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.

Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017)

Saïd Taghmaoui, Chris Pine, and Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman

Diana: Gal Gadot
Steve Trevor: Chris Pine
Hippolyta: Connie Nielsen
Antiope: Robin Wright
Ludendorff: Danny Huston
Sir Patrick: David Thewlis
Sameer: Saïd Taghmaoui
Charlie: Ewen Bremner
The Chief: Eugene Brave Rock
Etta Candy: Lucy Davis
Dr. Maru: Elena Anaya

Director: Patty Jenkins
Screenplay: Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder, Jason Fuchs
Cinematography: Matthew Jensen
Production design: Aline Bonetto
Film editing: Martin Walsh
Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams

For much of Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins directs Gal Gadot and Chris Pine the way Howard Hawks directed Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, keeping the romantic tension and witty byplay at the fore. But this is a superhero comic book movie, and eventually the demands of the genre force romantic wit to be subsumed in pyrotechnics and CGI. Still, for much of the film, Wonder Woman is as entertaining as you could wish. Gadot is the perfect embodiment of the Amazon demigod, carrying herself with regal power but also allowing the human vulnerability to show through. Pine seems to have become everyone's second favorite Chris: The others -- Hemsworth, Evans, and Pratt -- wound up in the currently dominant comic book universe, Marvel, whereas Pine got stuck in the second-tier DC universe. But he's probably the most talented of the four, having demonstrated his musical gifts in Into the Woods (Rob Marshall, 2014) and his dramatic ones in Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie, 2016). So although Steve Trevor meets a fiery end in Wonder Woman, Pine is too valuable a performer to let go entirely, and besides, Trevor always had a way of coming back from the dead in the comics.

Hacksaw Ridge (Mel Gibson, 2016)

Andrew Garfield in Hacksaw Ridge

Desmond Doss: Andrew Garfield
Sgt. Howell: Vince Vaughn
Capt. Jack Glover: Sam Worthington
Smitty Ryker: Luke Bracey
Tom Doss: Hugo Weaving
Dorothy Schutte: Teresa Palmer
Bertha Doss: Rachel Griffiths
Lt. Manville: Ryan Corr
Col. Stelzer: Richard Roxburgh
Milt "Hollywood" Zane: Luke Pegler

Director: Mel Gibson
Screenplay: Robert Schenkkan, Andrew Knight
Cinematography: Simon Duggan
Production design: Barry Robison
Film editing: John Gilbert
Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams

Hacksaw Ridge doesn't shy away from biopic or war-movie clichés, it embraces them: There's on the one hand the familiar bullying sergeant, and on the other the typical shy romance. But it succeeds in being a well-made action movie, after spending a little too much time on the shy romance and other bits of Appalachian backgrounding for the character of Desmond Doss, a real person who was both a conscientious objector and a Medal of Honor winner for his heroism as a medic during the Battle of Okinawa. To play Doss, the movie needed the equivalent of a young James Stewart or Gary Cooper, and found him in Garfield, who received a best actor Oscar nomination. The movie also provided a measure of redemption for its director, Mel Gibson, who had been persona non grata in Hollywood after a 2006 drunk-driving arrest in which he made antisemitic remarks to the arresting officer, a capper on a string of homophobic and extreme right-wing statements he had reportedly made over the years. He was nominated for best director for Hacksaw Ridge, and the film was also up for best picture and for film editing and two sound awards. It won for film editing and sound mixing. Gibson remains something of a problematic figure in the industry, and has yet to find a followup in his would-be comeback. Hacksaw Ridge demonstrates some of his known flaws, such as his violent delight in mayhem and bloodshed, and it's a bit heavy-handed in its endorsement of Doss's simple (not to say simple-minded) faith, but it provides some very old-fashioned movie gratifications.