somewhat of a stereotypical nerd who just wants to be popular, but Wiig’s performance kept me invested even when it was abundantly clear where her character arc was headed. And Pedro Pascal is fantastic as Maxwell Lord. Max comes across as a cheesy TV personality when we first meet him, but when his sinister side comes out, Pascal manages to balance humor with a kind of manic desperation and danger. Max also has a tender side that humanizes him, and that makes his fall as he succumbs to his darker tendencies all the more tragic. Maxwell Lord is easily one of the more interesting villains in any superhero movie. 

Plus, yes, as you’ve probably seen in the trailer, Chris Pine is back as Steve Trevor, and he adds a ton of heart and humor through his performance. How is Steve Trevor back? You can maybe piece some things together from what I’ve said so far, but I won’t say any more about it. It’s fun finding out how Steve manages to be alive after having died 65 years prior, so I won’t spoil it here. 

Beyond the performances, I just think Wonder Woman 1984 is just a fun superhero movie. The action set pieces are memorable, and even though some of the jumping and swinging feels a bit floaty to me, that didn’t distract me from the overall enjoyment of seeing Wonder Woman in battle. Many action movies these days have that kind of floaty feel to any CGI aerial action, so I think the effects here are at the very least on par with most other superhero blockbusters. Some of the best moments can be seen in the trailer (like Wonder Woman flipping a truck and leaping above it), but there a bunch of fun fight scenes on both large and small scales. 

As much as I enjoy the action in Wonder Woman 1984, it does take a while for it all to really get going. Except for a brief sequence where Wonder Woman stops some robbers in a mall at the very beginning of the film, the first half of the movie is all about character building and setup. There’s a lot of talking and drama, but there’s not a lot of action during this time. So if you want wall to wall fighting, you’re going to have to wait a bit. For me though, I enjoy the characters enough that I wanted to follow them and learn more about them and their relationships before they inevitably start fighting and falling apart. The first half of the movie didn’t feel like a drag to me, but I could see where others might want to see a bit more punching and kicking.

I do think the character building in the first half of the movie is important though, because it helps make the final few scenes more emotionally resonant. Even though, yeah, certain things can come across in a heavy-handed way towards the end of the movie, I am totally fine with a bit of comic book cheese in my comic book movie. I enjoyed all of the resolutions, and I even got a little teary one or two times. Maybe I’m just a soft touch when it comes to these things.

The story in Wonder Woman 1984 is good in a very comic-booky way. Getting from point A to point B and beyond can often take a lot of logical leaps, but I’m fine with that. This is a movie about a world filled with gods and magic, so I can buy into more than a few convenient coincidences and reality-bending scenarios as I’m enjoying my bright and colorful entertainment. I have certain expectations when I go to see a superhero movie like this, and Citizen-Kane-level storytelling isn’t one of them. I’d like to have good action, interesting characters, and some nice emotional beats. Wonder Woman 1984 has all of those things and more. I was very entertained for the two and a half hours I spent watching it, and I’m looking forward to watching it again sometime soon. 

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Ava (2020) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Ava (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #9

Ava movie poster

With its exceptionally strong cast featuring Jessica Chastain, John Malkovich, Common, Colin Farrell, Joan Chen, and Geena Davis, I was excited to get home and watch Ava after coming across it in one my local Redboxes. The writeup promised exciting action with Jessica Chastain as Ava, an assassin who ends up on the run after a job goes awry, and I do enjoy a good assassin-on-the-run action flick. And while there absolutely are a number of fun action scenes from gun fights to hand-to-hand combat, the main focus of the movie was split between action and some heavy drama as Ava’s troubled past comes meets her dangerous present. Now, I love a good drama as well, but overall I did come away from Ava feeling like maybe the divided attention paid to both the drama and the action didn’t quite come together in a way that enhanced both. So overall, I enjoyed Ava, but I was hoping to enjoy it a lot more.

The movie starts with Ava on a mission. It’s a quick setup just to get you familiar with Ava’s work and a bit of her personality. Ava is an efficient killer, but people in her organization have problems with how she handles certain situation. Ava has had issues with getting too emotionally involved with the people she’s sent to kill (not romantically, more in a “what did you do to make me kill you” kind of way), and Simon, one of her superiors played by Colin Farrell, doesn’t trust her anymore. Ava’s direct contact, Duke (played by John Malkovich) is a disciplined and fatherly figure, and he seems to trust Ava to do what needs to be done. But when we see one of Ava’s missions go wrong and nearly get her killed, it seems clear that someone is gunning to put Ava away for good. This is the action part of the movie, and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Meanwhile though, Ava takes a break from killing to go to her hometown of Boston, and that’s where the drama comes in. We learn about Ava’s dark past with her parents, sister, and ex-fiancé, and on its own I think it could be a good drama. Geena Davis plays Ava’s mom, and Common plays her ex-fiancé, so clearly the acting is great. I guess the thing that never really clicked for me is that Ava’s family life and her life as an assassin never really cross over. Obviously Ava’s troubles influence her character and affect her ability to survive as people are trying to kill her, but the drama side of the movie and the action side of the movie felt distinctly separate in a lot of ways. There’s never really a climactic scene where Ava is forced to reveal her new life to her family (well, there sort of is, but it’s very minor), and even though family ties end up being important to Duke and Simon and their work within the assassination organization, Ava is never really forced into the same position. I suppose that’s why I say the drama didn’t enhance the action and vice versa. It feels like a lot of dramatic buildup with no real payoff.

That being said, I did enjoy the movie. The actors are all great, and even though I would have preferred that the story took different turns, the people in the movie kept me invested in what happened to their characters. Also, there were multiple action scenes that I really quite enjoyed. Jessica Chastain is a good action hero, and I look forward to seeing her shoot and beat up a lot more people in the future (like in The 355 which I keep seeing trailers for in the theater).

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