My first reviews of 2021 are finally here. Yes, they were delayed, but I have been keeping up with the movies coming out this year. Hopefully for the remainder of the the year we’re going to get to them a little more regularly. Of these, I’d recommend checking out CODA on Apple TV+. It’s worth your time.

GODZILLA VS. KONG * * * (Dir. Adam Wingard)

The fight we’ve been waiting years to see…I think

Amazingly, given the less than stellar quality of all previous Godzilla and Kong entries in this wannabe mega-franchise, this is the first one that finally gets the “big dumb fun” tone right. For the most part, anyway. The humans are still a mix of non-characters played by random actors but at least none of them are taking it seriously this time around (speaking particularly of the Godzilla people, with Millie Bobby Brown and Kyle Chandler reprising their roles as less somber Godzilla trackers this time). There’s not much to the plot of course- Kong is being transported by shady government stooges while Godzilla’s on the lookout for his counterpart, a robot version of himself (Mecha Godzilla) that’s been built by the humans, but the only thing that matters is seeing the big guys come face to face and start pounding on each other. Which they do a lot of, thankfully. The fight scenes are finally well lit so we can actually see Kong versus ‘Zilla in this, and they’re also not overly long in the Michael Bay, Transformers style so as to tire you out from watching. The movie knows what you’re there to see and gives it to you straight for a solid three fights, complete with dirty looks, punches, gritted teeth, a truce, a partnership and a team-up against the really evil Mecha-dude. Never mind the fact that Kong’s size keeps changing and frankly there’s no WAY he could beat up Godzilla…he’s the only one with a real personality in the whole movie and the guy we want to see win no matter what. So there you have it. The only thing it was missing at the end was a hug, and after everything we just watched, a nice hug between them would not have been going too far. We earned it.

CRUELLA * (Dir. Craig Gillespie)

Cruella is the latest in a long line of soulless, cynical, IP-mining cash grabs from the treasure trove of beloved characters in the Disney vault that the company has long lost any sort of respect or appreciation for. Emma Stone takes the name and the image of one of the great Disney villains and butchers her worse than Cruella herself ever did any of those innocent dalmatians. Of course, this assumes some working knowledge of the character that appeared in either the novel, the 1961 cartoon voiced by Betty Lou Gerson, or even the 1996 Glenn Close-starring vehicle. Correct me if I’m wrong, but…Cruella DeVil was a bad guy, right? Not an aspirational, badass punk whose best pal is a CGI dog and who’d never dream of wearing furs, smoking cigarettes, or plotting puppy murder? Whoever this movie is about bears no resemblance to anything I know about 101 Dalmatians, and I can’t erase what I know. So who’s this movie for? Well, I suppose it’s for some amorphous group of people with a vague recognition of the brand name but no memory or knowledge of any previous film about this character, but fans of more recent fare like Joker and The Devil Wears Prada (which this shamelessly rips off beat for beat for nearly an hour of its unforgivable 2 and a half hour runtime). Estella, later Cruella, is orphaned in a laughable and poorly lit prologue and then grows up on the street with best pals Jasper and Horace (seriously), eventually taking a job as assistant to a fashion baroness (Emma Thompson, the villain of the movie, who seems to be playing some version of the actual Cruella DeVil) in 70’s London. Why is this movie set in the 70’s? Well, it’s so I, Tonya director Craig Gillespie can mine the era’s soundtrack and Disney’s deep pockets for all they’re worth, relentlessly tossing in one classic rock song after another in poorly executed and clunkily staged montage sequences. On the surface, the movie is grating, unfunny, irritating and badly paced- it would be a bad movie if it wasn’t pretending to be a famous character’s origin story. But since it seems to insist on being that, with constant throwaway references and CGI dogs in the background of almost every shot (this movie has nothing to do with dogs) it’s utterly baffling and makes no sense. I see no reason for this to have been made (other than reiterating the first sentence of this review), but the deepest response I had to it is wondering what Bob Hoskins movie Paul Walter Hauser (Horace) sought out to pantomime the worst American doing a British accent since Dick Van Dyke.

IN THE HEIGHTS * * * (Dir. Jon M. Chu)

Colorism controversies aside, In the Heights works as a musical — Colorism controversies aside, *In the Heights* works as a musical

John M. Chu’s adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first play is mostly a success, filled with energy and exuberance from a fine cast of unknown actors, so much so that it carries the movie through its nearly two-and-a-half hours. The director of several of the Step Up films puts together a full scale musical, which is nice to see again, with rambunctious dance numbers, Busby Berkeley tributes, dancing on the sides of buildings, you name it. And yet his touch is a bit on the heavy-handed side (the movie can at times feel like a really expensive production of the High School Musical Disney specials). Heavy handedness can be forgiven in the genre, but the stakes in this one are extremely low, with most of the songs about everyday life and trivial “I’m going to the park” style lyrics as a huge ensemble cast sings about their lives in Washington Heights, New York. This is a fault of the source material of course, but with some of the actual serious thematic content having been cut from the film (a subplot involving racism and prejudice against an interracial couple for example), it leaves the movie occasionally feeling itself a bit trivial in spite of all the music. Chu also made the very unfortunate decision to frame the story using an incredibly cheesy device with lead Anthony Ramos (in what should be a star making performance) reciting his life story to some grating five year olds in intolerable cutaways. It’s also a bit of a drawback that none of the music itself is catchy or memorable- you won’t come out of this one humming any particular tune, which is a bit of a problem in general (unlike with some of Miranda’s other work in Hamilton or even Moana). But the unevenness is pushed through by the very likable cast and the sheer energy of the production, which pulls you in in spite of yourself. It’s a worthy entry as the feel good movie to see in a theater especially, because it does leave you feeling good, and that’s a relief after a year in quarantine.

LUCA * * 1/2 (Dir. Enrico Casarosa)

Luca was almost good, but the kids will like it — *Luca* was *almost* good, but the kids will like it

For once, it comes as something of a relief that Pixar’s latest is not an overly ambitious, Soul-esque exercise in high concept ideas that fall short of execution. In fact, Luca is not so much typical Pixar in its story, a simple one of friendship and “coming out” that takes place over a summer off the coast of Italy in 1959, set to some beautiful backdrops and luscious underwater and coastal scenery that make you want to set foot in the fictional town of Portorosso if you could. Luca is a sea monster, a creature who lives under the water and is forbidden to go to the surface, but of course disobeys his parents and takes off on a journey with his new friend Alberto, fellow sea creature who teaches him that their identity is transformed on dry land so they can pass as human. The two of them then befriend Giulia, a girl who lives in the village, and plan to win the town’s annual triathlon race so they can repair an old motor bike with the prize money. And that’s it. No real life lessons in this one, more like a nostalgic coming of age film, somewhat based on first-time director Enrico Casarosa’s own childhood memories in Italy. I have some affection for this almost lovely and relaxed film, but I can’t help but wish I could have seen this same story told by a different studio. As much sincerity as Casarosa shows here, Pixar’s storytelling can’t help but feel familiar in its stale humor and the predictability of its emotional beats, not to mention the exaggerated attitudes and similar behavior/gestures you see from all CG animated characters in movies these days. It’s nowhere near as insufferable as Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, but Luca could have been better if given free rein to conform less to the Pixar/Disney brand of marketing. So much better.

BLACK WIDOW * * (Dir. Cate Shortland)

Scar-Jo’s botched pay day was a crap movie anyway

At this point it’s hard to figure out new things to say about a Marvel movie. The studio has figured out such a perfect formula to produce an acceptable “product” that will just pass muster with critics and make money at the same time, that the same elements apply to virtually all of them, including this latest. But Black Widow feels especially pointless because it’s a prequel starring a character who died in Avengers: Endgame, yet it’s not an origin story, because they already told us (more or less) what hers was in one of the many subplots of Avengers: Age of Ultron. So rather, this is kind of an interlude, taking place in between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. Got all that straight? Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter, much like this movie. Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha is on the run from the feds but runs into her former fake “sister,” Yelena (Florence Pugh) another victim of the evil Soviet spy warehouse that trains and brainwashes Black Widows by the hundreds. We’re given a quick prologue explaining that at one point in her childhood Natasha was set up as part of a family of undercover Russian spies living in Ohio (yes, that was the premise of The Americans) for a few years, a family that consisted of a little sister, a mother (Rachel Weisz) and a father (David Harbour). Now Yelena tells her that the guy who ran the Red Room where they were trained is still alive (apparently the one thing we knew about Natasha’s backstory from before isn’t true anymore- very convenient), so they’ve got to get their fake family back together to take him down. The movie tries to create a comedic family dynamic between the actors (Harbour as usual plays his loser goofball character, this time in the form of Red Guardian, a wannabe Soviet Captain America), but the movie suffers from a predictable, uninteresting, recycled plot whose tributes to Bond movies are as obvious as they are forgettable. The action scenes feel plugged in by factory algorithm (as they almost certainly were) with no memorable or believable stunts, just a mass of CGI crashes and explosions. And the whole thing just doesn’t matter, as Johansson has to make her way back to where she was in the last couple of Avengers movies anyway, so who cares that this happened on her summer vacation? Unless of course, it’s just pure setup for Pugh, the new Black Widow, to come take up her mantle, which of course she will, as it’s relayed to us via the usual end credits stinger. More and more I feel that all these movies really should be episodes of a long running TV show that is actually taking place on TV, because the big screen deserves more innovation, even in the action genre. But as they say on Amazon’s The Boys (a far better, more daring superhero show than anything Marvel produces), you don’t mess with the money.

CODA * * * (Dir. Sian Heder)

It’s its own kind of talent to take a formula story with all but a few familiar elements, and make it work in spite of itself. CODA (which stands for “child of deaf adults”) is one of those, but the sincerely moving nature of the film sneaks up on you and wriggles its way into your heart. This is in no small part thanks to the talented Emilia Jones as Ruby, the hearing teenager whose mother, father and brother are all deaf. She lives in Gloucester, MA and her family works as fishermen, with Ruby along at all times to do the interpreting for her family members with the public. But Ruby’s secret desire is to become a singer and she has the voice for it, as her teacher enthusiastically expresses. From there it becomes the kind of movie you think it is, with Ruby wanting to go to college and leave the family to pursue her dream, while her parents are flabbergasted and alienated by her talent. In all honesty, the actions of her parents in this film are frankly suspect, as forcing their one hearing child to act as interpreter (apparently her entire life) and give up any of her own goals to serve them is extremely unfair, so being on Ruby’s side isn’t much of a question. But the performances from Jones and Marlee Matlin as her mother are genuinely affecting and make you believe in this world, and the people in it, even when logic is gnawing at the back of your brain in some places. It helps that nothing feels exaggerated in terms of emotions. Ruby isn’t one of those too clever by half, snarky movie teens, but a regular girl you’d actually recognize in the real world, and when you buy into this universe so completely, the predictable happy ending can really get to you. This one did.