Pandora Returns!
Akhil Arora’s movie reviews from 2022 feature a James Cameron movie. Mark this moment for they are rare.
Avatar: The Way of Water
“[James] Cameron has decided to present Avatar: The Way of Water in variable frame rates: standard 24fps, and high-frame-rate 48fps. Most of the dialogue scenes make use of the former, while the action is all rendered in the latter. At times though, the Avatar sequel switches between the two on the fly, in the same scene, in what is both unnecessary and jarring. […] Cameron believes this solves HFR’s pain point, but I’m not convinced.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
“[Ryan] Coogler fails to impress with the few action sequences there are, and the occasionally incoherent narrative doesn’t know how to bring its promising pieces together. At the same time, Wakanda Forever is very moving in parts; mournful and unlike most superhero movies. It also wants to unpack ideas that other MCU films are eager to avoid. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good.”
Monica, O My Darling
“For all its showiness, peppy attitude, and too-cool-for-school attitude, [Vasan] Bala can’t hide the fact that Monica, O My Darling is oppressively mundane. [It’s] all plot, plot, plot. There are so many twists and machinations—this one killing that one, that one trying to kill the other one—that it’s all basically meaningless by the end. It’s running around like a headless chicken.”
Werewolf by Night
“[Even] though it might be the first proper MCU horror tale, I don’t think it’s effective in that regard. Sure, there are moments when blood streams down your screen … but I can’t recall any genuine scares. An even bigger problem is that it’s too short. Wrapping up at 48 minutes … Werewolf by Night doesn’t have enough time to flesh out its characters. It gets over before it really even begins.”
Darlings
“[More] a comedy of errors than a dark comedy honestly. At times, it’s more like a Hrishikesh Mukherjee movie, say Gol Maal, than a proper black comedy revenge thriller in its vein, à la Promising Young Woman. Leading up to its release, the cast and crew of Darlings attempted to ‘educate’ audiences on what the phrase dark comedy means. But as the Netflix film shows, they themselves do not understand it either.”
Bullet Train
“If you’re going to make an all-out action movie and have most of it take place inside of a bullet train, you got to get creative and ensure the action delivers. But just as he failed on Deadpool 2 (generic and forgettable) and the Fast & Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw (incoherent and wholly cartoonish), Bullet Train director David Leitch fails to ignite the spark here too. There isn’t a single choreographed sequence … that bowls you over.”
The Gray Man
“There’s a lot of action set-pieces scattered across The Gray Man, but none of them have staying power. Rather than meticulously craft scenes that build characters and suit their story, it seems [Anthony and Joe Russo] have crammed one in every nook and cranny of the Netflix movie. Sure, they are bombastic, but it feels like a case of the directors justifying the humongous cost of the production and VFX budget. In fact, I would argue The Gray Man goes too big.”
Jaadugar
“[Gets] everything wrong from the first minute […] Jitendra Kumar plays ‘Meenu’ Narang, a toxic and insufferable man-child who thinks he knows what love is. Meenu declares that he loves someone the first time he meets them. (Ew.) Meenu proposes marriage repeatedly, at times weeks after he’s met someone, even though he doesn’t know their last name, let alone what they want to be in life. […] Jaadugar thinks Meenu just loves deeply. But in reality, he’s just a creep.”
Thor: Love and Thunder
“[Suffers] from narrative gaps, wild tonal imbalances, and weightlessness. More importantly, it under-utilises nearly every actor and character at its disposal. At once a romantic comedy, a tale of a grieving father, a god devoid of purpose, a scientist trying to conquer death, a bored king looking for adventure, and a goofball trip through the cosmos, Thor: Love and Thunder tries to be about so many things that—many a time—it’s about nothing. Just vibes and zingers.”
Jurassic World Dominion
“Rather than being set in our world and focusing on what it might be like for humans to co-exist with dinosaurs, […] the bulk of Jurassic World Dominion once again takes place within an isolated dinosaur sanctuary that is run by a multinational corporation solely in it for the profit. What’s the point of calling it Jurassic World if your (terrible no-good) trilogy is going to end without showing us how the world and its many cultures are dealing with dinosaurs in different ways?”
Top Gun: Maverick
“[The] high-flying action is both legible and awe-inducing. […] Much of the action sequences’ propulsive force is down to planes flying so close to the ground and each other—I’m pretty sure it would get them fired in the real world—in combination with endless spins, twirls, and other exciting manoeuvres. [Joseph] Kosinski transfers his eye for flair and kinetic energy, as seen on Tron: Legacy, onto Top Gun: Maverick, imbuing the film with sheer joy and a rush of adrenaline.”
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
“[Sam] Raimi operated with a somewhat down-to-earth aesthetic in the Spider-Man world … but there are virtually no rules here. [He pushes] the MCU into places it has previously kept away from. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is, at different times, gnarly, gory, scary, and bizarro. It’s in your face and willing to push itself into the mythos and illustrative styles of some Doctor Strange comics like never before.”
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
“The magic went out of these movies long ago—and the third of five planned chapters, The Secrets of Dumbledore, is unable to truly put a finger on it. That said, I didn’t actively hate [it] like I did the last one. Or maybe it was simply because the bar had been set so low by The Crimes of Grindelwald that there was no way to go but up. Still, The Secrets of Dumbledore ends up making some of the same mistakes as its predecessors.”
The Adam Project
“[An] unfunny instantly-forgettable movie that plays it too safe and says the same old things about parenting. [Ryan] Reynolds is in a similar position. He seems to have peaked playing himself—though Deadpool 3 is yet to come, there are at least two sequels to Red Notice alongside Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot, and I wouldn’t put it past Netflix to see The Adam Project as a ‘franchise starter’. God, I hate that term.”
Turning Red
“On one level, Turning Red is about a 13-year-old girl dealing with puberty and adolescence, as her rapidly-changing body freaks and scares her out. But on another level, Turning Red offers commentary on the classic misogyny remark: women are too emotional. The new Pixar movie’s young protagonist is repeatedly told to ‘contain her energy’—with characters alleging that it would be ‘impossible to contain the dark side’ if she displays too many emotions.”
The Batman 2
“Given the sheer magnitude of The Dark Knight, it’s bold of [Matt] Reeves to opt for the Joker as the sequel’s centrepiece. […] I really hope he knows what he’s doing. The Dark Knight is one of my favourite movies of all time, and The Batman 2 will need to be something insane, special, and legendary to avoid looking like an also-ran. Reeves is inviting the comparison and he needs to answer for it.”
The Batman
“The start of this Batman-verse is asking a lot of the regular audience—and maybe, that’s a good thing. Because The Batman both feels like a terrific achievement given the comic book-saturated climate we live in, and a disappointment for it struggles to retain its identity and flex more than a few muscles. [Robert] Pattinson’s Batman isn’t fully formed here, and it seems neither is [Matt] Reeves’ vision.”
Gehraiyaan
“[A] classic case of being all over the place. It starts off as a romantic character drama […] But Gehraiyaan transforms into another beast over the course of its bloated 133-minute runtime (sans credits), becoming more and more plot and event-driven. It’s been described as ‘domestic neo-noir’ by the cast and director Shakun Batra, but it’s not that—Gehraiyaan bears no traits of the neo-noir genre. It’s just poor drama.”
Looop Lapeta
“[Proof] that Bollywood can’t make a lean-and-mean high-concept B-movie. Rather than jump straight into the thick of things (and stay in its lane), the Hindi-language remake of writer-director Tom Tykwer’s Sundance Film Festival-winning 1998 German thriller Run Lola Run stuffs in all sorts of plot, subplot, and backstory into it. There’s even a song sequence that further slows down Looop Lapeta.”