The Phantom of the Open (2021)

Director: Craig Roberts. Cast: Mark Rylance, Sally Hawkins, Rhys Ifans. 106 min. Biography/Sport.

• From Forrest Gump to Maurice Flitcroft, the real-life-based protagonist of this film, I've always had problems with movies glamorizing simpletons. Based on this narrative, Flitcroft actually escalated the game, and through methods that would normally be attributed to con men, advanced in the 70's from knowing nothing about golf, to participating in the British Open ... several times. He even instructs his sons to follow his way of living, mindlessly pursuing their passions without any long-term plan in sight. But no, let's make a movie with uber-talented stars such as Mark Rylance and Sally Hawkins in the leads, to show how cute, innocent and adorable the man was - let's make people feel good about their mediocrities, because hey, you can exude ineptitude and still change history (and considering some recent political figures, that's not far from the truth). The ironic part is that this World's Worst Golfer's endeavors were celebrated in the form of an annual prize, awarded to the year's worst golfer, in of all places ... somewhere in the U.S. Why am I not surprised. 

MoGo's rating: 6/10

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The Glance of Music (Ennio) (2021)

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore. 156 min. Documentary. 

• It's true: Ennio Morricone is one of those rare movie music composers, that if you've seen just a few movies he's composed, when the next one comes by, you know it's him (Danny Elfman, Alan Silvestri and James Horner are some other stylists with that attribute that come to mind). And this film is a tribute to that grandeur. Following his career through interviews with the recently deceased artist and some other shining stars of film and music (Clint Eastwood, Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Wong Kar-Wai, Dario Argento, Barry Levinson, Bernardo Bertolucci, Bruce Springsteen, Quincy Jones), in a film directed by none other than Giuseppe Tornatore (whose Cinema Paradiso was graced by the master's heavenly themes), we watch how some of Morricone greatest melodies came to fruition - from the coyote cry of The Good the Bad, and the Ugly, to the thrilling tension of The Untouchables, to the choir melodies of The Mission. And while his "Ecstasy of Gold" is certifiably one of the greatest synchronizations of film and music in cinema history, by the time he was describing "Jill's theme" in Once Upon a Time in America, I was almost teary-eyed. This long documentary is worth your time, even if you think you don't know Morricone's work ... to realize how well you do.

MoGo's rating: 8/10

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The Black Phone (2021)

Director: Scott Derrickson. Cast: Stars Mason Thames, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies. 103 min. Horror/Thriller.

• When we were kids in the 70's, we would see black-and-white photos on milk cartons, or posters in grocery stores ... of missing children. I was always mesmerized by these photos, and would stare: what happened to this kid? Where is he now? While my imagination never ventured beyond that, to this day I'm still disturbed by the notion. The Black Phone is based on that horror. It happens in the late 70s, and it knows exactly how it felt to be a kid, and worry about a prowler jumping out of a corner in broad daylight, for your picture to end up on a milk carton.  
• The movie takes this horror one step further: it shows you what happened to that kid, or what will eventually happen to them. Trapped by one such monster (unfortunately played by one of my favorite actors alive, Ethan Hawke), the story's young hero discovers through an ingeniously written screenplay where those other kids are - via a black phone on the wall. Without spoiling anything, let's just say the movie adds another familiar element of horror, and plays that element extremely well, to the point that you can easily suspend disbelief, and follow along with the gripping story.
• Horror movies are too numerous to count. Good horror movies are a rarity. The Black Phone is a good horror movie - of the kind that comes every five years or so. My pet peeve in movies has always been violence against children, but even with its subject matter, the film didn't cross that cross that line for me. If you're a horror buff, don't miss it. 

MoGo's rating: 8/10

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Thirteen Lives (2022)

Director: Ron Howard. Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, Joel Edgerton. Adventure/Biography. 147 min.

• Generally, I consider Ron Howard a "director-for-hire". Yes, he has had some major hits (A Beautiful Mind, Willow), but based on his filmography, he looks like a guy whom they hire for a project, not him becoming excited about one and going after (like the major auteurs do). Great examples are how he botched the ending of Inferno, based on the third Dan Brown/Robert Langdon novel, and how he was brought in to complete the disaster Han Solo movie. Directors who respect their own status never do things like that.  
• That said, Thirteen Lives is a decent film. Based on the real-life 2018 rescue mission of a junior soccer team trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand, the film, although quite long, has its moments. There is some interesting character development here, making you feel for the scuba divers who occasionally lose it and break into tears under pressure, or others who are callous to what's at stake and are there just to get a job done. These moments compensate for the movie's flaws, such as when local farmers agree, too rapidly, to have their fields (their entire life investments) flooded to rescue the boys; or when one diver initially is hesitant to go in for one last dive, but then agrees to go without any explanation - as though the movie length was too long and some segments ended up on the cutting room floor.
• My biggest advice, is that if you don't know much about the event (specifically, about the manner and method of which the kids were rescued), don't read anything about it before seeing the movie. Because that part of the story is what took my breath away. That's what Hollywood is loved for, and why the likes of Ron Howard have a job. 

MoGo's rating: 7/10

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Ambulance (2022)

Director: Michael Bay. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González. 136 min. Action/Crime.

• There used to be a time when in the realm of action, Michael Bay used to make fairly decent movies (I regard The Rock as one of the best action movies ever made). But then he started making those Transformers flicks, and now this is where we are: Ambulance. IMDb puts the synopsis very well: "Two robbers steal an ambulance after their heist goes awry." That's it. Two robbers steal an ambulance and the police chase them - the most simple, most primitive form of entertainment catering to the lowest denominator capitalism could have ever conceived. Just that now, in addition to the CGI technology he abused to its fullest in Transformers, Bay is equipped (or better said ... armed) with drone shots, twisting and twirling around cars and skyscrapers, for no reason other than to sustain an artificial momentum on an action movie. This movie is so crazy, the robbers listen to Christopher Cross' relaxing "Sailing" in the heat of one of its innumerable, boring chase scenes. By the end, I predicted I may have seen my worst movie of 2022.

MoGo's rating: 3/10

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Prey (2022)

Director: Dan Trachtenberg. Cast: Amber Midthunder, Dane DiLiegro. 99 min. Action/Fantasy.

• Finally, a Predator movie that, for lack of a better term, makes sense. Written as a prequel to the multitude of useless sequels after the brilliant 1987 original, this movie happens 300 years ago among Native-Americans. 
• I say this one makes sense, because both the Native-Americans and the Predator species are considered "warriors",  and the young heroine and her tribesmen's fighting skills are tested against the alien, to the point that occasionally you're not sure which side is the prey, and which the predator (hence, the movie's name). Secondly, one of the soldier characters in the original was a Native, and his resolve against the Predator there felt as if ... he'd heard of these stories before. 
• The fact that the cast are Native-Americans and speak the actual Comanche language, and the breathtaking cinematography of Canadian panoramas, make this take on the Predator legend even more refreshing. Quite violent, but you shouldn't expect any less from this franchise.

MoGo's rating: 8/10

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Nope (2022)

Director: Jordan Peele. Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Brandon Perea, Steven Yeun, Keith David. 130 min. Sci-fi/Horror.

• If Spielberg wanted to make a Hitchcock movie (or Hitchcock wanted to make a Spielberg movie), this would’ve been the result. While the step by step thriller/horror approach to an alien encounter is right out of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (and to a lesser degree, his War of the Worlds) all the way down to power outages during a UFO fly-by, and the scene of dismounting a pick up truck to see a UFO hovering above; the style is obviously Hitchcockian, most notably the suspense of the inflatable dancing men sequence towards the end, and a mid movie god’s-eye view showing the town from above - a salute to Hitchcock’s The Birds.
• After Jordon Peele’s masterpiece debut, Get Out, his second feature, Us, was a big disappointment - so I didn’t go into this one with any major expectations. I was pleasantly surprised. Nope contains what we as moviegoers are always thirsty for: lots and lots of beautiful, memorable images. I was somewhat dissatisfied with the ending (never as deep as Get Out), but that imagery … that was enough to love.

MoGo's rating: 9/10

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Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)

Director: Richard Linklater. Cast (voices): Milo Coy, Jack Black, Lee Eddy. 97 min. Animation/Drama.

• It's great to have the luxury (and of course, the talent) of telling the world what your childhood "felt" like. Because that's what this predominantly story-less movie is all about: the atmosphere of Richard Linklater's 1960's childhood in Texas, where the first men on the moon were being launched from your hometown of Houston. And didn't we all imagine ourselves as kids as the tycoon with hundreds of cool cars, Elton John playing in concert, or Neil Armstrong going to the moon? Linklater inserts that childhood dream of being the first man on the moon into his coming-of-age recollections, and makes this an enjoyable movie (in animated form, no less), even if you weren't born in America, or didn't have American childhood aspirations.
• Available on Netflix.

MoGo's rating: 7/10

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Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Director: Taika Waititi. Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi (voice), Russell Crowe, Jaimie Alexander, Chris Pratt. 118 min. Fantasy/Action.

• If I wanted to list my top 5 Marvel movies so far, Thor: Ragnarok (Thor 3) would've been in there (the other four being Iron Man, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Avengers: Infinity War, and Spider-man: Far From Home). The delightful Ragnar ok was directed by the bright New Zealand import, Taiki Waititi ... so of course, after awhile they corrupt him. This film's screenplay has a similar structure with similar jokes - down to a mid-movie sequence where a crazy god-like figure (Jeff Goldblum in Thor 3, Russell Crowe in Thor 4) demolishes throwaway characters. And Natalie Portman wasn't just going to stand by as the girlfriend/sidekick, so they turned her into a Thor clone in this one (no joking), never really explaining what the mechanism of her metamorphosis is. The only interesting aspect is Christian Bale as Gorr, the god-butcher (yikes!) and his tormented past - but then again, Christian Bale has a habit of being the only interesting aspect of a movie.

MoGo's rating: 6/10

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Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Director: Colin Trevorrow. Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Campbell Scott, BD Wong, Omar Sy. 146 min. Action/Sci-fi.

• I watched this movie around a month ago on opening weekend, and already remember almost nothing of it. That's how bland and repetitive this movie is. Lackluster villains, unnecessary close-up shots of action sequences, and going down a checklist of the original movie's best hits, makes this film difficult to tolerate. The joining of the old (Neill, Dern, Goldblum) and new (Pratt, Howard) casts in this movie creates significant hope, but even that effort falls flat, as story-wise you never know why the old crew was even invited to be in this one, as opposed to some other trio of scientists. There's an underground dinosaur bazaar here that I found somewhat interesting, but that's all I'm giving the below average score for. 
• Case in point: In the 1993 original made by Spielberg, there's the majestic scene where Sam Neill's Alan Grant first sees the brachiosaurus, gets up in the jeep, and pulls off his very dark and opaque sunglasses, upon which we see his wide-eyed shock at the scene in front of him. In this movie, Laura Dern's Ellie Sattler does the exact same thing upon seeing a dinosaur, but this time, her sunglasses are not opaque enough - we can already see her wide eyes behind the glasses, so pulling them off doesn't project the intensity of her amazement when she does. In other words, Trevorrow never understood why or how Spielberg's scene worked. But he still used it in his movie.  
• Curiously, Jurassic Park's sequel trilogy follows the same trajectory as the Star Wars sequel trilogy: the first movie (Jurassic World, and Episode VII - The Force Awakens) was a "maybe", creating some hope that the director (Colin Trevorrow for JP, J.J. Abrams for SW) was onto something. The second movie, a better movie (Fallen Kingdom, and Episode VIII - The Last Jedi) was made by someone else, and then the third (Dominion, Episode IX - Rise of Skywalker) made by the same director as the first, was just horrendous, making you hope they never make a movie of this franchise again. 

MoGo's rating: 4/10

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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

Director: Tom Gormican. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Tiffany Haddish, Neil Patrick Harris. 107 min. Comedy/Action.

• Nicolas Cage is one of those actors with whom people have a love-hate relationship; no in-between (mine is love). My favorite Cage movies, panned by many, have been The Rock and Knowing; and I find his dumbest and most hilarious, loved by many, to be Con-Air. Everybody went crazy over Face/Off (not sure why), and I thought he was the perfect choice to play Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider, even though the movie was horrible. See what I mean? 
• In the manner of other actor flagellating movies such as Being John Malkovich and JCVD (satirizing our vision of John Malkovich and Jean-Claude Van Damme, respectively), while playing himself in some sort of cliché adventure movie, Cage bravely and whole-heartedly embraces the above notion. He acknowledges that despite the nepotism that probably helped him launch his career (Francis Ford Coppola is his uncle), he exudes a certain depressing style of weirdness and corniness that makes him unique, and lovable. The movie is a satire of Cage's movie persona, and possibly, his real-life issues. At times watching the movie, it's hard to differentiate the two. 
• The ingenuity of the screenplay shows in the very last moments with the appearance of a certain actress. You'll know when you see it.

MoGo's rating: 7/10

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