Unanticipated Ways of Finishing the Mission
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
“You see, you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the same name)
Lightyear (Angus MacLane) rated PG 105 min.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): I’m continuing to wait a week after an E-Ticket movie (reference for those old enough to know this term; otherwise, look it up related to Disneyland) opens so I can then attend an early afternoon screening with a greatly-reduced-collection of fellow patrons, hoping to reduce my exposure to the latest variant of COVID-19 which I’d prefer to keep away from my 74-year-old-body for my benefit and to help protect my precious-but-immunocompromised-wife, Nina (our 32nd wedding anniversary coincides with this posting, although she’s pleasantly asleep as it goes live). So, next week I’ll get to Elvis (Baz Luhrmann) while this week I catch up with Lightyear, a sort of prequel to the Toy Story franchise as it’s about a movie character who was the basis for the toy that little Andy got in the first installment of that long-running, long-beloved tale of toys who come to life as long as they’re not in the presence of humans. I’m sure this will be on Disney+ at some future point, but for now you’ll need to watch it in a theater, which millions worldwide've already done.
Next, in the Short Takes section Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark (well, still just Ken at this point as Pat Craig’s off in Nebraska panning for gold—please don’t tell him he could have done better by staying in California but sometimes he gets a bit confused as to which state’s more likely to have shiny yellow treasures [maybe he could consider panning for corn?]) occasionally has requests to review independent films you’re more likely to see via streaming than in a theater which is the situation with Michael Matteo Rossi’s Shadows. (If you search for it through any other means than I note in my review just don’t accidently get the wrong one, as there are at least 260 movie titles containing “Shadows,” with probably the most-well-known-other-one also just called Shadows by another independent filmmaker, John Cassavettes [1959]—which somehow shows up on this list a few separate times.) Also, here are links for the schedule of the cable network, Turner Classic Movies, which gives you a wide selection of older films with no commercial interruptions and the JustWatch site which offers you a wide selection of options for streaming rental or purchase. If you'd like to see what reigned at the domestic (U.S.-Canada) box-office last weekend, then go here.
Just before we get to the reviews, though, I wanted to quickly call your attention to an update on the latest hit song from the re-organized Supremes, “Where Did Our Rights Go,” which will now only be able to be heard when performed live in Washington, D.C. after they realized they couldn’t record it because audio technology wasn’t yet invented in 1868. (For clarity, this is a quintet because Chief Justice John Roberts joined them only in upholding Mississippi’s new law which outlaws abortions beyond 15 weeks after conception [Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization] but not in the unneeded-added-on-part of that verdict nullifying the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision allowing abortions nationwide so that [horrid] historic change was decided 5-4, not 6-3.) OK, Red State readers, if you’re still with me, it's back to glorious-escape-from-reality offered to us by those cinematic wizards.
Here’s the trailer for Lightyear:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: Opening graphics tell us that in 1995 young Andy Davis saw what became his favorite movie, Lightyear, with his joy enhanced in receiving a birthday present of a Buzz Lightyear action figure based on the hero of that story, which we’re now going to watch as well. In this animated feature, Buzz (voiced by Chris Evans) is a human Space Ranger in Star Command on a mission with his close friend/commander, Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba)—along with a new recruit, Featheringhamstan (Bill Hader), and a large group in suspended animation—to the distant planet T’Kani Prime. In prowling around this planet, the 3 who are conscious find it holds several dangerous lifeforms, including a plant-like being that also resembles a giant octopus, so they hasten for a departure which forces a risky takeoff. Buzz insists he can pilot their huge spaceship up fast enough to avoid crashing into a mountainside, which he almost does, but small contact shears off their necessary hyperspace module stranding all of them on the planet. Buzz and Alisha revive the rest of their crew who then set about building a habitat for themselves as well as trying to concoct new hyperspace fuel needed to leave their marooned state. After a year, Buzz (who forlornly takes responsibility for their mutually-imposed-situation) gets into a jet plane intended to take a speedy ride for 4 minutes, but his fuel mixture fails to push him up to the required level of faster-than-light-speed.
However, when he lands he finds his short exposure to the enormous rate which he briefly traveled invoked Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity so his 4 minutes corresponded to 4 years into the future for everyone on T’Kani Prime, a startling realization for Buzz but not enough to keep him from doing more test flights attempting to hit the needed speed, even though each attempt resulted in him moving another 4 years into his future upon his return to the planet (that's becoming an acceptable home for the others even as he insists on singularly achieving the original mission of getting this crew safely back to Earth). Along the way in these time-jumps, Buzz is given a companion of a lovable robot cat, Sox (Peter Sohn); Alisha marries a woman (!; they’re shown having 1 brief kiss!!), gets pregnant (!!!), has a son; yet, when enough years have passed Alisha dies with the mission leadership position passing on to Commander Burnside (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), who’s comfortable enough with the entrenched colony (even as they have to keep chopping off the lengthy tentacles of those local beasts who keep grabbing the various human inhabitants) that he cancels Buzz’s project.
Sox, however, has found a new formula for the fuel so Buzz breaks protocol by jumping into a jet for another (unauthorized) test (shades of Tom Cruise’s similar tactic at the start of Top Gun Maverick [Joseph Kosinski; review in our June 9, 2022 posting]); Sox’ formula works, but this time when Buzz returns 22 years have passed, the planet’s been invaded by Zyclops robots commanded by huge Zurg (James Brolin) in a massive spaceship (looks somewhat like the Empire’s Star Destroyers from the Star Wars movies) hovering far above, with a small defensive squad consisting of Alicia’s grown-granddaughter, Izzy Hawthorne (Keke Palmer), naïve recruit Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi), and elderly-convict-on-parole Darby Steel (Dale Soules) ready for action. Buzz joins forces in an attempt to take out Zurg’s ship—thereby deactivating the combat-robots (like a similar plan in Independence Day [Roland Emmerich, 1996]). There are lots of battles as the story moves along, with one encounter resulting in Izzy accidently smashing the crucial hyperspace crystal so they find a replacement part in Zurg’s ship, but when they confront him they find that inside his large robotic armor suit is an older version of Buzz who used the hyperspace fuel to go far into the future where he took over this abandoned ship, its robots, and the Zurg suit, then traveled back to what counts as present time for our Buzz and his gang in search of more fuel so he could go further into the past, prevent the initial landing on T’Kani Prime, get everyone back to Earth. ⇒Our Buzz objects, though, fearful such a drastic-timeline-alternation will eliminate all that happened on the planet over the years, probably deleting Izzy from existence. The Buzzes battle individually resulting in the hyperspace fuel being destroyed, the elder Buzz seemingly killed, younger Buzz now willing to stay on T’Kani Prime as well as work together with others rather than needing to do everything himself so Burnside allows him (and his motley crew) to revive the Space Ranger Corps to protect this planet from outside invaders. In a brief post-credits-scene Zurg-Buzz revives, implying a sequel could be in future Pixar plans.⇐
So What? Well, we’re certainly in meta-territory here if we’re watching a movie (supposedly from 1995, so its visuals are intended to look somewhat out-of-date relative to what we expect in 2022 animation) that inspired a character in another 1995 movie, Toy Story (John Lasseter), thereby resolving any confusion about how the Buzz Lightyear toy in our known-timeframe could have been based on a character from our distant future (who keeps experiencing his own future as he puts Einstein’s masterfully-complex-theory into action by making time- rather than space-jumps) by letting us know immediately Buzz Lightyear has never been more than an animated movie character, either in human or toy form. Further, if this is Andy’s favorite movie, leading him to be overjoyed to get a Buzz Lightyear doll action figure, then it must be within Pixar's Toy Story universe, as well as seemingly existing prior to the events of the original Toy Story—the first feature-length movie created entirely by Computer Graphic Imagery (CGI), which, of course, contradicts Lightyear’s seeming-prior-existence, but we’re not here for philosophical debates, now are we? What clearly complicates this scenario a bit further is the inclusion of both the lesbian wedding of Alisha and a kiss (quick as it was) with her spouse, a “controversial” few seconds resulting in the entire movie being banned in many Arab-dominant-countries or at least led to protests from distributors in other nations, so if it’s generating this much hostility in China, Singapore, and the extensive Muslim world in 2022 you can imagine how unlikely it would have been for this shot to have been included in an actual 1995 Pixar movie (it almost didn’t make it into this one either as Disney originally cut, then restored, it after all the brouhaha in Florida about Disney’s belated-opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, resulting in this harmless-kiss-reinstatement). Also, there are many primary characters who are People of Color, another nice upgrade from many movies of 1995 (and beyond), including the entire Toy Story cluster.
As with most Pixar movies, especially those in the Toy Story collection (… 2 [Lassiter, 1999], … 3 [Lee Unkrich, 2010], … 4 [Josh Cooley, 2019; review in our June 26, 2019 posting]), in Lightyear we continue with some touching, human-interest aspects as we see the easy camaraderie between Buzz and Alisha (with the foundational “to infinity and beyond” verification of their mutual decisions) carried over to Buzz and Izzy, as well as Izzy’s eventual-ability to rise above various failures in her actions which she initially feels makes her unworthy of her grandmother’s name, then comes to embrace it again just as Buzz finally realizes he has great abilities but doesn’t need to assume every challenge must be met/overcome by him alone. However, for me, there’s an aspect of this movie which holds back my rating (unlike the 4 stars I gave to Toy Story 4 and would surly have given to the other Toys had I been posting reviews back when they were released), and it’s the same complaint I’ve had recently with Top Gun Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion (Colin Trevorrow; review in our June 23, 2022 posting), which you find laid out in clarity in the 2nd item with this current movie in Related Links farther below: so much of what we see in those just-mentioned-sequels and (oddly enough) this current prequel is an obsessive decision to link what’s happening in the present story to a wealth of references in what’s come before on screen (well, technically, after, in the case of Lightyear); this may be great fun for those who revel in such Easter Eggs, yet for me it’s less about intra-series-continuity, more about creative laziness in just recalling what’s already been established in previous plots. Such references may be embraced by those who pride themselves on recognizing older elements snuck back in again; however, I’d prefer reduction of clever-cross-connections, expansion in a fuller sense of an original story vision (as I yell at the Pixar kids to get off of my lawn).
Bottom Line Final Comments: The CCAL generally agrees with me as Lightyear’s gotten a cluster of 75% positive reviews from those surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes, a 60% average score from the usually-more-reserved-folks at Metacritic (more details on each of these critics-accumulation-sites below in Related Links, as with anything I review) whereas the RT reviews for the 4 Toy Story movies averaged 99% positive (100% for the first 2) and the MC ones averaged 90% (which is an astounding set of scores for them ranging from 84% for … 4 up to 95% for the original). Perhaps The New York Times’ A.O. Scott gets better to the point of what I’m saying with this: “[…] the origin story not of a hero but of a piece of merchandise […] The Buzz Lightyear toy was meant to stick around after the movie had been forgotten, and to populate a richer, more varied imaginative landscape. [¶ … It] aims to please by pandering, to be good-enough entertainment. As such, it succeeds in a manner more in line with second-tier Disney animation than with top-shelf Pixar. [¶ …] Its purpose is to extend brand awareness, and to close a loop between the stuff we see and the stuff we buy.” Such considerations haven’t prevented audiences from buying tickets, though, as after just over a week when it opened in 4,255 theaters it’s already taken in $91.9 million domestically, $156 million worldwide. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an enjoyable trip to a cool theater during increasingly-hot-weather as well as conjuring up welcome connections to a related-story-cluster that was always heartwarming. So, as long as COVID’s not cramping your away-from-home-choices too much, I’d certainly encourage a screening of Lightyear; it’s just that there’s a lot of action-for-action’s-sake to pad out the running time, although the little Sox character is quite a delight (reminding me a bit of my own scrawny 2-year-old-kitty, Layla, who’s comfortably taking over our condo by one room at a time).
With nothing more of value to say (Oh, was there value before?), I’ll conclude with my usual finale of a Musical Metaphor, this one an unexpected choice as I was struggling to come up with something so helpful Nina decided to simply do a Google search for a “Lightyear music video,” which led her easily to “Infinity and Beyond” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiadoxxQsj0, a YouTube creation by NerdOut that well-captures the attitudes, imagery, sense of emotions in Lightyear so I hope you think it’s as relevant for this movie as I did. (Thanks again, Sweetie; maybe next week you should do the whole posting—which would be about a 20th of the ramblings I subject readers to each week, but, global-audience, don’t get your hopes up, because she has other things on her agenda.)
SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)
This is an independent feature heavy on aspects of crime gone wrong as a young L.A. dope dealer comes across some high-octane meth, not realizing it was mistakenly sold to him by a worker for a vicious kingpin who not only wants his product back but is easy with anyone connected with the problem being killed (except his hitman’s secretly the boy’s uncle, so constant complications ensue).
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.
As noted earlier, director/screenwriter Rossi contacted me directly to inquire about a review of his latest work (earlier ones include a short, The Last Wish [2011], and features Misogynist [2013], Chase [2019], The Handler [2021], which collectively have won some awards but you won’t find much about them on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic although each—including Shadows—are noted on IMDb [along with his bio]), so with the infrequent opportunity to see something from a hardworking independent filmmaker I watched his latest (he feels it’s his best so far), am happy to call your attention to it if you’d like to see a well-acted-crime-story that’s always clear in its intentions but with lots of cold-blooded-deaths if that’s a limiting factor for you. What we have here is the tale of 18-year-old Cody (Rahart Adams) getting by as a small-time-drug dealer in L.A., frequently hanging out with a couple of buddies, proud to show them a bag of high-powered-meth he’s just scored, interested in a local prostitute, Michelle (Rachel Alig), a friend of his Mom, Jewel (Krista Allen), who’s told her fellow-working girls to stay away from Cody just as he has little use for her, angry that as a younger junkie (she’s sober now) she was a “shitty Mom,” let him grow up in foster homes which he resented bitterly. He pursues Michelle anyway, yet his life’s about to become more miserable than he’d ever imagined because his new drug comes from the gang headed by Nicky (David Labrava), furious one of his underlings sold off some residue of this new product, fearful that if its components are analyzed he’ll lose his monopoly on what he knows will be a lucrative product.
Nicky sends trusted hitman Dean (Eric Etebari) to clean up this mess, not knowing (nor do we at first) Dean’s actually Cody’s uncle with a long history of trying to protect his sister, Jewel, and now his nephew. Dean finds Cody and Michelle at a party where some local thugs are hassling him until Dean makes short work of them, then whisks the youngsters away, not letting anyone know he’s got a lower-torso-wound from the encounter. Away from L.A., Nicky’s wannabe second-in-command (who certainly acts as if he’s won the role, at least when Nicky’s not around), Axel (Francis Capra), tells Nicky of Dean’s family relations, then takes some thugs to the City of Angels to kill everyone even tangentially-involved with the meth, which, of course, results in even more bloodshed (not directly connected to this is a subplot about a guy, Cliff [Vernon Wells], who does business with Jewel and her friends [despite his need for a hot shower to keep them from gagging from the stench while in the room with him], then finds himself the victim of a spiked heel to the chest as he gets a lot more than he bargained for from Amber [Eve Mauro] and Ruby [Cathy Baron]). ⇒Ultimately, Axel and his goons catch up with Cody, his 2 close friends, Michelle, and Dean with Michelle and friend Mark (Adam Carbone) surprisingly biting the dust, even as Dean's seemingly seriously wounded.⇐
⇒But when Axel sends Amber and Ruby to finish off Dean they learn he’s just playing possum, kills them along with Axel and all of his henchmen, plus Nicky who came to make sure everything went his way (it didn’t). As morning comes to this gruesome night, we find Cody reconciled with Jewel, Dean seemingly now staying with Jewel.⇐ While Shadows resembles Jurassic World Dominion—to which I also gave 3 stars—a bit in that in the latter you’re soon wondering what sort of dinosaur will show up next to terrorize our protagonists while in Shadows you have to wonder who’ll be the next to die, especially when some we don’t expect to expire suddenly are gunned down, it’s engaging to watch . (Nina gives it her highest compliment: “I didn’t think once about what I’m planning for dinner tomorrow night.”) I think you’d find Shadows quite intriguing, especially the acting of Adams, Etebari, and Labrava, so if you want to explore it I know you can find it on Amazon Prime Video for a $4.99 rental (also seems to be available for the same price on Apple TV+ and VUDU, according to different websites) although you’ll find little critical analysis of it—RT has only 1 (positive) review, MC has none—but in IMDb’s External Reviews there are 9 of them (before mine added on), largely positive.
For my Musical Metaphor, I turned to Nina again as I was having trouble coming up with anything so she did another Google search, accidently left the “s” off, thereby landing on the song “Shadow” (by the Chromatics on the Adult Swim Singles 2015 album), used at the end of the “Part 2” episode of TV's revived Twin Peaks: The Return, also called Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series (Showtime, 2017, following the original ABC series, 1990-’91; song also on the 2017 Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series album), which I decided to use at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGUbo LZx3Tk for several reasons: (1) Although not as strange as any of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Shadows does have a disturbing vibe to it that at best reminds me of aspects of Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) so lyrics like “We’re watching all the street lights fade / And now you’re just a stranger’s dream / I took your picture from the frame / And now you’re nothing like you seem” evoke a similar mood as you’ll find in Shadows; (2) The song's produced and mixed by Johnny Jewel; (3) It comes from Italians Do It Better Music, this movie’s from Italian Cowboy Productions; (4) The whole thing’s just too serendipitous to pass up, which I hope Rossi will accept (but if he doesn’t, I’ll call my uncle).
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: In quick fashion, here are some extra items you might like: (1) 10 Best Films of 2022 (so far, according to Variety); (2) Natalie Portman wants a Thor-Captain Marvel crossover-movie; (3) Why movie theater owners are finally feeling optimistic.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!
*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.
Here’s more information about Lightyear:
https://movies.disney.com/lightyear and especially https://www.pixar.com/lightyear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2zbjJC5iS0 (15:00 25 things you missed in the movie [ads interrupt at about 5:18, 10:20])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lightyear
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/lightyear-2022
Here’s more information about Shadows:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9854058/?ref_=nm_knf_i3
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/shadows_2022
Please note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post. You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow connect
with us at that site in order to do it (most FB procedures are still a bit of a mystery to us old farts).
If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)
If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.
By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact, but maybe while there you’ll get a chance to meet Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, RIP). Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker (although, as you know, with bar songs there are plenty about people broken down by various tragic circumstances, with maybe the best of the bunch—calls itself “perfect”—being "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" written by Steve Goodman, sung by David Allen Coe). But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion/lover/
wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes/wanes over the months/years to come. But, just as we can be raunchy at times (in private of course) Neil and his backing band, Promise of the Real, on that same night also did a lengthy, fantastic version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" (19:06) which I’d also like to commit to this blog’s always-ending-tunes; I never get tired of listening to it, then and now (one of my idle dreams is to play guitar even half this well). But, while I’m at it, I’ll also include another of my top favorites, from the night before at Desert Trip, the Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter" (Wow!), a song “just a shot away” in my memory (along with my memory of their great drummer, Charlie Watts, RIP). To finish this cluster of all-time-great-songs I’d like to have played at my wake (as far away from now as possible) here’s one Dylan didn’t play at Desert Trip but it’s great, much beloved by me and Nina: "Visions of Johanna." However, if the day does come when Nina has to present these above thoughts (beginning with “If we did talk”) and this music after my demise I might as well make this into a somewhat-Top 10 of songs that mattered to me by adding The Beatles’ "A Day in the Life," because that chaotic-orchestral-finale sounds like what the death experience may be like, and the Beach Boys’ "Fun Fun Fun," because this gathering may have gotten morbid so I’d like to sign off with something upbeat to remember me (the Galveston non-surfer) by.
OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.
Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 17,895 (as always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers); below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (with appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):
No comments:
Post a Comment