Squandered Squad

Movie Reviewed: The Suicide Squad

Director: James Gunn

Date Watched: 28 August 2021

jamesintexas rating: *

Just not very good. Despite Margot Robbie's game, fun performance as Harley Quinn, a walking shark person, and Idris Elba's intensity, the film seems sloppy, lazy, and lacking in fun, especially when Robbie is not onscreen. 

James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, for me, was one of the top films of that year, a master class is silliness, fun music, quirky storytelling, and kinetic filmmaking. This film lacks that imagination and verve, I think, and it seems hung up on presenting lots and lots of characters, far more than we can care about. John Cena's Peacemaker is a silly highlight, but the giant special effects extravaganza is not as much fun as just watching characters riff and dig on each other. 

The Suicide Squad is not incredibly memorable, and so it goes in 2021. I am still searching for the best (or I'll just take simply a good) film to hang my hat on. This ain't it. Margot Robbie, to be clear, is a national treasure in her committed wackiness, though Birds of Prey was much more fun and stylized.

Guarding the Franchise: Fun Thrills and Tears in Capable Sequel

Movie Reviewed: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Director: James Gunn

Date: 27 May 2017

jamesintexas rating: ***



I think it is a testament to James Gunn's quirky weirdness as a director of perhaps the biggest film of the year that what I mostly remember, several weeks after watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, is the murderous interstellar rampage set to "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay and the Americans. There's slow-motion walking, Tarantino-esque nods, fun special effects as Yondu's whistle directs an orchestra of death, and it recaptures a bit of that jarring tone from the first film, the tone established by the unconventional placement of early 1980's pop music alongside space battles. Overall, I think that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 remains fun throughout, despite being overlong and overstuffed with battles, though I do not feel as enraptured with it as its original. That film was one of the best of the year and earned four stars from me.

After a mysterious opening scene with a flowy-haired, digitally retouched Kurt Russell driving a convertible on earth, Gunn opens the film with the familiar characters.  In a wonderful title card scene which undercuts our expectations, Gunn establishes that the Guardians are now tasked with protecting the universe for hire while squabbling within themselves. He carefully stages the scene with a ferocious monster but seems uninterested in showing us what we want to see.  Instead, we follow Baby Groot (voice of Vin Diesel) as he runs playfully around the periphery of the scene. It is a charming beginning and establishes the relationship with Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) and her race of golden warriors who trade protection for Gamora's seething sister Nebula (Karen Gillan). The guardians must flee and separate as a result of Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper) stealing some batteries and coming into snarky opposition with Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), but another ship seems to rescue them at the last minute. A crash landing on a strange planet leads to both reunion and separation as Quill confronts aspects of his past, Rocket rejects the dynamics of the group, Gamora and Nebula discuss their tenuous relationship with their father and each other, and then there's Drax (Dave Bautista), who just seems to awesomely exists to be gigantically huge and titanically funny in his one-liners. When the strange ship lands, the Guardians separate, but unknowingly, they are being hunted by Yondu (Michael Rooker) with a price on their heads for their betrayal.

I won't say more because I don't want to reveal the plot's twists and turns, but Gunn crafts a satisfying tale set to an awesome soundtrack. At multiple moments, the screen is filled with such beautiful imagery and colors and planetary skyscapes that I marveled at Gunn's artistry and patience in holding the camera to let us enjoy the world. However, my main criticism is that the film is too long and too big-battle heavy, taking us away from the weird conversations and the relationships that ultimately distinguish this film among others of the genre. I think Guardians is at its best when the main characters are talking to each other, and there are just too few conversations like that is in this film. Gunn sacrifices those quieter moments for an expansive story, one in which sequel cultivation is a priority. That's why you get Sylvester Stallone showing up briefly and some other cameos at the very end. I think the best decision made by James Gunn was to promote Michael Rooker's character to featured player with more screen time and dialogue and more of a character arc. Rooker's Yondu is endlessly fascinating in look and action, and Yondu and Quill provide the emotional heft of the film in a surprising way. Gunn's use of Cat Stevens and Fleetwood Mac charms, and despite feeling like everyone needed to talk to each other more, I think Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a fun, often beautiful, meticulously crafted film that keeps laughter balancing tears, yes tears, in a summer blockbuster that showcases a ferociously violent Baby Groot in an off-kilter, strange twist on the traditional action-adventure. A welcome twist.

Dazzling Guardians Delivers!

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

Director: James Gunn

Reviewed: 25 January 2015

jamesintexas rating--****

How does it work? A feisty raccoon that fires automatic weapons? A Chewbacca-like walking tree capable of only one line of dialogue? A television actor thrust into the limelight to carry a movie with his charm? A completely new world of planets and creatures and swirling stars and shifting alliances? A heavy opening scene grappling with major grief? A jamming soundtrack of 70's and 80's pop songs juxtaposed against space?

I don't know how James Gunn did it, but it works, and Guardians of the Galaxy is not only one of the best films of the year; it is one of the best films of its kind of recent memory. To throw the mantle of Star Wars around is not something that I do lightly. I did it for Avatar in 2009, and I do it now.  I re-watched it after watching it, and I found that each scene has its own beautiful background. Instead of CGI overwhelming and turning my brain off, Gunn and his team have constructed a lush world of landscapes and sky, planets and moons, colors and dirt that feels memorable and unique. And loved.

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) finds himself taken from earth after his mother's death in 1988 and transported to a ship of Ravagers led by Yondu (Michael Rooker), and he opens the film with a quasi-Indiana Jones mission to recover an artifact from a defunct planet. A marvelous fight ensues, and soon, Quill finds himself in league with Gamora (Zoe Saldana), a possible ally from the enemies Thanos and Ronan, bounty hunters Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel), and muscleman Drax (Dave Bautista). Their mission? To save the galaxy. But imbued in all of this is a wicked sense of humor and fun, as well as the best soundtrack that I have heard in an action film in a long, long time. Gunn takes these characters seriously, but Rocket has an air of impish defiance to him, a sort of Han Solo trapped in a raccoon form that becomes even more fun when juxtaposed against the sage and mighty Groot. Pratt displays charm from the first frame, putting his headphones to his walkman on and dancing his way through a mission, and Saldana gives Gamora a fierceness and a warmth simultaneously. My favorite performance might be Dave Bautista who plays a warrior seeking revenge but can't understand metaphors, and Bautista is given some of the film's best lines. The enemies are sufficiently scary, the back story competently told and not overwhelming, and the pace is strong. Unlike certain films in the George Lucas canon, Gunn feels confident to let his camera tell the story at certain moments by lingering at the beauty of a scene instead of quickly cutting. The action is always clear and easy to follow, and it helps that for the first two thirds of the film, most of it is hand-to-hand until an epic space battle requires the frenzy of flying ships.

Why does this work?  It doesn't take itself too seriously, but it does at the same time. The framing device is a very intense one, and Guardians is not short on heart. I felt moved by it in the most rare of ways, and it looks gorgeous. The soundtrack sets the tone, and the bold move of these pop songs echoing through the universe pays off marvelously. There is an alchemy here to the performances and the production design, the direction and the writing. Guardians of the Galaxy is the first movie of my son's lifetime that I cannot wait to sit down with him and watch. It is worthy of comparisons to Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

What a gift.