Too many ‘Eternals’ spoil this Marvel brew

      I saw Eternals a couple of weeks ago and instantly was struck by the inappropriateness of the title. Eternals? By the time I reached the parking lot, much about this overstocked comic book of a movie had faded into the hazy vault of dispensable memory.

    About those Eternals. Each of them is endowed with a power that can be employed to save humans from monstrous, water-dwelling creates known as Deviants. In a reasonably engaging prologue, we learn that the Deviants were defeated centuries ago by the Eternals but now have returned to make the world Deviant again. 

   Er, no, they don’t really have a slogan.

    The major news about Eternals takes us behind the camera. The movie marks the superhero debut of director Chloe Zhao, best known for the Oscar-winning and, in my view, somewhat over-rated Nomadland. 

   Watching a director with respected indie bona fides take the helm of a giant cinematic cruise liner breeds its own level of fascination — not to mention questions about whether two oppositional movie streams can co-exist.

   I’m not sure Eternals answers the question, but it left me with two thoughts: Congrats to Zhao for securing what I hope was a major payday and for orchestrating a complex narrative.

   Unfortunately, that narrative too often challenges coherence.

   Zhao works with a diverse cast of characters in pursuit of big-screen thrills. Brian Tyree Henry plays a gay Eternal with a husband and a son; Kumail Ali Nanjiani, Don Lee, and Gemma Chan add to the mix. Salma Hayek portrays an Eternal with authority over the other Eternals.

    Zhao shows that she can muster up impressive visuals. Some scenes look as if they might have been inspired by a John Ford Western, and there are references to Kubrick’s 2001. Other pulpy sights accompany this skewed mashup of mythological references.

    Although there are ten Eternals, Chan’s Sersi comes closest to being a central character. Sersi tries to organize the unruly Eternals into defeating the Deviants, which also means saving humanity.

    As the temperamental Thena, Angelina Jolie crops up from time to time, perhaps to remind us that she’s in the movie.

   Nanjiani brings sparks of life to the proceedings as Kingo, an Eternal who has become a Bollywood star. 

   Lia McHugh appears as Sprite, a character of perky annoyance.

   A love affair between Chan’s Sersi and Icarus (Richard Madden) adds a melancholic note while showing us that not all the Eternals are committed to truth, justice and the American way. 

   Oops. Wrong franchise.

   Eternals is another product of the Marvel universe, which seems to be striving to be infinite, a never-ending galaxy of movies and characters. 

   Eternals may be the first superhero movie in which two men kiss and scenes in which dialogue dominates can be found. But Externals also wobbles under an expository burden that operates like tow ropes on a fractured narrative. 

  Moreover, a two-hour and 37-minute length can feel as if it might be an acknowledgment of the ages of the Eternal characters. Zhao has made a long movie that feels long.

   I know I’ve omitted some of the Eternals and I should say that the movie might have been fun had the Eternals done nothing but show up at key points in human history, which is what early scenes promise.

   If we’re lucky, Eternals will be a one-off. But don’t count on it. When Marvel makes a mess of a movie, it also drops seeds that seemed destined to sprout in some future multiplex harvest. 

   Besides, critics have little choice when it comes to the ongoing Marvel parade, so it pays to keep an open mind.

Winners of the 2021 Critics Choice awards

 

  

    Nomadland hit high notes as it took home four awards at Sunday's Critics Choice Awards. The Critics Choice Awards sometimes serve as a bellwether for the Oscars, but this is a strange year. Who knows? Maybe Oscar will chart its own course.

    Still, I suspect  that Nomadland now stands as the front-runner when it comes to best picture. 

    This year's race for best actress should be interesting. Andra Day, also a Critics Choice nominee, won the Golden Globe for her performance in The United States vs. Billie Holiday, but Carey Mulligan took home the Critics Choice award for Promising Young Woman. 

    On Oscar night, I wouldn't bet against Nomadland's Frances McDormand, another Critics Choice nominee for best actress. Nor would I rule out Viola Davis, also a Critics Choice nominee, for her performance in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. 

   Oh well, lots of Oscar talk awaits.

   Meanwhile, here’s the list of this year’s Critics Choice winners. Full disclosure: I'm a voting member of the Critics Choice Association.

     

Best Picture

Nomadland  

Best Director

Chloe Zhao, Nomadland

BEST ACTOR 

Chadwick Boseman -- Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 

 

BEST ACTRESS 

Carey Mulligan – Promising Young Woman 

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR 

Daniel Kaluuya – Judas and the Black Messiah

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS 

Maria Bakalova – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm  

 

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS 

Alan Kim – Minari 

 

BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE 

The Trial of the Chicago 7  

 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY 

Emerald Fennell – Promising Young Woman 

 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 

Chloé Zhao – Nomadland 

 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY 

Joshua James Richards –  Nomadland

 

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN 

Donald Graham Burt, Jan Pascale – Mank  

 

BEST EDITING – TIE  

Alan Baumgarten – The Trial of the Chicago 7  

Mikkel E. G. Nielsen – Sound of Metal 

 

BEST COSTUME DESIGN 

Ann Roth – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom  

 

BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP 

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 

 

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS 

Tenet 

 

BEST COMEDY 

Palm Springs 

 

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM 

Minari 

 

BEST SONG  

Speak Now – One Night in Miami  

 

BEST SCORE 

Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste – Soul 

 

His tragedy: He no longer can ride

An authentic look at the post-rodeo life of a bronc rider.

These days, we tend to think of head injuries as a byproduct of ferocious hits that occur during football games, particularly at the professional level. The Rider, a film that mixes documentary and fiction footage, alerts us to the dangers of another -- if less publicized sport -- rodeo bronc riding. But that's not all that's on the movie's mind. It's also about the ways in which a man's deepest identity can be challenged.

Brady Jandreau, a South Dakota bronc rider who suffered a terrible head injury, grew up on the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Reservation. In The Rider, Jandreau plays a character much like himself.

After a terrible rodeo accident, Jandreau’s Brady Blackburn, a Lakota cowboy, has been warned off riding by physicians. Brady trains horses that are too challenging for other wranglers, but he misses the rodeo life, which is tied to his long-held view of how he should live in the world.

Brady grew up with an ethos that’s as much a part of his being as his skin. Abandoning rodeo challenges his view that when you fall off a horse, you get back on. You don't whine. You don't feel sorry for yourself. You "cowboy up,'' as the saying goes.

Brady lives with his sister (Lilly Jandreau) and his father (Tim Jandreau), real members of Jandreau’s family. As is the case with Brady Jandreau, these non-actors give the film a feeling of authenticity that would otherwise have been impossible to obtain.

Brady must deal with a variety of blows to his ego: He goes from being a hotshot on the rodeo circuit to working check-out at the local supermarket. He still hangs out with his pals who seem to have hybrid identities: They’re cowboys with what looks like classical western values and they're Native Americans.

Beijing-born director Chloe Zhao doesn't do much by way of exploring any tensions between the cowboy and Native American psyche. Maybe that's the right approach. The characters in The Rider don't seem at odds with themselves. They're not the kind of men who much care about what others think.

If you were looking to cast a cowboy simply for looks, you could do no better than Jandreau. He's entirely believable as a bronc rider and horseman, probably because that’s what he has been. Handsome and stoic, the only physical mark of Brady's disability involves an ugly wound on the side of his head; his cowboy hat covers the staples. His right hand sometimes freezes in paralysis.

The most moving part of the movie involves Brady’s visits to another former rodeo roughneck (Lane Scott) whose injuries were even worse than Brady's. Now hospitalized, Lane can’t speak and he's partially paralyzed. Brady quietly and tenderly helps Lane with his rehab exercises, scenes that are touching and unimpeded by any displays of self-pity.

Zhao doesn’t try to fit her characters into stereotypical cookie-cutter molds to advance the movie’s drama or stir up false promises of romanticism. The relationship between Brady and his dad can be rocky, his concern for his mentally challenged sister is sweet and unforced, and he seldom complains.

Zhao gives us a character study and slice of life that’s memorably void of cant. She presents her characters as men who belong entirely to their own worlds.

Fair to say, though, that Zhao has made a movie about how one man copes with the pain that accompanies loss. Brady certainly knows how to "cowboy up," but we know his pain is real -- and so does he.