Secret Invasion

★★1/2

Mild Spoilers

Directed by Ali Selim
Written by Kyle Bradstreet, Beto Dantas, Jonathan Hirschbein, Matt McRee, Haleema Mirza, Jennifer Muro, Jovan Robinson, Brian Tucker, Michael Bhim, Brant Englestein, and Roxanne Paredes

S.H.I.E.L.D. (or is it S.W.O.R.D. now?) head honcho Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) returns from space to handle a sleeper Skrull agent named Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) who has gone rogue and started his own terrorist organisation. He reteams with former associate Agent Hill (Colbie Smulders) and Skrull ally Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) to stop Gravik, with some help from Talos’ daughter G’iah (Emilia Clarke) who has allied herself with Gravik’s cause. If you didn’t know, Skrulls are a shape-shifting alien race who can physically impersonate anyone, not unlike Mystique from the X-Men films.

Secret Invasion is a spy thriller (more Bourne than Bond) that looks like one, even feels like one, but isn’t in any way as clever as it wants you to think it is. There is a huge potential here to create a very gripping espionage tale where literally anyone could be a Skrull in disguise, but because of budgetary reasons and one hand-waiving excuse, a Skrull needs to remain in one identity for long durations, which is pretty baffling since some Skrull characters here are literally walking about with their most identifiable facade for any covert operatives to easily spot and pick them up or take them out. With that kind of ability, I’d be changing into multiple identities at all times and be virtually impossible to find. I know it makes Skrulls a little overpowered, but I’m sure there are clever solutions that can be concocted to level the playing field, e.g. a Skrull detector of some sort, or just Fury using his wits to sniff out imposters. Instead, what we have here is a weak spy series with a lot of logical problems that they didn’t even bother to hide with great production values, which it also didn’t have. The script was also pretty dire - some of the most cringey dialogues I’ve ever listened to. The series also felt like it had forgotten to edit its footages, with some weird reactions and movements from actors that should have been trimmed away. Like there’s one moment where the President of the United States (Dermot Mulroney) made an odd, out-of-place grunt, or when Fury was pointing his gun at someone and his other arm just briefly flailed about for no reason at all. I suspected that they were forced to artificially extend the series to six episodes and didn’t have enough coverage for it. There is also another big issue that I had with the series that I will rant about in the spoiler section below.

The only saving grace is the cast. Jackson is the reason to watch this, and Olivia Coleman stole every scene she was in as a British clandestine operative Sonya Falsworth. Ben-Adir also happens to be in the Barbie movie that is currently in theatres, and it’s interesting that we get to see an actor doing two very different roles in the same span of time. I enjoyed Mendelsohn, Clarke and Smulders, but their roles are criminally limited.

I would only recommend this for die-hard MCU followers. This one is easily the weakest of the Marvel streaming entries to date.

I HAVE ONE SPOILER-Y GRIPE

Here’s my gripe: Fridge-ing Maria Hill and also Talos. But it’s not really just the idea of it, but the execution, no pun intended. These are pretty important figures in Fury’s world for decades and you’d expect a lot more care in the way their deaths had been handled, and provide a more satisfying dramatic impetus for Fury to stem out Gravik and his operations. But there’s just no impact being felt from their deaths, with a pretty nonchalant Fury who seemed strangely ambivalent towards the abrupt departures of his most trusted allies. Just a few shots of Fury getting, er, furious or upset would have been enough, but all we got were a bit of frowning and grimacing. It’s either an odd creative choice, or (I really hate to say this but) just plain ineptitude.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

★★★★

Mild Spoilers

Directed by Aaron Horvath

Written by Matthew Fogel

Another surprise of the year, especially with all the dire warnings from critics that this was going to be godawful. It’s not even close. I didn’t just like the film - I loved it! But there’s a catch. If you’re not familiar with the games at all - knowing what they are isn’t enough; at the very least you have to had played them before - you’d be confounded by all the love this vanilla Hollywood animated flick is getting. But to Super Mario Bros. fans, this is not vanilla at all. There is genuine love for the games on display here; from the use of iconic musical cues to the integration of actual gameplay into the action sequences. Weaved into all that is a relatable story about two down-on-their-luck Italian-American plumbers who find their calling when they become heroes in a magical world found under the sewers of New York. It was a good call not to do this as live action, as the animation design is almost indistinguishable from the latest iteration of the Mario or Mario-adjacent video games, making the game-to-movie transition basically seamless.

Next, let’s address the elephant in the room. Chris Pratt, who was controversially cast as Mario (for some reason), is actually not bad here. I also didn’t once think that Mario sounded like Starlord, Owen Grady or Andy from Parks and Recreation. The rest of the cast did a good job too, among them are Charlie Day (as Luigi), Anya Taylor-Joy (Princess Peach), Seth Rogen (Donkey Kong), and Keegan-Michael Key (Toad), but it was Jack Black’s Bowser that stole the show. Actually, that isn’t entirely true. There is another scene stealing character that I suspect is going to be a big meme star after this, but I’ll let you discover that one yourself.

The movie is also loaded with many references and Easter eggs not just to Mario games but also to other Nintendo games. You can find some of this already listed on the IMDb trivia page. As of this writing, it has not mentioned about Charles Martinet who was the first to voice Mario in the games, who I think made an appearance in the movie because 1) I heard his voice, and 2) his name is listed on the movie’s IMDb cast list.

EDIT (13 April 2023): I forgot to mention about the very well-depicted brotherly bond between Mario and Luigi, which led to an unexpected emotional catharsis in the end. So, there IS a story here, one with heart. Not a 1UP heart, but better. I suspect people who said there was no story here was just not relating to that relationship, but I have two brothers myself so this did connect with me. I wonder if it’s the same for anyone else who are close with their siblings.

Overall, this is a solidly enjoyable adaptation of a beloved video game that will please fans and befuddle everyone else. It’s funny, fun and faithful to its source material. Stay on for the end credits scene, but it’s minor enough to skip over and ask someone else about it later if you needed to leave right away.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods

★★★1/2

Directed by David F. Sandberg

Written by Henry Gayden, Chris Morgan and Bill Parker

Events from the first Shazam movie caused the barrier between two worlds to crumble, and the Daughters of Atlas, goddesses Hespera (Helen Mirren) and Kalypso (Lucy Liu) traverse to the world of Men to exact vengeance on the race that imprisoned them. Standing in their way are Billy Batson (Asher Angel/ Zachary Levi), Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer/ Adam Brody) and the Shazam family.

Here we have yet another one of those with the same stupid plot about otherworldly villains who want to destroy the world through yet another one of those conveniently available magical artifacts. Their finale would always be set in a city on the verge of destruction, with the heroes saving it just in the nick of time. If you’re expecting more of the same from Shazam 2, you’re not going to be disappointed.

I was not a huge fan of the first, even though I liked some things about it, so expectations were low going into the sequel. I thought the characters in the first film were interesting, especially Freddy and some of the dramatic moments were really strong, like when Batson reunites with his mother. There are some good albeit brief familial drama here, but the actors sold it really well. I also enjoyed the humour, with quite a number of pop culture-related ones, as well as some self-referential stuff. I appreciated all of that since I found the superhero stuff to be very rote.

It’s also weird that there seems to be two protagonists given almost equal importance, but I felt that Freddy’s character was way more compelling that Batson’s to the point of overshadowing the main star. This time round, Freddy’s pining for new girl in school Annie (Rachel Zegler of West Side Story fame). Although Zegler’s character didn’t have much depth, but Zegler and Grazer had such great chemistry together that I was rooting for them despite how predictable their teen romance got. Batson’s character got really underserved here with yet another routine discover-the-hero-in-you arc that was repetitive, unfocused, and not very interesting.

I was also quite surprised by the action in this one, which looked very well planned and polished, and much larger in scale. I will admit it was a lot of fun watching the six caped superheroes going about saving people. The VFX looked really good. Normally, you could see the transition from a live-action shot to a rubbery CG double, but I think the tech has gotten so impeccable that I can’t really tell anymore. The VFX shots of citywide destruction looked solid, and there were a lot of them. This is an expensive looking show.

It was fun to see Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu play baddies in a comic book flick. Mirren came off a bit better as she was the only one who got the funnier moments, but I thought they both played it a bit too straight. Would have loved to see them ham it up instead as that would have better suited the lighthearted tone of the movie.

Usually, I would have ended the review here by saying that this is an enjoyable but imperfect movie, go watch it and all that, but there’s more. The movie has one unexpected cameo (at least for me; I heard they revealed it in recent trailers - I don’t watch trailers), and two end credits scenes that was surprisingly puzzling to me, since James Gunn announced earlier in February that he was going to set a new trajectory for DC, and that the Snyderverse is no more. I get that they’re putting out the last few Snyderverse films that were already in production or completed before the upheaval, but since you’re not continuing with the Snyderverse, why still leave these scenes in, especially when you could have easily excised them with no impact to the film? There’s even one end credits scene that connects the film directly to one of Gunn’s own DC projects. Does that mean some remnants of the Snyderverse would remain while others are jettisoned? Why even tease these stuff if you’re not going to do anything with them anyway? It’d be real funny to see the WB suits scramble to do an about-turn if Shazam 2 unexpectedly makes massive B.O. money. (It flopped. - Wei from the future.)