As ecclesiastical figures became fixtures in the lives of their devoted, a school of thought developed around the specific concept of how to write about the lives of saints. "Hagiography" was the noun cultivated for this specific medium. We’re veering dangerously close into, “Oxford Dictionary defines hagiography as…” territory, but savor the concept for a moment. Saints, their sacredness, their miracles, their piety, it deserved something beyond biography.
 
These days, the term is still tossed about, but as more of an eye-rolling indictment. If a film or book dares to approach its subject with breathless wonder, the commenterati will impugn the takes as inherently naive. No one is that good. No one remains unsullied by this life. No one is worthy of that kind of adulation. It speaks to a deeply ingrained cynicism. A certainty regularly reinforced by every supposed hero run up the flagpole only to be milkshake duck-ed within one refresh of the Twitter timeline.
 
The new documentary about cultural icon Mr. Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, is a slice of pure hagiography. Where it is unabashed in its treatment of Fred Rogers—with varying degrees of success—it raises greater existential questions about our relationship with one another and, for lack of a better word, our heroes. Can someone be good? And if so, can they make the world better?
 
Admittedly, as a pure slice of documentary filmmaking, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is not as successful as one would hope. It’s a bit poorly organized. Timelines are muddled, and for as much as it is about the ethos of Fred Rogers, I don’t feel like we get to know Fred Rogers. Though, perhaps that is just it—there was no real separation from the man and the television personality. The film does a nice job of fleshing out his vision: a man who was an ordained minister with a background in childhood education saw television as a potential tool. From that kernel grew Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, a show that would run for a staggering 895 episodes.
 
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? does hand in several emotionally profound moments. The unquestioned strength of the film are the segments where you see this man, half persona and half human, reach out and transform the life right in front of him. But in tracking the larger narratives—the arc of the man himself, the impact of the anti-Rogers movement kicked off by conservative pundits, the foibles of Fred—we only skim the surface. These essential issues take on no real shape or weight, and it’s a missed opportunity. Trials often serve as the furnace and forge of growth, but the documentary seems intent on perpetuating the belief Mr. Rogers’ sneaker clad feet never touched the ground.  
 
The documentary is most successful when the individuals around Mr. Rogers share their perspectives. It adds up to a revealing, funny, and heartfelt portrayal of the man as lived by those in his universe. Whether it is the tattooed, ass-showing stage manager, or his sister who is seemingly the basis for Lady Elaine Fairchilde, or Francois Clemmons the gay, black man asked to play the friendly neighborhood police officer; this is when the film’s beautiful beating heart shines through. The difference Fred Rogers made in their lives, the capacity of his love, the sincerity of his worldview—this is the legacy. It's a feeling is so pure it cascades out of the screen.
 
The documentary, as a film, is not perfectly executed. But those luminous moments, that sensation, it’s like a tincture of the kindness Mr. Roger’s dared to put into the world infused straight into your bones. And for a moment, if you let it, it might just ignite in you that child, cross-legged on the carpet, watching the familiar opening frames of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, who believes the world is open. A reminder that you, yes you, have inherent worth exactly the way you are.

So does Won’t You Be My Neighbor? succeed?

​It goes back to this bifurcated notion of hagiography. Just how exactly do you capture someone so hopeful, so earnest, so ingrained in our vernacular that they seem beyond human? The cynic in me wants every subject, no matter who, atomized down to their rawest bits. But what this film recognizes is that Mr. Rogers’ most important self is an avatar. A symbol, a prompt, an icon of our collective, potential good.

—Monte Monreal

​Isle of Dogs, the ninth and newest effort from the other (other) filmmaking Anderson, is his most humane film in some years. Since Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson’s films have done something worse than spiral—they’ve remained static. Each increasingly consumed by his well-documented quirks, in the Anderson-verse the auteur comes before the art. Isle of Dogs is hardly a break from any of the above, but stop motion animation pumps something sanguine into his little manicured world.
 
The premise is incredibly thrifty. Framed by a legend about a boy samurai who defends dogs against the cat loving Kobayashi clan, we quickly jump to a now dystopian Megasaki City. An industrial, polluted hellscape, renewed anti-dog hysteria is at fever pitch. Dogs have been relocated to Trash Island, and young Atari goes on a quest to rescue his dog Spots. The narrative remains tightly wrapped around this concept as it runs the length of its lean 101 minutes. And along the way, there are some conspiratorial notes, cautious friendships, and valuable lessons learned.
 
Where this is all good and well, I’m really just here for the takes. And does any director give us more molehills to refashion into mountains than Wesley Wales Anderson? BRING ME ALL THE SPICY TAKES!
 
Cats/Cat People are Lame
People on world’s worst website, Twitter.com, are pissed about what they describe as the film’s, “anti-cat sentiment.” But if a hot take falls in the truth forest, is it just a fact? Yes, where Anderson seems like a human cat in a corduroy jacket, homie is a dog person. And therein lies Isle of Dogs’ easy hook: dogs are good and cute and smart and the best. And goodness, every time their little dog eyes well with tears? Effing bawling.
 
So much of the film’s kindness is lived through our titular dogs. Where their interactions are stilted and emotionally distant—Anderson’s love language—the characterization fits the mind of a mutt. Kind in a perfunctory way, loyal as almost genetic predisposition, their sincerity is a welcome, warm infusion into Isle of Dogs. And where this film does trade in the cat versus dog versus their insane human companions cliche, the story is useful as a meditation on entrenched power. Where it comes from, the motivations behind, and this power as a profound corrupting force. The cats and dogs could have just as easily been swapped, but through this age old polarity Isle of Dogs asks s a more covert question: Why are there even sides?

​All the same, dogs rule.
 
Wes Anderson Made the Same Movie...Again
If this is the axe, let me be your Tormach PSG 612 surface grinder. In a 2012 interview with Terry Gross, Anderson offered the following, “I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.” This strange creative ambition has somehow enabled and stifled his oeuvre all at once, and Isle of Dogs does not break the spell.
 
This film is more successful than previous forays into his universe for several reasons. One, there are more voices in the room. With credited writers including Anderson as well as Jason Schwartzman, Kunichi Nomura, and Roman Coppola (with whom he has previously collaborated), the overall tone feels more varied. Also, as bizarre as this may be, perhaps non-humans are a better vessel for Anderson’s mannerisms. Arrested development and singular motivations suit dogs, teenagers, and myopic politicians.
 
But we’re here for torrid takes, and Anderson making the same film again and again is hardly even balmy. So my fire ass take? Wes Anderson should make a bad movie. Isle of Dogs is good, very likable, but let’s feeeeeeeel something. Splurge the creative capital accrued over twenty years! Make an out-of-the-comfort-zone fever dream of a project. Make it sweaty and haggard and insane. For lest we forget, another Anderson had the guts to redraw his creative boundaries, and he emerged as the finest filmmaker of a generation.
 
Cultural Appropriation
Now to the takery core for some truly molten POVs. L.A. Times critic Justin Chang wrote an excellent review of Isle of Dogs. Paired with his praise, he asks some relevant questions about the film’s treatment of Japan as a place, people, and culture. Two of his critiques are resonant above the rest. One is the use of language. Dogs speak in English, and all others speak in their native tongue with no subtitles. Chang asserts the approach makes the Japanese characters foreigners in their own city. The other, our pro-dog resistance leader is played by a young white American woman who repeatedly pushes back against stereotypical Japanese timidity.
 
This conversation is frustrating but necessary. As Chang took the dialogue to social media, he offered there was nothing malicious about Anderson’s portrayal, but the dastardly trick of harmful representation is passing itself of as something benign. In the end, Chang’s argument delves into culture being used as a prop on no terms of its own. Anderson would likely make an impassioned defense citing hours of research, diligence to cultural aesthetic, time spent worshiping the heroes of Japanese cinema, but a narrow ledge separates tribute and fetishization.
 
“So, a white person can never make a movie about Japan?” one million anime avatars on Twitter cry out at once. No, instead it’s a call for artists and admirers of any culture to create space where they recognize their position as the outsider. A space to learn and to have their best held notions upended and to be surprised by a culture they believe to know. Anderson failed to create that space. Yes, the problem of xenophobia and some current politics color Isle of Dogs. As such, this comes off as more a problem of Anderson’s unyielding vision than it is willful appropriation, but any effort to gloss over this point makes for a nearsighted evaluation of the film. 

This does not, for me, destroy the experience. In an effort to be a more empathic observer of art, it’s part of the conversation, but several other facets elevate Isle of Dogs to Anderson's most successful film in years. It may read as a cop out, but perhaps the searing takeaway from this film—whether in regard to cats, dogs, cinematic monotony, or cultural appropriation—is that nuance may be the most provocative take of all.

—Monte Monreal

There are few qualities more dispiriting in a major motion picture than no sense of fun, but to describe the new Tomb Raider in a word: it’s joyless. Bereft of personality or identity, this movie doesn’t even distinguish itself enough to be a straight ahead bad movie. Stiff, chilly, unimaginative, it’s hard to grasp just how this milled out to something so aggressively average. But as yet another disastrous video game film shuffles across the national cinema stage I can’t help but continue to wonder, who is this for?

Tomb Raider seemingly had lots of good things going for it. With a widely recognized gaming franchise to lend some cache and a cast of bonafides like Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins, and McNulty, how did this end up as such colorless gruel? Even gruel feels too hearty and nourishing to use as a descriptor. Cellulose maybe? Anyway, the fate of this film is sealed for a few pretty inescapable reasons. 

The story beats are so perfunctory, the characters so gossamer thin, it is damn near impossible to coax energy, much less excitement, out of any film element. The twists are like slight veers, the climax is hollow, and even the set pieces—the bread and butter of this kind of picture—are downright languid. From a talent standpoint, it’s hard to imagine, but this film manages to cast a pallor over Vikander’s endless, irrepressible charm. McNulty is practically in absentia. I mean, how are you not gonna at least give Goggins some scenery to gnaw on? Isn’t that what you’re paying for?

From the comfort of my armchair, it seems as though handing in a likeable romp would have been a breeze, but somehow Tomb Raider is just tired. The sets, the extras, the score, all lumbering across 122 uninspired minutes. Not brave enough to be pulpy, not smart enough to be taken seriously, this movie has no sense of self. It’s all so vacuous, I’m not even mad. I’m weirdly in awe. Did no one want to fight for this movie? Was there simply an insurmountable lousy script at the core? Is it mired in thousands of references to the game I just don’t get? I’ll never know, but the final product is fit to be rolled out on a gurney. And these no goodniks even have the audacity to setup a sequel! Lord, grant me the hubris.

Who are these movies for? Bruh, for true, I do not know. The first game installment came out in 1996 and birthed two films with Angelina Jolie released in 2001 and 2003. Where these did yield some financial success, I don’t recall anyone just loving them, lost on both critics and fans. Over the ensuing years, the Jolie helmed Tomb Raiderfilm never took on cult status, nor cracked the regular orbit of Sunday afternoon cable television filler. So, again, who is this for? I know you can roll out the nostalgia trough and people will choke down even the paltriest fare, but who was clamoring for this film? I have to know! 

If there was anything this film accomplished, it made me appreciate Wrinkle in Time more? So, I was supposed to write a review for Wrinkle last week (downcast eye emoji). In the end, it turned out to be a 759-word screed against white supremacy. Nobody wants that, so it was relegated to the robust personal archive. Where Wrinkle in Time was a deeply (deeeeeeeeply) flawed vessel for its message, it swung big—a burden Tomb Raider wouldn't dare take on. 

Wrinkle put its big, stupid heart out there, and Tomb Raider is almost catatonic. But as of right now, that damnable Tomatoery has Tomb Raider scored higher. I won’t ascend the soapbox with tinfoil hat askance to explain the real reasons for this disparity, but my goodness... Our expectations and perceptions are utterly fuckered when a crappy, yet well-meaning film (with occasional transcendent moments) gets dogged for daring to try, while Tomb Raider gets a wider berth for its relentless pursuit of mediocrity.

So, in the spirit of the film I’m really going to phone in this concluding paragraph. Tomb Raider opens today and runs two hours and two minutes. I hope Alicia Vikander can skirt the wreckage and at least land a Marvel franchise. The end. 

—Monte Monreal

​Dear friends, hello. I have some startling news.

The shape of it feels so fragile in my mind, I’d as soon whisper these words into a piece of paper, burn it, and let the ashes drift from my upturned palm into the slate winter sky. But as I strike each key in an attempt to make this fledgling hope something real, I’m ready to swallow hard, square myself, and speak my truth: Game Night is good.

Like, good good. Not better than it needs to be, not just a catch-it-on-HBO-someday—it’s actually good and funny. And charming! And even a bit thrilling. With a great cast to lift a tight, well-conceived script, this picture traverses the gap from February cinema graveyard to sleeper gold. It isn’t something poetic or profound, but Game Night is a hearty, self-actualized, and easy to like studio comedy. 

So many comedies now opt for a rambling style as popularized by the Apatowites. Actors will have a framework for a scene. Directors will flip on the camera. Then everyone riffs and bebops until they stumble into some passable jokes. Game Night is a welcome antidote with a well-constructed script at its core. Riddled with sharp jokes, adroit physical comedy, and plenty of trap doors, it’s the tightest straight ahead comedy in recent memory.

Where the writing is solid, the superb lineup is allowed to play to what they do best. You’ll see a lot of familiar faces playing to type: Jason Bateman as beleaguered guy, Billy Magnussen as beautiful dumdum, Sharon Hogan as the caustic wit, and Jesse “Da Gawd” Plemmons out there just Plemmin’. But instead of having to do all the heavy lifting with these personas, the characters are firmly grounded in a self-assured narrative. The funny feels easy.

Where this seems like the space for an obligatory plot explainer, each point revealed would leach an equal amount of joy out of the film. Though the overall premise is pretty familiar, nice idiots unknowingly in over their heads. I’ll leave it at that, but for those of you with a dedicated crew of hardcore Settlers, Game Night will serve as a gentle reminder to reset the boundaries of your competitiveness and credulity alike. 

With all of the above in mind, the best part of the movie? It’s funny. It made me laugh. There was even a guffaw or two. Nasty without being cruel, dark without being bleak, provocative without bullying, buttons are pushed and lines are crossed—but never into a despicable space. Decent people are poached in the squid ink broth as opposed to the darkness coming from within. There’s some overly sweet notes, but it’s a movie about a bunch of thirty-something couples having a game night. As I’m describing my actual life, I can confirm: that shit is corny sometimes. With a core cast of six actors plus a handful of tasteful cameos, that’s lots of jokes, and they dutifully keep the film’s engine fired. 

Among some of the more unexpected surprises in this surprise laden picture, it’s visually coherent. There is a style and aesthetic and couple of meaty set pieces. Also, one of our talented directors is none other than John Francis Daley (Google him, you’ll recognize that mug)! Another bonus, each of the main three couples is given a dynamic to sort out. A pretty scant expectation, but to give multiple characters a pronounced interpersonal thread and offer some reasonable satisfaction? Nobody was gonna be mad if they didn’t do that, but damned if the effort wasn’t there. 

And that’s the story of Game Night; small, concerted efforts. Little stitches to make it tighter, make it smarter, make it twistier, and, one by one, they yield a satisfying comedy with teeth and brains. We’ll see if this scrappy comedy can land a box office haymaker and pave the way for more of its kind. Though, for now, the joy is in watching the film, which is smart, funny, quality work with a great cast and a great script. And if that last sentence reads like the boilerplate checklist of what should go into any film, maybe buy a ticket for Game Night, because it feels a lot more like a joyful aberration than what has become the accepted norm.  

—Monte Monreal

I’m not sure how William Goldman get’s to officially claim this quote, but if there is one notion at the crux of Alex Garland’s Annihilation it would be this old chestnut, “Nobody knows anything...... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.” 

The idea permeates our troubled film from internal narrative crisis all the way to the bizarre–potentially watershed—drama of Annihilation’s distribution. This identity crisis, the not knowing, works against Alex Garland’s newest, and all sympathies to my dude. Is Annihilation bad? Eh, it’s like a "Yes, but..." or "No, if…" thing—though this I can confirm: it’s a hot goddamn mess. That’s not entirely a negative, but to get there, first we have to talk about Stalker.

Annihilation’s similarities to Stalker are, you know, it’s a thing. Sure, for some of the immediate reasons—both are loose adaptations, both feature a mysterious zone triggered by an extraterrestrial event, both center around a journey into said zone and its effect on the passengers—but this is something more: a feeling, a tone, an atmosphere of deliberate disorientation. I recognize it’s unfair to outright compare the two. Stalker is not the paragon of originality. Garland poured soul and creativity in this project. But there isn’t enough distance between the two to avoid the conversation. Furthermore, what makes the comparison so jarring is Tarkovsky hacks his way through those tricky elements and emerges with a masterpiece. Garland’s Annihilation, well, it’s a dog’s breakfast. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a Blade Runner type sitch, but more on that later.

One thing is clear, Alex Garland is ambitious. Riding the wave from his stellar debut Ex Machina, Garland was rightly given the helm to a massive project with lofty expectations. But part of Ex Machina’s success, it’s a claustrophobic, dread soaked film with three characters. Annihilation is scaled up to a large cast with an entire world to build. There are few questions as to whether Garland possess the skill to handle a production of any size, but this movie is undermined by so much minutiae. I didn’t like the visual tone (can we please, please kill off the lens flare), I thought Area X looked built not grown, there is no meat on the bone for our actors, and perhaps the biggest disappointment, they story is shambolic.   

At best, I could talk myself into Annihilation as a meditation on not knowing–those words again—but uncertainty is a volatile element with which to tussle. I’m very much on board with no finite answers, but it never felt like this film knew what questions it was raising. That’s like god-level discombobulation, and if that was truly the thrust, why bother? Why spell out realizations about Area X? Why the very deliberate climactic sequence? Why the breadcrumb trail of videos peppered throughout the film? Why?

Unfortunately, within what story we are offered, the answers to the above questions mills out to something kinda, er...kinda dumb. Instead, if this is all meant to worship at the feet of enormous ambiguity, let’s go there. Fumigate me with existential dread. Pillory me with intrigue. Inoculate me from any and all understanding. But don’t tip your cards with an empty hand, and if you insist, at least play it with some clear-eyed bravura.

There is enough grace and intelligence here to save Annihilation from Interstellar-level fatuity, but I can’t help but wonder if Paramount Studios just did my guy dirty. Garland already proved what he can accomplish when left to his vision, but movies have an enormous surface area. When the money lenders at the top lose faith, the shit truly rolls downhill. Off screen battles are generally pretty boring, but the power struggle here signals something much more severe. 

Paramount so wholly doubted Annihilation, they sold the international distribution rights. That is not only unheard of, it’s utterly mind bending, and portends terrible things. This movie will only be released in theaters in America and China (not even Garland’s UK home) and everyone else will get it via Netflix. That’s really bad. Bad for Garland, bad for filmgoers, bad for already gun shy studios, and bad for auteurs; the William Goldman dictum mutated to hideous new proportions.

So did some of the offscreen chicanery seep into the film? Maybe. The word seems to be Garland got his final cut, but I can’t help but wonder if once the fighting began, things both micro and macro just begin to unravel. There is an interesting film peeking out in places, so maybe, if we’re lucky, this is like a Blade Runner type sitch. There are seven different versions of Blade Runner. The original U.S. theatrical release is my least favorite, and it’s largely due to studio intervention. Some 20 years later, Ridley Scott released Blade Runner: The Final Cut, and for my money, it’s the superior version. Will we someday get a 19 hour, frenzied work print of Annihilation that is pure bliss? We can only hope so, but who knows?

The studio doesn’t know. The characters meandering through Area X certainly don’t know. Audiences around the world may never get the chance to know. And me, I don’t know a damn thing. Because nobody knows anything, not really. Where that can work to our surprise, in this case, it’s the not knowing that sinks Annihilation.  ​

​—Monte Monreal

There is a seductive quality to being a teenage superhero. An age when you are aware of injustice, yet can do little to stop it; capable of great optimism but familiar with despair—adolescence has become an enduring trope for good reason. As a mutant pubescent do-gooder, you’re in parts unbound from one, but much more susceptible to the other. Though one essential notion of being a teenager superhero remains the same, an ethos Spider-Man: Homecoming embraces, it could be so much fun.
 
Where I’m no arbiter of such things, is this the Spider-Man we’ve always wanted? It’s a gale of fresh air by any summer movie standard, not just the unwieldy design of superhero pictures. Refusing to take itself seriously in a way Deadpool never grasped, Homecoming is a joyful mixture of gold standard hero creation and genre antidote. And that's the word: joy. An unbridled joy, equally endearing and relentless.
 
The other immediate quality of Homecoming, it uses its brain. Jon Watts and company find a clever way to nudge every expected element of Spider-Man. With each subtle shift in perspective, fresh blood trickles through the reboot weary franchise. From the opening sequence, a series of Peter Parker’s frenetic smartphone videos, the film establishes itself as something rambunctious. No origin story, bougie Aunt Mae (Marissa Tomei), a riff on Spidey’s city dependence, it’s built on solid beats. Perhaps not always unfamiliar, but like an exceptional pop song, the mix is beautiful. Concepts are balanced, relationships make sense, and above all, the film has a good heart.
 
To that end, the stakes make sense. Peter Parker, as embodied by Tom Holland, attends Midtown Tech. A high school science academy and diversity cavalcade of hyper-intellectual youths, *handclaps* this is the future liberals want! It’s the weeks leading up to homecoming, and Peter has Spidey problems intermingled with teenager problems, but nothing is the end of the world.
 
Homecoming plays as much the teen movie—Hughesian in a way, but never a pastiche—as it does a superhero film. Academic Decathlons, ATM robbers, crushes, super weapons, they all coexist, each one’s priority as fluid as any concern of a high schooler. And in a cinematic universe where apocalypses are a dime a dozen, Spider-Man’s tangle with arms dealers feels just as pertinent. Where the scale may sound puny, the connections pulling our characters into the central conflict are personal. Saving an entire Eastern European capital, a’ la Avengers: Age of Ultron makes for grandiose cinema, but a tightly woven story with visceral heroes and villains offers something far more human.
 
And the humans in Spider-Man: Homecoming are rad. With a battery of high-caliber talent to deploy, the film manages to give something substantial to each player. Donald Glover and Hannibal Buress, with four scenes between them, are as effective as co-star Zendaya’s angsty Michelle. We get Martin Starr out there reminding us that protest is patriotic. Even a disembodied voice emerges as a memorable sidekick. And, somehow, the requisite appearances of other Marvel characters are largely tasteful. One such instance is punctured with, for my money, the best joke in the picture. Though, with all the warm pork bone broth goodness this picture pours down your gullet, I couldn’t help but feel the nag of one loose thread. I know, I know, it's always a loose thread with me, but the presence of Bokeem Woodbine as one of our Spidey foils cemented the connection.
 
It’s a moment from FX’s serialized Fargo where ambitious criminal Mike Milligan (as played by Woodbine) ascends in the organized crime world. An enlightened man of the 1970’s, Mike has a higher purpose, justification for each bloody handprint left up the ladder. Yet it’s Morning in America, and the multinational is the new kingpin. The enforcer’s reward is a small office outfitted with a word processor. He’s instructed to ditch his oxblood western suit, cut his afro, and learn to golf. Always golf. And on the dawn of Spider-Man: Homecoming—our Sony, Disney orgy of corporate interest—I can’t help but feel Marvel, a once weird, bankrupt, scrappy, visionary, has traded it all in to be just another corporate stooge.
 
This is not some phony righteousness on my behalf. Hell, if they existed, I would depression-lunch-rage-eat loads of McDoubleCrunchwraps, but some hellish union between McDonald's and Taco Bell does not a positive make. I’m not a fan of Hollywood’s current climate—especially Sony “lending” Spider-Man to Marvel, an echo of bad studio system politics—but the onus is to evaluate what happens between the margins, and Homecoming is a joyful place. So, for the sake of my beloved, beleaguered editor, there ends the need to grind this, my favored axe.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is good, but consolidation of creative enterprise under the penumbra of one megacorporation, well, that’s bad. Should the latter be wielded against the former? No, but they are inextricable.  

—By Monte Monreal

​Trying to unpack the many identities of DC’s newest Wonder Woman is like pulling apart layer after layer of a matryoshka. The large, welcoming exterior is an above-average superhero film, and the smallest doll nested in the center is a bittersweet note where realities of and hopes for our world converge. In between there are contrasting pieces each bearing their own questions, each requiring a peek down to the next level. If this seems like an aggressive rubric on which to grade a summer tentpole, there is a pervasive feeling Wonder Woman is required to save the world both on and off the screen. I’ll attempt to peel back the layers left to contemplate, but if this extended analogy has them eyes rolling, I’ll spare you: Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman is a film powerful enough to carry both words in the title.
 
Superheroes
Where this may be the least meaningful of the film’s accomplishments, you heard it here first, folks: DC is out of detention. Yes, between the frenetic joy of The Lego Batman Movie and the  successes of Wonder Woman, DC has finally managed to post bail. Where I wish I could tell you this film subverted and rebuilt the genre—with its many cataloged problems—we never quite ascend to a tier where films like The Dark Knight dare tread. It’s more of a foundational story concern, all tropes and elbows, but this world of color and empathy purges the grueling self-seriousness that has long shackled DC to inferiority. Though, Wonder Woman does get damn close, and it’s for this exact reason all of this may prove so polarizing.
 
Representation
I took a friend of mine to see the screening, and she quite liked it. This is not a person I would remotely describe as an ardent lover of superhero pictures, or even action films, but Wonder Woman won her over. After the film had a couple of days to settle, I asked her—acknowledging the predictable story beats—if our lead was another dumb dude would she have felt the same? Her response? "I liked watching a woman kick ass." And she’s right, slicing straight to the nut with brute truth.
 
I’m loathe to spoil anything, but in an early sequence we see a crew of Amazons whoop up on some Kaiser-loving bros. A full throated, acrobatic beat down, and it’s doooooope. Yes, specifically because a big budget brawl featured women expressing their physical dominance, this picture is special. I can’t recall another sequence like it, and so goes the complexities of representation. Many of us have come of age through summer after summer of blockbusters, but the list of successful female leads can be counted on one hand. As women make up, like, just gonna throw out a number—half of the population—the disparity is beyond troubling. It’s bizarre. But does plugging a woman into an otherwise perfunctory exercise in hero movie making warrant high praise? I believe it does, because new perspectives, no matter how rote, can transform walls into doors. This begs the question, “Is Wonder Woman a feminist movie?” To which my aforementioned friend replied, “Does it need to be?”

Politics
One element of Wonder Woman I wish they had really dug into was the backdrop of WWI. As this is a film about the ideological evolution of Wonder Woman—or Diana as played by Gal Gadot in an exceptional turn—a moment where industrial warfare, absurdist futility, and a new century converge in the trenches of the First World War is fertile ground. Where this could have been a bold parallel track to run, Wonder Woman turns over a few stones, but never tries to piece it all together. And this is where the politics are at times laser precise, and other moments so very muddled.
 
There is a really thoughtful moment where Diana tries on a number of outfits made available to a woman in 1917 London. She finds them, in a word, constricting. In a brilliant gesture, Diana eventually sports a sensible hat, jacket, and long skirt, an ensemble plucked straight from the black and white photos of London suffragettes marching for the vote. In another deft move, Diana dresses down a quorum of serious men in an impressive dark wood war room. They are predictably aghast, but the subtext is what matters; there is no reality where Diana believes she can’t make her voice heard. It is never said, but it is there, smart and incisive.
 
In other moments, Wonder Woman can’t help but truncheon you with its ethics. Varying comments on racism and sexism and war are spilled on screen through chunky dialogue. They become something without nuance, and ideals without dimension can be reduced to a consumer good. Especially when folded into what is ostensibly a product expected to return a profit. So is this a feminist film? Does it need to be? Both answers warrant their own breathy write-ups, but either way it’s a tremendous expectation to pin on a multinational conglomerate’s franchise installment. There is no box office smash, or failure, that can validate a movement. Wonder Woman does offer a distinct victory for the representation of women in major motion pictures, but is important to remember, this, if anything, is the trailhead, not the destination.
 
Norms
That brings me to the biggest disappointment offered in the film, a distinct inability to think beyond the obvious. Look, if you get me in a room with Chris Pine—the dashing Steve Trevor—I’m gonna try and gin up some sexual tension, but that’s a given. Wonder Woman falls into this and so many other dull traps. Whether it is the endless commentary on Diana’s looks, or the need for coupling, or big romantic speeches (which our picture almost writes its way out of in a near transcendent moment), these norms become inescapable. There’s a goofy dick joke! And where the easy comment might be is that this is simply how things are, that sort of thinking is how they stay that way.
 
Hope
Ugh. See that dopey sub-header? I know, but you’ve come this far, so screw it. Let’s open the old heartlight a bit. We deserve it! And therein lies the crux of the film, what we think we deserve versus what we believe. I believe the world is dying. I believe we have turned the page to yet another dark chapter in collective human history. Diana, 100 years ago, looking across the trenches of World War I sees the same. And when she is confronted with this internal crisis—carnage soaked evidence of a world so far gone—Wonder Woman rejects the crushing blow of despair. Instead, she does what heroes do, super and otherwise, she finds something worth fighting for. 

​—Monte Monreal