Movie Review The Creator

The Creator (2023) 

Directed by Gareth Edwards 

Written by Gareth Edwards, Chris Weitz 

Starring John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe, Sturgill Simpson, Allison Janney 

Release Date September 29th, 2023 

Published October 2nd, 2023 

The Creator stars John David Washington as Joshua Taylor. Make note of that biblical name, it means something. Joshua is a double agent of the future. In this future world, A.I was built to make life easier for Americans. That worked until the A.I got too real and decided to nuke Los Angeles. Some time after that, America has banned A.I and is at war with New Asia, a country that has become a haven for A.I living in among the human population as equals. Joshua is a spy who was tasked with getting close to Maya (Gemma Chan), who is believed to be the daughter of the Nirmata, the A.I creator. 

Nirmata, we are told, has been working on a weapon that could turn the tide of the war between America and New Asia. This new A.I weapon is evolving quickly and will carry the ability to destroy non-A.I technology, like that used by the U.S military. Joshua's assignment works better than expected as not only does he get close to Maya, the two fall in love and Maya gets pregnant. That's when things hit the fan as the Americans decide to attack without warning Joshua first. In the attack, it appears that Maya and the rest of Joshua's band of A.I brothers, are killed. 

Returning to America, Joshua takes a crappy job and appears ready to spend the rest of his life guiltily drinking himself to death. That's when he's approached by General Andrews (Ralph Ineson) and Colonel Howell (Allison Janney). They have proof that Maya is still alive and they want Joshua to go to New Asia on a mission to reconnect with her and by extension, get close to the new A.I weapon so that it can be destroyed before it evolves to destroy the American military. That's the plan anyway, these things in movies tend to fall apart and fall apart they do. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Don't Worry Darling

Don't Worry Darling (2022) 

Directed by Olivia Wilde 

Written by Katie Silberman 

Starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll 

Release Date September 23rd, 2022 

Published September 23rd, 2022 

If your life was perfect, how would you know? I’m not talking about the basic signifiers of things you would have that would make your life seem perfect like money, a nice house, a supportive family, I mean, what if life was perfect. No pain, no sorry, no irritation or even annoyance. Your every need is met immediately. Nothing is ever out of place. It’s an impossible standard, of course, but what if? If life were perfect, how would you know? 

This is a philosophical thought experiment. If life were perfect, perfect would be normal and thus not perfect. How do you know there is up without down? How do you know what joy is if you don’t know what the opposite of joy feels like? Yin and Yang, give life meaning. Love and the absence of love are distinct feelings. If you only ever knew love then love would become a mundane expectation of everyday life, unrecognizable without knowing the absence of it. What is loss if you never lose? 

The new movie Don’t Worry Darling got me thinking about this idea of a perfect life and how impossible that idea is. This notion that someone could invent a perfect life is downright silly but that doesn’t stop people from trying. Mad men like Chris Pine’s Frank seek to stamp out all problems from the world, tame life into what they want it to be. He’s admired for this madness and seeks to indoctrinate others to his notion of what a perfect life would look like. 

He’s arrogant enough to push aside the notion that the human mind is not built for perfection. In the brilliant action adventure movie, The Matrix, a character known as Agent Smith, wonderfully played by Hugo Weaving, explains that the A.I monsters who created The Matrix, a simulated reality intended to enslave humans while the humans themselves are treated as organic batteries, first created a perfect simulation. 

The first Matrix created a simulated reality with no heartache, no pain, no death, no war, no negatives whatsoever. Everyone was cared for and their needs were perfectly attended to. The humans went insane in no time at all. The mind rebelled against perfection because how would you know that life is perfect if every day featured the same level of precise perfection? If perfect becomes normal, normal becomes mundane and the imagination seeks something to think about, something to question. 

Click here for my full length review of Don't Worry Darling. 

Movie Review: Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel (2019) 

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck 

Written by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, Geneva Robertson Dworet 

Starring Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Annette Bening, Scarlett Johansson

Release Date March 8th, 2019 

Published November 9th, 2023

When Captain Marvel was released in 2019 it managed to beat the hype of being just the latest entry in the smoking hot Marvel Cinematic Universe. Brie Larson came into full movie star form playing Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel. Larson’s chemistry with the cast was off the charts, the direction was kinetic and exciting and as a puzzle piece in the long term planning in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was an incredibly satisfying fit. On top of all of that, it was just a great action movie.

Now, with The Marvels debuting and Captain Marvel back on the big screen as part of her own superhero team, it's the perfect time to reflect back on Carol's unique introduction to the MCU. With the Marvel Universe in flux, a lot bad press surrounding the most recent movies in that cinematic universe, it's nice to be reminded just how good Carol's introduction to the MCU really was.

Brie Larson stars as Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers, aka Vers to her fellow Kree Warriors. When we meet Carol she has been training as a Kree Warrior with a mysterious and forgotten past for several years. Flashes of memory keep popping up in her dreams but the pieces don’t fit. With the aid of her mentor and commander, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), Vers attempts to keep her memories at bay while focusing on her training and managing her remarkable abilities.

After meeting for the first time with the Kree ‘Great Intelligence,’ Vers gets her very first mission. Under the command of Yon-Rogg, Vers will go to an alien planet and rescue a Kree spy in the midst of a Skrull controlled planet. The Skrulls are a race of dangerous aliens, the greatest foes of the Kree, who have the disturbing ability to morph their features into those of anyone they see down to a DNA level of mimicry.

In her first mission, Vers is captured and her memories are accessed and she is forced to confront her past. When she eventually makes her escape, her only way out is a Skrull escape pod programmed to go to Earth. Here, Carol will be forced to confront her true identity as she battles the Skrull leader Thalos to keep him from retrieving technology created by a figure from Carol’s past, Dr Lawson (Annette Bening), tech that could change the course of the war between Kree and Skrull forever.

Along for the ride, and discovering aliens for the first time in his career is Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson). Captain Marvel may be the origin story for Carol Danvers but it also provides a little more of the origin story for the future leader of Shield and the man behind the Avengers’ initiative. Captain Marvel is set in 1996 and the picture we get of a young-ish Nick Fury is pretty great. Baby-faced rookie Agent Phil Coulson is another standout treat.

The chemistry between Brie Larson as Carol and Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury is off the charts fantastic. These two actors have a comfort, familiarity and ease that would be more expected of actors who had worked together for years rather than having never met before. Larson and Jackson have a comic connection that never fails to charm and when it comes time to fight that same natural chemistry increases the fun and excitement in that arena as well.

Captain Marvel was the first major big screen release for the indie darling director duo of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck and they proved themselves more than ready for the spotlight. The action is exceptionally captured and exciting, the special effects are flawless, the script is tight and focused and the character work is some of the best in the MCU. Much of this can be traced to the steady creative hands of Boden and Fleck.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media