Blue Beetle (2023)

I'm not going to try to convince you all that you need to give Blue Beetle a watch because it's a different kind of superhero movie, and I'm not going to make ridiculous claims about it being a reinvention of the many other movies we've already had from Marvel and DC in recent years, but I am going to go to bat for it. It follows a standard formula, granted, but it actually feels like something fresh and energetic at a time when other films in the same wheelhouse all started to stagnate.

Xolo Maridueña is Jaime Reyes, a young man who ends up becoming inextricably entwined with an alien scarab entity/device that gives him superhuman powers. His family all try to help him get the hang of things, but that becomes a lot trickier when Jaime is hunted down by the powerful Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), and her main henchman, Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo). There's also the presence of Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), the woman who actually caused the scarab to end up on Jaime in the first place, which allows for a potential blossoming romance amidst the expected action beats.

Directed by Ángel Manuel Soto and written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, this shows what can happen when you don't throw a team of people on to one project, having them all trying to put extra ideas in the mix and running the risk of too many cooks spoiling a recipe. Soto and Dunnet-Alcocer know what they need to do, and they also know how to make the most of their opportunity to depict some Latinx representation in blockbuster fare. The Reyes family (parents, uncle, sister, etc) bring their own unique perspective to the unfolding events, and the strength of their familial bonds becomes a major strength for our hero. The life lessons here are obvious, but they're no less enjoyable, and come as something of a relief after seeing so many features in which a hero has to sacrifice parts of his life in order to be a saviour of the people.

Maridueña is a really good lead, easy to like and easy to be amused by as he tries to get to grips with his new powers. I know he's been in other things before this, but this might be my first time seeing him onscreen. I'll happily look out for him in anything else. Marquezine is also very good, pairing up nicely with our lead, but the real delights come from those playing the rest of the Reyes family. George Lopez is as much fun as you'd expect, Belissa Escobedo is the typical fun/annoying sibling, and Damián Alcázar, Elpidia Carrillo, and Adriana Barraza are a perfect fit for their respective roles. Sarandon is a very entertaining villain, Trujillo delivers physical menace for almost every minute that he's onscreen, and there's also room for Harvey Guillén to show his face in an enjoyable cameo.

The special effects are consistently excellent, the score (by Bobby Krlic AKA The Haxan Cloak) is fantastic, and the soundtrack is full of great choices, not least of which is the use of a Cypress Hill hit accompanying a satisfying action sequence in the big finale. Pawel Pogorzelski delivers clear and beautiful cinematography that keeps the whole thing more colourful and visually appealing than the majority of the DC films that tried to stay more in line with the "Snyder-verse" portfolio, and there's something to be said about the joy of watching someone fighting against enemies who aren't threatening to destroy Earth. Blue Beetle has his own life threatened, as well as the lives of his loved ones. That's more than enough to motivate him to keep battling against overwhelming odds. Sometimes a whole world isn't the planet that we live on. Sometimes a whole world is made up of the friends and family around you.

This deserved much better than the fairly lukewarm reception it received, although I know the other factors that all contributed to the unfortunate situation. Do yourself a favour and check it out now. You don't need to have swallowed a whole encyclopedia of comic book characters, you don't need to worry about spotting connections to any other movies, and you can just enjoy an excellent standalone superhero story with characters who actually feel like real human beings, even when surrounded by all of the special effects and advanced tech on display.

8/10

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The Tax Collector (2020)

I get it, I really do, and I may have even been guilty of it myself sometimes. If a director is doing stuff we enjoy then we enthuse over their choices, their style, and their consistency. But if we don’t enjoy their work, that consistency is seen as a major flaw, and can often be the defining element used to underline exactly how they keep making movies we don’t enjoy. 

The Tax Collector is a David Ayer movie, which means you get a lot of what David Ayer usually puts into his movies. Gritty crime happenings in a male-dominated world, people who don’t work within societal norms, but do have their own code that they live and work by, and an ending that pulls from some major incident that happened much earlier in the film.

You might not like David Ayer movies, I have had a hot and cold relationship with his filmography, but he keeps working in areas that he believes plays to his strengths. And his fans would probably agree. Here’s the kicker though, The Tax Collector is really quite good.

The story revolves around David (Bobby Soto) and Creeper (Shia LaBeouf), two men who collect money for a crime boss. They are tough, they have to be, but they also know the rules of the business, David recognises when diplomacy is better than brute force, and they work within their own code of conduct. Sadly, all of their good work looks set to come undone when a violent enemy (Conejo, played by Jose Conejo Martin) determines that he will make a major grab for power.

There isn’t anyone to help truly sell this movie, Ayer hasn’t bagged himself a MAJOR name to put in a central role, but that’s okay when you have two great lead performances from Soto and LaBeouf. And I am just going to say it, LaBeouf is absolutely superb in his role here, something I didn’t expect. He is often putting on an act, whether it is the inflection of his speech or his ability to stare down anyone who might not realise how much trouble they could be in, and it is all based on a number of strong choices that could have gone disastrously wrong. Thankfully, those choices work. Martin is an intense and intimidating villain, Cinthya Carmona and Cheyenne Rae Hernandez are both excellent as two very different female characters, and Cle Sloan is convincing in the role of a gang leader who respects the ways in which Soto’s character works hard to avoid any scenarios that could lead to mutually assured destruction.

You get the usual profanity throughout the script, the attempts to humanise criminals that you will either accept or loathe, and it’s hard to think of someone who has so consistently recycled their third act tricks of the trade more than Ayer, but the big plus here is a defining thematic strand that makes it much more effective than some of his other films.

Without spoiling things, as it becomes clear very early on, this is a film all about the power of family and friendship, but it shows it in both a positive and negative light. Family and friends can save you, support you, and inspire you, but they can also drag you down, expecting you to either follow their patterns of behaviour or just silently put up with their nonsense. Many Ayer movies have made good use of the “no loyalty among thieves” or “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mottos. This also has a bit of that, but is much more interested in exploring those family ties, whether that is a blood tie or people in a unit that you have made part of your family. 

You will already have some idea about this film, and whether you want to watch it or not, but I think it is one of Ayer’s best, and certainly his best from the last decade or so.

8/10

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The Smurfs (2011)

Now, to be fair, I can't remember what The Smurfs were like in their original form. I can't recall the old comics that they appeared in or even the old cartoons. But I do recall enjoying their antics. Having just seen, and been extremely irritated by, The Smurfs, I can only assume that they appealed to me because I was younger and sitting in the target demographic. I may like to stay young at heart but that doesn't always guarantee that I'll enjoy childish things as much as I used to, especially if they're presented in such a poor way.

As well as the little blue folk there is a montage or two, an adult couple all too easily roped in to the proceedings (played by Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays - two people deserving of much better), far too many words replaced by the word "smurf" (e.g. "where the smurf are we?"), an incompetent villain played by Hank Azaria, a number of life lessons and one or two musical moments that are even worse than the usual hits shoehorned into these products. There's also an opening sequence that screams out "look at what we did so that you would be forced to drag the kids to see this in 3D, this is shiny 3D stuff, shiny and 3D and in no way improves the movie in any way but DOES allow everyone to make more money by charging you extra to see it in 3D!!!!!"

The story, as slight as it is, sees the smurfs ending up in New York, pursued by the dastardly Gargamel (Hank Azaria). The little blue folk, inevitably, disrupt the lives of a couple of adults (NPH and Mays) while one half of the couple is also trying to keep his boss (Sofia Vergara) happy and become a better partner for his loved one.

The vocal cast here includes Jonathan Winters as Papa Smurf, Alan Cumming, Katy Perry as the lone Smurfette, Anton Yelchin, George Lopez and some others. They do their bit, with Cumming providing a comedy Scottish brogue that sounds horribly fake even though he IS Scottish.

The script, by a number of people (J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, Jay Scherick and David Ronn), does have one or two decent lines making it clear that it knows how ridiculous the whole thing is but then everything is undone by the by-the-numbers big moments that audiences have already seen, and seen done 10 x better, in many, many other movies.

Director Raja Gosnell does what is asked of him but it's a shame that he couldn't have done something ever so slightly better with the material. A bit more sly wit wouldn't have gone amiss and the movie feels a bit too long, even at just 103 minutes.

Of course, kids will enjoy this a lot more than I did and any children reading this (why the hell would you read this? get outside and get doing kiddie things like playing football and/or vandalising empty homes) should add two or three to my final rating.

I won't be rushing to see the sequel that's already underway and I don't ever want to see this again but it'll please some people. I'd strongly advise most parents, however, to try and distract the kids with something/anything else instead.

4/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Smurfs-Blu-ray-Region-Free/dp/B003TFDUMI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1345713274&sr=8-2