Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/10/22

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, September 10, 2022

Thor: Love and Thunder (Taika Waititi, 2022)

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe, Jaimie Alexander, Idris Elba, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Sean Gunn, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper. Screenplay: Taika Waititi, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. Cinematography: Barry Baz Idoine. Production design: Nigel Phelps. Film editing: Peter S. Elliott Tim Roche, Matthew Schmidt, Jennifer Vecchiarello. Music: Michael Giacchino, Nami Melumad.

Critics were kind of meh about Thor: Love and Thunder, but I found it one of the less wearying of the entries in the superhero comic book sweepstakes. Aside from the unnecessary episode with the Guardians of the Galaxy, it zips along through the narrative challenges and nicely balances the love with the thunder. Chris Hemsworth is one of the most engaging actors stuck in the action genre, especially when Taika Waititi is giving him opportunities to play the goof. Christian Bale turns Gorr into one of the more complex Marvel villains, and it’s good to see Russell Crowe loosen up and have a ball playing Zeus. I have mixed feelings about Natalie Portman’s performance as Jane: She does a good job playing the diminutive foil to Thor, but I never felt the necessary chemistry in their love affair. Thor seems more enamored of Mjolnir than he does of Jane. I don’t know why Waititi needed to reprise the gag of the actors – Luke Hemsworth, Matt Damon, and Sam Neill – playing Thor, Loki, and Odin, this time adding Melissa McCarthy as Hela; it only overloads an already bloated excursion into Thor World.