Wonder Woman 1984 (5/10)
I admit I didn't have high expectations for this movie. Still, I expected more than a two and a half hour remake of the old
Twilight Zone episode "The Self-Improvement of Salvador Ross".
How is it that a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars can't buy better writing? Apart from the mundane and unoriginal premise, the script has other weaknesses, like poor character development, and unexplained plot ideas -- like who is the poor guy whose body Steve Trevor has suddenly inhabited? And why do Steve and Diana have no qualms about Steve appropriating the body of another human being? Yes, she eventually "renounces her wish" when she see how these wishes are destroying the world. But for most of the movie she and Steve have no care for the person whose body he is basically stealing.
Also, Steve has never flown anything more advanced than a 1915 biplane. How then is he able to pilot a sophisticated jet? Why would this jet -- which is a display at the Smithsonian -- have fuel in its tanks? Moreover why would it still have working engines, if (as a museum piece) it hasn't undergone regular maintenance?
The overall message of the film is clear -- accept your lot, to want to improve your life in any way is "greedy". Max Lord is an obvious caricature of Donald Trump, so the movie's political posturing was already out of date by the time it was released.
The effects are "fancy" but no better than any CGI work from the past 20 years. In fact Wonder Woman's dash down the highway looks no more convincing the Clark Kent outrunning the train in
Superman: The Movie.
Hans Zimmer's score however is surprisingly adequate. Though he does bring back that slick, vulgar "Wonder Woman theme" (which does nothing to express her character) he at least spares us the electric cello this time. He comes up with yet another "inspiring" power anthem, but on closer scrutiny it's rather fluffy. The big climactic cue is just a ripoff of Morricone's
Once Upon A Time in the West, but hey, if you're going to crib from someone else it may as well be one of the masters.
The only thing that makes this watchable is Gal Gadot, who is one the most attractive stars to emerge in recent decades, and whose sincerity and radiant beauty lights up every scene. But even she can't save this formulaic, gimmicky dud. I'd watch
Supergirl before watching this again!
), and because I wanted to hear Poledouris' lyrical music in context. I did realize that I had seen a brief bit of this on TV as a kid, when the kids turn over a dead Leo McKern and a crab crawls out of his mouth, causing the girl to faint and the boy to carry her back to the rowboat. It's an image that stuck in my head for years, but I never had a clue what it was from until now. 
), but it's a turkey. It makes you realize what a miracle Carroll Ballard pulled off with The Black Stallion, which mined a similar "coming of age on a pristine deserted island" concept but did it with grace, elegance, an inspired lack of dialogue and true heart, instead of using it to leer at an underaged Brooke Shields.
), The Mothman Prophecies is a film that uses Fred Murphy's innovative camerawork and atmospheric sound design (I wouldn't want to listen to "Tomandandy"'s score by itself, but it works effectively within its context) to create an almost suffocating sense of dread, with glimmers of authentic anguish (like Gere's attempts to figure out if his late wife, played briefly but hauntingly by Debra Messing, is trying to contact him) and buoyed by fine performances. It all culminates in a bravura climax where all of the film’s collections of oblique clues and allusions come together in a sequence boasting some superb miniature work (at the tail end of the era when you’d still see miniatures utilized in movies) and a shivery denouement. It’s like The X-Files in its early days, before it became puffed up with pretentiousness and had no allusions other than scaring the dickens out of the viewer. Shame that Pellington’s career never amounted to much after this (and his previous thriller, the tense, underrated Arlington Road), because this film is an absolute beaut, and one of the best and most overlooked post-2000 horror movies.