Aquaman (2018)

Out of all the superheroes in the DC Comics pantheon, Aquaman has to be the one with the worst public perception. The creation of writer Mort Weisinger and artist Paul Norris, he debuted in 1941, but has spent much of the last few decades as a punchline. A lot of people must've never seen anything other than his appearances on the old Super Friends Saturday morning cartoon from the '70s and '80s, because "Aquaman is lame because he talks to fish" is one of the hokiest, most tired jokes out there.

A movie based on Aquaman was even a recurring gag on the old HBO show Entourage, with a lot of humor stemming from how unlikely such a thing would happen in real life. But here we are, talking about the second movie featuring Aquaman in a major role. And it's a solo movie too! And you know what? The Aquaman movie is not a joke; it's actually pretty great.

The movie begins with a brief prologue taking us to Massachusetts circa 1985, where lighthouse keeper Thomas Curry (Temuera Morrison) finds an unconscious woman washed up on the shore during a storm. She awakens and introduces herself as Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), queen of the mythical underwater kingdom of Atlantis. The two fall in love and eventually conceive a son they name Arthur.

Atlanna, however, is soon forced to return to Atlantis to fulfill her side of an arranged marriage. Her young son grows up to be extraordinarily strong and fast, and finds he can telepathically communicate with aquatic life. He hones his abilities and becomes a skilled warrior under the tutelage of an Atlantean named Vulko (Willem Dafoe), but ultimately chooses to stay among the surface dwellers after discovering that his mother had been killed once the king of Atlantis learned she'd given birth to a surface dweller's child.

Cut to the present day, a few months after the events of Justice League. The adult Arthur (Jason Momoa) has styled himself into a sea-faring vigilante the media has nicknamed "Aquaman." He is approached by Mera (Amber Heard), the princess of another underwater kingdom. She comes bearing a warning, that the reigning king of Atlantis, Orm (Patrick Wilson), plans to instigate a war with the surface world with the combined armies of the Seven Seas.

Knowing nothing good could come from Orm's war, Mera has sought out Arthur so that he may use his status as Orm's older half-brother — and thus the rightful king of Atlantis — to challenge Orm's claim to the throne and prevent the war. He is initially hesitant to accept, still bitter about his mother's death. He's convinced to help, however, when a massive tidal wave manufactured by Orm wreaks havoc on much of America's east coast.

Their initial attempts to step in don't quite go as planned, and Arthur and Mera soon find themselves on the run. While they search for a mythical trident that will help Arthur stake a proper claim as king, they must avoid the machinations of both Orm and "Black Manta" (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a dangerous pirate armed with experimental Atlantean weapons and a personal grudge too settle with Arthur.

I've never been a big Aquaman fan. Nothing against the character, but I've never been really drawn to him. I haven't read any of his comics, and I missed out on quite a bit of his appearances in animation. My only past real experience with Aquaman before his big-screen debut last year was Alan Ritchson's appearances as the character on four episodes of Smallville. But I did like Jason Momoa's take on the role in Justice League, I'm a fan of the director, and I'll see pretty much every comic book movie that comes out, so I wasn't about to skip this movie. And truth be told, I can't say that I was disappointed. The movie feels like a throwback to the cheesy comic book flicks from the '90s. Sure, not all those movies were good, but that isn't an insult to Aquaman. Far from it, because Aquaman takes that and makes itself a hell of a lot of fun.

At the helm is James Wan, who honestly isn't the first person I'd think of when it comes to directing a movie like this. He's no stranger to action movies, having made Death Sentence and Furious 7 in the past, but I've always associated him with the horror genre. The guy co-created the Saw, Insidious, and Conjuring franchises after all. But Wan is a talented filmmaker no matter what genre you put him in, and he shows it with Aquaman. Starting with a 30-second sequence at the movie's beginning that sees Atlanna fight off a number of Atlantean soldiers in Arther's childhood home in one unbroken shot, we can see that Wan means business.

Wan's direction here is outstanding, filling the movie with one visually stunning scene after another. Whether it be the action sequences or even just the digital set design, Wan builds a movie that is amazing to look at. The undersea scenes, especially Atlantis, look like an aquatic version of the world from Avatar, a visual feast blues, purples, greens, and golds looking absolutely beautiful. It's also helped by the movie's amazing cinematography, which makes the movie look even more incredible if you see the movie in 3D like I did.

And as I said before, Wan might be particularly recognized for his horror movies, but he knows his way around an action movie too. I already mentioned Atlanna's fight at the beginning of the movie, and it gets even better and more exciting as we progress. There's a scene where Arthur and Mera fight Black Manta and the Atlantean commandos in Sicily, the heroic duo are pursued by and brawl with their enemies on rooftops and through homes with neither side being able to really get the upper hand until the very end of the scene. It reminds one of the thrilling parking lot chase scene from Wan's own Death Sentence. The scene is amazing, and just when you think it can't be topped, the movie ends up proving you wrong.

The cast is a mixed bag, though I can't complain much about what I disliked. Dolph Lundgren (who appears in a small role as Mera's father) and Temuera Morrison put forth likable performances, as do Willem Dafoe and Nicole Kidman. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II isn't bad, meanwhile, but he's forgettable. He only has three or four scenes in the movie, with maybe only fifteen minutes of screen time in the whole thing. Most of that is action scenes where he was most likely replaced by a stuntman or a CGI stand-in for the scenes where he's in the Black Manta armor. But I will say that whenever they get around to making Aquaman 2, I hope to see more of what Abdul-Mateen can do.

I also can't say I particularly cared for Amber Heard. She and Jason Momoa don't have much on-screen chemistry together from what I could tell, and her performance feels sorta one-note.  The whole "Mera thinks Aquaman is an idiot and the surface world is uncivilized, but then she changes her mind over time" thing and the belligerent sexual tension concept are played out but could be blamed on the script, but I didn't think Heard did much to make it tolerable.

But I will say, though, that we did get two fantastic performances from our hero and our villain. Patrick Wilson is no stranger to superhero movies (having starred in Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation), and he's also turned up on several of Wan's past movies, so I was excited to see him turn up here. He plays Orm as the ultimate douchebag. If the movie had been made in the '80s, he'd be accused of doing his best impression of William Zabka. Wilson plays Orm in such a way that you can't wait for Aquaman to put him in his place and punch him right in the mouth. It's rare that I've seen Wilson play a bad guy, and I kinda hope he does it more often in the future because I thought he was great.

Speaking of great, I can't say enough good things about Jason Momoa. He was one of my favorite parts of Justice League, and he does another awesome job here. Momoa plays Aquaman with a charming likability, but even when he's cracking jokes and being kind of a goofball, he always makes the character feel like a total badass. One gets the feeling that if you met this Aquaman in real life, he'd be the life of the party and your best friend if he liked you, but God help you if he didn't like you.

If there were any lingering jokes about Aquaman being lame, then James Wan and Jason Momoa have killed them dead. The movie has its flaws, sure, but they're easily overlooked because the movie is just so much fun. Aquaman never ceases to be exciting, providing two and a half hours of pure, unadulterated entertainment from beginning to end. So if you're on the fence about Aquaman, unsure about whether or not you should check it out, I'll totally recommend seeing it. It's most certainly worth your time.

Final Rating: ***

Halloween (2018)

I don't know if there's a whole lot of room for debate when I say that the original Halloween is an absolute classic. Say whatever you want about the sequels and remakes, but there's no denying that John Carpenter's original movie from 1978 was a landmark moment in the horror genre. It helped birth the rise of the subgenre of slasher movies in the 1980s, and has served as a tremendous influence on a lot of horror films and filmmakers ever since its premiere forty years ago.

And as the original celebrates its fortieth anniversary, Universal Studios and Blumhouse have teamed up to give us a sequel to it that's practically a fresh start for the whole franchise. Gone is the cult of Thorn in the middle sequels, gone is the '90s flair stolen from Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Gone is the seven-foot-tall beast from a white trash family that Rob Zombie gave us. This new entry in the saga of Michael Myers is a direct follow-up to the very first movie that eschews everything that followed it, and it's one hell of a ride.

Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) has spent the forty years since his brutal killing spree incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, and is soon to be transferred to a maximum-security prison. Or at least, that's the plan. Instead, Michael escapes when the bus transporting him crashes and he makes a beeline for his old stomping grounds of Haddonfield.

But waiting for him is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who has lived in unending fear that she might cross paths with Michael again one day. She lives alone in the middle of nowhere in a heavily fortified house. There are bars and tons of locks on all the windows and doors, security cameras and giant floodlights surround her property, and there's a panic room full of guns in her basement.

Laurie's inability to overcome her traumatic past, however, has heavily soured her relationship with her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who forbids her own daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) from interacting with her grandmother. But once word gets out that Michael has returned to Haddonfield and has started adding numbers to his body count, Laurie heads back into town herself to protect her family and kill the monster that has haunted her for so long once and for all.

I'll admit that I've never really been a fan of the Halloween franchise. I just never really latched onto them growing up the same way I did the Friday the 13th movies. That said, I went into the theater hoping that at the very least, this new incarnation of Michael Myers would wash the taste of those godawful abominations that Rob Zombie directed out of my mouth. And you know what? This new Halloween kicks ass. It's a genuinely scary movie that I'd honestly call probably the best of all the franchise's sequels. (Or at least my favorite of the sequels with Michael Myers, because I do love me some Halloween III.)

While director David Gordon Green might sound like an odd choice to helm a movie like this due to his past work being a long list of comedies, he proves here than he can make one hell of a horror movie. Green does an amazing job actually building to scary moments rather than just trying to startle the audience with cheap jump scares. Take, for example, a scene at a gas station early in the movie. Michael ever so subtly moves in the background, just slightly out of focus. You might not even really notice him at first, depending on what part of the screen you're paying attention to. But then you start noticing just what Michael has been doing. And just as we begin to realize just how much trouble the characters are in, Michael strikes and takes tension to full-blown terror.

Green also doesn't hold back when it comes to showing just how much of a monster Michael is. The character almost seems like a blend of the cold, focused boogeyman from the 1978 original and the brutal animal from the 2007 remake. Roughly halfway through the movie, there is a three-minute sequence that is one unbroken shot of Michael walking down a street surrounded by trick-or-treaters. The camera follows Michael as he sneaks into different houses at random and kills the occupants inside. It's terrifying in its utter senselessness. Michael has absolutely no reason to do this, no greater purpose for it beyond pure sadism and malice. Green making this one unbroken shot gives us no escape; we're following a monster in a white mask as he cuts a bloody swath through a small town for no reason other than because he can, and there is no stopping him.

I also thought the movie benefitted from a strong script, written by Green, Jeff Fradley, and Danny McBride. (Yes, the same Danny McBride from Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, and Eastbound & Down.) I thought Halloween H20 was bold to remove the fourth, fifth, and sixth movies from continuity, but Green, Fradley, and McBride go as far as to ignore all the sequels, evidenced when Allyson dismisses the idea of Michael and Laurie being siblings as a bunch of malarkey thought up by a sensationalistic press. Much like H20, it streamlines things for people approaching the franchise for the first time, since you don't have to worry about having missed anything beyond one movie. And even then, you don't need to have seen the original to understand this one. They fill in enough of the gaps that you more than likely won't feel lost if you're new to the Halloween movies.

That said, what I felt made the movie so strong was not only its fresh take on the franchise, but in how Green, Fradley, and McBride depict Laurie Strode. This Laurie is so different from the one we saw in H20. She's not trying to hide from her past at the bottom of a liquor bottle and keep it a secret from the world with a new name. This Laurie has suffered all kinds of trauma, so much so that it has left her an utterly miserable person even decades later. She can't let herself move on because the psychological wounds are too deep to heal. Sure, Laurie was messed up mentally in H20 (so much so that Jamie Lee Curtis's cameo as the character in Resurrection was set in a mental institution) and in Rob Zombie's second movie, but it feels more believable, more real here.

But I'll also say that I didn't think the script was perfect either. And it's for one reason: the Dr. Sartain character. I got the feeling that Green, Fradley, and McBride wanted to put a Dr. Loomis kind of character in the movie but didn't have the heart to recast the role, so they came up with Dr. Sartain instead. Dr. Sartain has none of the gravitas of Dr. Loomis, and a stupid third act twist does the character no favors either.

And then there's the cast, the glorious cast. The supporting actors are fun (I especially liked Jibrail Nantambu in his small role as a smart-aleck kid being babysat by one of Allyson's friends), and Judy Greer is quite good as Laurie's estranged daughter. Greer especially gets to show off once her character is stuck facing her unhappy childhood once Michael starts coming for her family.

James Jude Courtney, meanwhile, is terrifying as Michael Myers. Nick Castle plays Michael in a handful of scenes, reprising the role he played back in 1978, but it's mostly Courtney we see on-screen. Courtney has an aura to him that makes Michael scary to even just look at when he's standing still. I never really got why Michael was always called "The Shape" before, but now I think I do. Courtney's Michael is the shape of evil, the shape of what goes bump in the night. And honestly, this is probably the scariest depiction of Michael I've seen since the original movie.

And I can't talk about the cast without discussing Jamie Lee Curtis. Some people might be seeing this movie just for Michael, but Curtis as Laurie is just as important. Her depiction of Laurie here is of a woman not to be trifled with. She reminds me somewhat of Linda Hamilton's performance in Terminator 2, how she'd transformed from naive young woman to hardened warrior. The difference between them, though, is that Laurie feels much more raw. Her pain, worry, and paranoia are much more palpable, and Curtis plays the role with an intensity that keeps your eyes on her. If Michael Myers is the shape of evil, then Curtis makes Laurie Strode the shape of unprocessed rage caused by trauma and a desire to make sure nobody hurts like she does.

The opening credits of the 2018 version of Halloween are a montage of names next to a rotten, destroyed pumpkin. But as the names flicker by and John Carpenter's iconic theme reaches is crescendo, the worn-out pumpkin rebuilds itself into a vibrant jack-o'-lantern. It seems rather fitting, as if it represented the Halloween franchise as a whole. Michael Myers hasn't had it easy through his last few movies, but this new one is the perfect way to remind us why Michael and the Halloween name are so important to the horror genre. And I can't wait to see where the franchise goes from here.

 Final Rating: ****