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.

Immersive '1917' captures chaos of war

Director Sam Mendes, with a mighty assist from cinematographer Roger Deakins, takes an audience on a harrowing World War I journey.

World War I has inspired any number of great movies: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), The Grand Illusion (1931), Paths of Glory (1957) and director Peter Jackson's recent documentary They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) to name a few.

That long-ago war remains of particular interest to filmmakers because it provides directors with advantages. As a pre-Nazi war, battle depictions can be brutal without demonizing the enemy. In World War I, soldiers from both sides can be portrayed as ordinary men who happen to be wearing different uniforms, making the insanity of war seem even more pronounced.

On top of that, the war marked a kind of end of global innocence, a prelude to even worse depravities -- although it's difficult to think of any form of combat more grueling and awful than the trench warfare of the so-called War to End All Wars.

Now, director Sam Mendes, fresh off two recent Bond movies, has entered the World War I fray. I'm betting that every review you'll read will make note of the fact that Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins have created the illusion that their movie is unfolding in real-time. They skillfully create the impression that the movie consists of a single sustained shot, a gambit that isn’t without payoff. We can't escape the surreal horror that Mendes and Deakins create in their effort to portray the ferocity of battle.

1917 qualifies as one of those movies for which the script could have been written on the back of a napkin. The screenplay by Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns focuses on two British soldiers (Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay) who are sent on a mission that takes them out of muddy trenches into the terrifying No Man's Land that separates them from another battalion of British soldiers.

The men are ordered to stop the nearby battalion from launching a massive attack because British intelligence has learned that the Germans lie in wait. The Germans plan to slaughter the advancing Brits.

Mendes makes just enough effort at character development to keep the movie from hollowing out. Chapman’s Blake is eager to execute the mission because his older brother serves in the battalion that's about to be decimated. MacKay's Schofield was selected to accompany Blake before either soldier knew what they were being asked to do.

The more reluctant of the two, MacKay's character senses that they've been given a mission they’ll be lucky to survive.

Once the men depart the relative safety of their unit, the movie becomes an episodic account of their travails -- which include a stop in a abandoned, rat-infested German bunker, an encounter with the pilot of a German plane that has been shot down and a brief visit to a ravaged town where Deakins creates images of fiery devastation that border on madness.

It's not the movie's single-shot illusion that proves most indelible; it’s the haunting imagery of 1917: mutilated bodies strewn across the devastated terrain, a solitary cow grazing outside an abandoned farmhouse; and an encounter that one of the men has with a French woman who's hiding with her infant as chaos rages around her.

Mendes wisely doesn't explain how the combat we're seeing fits into a larger picture. Neither of these two soldiers knows anything but the daily grind of attempting to survive.

And although Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch appear in cameo roles, reliance on faces that may be less familiar to big-screen audiences enhances the movie's authenticity. We plunge into the action without the distractions of star turns.

At times, 1917 threatens to become an edge-of-the-seat action movie, particularly in a sequence involving swirling rapids. Is Mendes trying a little too hard to sustain excitement?

Perhaps, but 1917 qualifies as an impressive piece of immersive cinema with plenty of white-knuckle moments and an undisguised appreciation of the courage of men who learned not to dwell on the horrors they were witnessing, at least not in the moment. We know, of course, that as time passes, harrowing sights will remain vivid in the memories of the men who saw them. Some of them will haunt us, as well.

'Rocketman': a blast of pop energy

Taron Egerton delivers a major performance in this Elton John biopic.

A simple description of Rocketman makes the movie sound like one more celebrity biopic. Here's how such a summation might go: A boy who feels unloved establishes himself in the world of music, attains international celebrity as a rock star, almost loses himself to sex and drugs, enters rehab in the nick of time and emerges whole.

All true, but of little help in understanding what director Dexter Fletcher achieves with Rocketman, a movie about Elton John, one of rock's most successful artists. Fletcher refreshes genre cliches with storytelling strategies that turn Rocketman into an infectiously energetic look at the life of a rock star.

To begin the story, John -- in a red costume with wings and devil's horns -- marches down a hallway. We suppose that this man in red plumage is about to burst onto a stage, which -- of course -- would be the cliched way to begin a rock 'n' roll biopic. The star emerges. The crowd goes wild. The music begins.

But when John pushes through a set of doors, he's not putting himself on display for adoring fans. He's entering a rehab therapy session where he confesses to a multitude of failings. Among them: alcohol, drug and sex addictions, anger-management problems and shopping issues.

Without wearing it out, Fletcher uses the therapy format to take us back to the childhood John spent in a London neighborhood of British council homes. His mom's mind seems to be elsewhere and his unloving martinet of a father shows no appreciation for the talent of a son who wins a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

Fletcher turns this "flashback'' into a beautifully staged musical number, thus tipping his hand. He's not going to allow his filmmaking to be shackled by convention. The movie will stake its claim as a quasi-musical.

I won't say more about Rocketman’s stylistic flourishes. Fletcher includes enough of them to turn the movie into a heady tribute to the pop-cultural energy that's embodied in Taron Egerton's terrific performance as Elton John.

Of course, when a movie runs on so much high energy, it can't help but create a few spaces where the pace lags. Overall, though, Rocketman should appeal to those who enjoy cinema with a creative kick, as well as those who count themselves as Elton John fans.

Key songs are included. They're sung by Egerton who so thoroughly inhabits his character that his performance proves exhaustive and exhausting. I mean that in a good way. Egerton rides the wave of energy that elevates John’s stage presence even as it smashes his off-stage life into walls of pain. What Egerton does qualifies both as an amazing feat of talent and will.

Fletcher doesn't flinch from John's gayness. As his career begins to take hold, the singer falls for John Reid, a music manager (Richard Madden). A self-possessed operator, Reid eventually makes it clear that his approach to John has a cruel business edge. And Elton himself isn't always likable. He flies into rages or submerges himself in drug-induced stupors.

At one point, John tells his longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) that musical ideas pop into his head so quickly he hardly can keep up with them. And that, I suppose, is the key to understanding John's pre-rehab years. He's surfing the waves of his talent, never entirely safe from the big breaker he won't be able to ride. The movie charts John's ascendance quickly, almost a biography in shorthand.

Amid all this, Fletcher tells the story of an unloved child who seems to be appreciated only by his grandmother (Gemma Jones). Matthew Illsley and Kit Connor play John as a boy and an adolescent. The name -- Elton John -- is an invention. The movie shows how the young man born Reginald Dwight -- hit on the name he'd make famous.

Essentially, Rocketman consists of three acts. The first covers John's childhood. The second deals with his meteoric rise to success. In the third, John feeds his ravenous audience -- touring, performing and indulging his addictions. A fourth act -- John's recovery, marriage, and journey into fatherhood -- appears only in information and photos that accompany the end credits.

The supporting performances are all good. Bell creates a loyal friend in Bernie Taupin, a lyricist who eventually must step outside the tornadic spiral of John's success. Handsome and self-assured, Madden’s Reid wins John's heart before the relationship with his client/lover turns sour.

As John's mother, Dallas Bryce Howard paints a telling portrait of a woman whose refusal to be corralled by a stifling marriage leads her down a path that’s not likely to win any mother-of-the-year awards.

Elton John, who's now 72, served as one of the movie's executive producers, so it's fair to wonder what has been elided or omitted entirely. Still, it would be unfair to think of Rocketman as an act of cinematic hagiography. The movie is in love with John's music, but how could a biopic about Elton John be otherwise?

Rocketman includes an attempted suicide and plenty of despair. That's why it feels strange to say that the movie generates a feel-good vibe that follows you out of the theater. Maybe that's because even in the turbulence of John's rollercoaster life, the joy of music and performance can't be denied.