HiT or Miss: What Was James Gunn Thinking?

If you’ve read any of my previous work either here or in my previous life as a South Jersey columnist, you know I’m an avid movie and TV watcher.

Throw in my rabid Philadelphia sports fandom (Phour for Phour, baby!) and I watch… a lot of TV. And I’m not poor, but I’m certainly not rich enough to spring for ad-free versions of my Hulu, Netflix, AppleTV, Paramount, Amazon Prime or Acorn accounts.

That means I also watch a lot of commercials. And Kevin Hart is in every one of them.

HOW TO SCREW-UP THE MOST UN-SCREW-UPABLE IP OF THE WEEK

Put James Gunn in charge of it. In 2014 I didn’t really care about “Guardians of the Galaxy.” And I say this as a committed Silver Age Marvel Comics nerd (I have the moldering long boxes in my attic to prove it!).

Loved Spider-Man, Captain America, X-Men and Fantastic Four, but I didn’t care one whit for the space-faring stuff. In short, my expectations were low. Then GotG became my favorite MCU flick and remains so to this day, though Infinity War is thisclose.

“Here’s a guy who gets it!” I thought.

Fast forward 10 years, Gunn is put in charge of rival DC and out comes the Okayest Superman movie, followed by a not very good “Supergirl” movie, then Lanterns. The latter was probably in trouble from the moment they put guys embarrassed to call it GREEN Lanterns in charge of it, and it became the most polarizing show since True Detective.

(“Lanterns” is good, but it gave me whiplash when it needlessly veered into Wokeville.)

Now, “Clayface?”

It’s insane to make the third movie in your new cinematic universe about a C-list Batman villain that 99 percent of normie-norms have no idea is a Batman villain. Then I remembered Gunn did his best work with fringe Marvel (GoTG) and DC (“Suicide Squad”) characters.

Giving him free rein over Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman is a mistake it will take DC a decade to recover from. Give him, I don’t know, Legion of Super Heroes or Doom Patrol, and let him go nuts. He’s good at that.

HOW TO SCREW-UP THE MOST UN-SCREW-UPABLE IP OF THE WEEK PART II:

Put Greta Gerwig in charge of it. Look, I enjoyed “Lady Bird” a few years back. “Barbie” was really weird, but it wasn’t made for me, so I took it for what it was (though did we really need a “Barbie” movie that ends at the gynecologist’s office?).

That box office behemoth rightfully earned her a Big Swing, a blank check movie, and she’s cashing it in on… “The Magician’s Nephew?”

This is equivalent to starting your new cinematic universe with “Clayface” when you have “Superman” (“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”) sitting RIGHT THERE. And the reported budget is $280 million. That’s $280 million on a Narnia book that isn’t even the most famous Narnia book. Crazy.

Add in a trailer that is the most polarizing thing since “Lanterns” and, well, that’s how people get fired.

A tough week for Netflix continued with the middling reviews for Ben Affleck’s “Animals.” I think I’ve settled into an age (mid-late-50s) where I find most movies to be “fine.” (Not “Digger.” “Digger” is AMAZING.) And “Animals” is… fine.

Affleck directed one of my very favorite movies, “The Town.” If “The Town” is not one of your very favorite movies then you just don’t like movies.

But “Animals” is not “The Town.” It’s a competently made thriller that stretches credulity at points and lacks the directorial zip of Affleck’s earlier films. It is also, for me, the first time I felt his very far-Left wing politics creep into his work.

On the plus side for Netflix, season 4 of “The Diplomat” came out this week and hooooooooo boy is this a good show! Kerri Russell (“Felicity”) is the newly-appointed ambassador to the UK, Rufus Sewell (“Dark City”) is her husband, who has political aspirations of his own, and to say much more would veer into spoiler territory.

It’s a whip-smart political thriller-drama akin to the early seasons of “House of Cards.”

Russell is terrific as she channels her inner Tom Cruise, but Sewell walks away with every scene he’s in. It’s really a very good show for smart adults who like smart shows. Season 4 has gotten a little talky, but the central plot is riveting.

Speaking of Cruise (for as long as this column lasts, there will always be a Tom Cruise reference), I threw “The Last Samurai” on HBO the other night as it is “leaving soon” (probably 2037) and man, I forgot how good it is. He’s a Civil War soldier sent to Japan to train and modernize their army and yada yada yada he’s in a kimono.

It’s a really lived-in performance. Cruise was 41 at the time, and the film was book-ended by “Minority Report” and “Collateral” to form his Grown-Up trilogy. Worth a first watch or rewatch if it’s been a while.

Conversely, his performance in the also “leaving soon” “A Few Good Men.” The Rob Reiner drama doesn’t quite hold up. You can practically feel Cruise trying to shed the skin of his younger “Days of Thunder” self and, at times, it’s a little much.

Movie’s still a banger, though. YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH! Classic.

After careful consideration, I have decided that the NHL’s Dallas Stars have the best jerseys in all of sports. It’s just magnificent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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SPOOKY SEASON MOVIE OF THE WEEK:

Yes, I’m a committed Marvel nerd, but I like DC, as well. Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” is a go-to, comfort food, put on at bed time movie. What can I say? I’m an equal opportunity dork.

Anyway, my boys and I ventured out to see “Clayface” (if you skipped the 3rd paragraph, he’s a Batman villain) and, while it’s insane that this movie exists at all, I must admit that I found the idea of a comic book-based horror movie intriguing.

In short, very famous, very handsome actor Matt Hagan (Tom Rhys Harries) dallies with gangster’s moll, gets pretty face sliced up, goes to extreme measures to get it back. As inciting incidents go, not bad. “Clayface” is basically an evil Plastic Man, able to change his appearance or, say, turn his hand into a sledgehammer.

Except Hagan comes off as more misunderstood than evil, which works fine until he inexplicably turns evil for no real reason, at which point I checked out.

The film also features a howler of a scene in which Hagan imitates one of the mob boss’s henchmen, leading to the ol’ “Shoot him!” “No shoot HIM!” routine and the henchman’s apparently very deep inner life is revealed though it was never mentioned before or after.

It’s like Norman Osborn’s butler in “Spider-Man 3” showing up to dump three pages of exposition before disappearing to never be heard from again. It’s the hardest I’ve laughed at a movie in a long time. That said, the move is, you guessed it, fine.

“Clayface” isn’t quite a super anti-hero movie yet not quite committed to being a full-on horror movie (despite a few wince-inducing sequences).