Aquaman (James Wan, 2018)

Aquaman (James Wan, 2018)

Cast: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, Temuera Morrison, Ludi Lin, Michael Beach, Randall Park. Screenplay: David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Will Beall, Geoff Johns, James Wan. Cinematography: Don Burgess. Production design: Bill Brzeski. Film editing: Kirk M. Morri. Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams.

I sometimes feel with the comic-book-sourced superhero movie that we have moved not just into a separate genre but into an entirely separate medium: a fusion of video games, technology, and neo-mythology that's something other than traditional cinematic storytelling. Any auteur-theory criteria that we might apply to the movies we knew and loved are irrelevant when the number of credited people who worked on a film runs into the thousands. Aquaman is an artifact, meant to have its two-and-a-half hours experienced in the most technologically advanced venue possible, as a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk -- wouldn't Richard Wagner have been happy to have CGI and Dolby sound and Imax and 3-D for his Ring? From time to time we glimpse remnants of the old conventional cinema in Aquaman: engaging performers like Jason Momoa and Willem Dafoe and Nicole Kidman (who seems to be everywhere -- when does the woman sleep?). But their puny human efforts are swamped by the technology, so much so that we hardly care about their characters when computer-generated things are zooming and whizzing in every direction. Sometimes the humans are taken over physically by the computer, which makes them look younger (Dafoe) or brawnier (Momoa) than they are in reality. Which is all just to say that I enjoyed Aquaman as whatever it is, but I kind of hated it as a movie.

Saw (James Wan, 2004)

Ned Bellamy and Danny Glover in Saw

Adam Faulkner-Stanheight: Leigh Whannell
Dr. Lawrence Gordon: Cary Elwes
Det. David Tapp: Danny Glover
Det. Steven Sing: Ken Leung
Kerry: Dina Meyer
Paul: Mike Butters
Mark: Paul Gutrecht
Zep Hindle: Michael Emerson
Brett: Benito Martinez
Amanda: Shawnee Smith
Diana Gordon: Makenzie Vega
Alison Gordon: Monica Potter
Jeff: Ned Bellamy
Jigsaw: Tobin Bell

Director: James Wan
Screenplay: Leigh Whannell, James Wan
Cinematography: David A. Armstrong
Production design: Julie Berghoff
Film editing: Kevin Greutert
Music: Charlie Clouser

My daughter was shocked to see James Wan's Saw in the DVR queue, but hey, a movie-watcher can't just limit himself to Rossellini and Renoir. So when I saw this coming up on the schedule, I decided to record it. After all, it's a prime example of an independent filmmaker's breakthrough into success and of a trend in horror movies, spawning numerous sequels. So what if it does have a 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes? There were actually some reputable critics like David Edelstein and Owen Gleiberman who reviewed it favorably. And anyway, film critics are typically hard on genre pictures. So maybe I'd like it. I'm not averse to horror: I watch Hannibal and Penny Dreadful on TV, and anyway, I know all that blood is corn syrup and food coloring. The truth is, however, that Saw is neither as good as I'd hoped nor as bad as I feared. The central plight -- two men trapped in a grungy bathroom, one tasked with killing the other in order to spare the lives of his wife and daughter -- is a compelling one, much better than those old teenagers-who-must-die-because-they-have-sex slasher movie plots. Gradually, with the help of good actors like Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, and Michael Emerson, the plot thickens. But then it goes haywire: Screenwriter Leigh Whannell (who plays one of the trapped men) and director Wan seem to think that if one plot twist is good, then half a dozen will be great. The result instead is incoherence, and the ending is such an obvious attempt to provide an opportunity for sequels that it feels like a cheat. It's also a measure of how far we've gone in 11 years, too, that the violence seems tamer than what's routinely presented on even commercial television, where the serial killer has become a weary character trope. The only characters for whom I felt much empathy were the bound-and-gagged wife and child played by Monica Potter and Makenzie Vega, clinging together in terror. I'm always uneasy when I see children performing in films that they should under no circumstances be allowed to watch. On the other hand, it seems to have done Vega, who made Saw when she was 10 years old, no great harm: She now has a recurring role on the TV series The Good Wife.