Shazam! (2019)

DC may have turned the corner and finally discovered how to make a fun movie.  in 1974, Thaddeus Sivana is with his father and older brother in a car.  Suddenly, the car windows get covered in frost and his father and brother are gone.  Stepping out of the car, he finds himself in a cave where a wizard (Djimon Hounsou) tests to see if he is worthy of the power of Shazam!  Sivana fails and immediately finds himself back in the car.

In the present day, Billy Batson (Asher Angel) embarrasses a pair of police officers before going to a house where he thinks he will find his mother.  It is not his mother.  And the police show up.  Billy has been in foster care since he was separated from his mother in a crowd when he was 4 or 5.  A regular runaway from every foster home, he is placed in a new one with a mix of kids.  While on the subway, the windows freeze and he finds himself tested by the wizard.  He is worthy!  Shazam!  Having no idea how to be a superhero, the antics of Shazam (Zachary Levi) are quite funny.  Any heroics are accidental.

 

Elsewhere, Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong) has not been idle.  He has spent that last 45 years trying to find his way back to the cave.  He has tracked down a vast number of people who had the same experience as him, all having been rejected by the wizard.  Unworthy of the power of Shazam, he instead frees the power of the seven deadly sins.  Shazam may be powerful but he's only 14.

 

Humor, excitement, uplifting, epic action, and just an overall great time.  Highly recommended.  More like this for the DC-verse, please.

Long Shot (2019)

Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) is Secretary of State and has ambitions of running for President.  Her boss, President Chambers (Bob Odenkirk), had played president on TV and loves to watch reruns of his glory days.  In fact, he has decided not to run for re-election so he can establish a movie career.  He is not averse to offering his support for her candidacy.  At this key moment, Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen) re-enters Charlotte's life.  She had been his babysitter, which is weird in flashback.  He's 13 and she's 16.  Huh.  Fred is an unemployed reporter with a drug habit.  Oh, Seth Rogen as a pot smoker?  This is my shocked face.  :|  Despite the wise counsel of all her advisers, Charlotte hires Fred as a speechwriter.  Charlotte is entranced by Fred glowing memories of her high school campaign for class president.  Yeah, the hyper-successful woman jumps in the sack with this unkempt doper.  If it played as a true comedy, that might work.  Instead, Charlotte is an environmental activist with a Bees, Trees, and Seas agenda that is getting chipped away by political realities.  Ugh.  And Fred is an absolutist who loses faith in her for cutting deals.  Ugh.  This is a comedy, right?  The movie has lots of profanity, some drug use (including by the Secretary of State who is running for President), cringe-inducing masturbation (meant to be funny), and a completely unconvincing love story.  This is a comedy, right?

 

Best avoided.

Support for AOC

To my complete surprise, I find myself in agreement with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  She has proposed that elected representatives should be barred from becoming lobbyists upon 'retiring' from Congress.  This practice is similar to insider trading.  The problem isn't just elected representatives.  How many regulators leave the various government agencies to then turn around and lobby their former colleagues on behalf of the industry being regulated?  Ted Cruz offered support, suggesting a lifetime ban on former members becoming lobbyists.  Though I like the goal, I suspect courts would strike down such a law.  Are there other professions from which people can be banned except in the case of conviction of a crime?  Even so, I hope to see the Ocasio-Cortez-Cruz bill proposed in Congress.  I give it long odds at getting through the House or Senate but Trump would gladly sign it.

Hamilton

I saw the musical Hamilton last week during its swing through Texas.  Hamilton's life is faithfully told and one cannot help but be impressed at his achievements and grieve for his losses.  However, I don't care for rap and this was mostly that.  Rap battles among Washington's cabinet members - complete with mic drops - did not impress me.  There is a lot of overt politics that reference the modern day rather than the time in which the story takes place.  The most obvious was when Hamilton says to Lafayette "Immigrants getting the job done."  Sigh.  Lafayette was not an immigrant.  He was a French aristocrat who was abroad in war.  Patton would never have referred to himself as an immigrant while fighting in Africa or Europe.  Same goes for Lafayette.  As for Hamilton, he was a British subject who moved from one colony - Nevis in the Caribbean - to another - New York.  In modern terms, that's like moving from Oregon to New York.  Again, not an immigrant in the sense the play implies.

 

Some characters come off very well, reflecting modern understandings of them.  Washington is steady, humble, and wise.  Hamilton is brash, brilliant, and arrogant.  Burr is given a sympathetic portrayal.  He is seen as second best to Hamilton for decades, which is a stretch.  Burr had many acquaintances and was prone to intrigue, aspects that don't show here.  In fact, it is Jefferson who is the schemer to undermine Hamilton.  Jefferson is shown as self-absorbed and more arrogant than Hamilton, not an easy task.  Madison is relegated to Jefferson's fawning sidekick, a slap to the Father of the Constitution.  As an interesting aside, Aaron Burr introduced James Madison to his future wife, Dolley Madison.

 

The play repeatedly declares New York to be the "greatest city in the world" which certainly thrilled Broadway during its run but is again for modern audiences.  New York may have been the greatest city in the colonies but it was a shadow to the great cities of Europe.  I love New York but this again took me out of the setting and placed me in the modern day.  The casting is intentionally non-white, which made it a bit difficult to know who was who at the beginning.  Artistic license or yet another political statement?  Meh.  On the positive, if this can introduce American history to a wider audience, that is terrific.  Maybe some rap lovers will read the Federalist Papers to get the deeper story.