Aquaman (2018) **

It's a cliché because it's true: the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) movies are better than the DC Comics movies. Some may say it's the characters themselves, that guys like Batman and Superman are just too time-worn and hokey, but I don't buy it. One of my favorite characters from the MCU is Captain America. It doesn't get much more old-school and hokey than Cap, but the current film incarnation, as played by Chris Evans, is a complex man, with nuanced loyalties, and he's the moral center of the Avengers films. Batman, a DC character, should be even more complex and compelling, but I find that his screenwriters strain to push his dubious, repressed-rage storyline. They did hit a home run casting Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight,” and “Wonderwoman” was fairly entertaining,but DC remains the “poor man's” version of a comic movie universe.

“Aquaman” does nothing to change that dynamic. Jason Momoa has already appeared as Aquaman in “Batman vs. Superman” and “Justice League,” but this is his chance to take center stage in his own origin story. We learn how Arthur Curry was born of the union of a surface-swelling man and Princess Atlanna from the secret, underwater world of Atlantis. Yep, despite all the sea-faring and undersea exploring on the part of surface-dwelling humans, a massive society of underwater humanoids has managed to remain hidden into the modern day. Now their leader, King Orm (Patrick Wilson), has had enough of living in the watery shadows. He has hatched a plot to unite the seven underwater kingdoms to wage war on the surface.

Arthur, meanwhile, is somewhat aware of his Atlantean heritage. He grew up motherless, with stories from his lighthouse-keeping father, and with occasional visits from an Atlantan royal advisor named Vulko (Willem Dafoe.) Vulko taught Arthur about his aquatic powers, and now the adult Arthur spends his time fighting injustices at sea, where he makes an enemy of a pirate named Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Princess Mera (Amber Heard) sneaks out of Atlantis to recruit Arthur to come challenge Orm for the crown and prevent the war.

One thing I really loved about the series “Game of Thrones” is that it showed the inherent instability of a hereditary monarchy. Most films and movies like to romanticize the whole “one true king” idea. “Game of Thrones” showed what happens when you give one person absolute power. If you luck up, and they aren't corrupted by that power, and they rule wisely and justly, it's unlikely that a country will keep getting that lucky generation after generation. Eventually you get a despot, and meanwhile you've got relatives thinking they have a claim to the throne, starting wars and such. We shouldn't have needed GoT to remind us of this. It's in all the history books, but for some reason, Hollywood loves to go back to the idea of One who is destined to rule. “Aquaman” goes all in on monarchy. Ultimately, it's about who has the “right” to rule Atlantis, Arthur or Orm, and it has to be decided by single combat. Never once does the film question that dogma.

If you can get past the obsession with monarchy and suspend your disbelief over the idea of a hidden, undersea society, then you have to deal with the lame dialog and weak acting. Jason Momoa is very charismatic, but not quite enough to carry the entire movie on his wide shoulders. Amber Heard looks swell, but she can't act her way out of a wet paper sack. She looks like an Oscar contender, however, next to the wooden Patrick Wilson, whose stiff acting is the perfect match for his one-dimensional character. “Aquaman” manages to make even good actors like Willem Dafoe and Nicole Kidman look bad.

The one thing “Aquaman” has going for it is visual effects. The battle scenes and sea monsters look great (as does Amber Heard's cleavage). It's an okay movie to watch while working out, but once the blood starts flowing to your brain instead of your quads, you will want to turn it off.

2 stars out of 5

Shadow of the Vampire (2000) ****

Bram Stoker's 1897 novel “Dracula” has been adapted to screen many times, but the first film adaptation was not called “Dracula.” German filmmaker F.W. Murnau was unable to get the film rights from Stoker's estate, so he simply commissioned a screenplay with the names and a few details changed, including using the word “nosferatu” for “vampire” and changing “Count Dracula” to “Count Orlock.” The changes weren't enough. Stoker's estate sued and won, and the court ordered all copies of “Nosferatu: A Symphonie of Horrors” destroyed. Fortunately, some copies survived, and the expressionistic, silent film has come to be appreciated as a classic.

“Shadow of the Vampire” re-imagines the making of that film, with the central conceit being that Murnau (John Malkovich) achieved unparalleled realism not with special effects, but by recruiting an actual vampire to play the Count (Willem Dafoe). He introduces the beast as actor Max Schreck, and explains his unusual behavior on set as an early form of method acting: Schreck remains in character throughout filming and will only film at night. The ruse works, and the cast and crew are impressed by Schreck. Murnau, however, finds that his control over the creature is limited, and Schreck starts feeding on the crew.

If “Dracula” and “Nosferatu” were about erotic obsession, “Shadow of the Vampire” is about artistic obsession. Murnau will stop at nothing to make a great film, to the point where we ask, “Who is the real monster here?” (For the record, the real Murnau was not reportedly an obsessed beast of a director.)

Malkovich is in top form here, but it is Dafoe's award-winning portrayal of the vampire that really makes the film. He is a repulsive creature, but he occasionally forces us to see his underlying humanity, creating the most humorous and poignant scenes in the film. Trying to negotiate with Murnau to feed on some of the crew, Schreck suggests, “I think we could do without the writer.” Later, around a campfire, Schreck discusses the novel “Dracula” with other crew members. He points out that Count Dracula, once the proud King Vlad, would have had many servants during his mortal life. As a centuries-old revenant living in a ruined castle, he has no servants, and is embarrassed when his young visitor, Harker, catches him setting his own table. “It is the loneliest scene in the book.” Schreck is a killer, but we ultimately sympathize more with him than with Murnau.

This was a movie that I heard about and intended to see when it came out, but somehow it eluded me for 19 years. I'm glad I finally remedied that. I probably wouldn't call “Shadow of the Vampire” essential viewing. It doesn't seem to have had much impact on film or culture, and I never hear friends referring to it. It's a great movie, though, and you shouldn't wait 19 more years to check it out.

4 stars out of 5

Lenny (1974) ***

Everyone knows Lenny Bruce's name, but I never really knew anything about the famous comedian until he appeared as a character in the Amazon Prime show, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” On the show, Bruce befriends Mrs. Maisel, and Luke Kirby plays him as he reportedly was: a drug-using, foul-mouthed, iconoclastic sage. Bruce shook the comedy world of the 50's and 60's with his frank commentaries on sex, race, and politics. He was arrested many times for obscenity, and ultimately came to be seen as a First Amendment warrior.

Bob Fosse directed this 1974 Bruce biopic, and it's a hot mess! Based on a play by Julian Barry, the movie follows Lenny's career and tumultuous private life. The story picks up with Lenny (played by Dustin Hoffman) meeting his future wife, a stripper named Honey (Valerie Perrine). It follows his career as he gains success by leaving behind safe comedy to discuss taboo topics. Along the way, Lenny and Honey develop drug habits that complicate their lives. Ultimately, Lenny draws the attention of the Law, and thus begins the series of arrests that ruined him, but also made him famous.

As a film, “Lenny” is like the man, a beautiful failure. Director Bob Fosse probably knew he was making a mess of the story. His own autobiopic (“All That Jazz”) portrays Fosse as going crazy trying to edit a difficult movie, and that movie was “Lenny.” Still, the film won a lot of awards, and is generally critically acclaimed, with great performances by Dustin Hoffman and the adorable Valerie Perrine. The story is told like a documentary, with interviews with Honey and others from Lenny's life intercut with flashback scenes, including quite a few scenes of his standup shows. Unfortunately, it is overlong and, honestly, boring. Some of the standup is interesting, and Perrine's nude scenes are easy to look at, but many scenes just go on forever. One of Lenny's bad standup shows, where he is stoned out of his mind on heroin, goes on way after we have gotten the point. Even one sex scene falls flat. Lenny has bullied Honey into swinging with other girls, so there is a montage of threesomes. We know that Honey doesn't want to be there, and the whole thing is just uncomfortable rather than erotic.

Bob Fosse did a lot of things: dancing, choreography, directing for the stage, and directing films. Out of all his artistic endeavors, I don't know what he was best at, but I don't think it was film. I honestly think that with these actors and this subject, there's a great film here that just needed a better director to edit it down by about half an hour, making the scenes tighter and the story move along. As it is, it's still a worthwhile movie, but, like Lenny himself, it has some fatal flaws.

3 stars out of 5

Mean Streets (1973) **

1973's “Mean Streets” isn't director Martin Scorcese's first feature, but I would say it's his first well-known feature. It marks the first of many collaborations between him and Robert De Niro, and it stars another frequent Scorcese collaborator, Harvey Keitel.

Keitel plays Charlie, a well-dressed, young, Italian New Yorker who spends his days helping collect debts for the Mafia, and his nights partying with his friends, as any young man should. Charlie is a hard worker with good prospects, but he is held back by his best friend, Johnny Boy (De Niro). Johnny is irresponsible, self-destructive, and probably mentally ill. In the shady, violent world in which these boys move, Johnny's craziness doesn't automatically disqualify him as a player; his violent streak sometimes comes in handy. The problem is his habit of borrowing money he can't pay back. Charlie constantly has to beg his associates to give his friend one more chance. Charlie also has a secret lover, Johnny's cousin, Teresa. She's a pretty girl, but she has epilepsy. In Charlie's world, that marks Teresa as damaged goods, so he can't date her openly. As Charlie hustles to impress his loan-shark uncle, he ultimately has to chose between his career on one hand and Johnny and Teresa on the other.

“Mean Streets” has some vaguely interesting moments, in particular, Charlie's angst at the contrast between his Catholic faith and his street lifestyle, and his inner dialogue on the subject. (His quote about “The pain of hell. The burn from a lighted match increased a million times. Infinite.” is sampled in a version of the Shriekback song “Nemesis.”) Charlie is constantly holding his finger up to flames, testing himself against what he imagines is the pain of hell, seeing if he can scare himself into true belief. He is also conflicted in his relationship to Teresa. Like any good Catholic, he disrespects her because she sleeps with him. Underneath, though, he really loves her, and he needs to find the strength to stand up and say, “This is my girl.”

With Johnny, however, Charlie isn't conflicted. He is constantly loyal to his friend, no matter how many times Johnny screws up, and it's this loyalty that frankly gets tedious and makes “Mean Streets” a bit of a bore. Johnny is such a piece of crap that I was already rooting for somebody to put a bullet in his head halfway through the film, and it's just painful watching Charlie bail him out over and over.

The greatest weakness of this film , however, is its nihilism. As with another Scorcese film, “Taxi Driver,” there is this long, painfully-drawn-out buildup to violence, and then I was left wondering, “What was the point?” Nothing gets resolved, and this isn't really a complete story. It's more a sketch from which Scorcese built later, great gangster films like “Goodfellas.” I'm clearly in the minority on this one. Most film writers consider this one of the great films. I find that, like some of the French New Wave films, it may have been very groundbreaking and influential, but viewed on its own merits, “Mean Streets” is boring and pointless. Other than a chance to sample a great director and two great actors in their early years, I can't think of a reason to recommend it.

2 stars out of 5

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019) ****

-Contains Spoilers for the original “Breaking Bad” series-

At the end of the amazing TV series, “Breaking Bad,” we saw Jessie Pinkman (Aaron Paul) driving away from the scene of his torture and imprisonment, having been liberated by his mentor/partner/frenemy Walter White. We are left to make up our own story about what happens next for Jessie, which I thought was a pretty perfect ending. Still, however satisfying the meal, dessert is always tempting. When I heard that series creator Vince Gilligan was giving us a Jessie Pinkman movie, I knew I would be on board.

“El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie” picks up where the series left off, with Jessie driving away from the compound. He isn't home-free, as it happens. It doesn't take the police long to connect him with the massacre of neo-nazis, and he is a wanted man in Albuquerque. Jessie has to scrape together enough money to make his escape with a new identity, and he does so in classic “Breaking Bad” fashion. Meanwhile, the movie is peppered with copious flashbacks to his time as a human slave for the neo-nazis, making even more explicit how how cruel his confinement was.

As much as I enjoyed “El Camino,” and I really loved it, it was probably unnecessary. The series' ending was narratively perfect, and I think fans were perfectly capable of imagining their own future for Jessie. The movie does allow a couple of comic-relief characters, Badger and Skinny Pete, to shine, and adds some depth to their friendship with Jessie. It also gives us a bigger idea of just how broken and traumatized Jessie was by his captivity. Otherwise, the film doesn't really manage to shed any new light on anything from the original series. Fortunately, it doesn't ruin anything, either. Gilligan is true to his characters here, and I think “Breaking Bad” fans will relish the chance to spend a little more time with them.

It's a ballsy move to tinker with perfection, and Vince Gilligan has done it twice. First, he created the prequel series, “Better Call Saul,” and now he has given us a coda to “Breaking Bad.” I would argue that it was even ballsier to give his movie a title with a precarious connection to “Breaking Bad,” which many fans might simply click right past on Netflix. The part that says “A Breaking Bad Movie” is in small print, and the ad otherwise looks like just another “Netflix original.” Besides the fans who might overlook the movie, there are bored people who might try to watch it without having seen the “Breaking Bad” series. Bad idea. Let me make it clear right now that “El Camino” is not meant to stand on its own. Watch the series first, then watch the movie.

4 stars out of 5

Juliet, Naked (2018)***1/2

There are a lot of ways to measure age, but if you are a member of Generation X, one way is to follow the film career of Ethan Hawke. He's pretty much the poster-boy of our cohort, and yeah, he's getting up there in years.

In “Juliet, Naked,” the graying Hawke play Tucker Crowe, a mysterious singer-songwriter who did one great album, called “Juliet,” then disappeared, leaving behind a small-but-dedicated cadre of fans. We learn the Crowe story from the website of one of these fans, Duncan (Chris O'Dowd). Duncan is in something of a state of arrested development, with a room plastered with Tucker Crowe posters and filled with bootlegs. When he gets a disc of raw demos of the songs from “Juliet,” he loves it as he loves all things Crowe, but his long-suffering girlfriend, Annie (Rose Byrne), isn't impressed. She puts a negative review of the album on Duncan's fan site, and draws the attention of Crowe, himself. Soon Crowe and Annie are having a secret, email correspondence that blossoms into friendship and flirtation.

Despite the somewhat ridiculous premise, the film is actually quite good, largely on the strength of an excellent cast. The film is based on a book by Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity” “About a Boy”), who loves to write stories about music and musicians. Ethan Hawke relates in interviews that he has been a Hornby fan for years, and was chuffed to get to play one of his characters. It would be hard to imagine anyone other than Hugh Grant as the lead in “About a Boy” or John Cusack in “High Fidelity,” and the same can be said about Ethan Hawke in this film. (Although it must also be said that “Juliet, Naked” is not quite as good as those two films.) Hawke perfectly plays this earnest man-boy who has fathered children with four different women, and disappointed them all.

But “Juliet, Naked” isn't just Tucker Crowe's story. It is equally about Annie and her attempt to break out of her career and relationship inertia. She and Duncan are tired of each other, but each lacks the gumption to make a change without a solid push.

This isn't the greatest Nick Hornby adaptation, but it's a decent movie. I wish they had gone ahead and written full Tucker Crowe songs for the movie, John Carney-style. I also wish the characters had a little more depth to them, especially Annie. Still, this is good stuff if you like talky, funny movies about adults trying to find their way.

One more thing: We do not get to see Rose Byrne, or anyone else, nude in this film, despite the title's “naked” attempt to suggest otherwise.

3.5 stars out of 5

Kill the Irishman (2011) **

2011's “Kill the Irishman” starts out fairly strong, with the charismatic Ray Stevenson playing real-life,Cleveland gangster Danny Green in this rise-and-fall tale. The film dramatizes the story of Danny Green's rise from poor, Irish street urchin to union leader to disgraced union leader to mobbed-up crime figure in the 1960s and 70s. Danny eventually got involved in a historical Mob war that made car-bombings a regular fixture of late-1970s Cleveland, and which ultimately led to major shakeups and criminal convictions among the American Mafia. Danny was truly a part of history, and he gained a reputation, for a while, as being impossible to kill.

Unfortunately, the movie mirrors the depiction of Danny's love life. Early on, Danny meets and marries Joan, played by Linda Cardellini, whose is adorable and a solid enough actress to provide a convincing foil for the increasingly-criminal Danny. That part of the film is really compelling. After that marriage falls apart, Danny meets Ellie, played by Laura Ramsey, who hits her marks and recites her lines, but has no personality. This second half of the film steadily dwindles down into treacle and sentimentality.

Dramatizing the story of a real-life Mafia figure as it does, “Kill the Irishman” draws natural comparisons to Martin Scorcese's “Goodfellas,” but believe me, this movie is no “Goodfellas.” The film has a strong cast, including Val Kilmer and Christopher Walken, and it suffices as light entertainment, but the saccharine third act ruined it for me.

2 stars out of 5

A Simple Favor (2018) ***1/2

If you took all the mystery noir conventions collected over decades and blended them together, you might come up with “A Simple Favor,” a fun, mildly-flawed thriller directed by Paul Feig, based on the novel by Darcy Bell.

Anna Kendrick plays Stephanie, a struggling, single mom and Mommy-vlogger. When she isn't posting crafts and recipes on the internet, she is over-volunteering at her son's kindergarten. The perky nerd strikes up an unlikely friendship with the mother of one of the other kids. Emily (Blake Lively) is a glamorous career woman, head of PR for a fashion house. She has little time for family and is unapologetic about it. Stephanie is drawn to her beautiful, new friend's confidence and fancy martinis, and Emily is drawn to Stephanie's guilelessness. She increasingly uses Stephanie for free babysitting, ultimately asking that she take her son in for a couple of days while she goes on an emergency business trip. When Emily never returns from that trip, Stephanie starts peeling back the layers of her mysterious friend's secret life.

You should definitely watch “A Simple Favor.” It's a fun, twisty, ultimately somewhat bonkers crime thriller with a great cast and some Blake Lively nudity. I mentioned some mild flaws, which take the form of some plot holes. I suspect that Emily's actions and motivations are better developed and explained in the book. In the limited time-frame of the film, not everything makes sense. That doesn't ruin the fun of the film, though, you just have to go with it.

3.5 stars out of 5

Half Baked (1998) ***

If you don't smoke weed, you might think that the perfect “pot-smoking” movie would be something with lots of trippy, flashing lights and special effects. I've learned over the years, however, that what people who smoke pot really want to see in a movie is … people smoking pot. Just like the best kind of movie to watch if you want to have sex is, well you get the idea. This being the case, Dave Chappelle's 1998 classic “Half Baked” is the perfect stoner movie. If you aren't high, it's still a reasonably fun comedy as long as your expectations are low and you can access your 13-year-old sense of humor.

Chappelle plays Thurgood, a pot-smoking janitor sharing an apartment with his stoner buddies Scarface, Brian, and Kenny. Also, there's a random guy always sleeping on the couch, known simply as “the guy on the couch.” These buds toke up daily, living in a constant state of altered neurotransmitters and low expectations. They seem happy with their lives, until Kenny gets arrested. Nice guys like Kenny don't do well in prison, so the boys try to get themselves together enough to earn bail money for him. Meanwhile, Thurgood meets a ridiculously pretty girl (Rachel True,) who isn't into potheads.

There's never a moment when you believe a second of “Half Baked.” It's nonstop, broad, ridiculous comedy, and, oh yeah, the guys are constantly smoking weed. The only thing that makes it work (if it does) is Dave Chappelle's comedic talent. Besides playing Thurgood with insouciant charm, he plays a hilarious rapper who is reminiscent of some of the characters from “Chappelle's Show.” The Guy on the Couch (Steven Wright) also puts in a bravura performance. It's a low-budget movie, panned by critics, but appealing strongly to a niche audience - all the ingredients for a cult classic. It feels wrong to give such a dumb movie more than one star, but honestly, I enjoyed it, even sober. If you like Dave Chappelle, I think you have to watch “Half Baked.”

3 stars out of 5

Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse (2018) ***

I've honestly been done with Spider-man movies for a while. In my lifetime, they have cycled through 3 different actors to play him, just recycling the story over and over. And that's just the live-action movies. Add in the comics, where the real experimentation takes place. Versions of Spidey have been every race, gender,and species you can imagine. Comic writers get away with this by simply declaring that they are working in a different universe. They've been doing this since the '50s, the “Golden Age” of comics. A writer would decide that he wanted to write a story about, say, Superman. If his story was going to contradict something from all the previous Superman comics, then he could just declare that this took place in an alternate universe.

In the case of Spider-man, most people are familiar with Peter Parker, the teenager who develops superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. In comics there's a parallel universe where Gwen Stacey, a Peter Parker love interest in the original universe, is the one bitten by the spider. There's a Spider-man Noir series about a version of spidey from the 1930's, and there's a Japanese anime comic where the hero and the spider work together to operate a mechanical spider robot. There's even a parody comic about Spider-ham, where the web-slinging hero is a pig.

There's also one where a Black/Latino teen named Miles Morales is the one who gets bitten by the radioactive spider and gets the superpowers, and that's where “Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse” picks up. There's already a Peter Parker/Spider-man in Miles's world, but he gets killed trying to stop a villain named Kingpin from opening a dangerous inter-dimensional window. The window gets opened, and spider-people from a bunch of different universes get sucked into Miles's 'verse. The dying Parker tasks Miles, who hasn't even learned to use his powers yet, with stopping Kingpin from opening the window again. Miles sets out to try, with help from the other spider-people.

As comic-book movies go, this isn't on the level of "Watchmen," but it's pretty fun. The animated format frees it up, and it's way more fun than any live-action Spider-man I've seen in a while. There's nothing particularly deep here, and your life will go along just fine if you miss it, but it's worth a watch, if you're into this kind of thing.

3 stars out of 5