In Which He Remains The Right Man For Her

Used to Love Him

by ETHAN PETERSON

The Mummy
dir. Alex Kurtzman
107 minutes

Jennifer (Annabelle Wallis) meets Nick (Tom Cruise) in Baghdad. Although he is twenty-two years her senior, there is a serious paucity of English-speaking men in this city. She therefore invites him back to her hotel room, where he pleasures her as many times as his advanced age is able to accommodate. In her quiet moments, Jennifer hunkers down in front of her laptop, puts on a pair of optional eyeglasses – at no other time in The Mummy does she ever wear them – and checks in with her supervisor Henry (Russell Crowe).

These are the two men in her life. She might have chosen better if she had left Cambridge and took the job offer from an American company; instead she wanted to make her home in London, and work for an organization called Prodigium, which dedicates itself to the elimination of evil. It is subtly suggested in The Mummy that Jennifer is hoping to turn the focus of her company from the commercial exploitation of historic sites to a more active role in political affairs, e.g. Brexit and the like.

She is pretty lukewarm on Nick after the sex. She has given him her body, which is impressively sculpted, and when we see Nick in the nude during the weeks that follow we recognize why he is able to attract such a spry young woman. (Her cheekbones are particularly impressive; they radiate like the vibrant, enticing pouches of a squirrel.) She alleges that while the sex was consensual, Nick's theft of an important map she kept for reasons afterwards was most certainly not. She is very angry at him for awhile until they discover a tomb beneath the earth.

The couple escorts this historical find by airplane out of Iraq. On the way, the plane crashes and Nick gives Jennifer the only working parachute on the flight. She is grateful for his sacrifice, and when she finds out that he survived the crash through some kind of wonderful miracle, she is so appreciative that she is like, "Want to get dinner?" When a woman asks you if you want to get dinner, it means something very different from what it would ostensibly seem, and Nick's experience the following evening agrees with my observation.

Even though she now expresses to Nick that she cares for him and believes he is a good person, she never touches Nick again throughout the rest of The Mummy. She does take him to meet the other man in her life, I guess to compare them? Meanwhile Nick is having these little daydreams about another woman (Sofia Boutella), the woman in the tomb, an Egyptian princess who wanted to find a vessel for Set, the god of death. 

This embalmed creature of power decides that Tom Cruise is the ideal person to embody such a deity and drowns Jennifer. Before she dies, Jennifer tells Nick that she is scared. He loves her so much that he brings her back to life a few minutes later, and she does not even spit water from her mouth or lungs. His decision is understandable. I mean, how many more young blondes will allow him to save their life in the near future, do you suppose? Not many: they will all probably be brunettes, so he should cling to this Jennifer.

It is a serious, tragic shame that everyone hated The Mummy so much, since a sequel where Tom Cruise plays the Egyptian God of death would be top tier. Unfortunately the direction of Alex Kurtzman (Fringe) is pretty cartoonish for the material – he is better known as a writer, and this script feels like it was worked over by every scribe in Hollywood. Nick and Jennifer literally have no preferences at all – there is nothing they enjoy. They have no family, no friends. It is like they are already in a tomb.

The pacing also suffers. For an adventure film, The Mummy never really goes anywhere. After the opening scenes in Iraq, the film returns to a particularly garish part of London and never really leaves it. It is rather unclear what the film's $125m budget went to: Tom's trailer and jet? The princess' plan to take over the world or whatever is thwarted in a matter of scenes, in order to place the focus back where it belongs: the heart of Tom Cruise.

While she is imprisoned by Russell Crowe, the Egyptian princess threatens all the English people who have chosen to hold her captive. At first, she speaks in the old language. Nearby, London sits atop their quiet stronghold like a mother bird on a basket of eggs. The princess quickly learns English, proclaiming it a simple way of expression. Tom Cruise makes a face like he is maybe about to object, but then he blows out the air in his lungs and shuts the fuck up.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.

In Which We Stand Against The Music Of Time

Another Country

by ETHAN PETERSON

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
dir. James Gunn
136 minutes

Kurt Russell's first scene in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is this creepy flashback of him and his young girlfriend where the camera barely glimpses his face. Since he is supposed to be twenty years old during these scenes, and is in all actuality a ripe 66, director James Gunn papers over his face with some hot CGI. The fact that he did not all have the courtesy to do this for Sylvester Stallone as well seems deliberately mean and perhaps even anti-Italian.

Stallone portrays a ship captain named Stakar. He is absolutely tiny, like morsel-sized, and he only really has one scene. Unfortunately, I was unable to recognize a single word he slurred in any of his dialogue, so this review will remain incomplete until the movie comes out on Blu-Ray or Gunn updates the special effects for a theatrical rerelease forty years from now when they seem vague and corny. Right now they seem vibrant and fun, but as we know, time turns everything into molten shit.

The plot of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 concerns Russell finding his son Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), and taking him to the planet he has created, called Ego. As a result, Star spends the entire movie completely gullible in his Papa's thrall and never really goes anywhere. Pratt is deemphasized in favor of the real protagonist, Rocket (Bradley Cooper) a CGI animal, who is briefly imprisoned before attempting a rescue mission. Rocket's internal dilemma is that he has the sense he may be nothing but a little asshole.

It is sort of sad to see Gunn hamstrung with the general shittiness of this cast and material. He is a bravura director, whose swirling, colorful style for these films is extremely sophisticated, and should fit the diaphonous galaxies on display. The art direction in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. ranges from awe-inspiring to dogshit, and the general atmosphere of the planet Ego comes across as a bit too familiar. Gunn papers over this lack of visual depth with stunning movement and accomplished cinematography.

Pratt looks absolutely huge physically, and he should have a lot to bite into on an emotional level with his father as the antagonist. This is the most disappointing of his recent roles from that perspective. Harrison Ford was never great at communicating sorrow or indecision either, but his directors and writers knew how to give him purposeful, active characters that played to his abilities. When Pratt is in motion, he is like a high-speed train, but stalled his considerable bulk is too close to the impact of his larger colleague, Drax (Dave Bautista).

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is ostensibly a comedy, and the film is at its most amusing when the various members of the starfaring team are playing off one another. Unfortunately Gunn decides to split them up for most of the film, and the resulting pairings do not work so well. The flirting between Quill and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is given a higher priority than the latter's more interesting plotline with her sister Nebula (the preternaturally talented Karen Gillian). Gamora never asks Quill for advice or details the vagaries of her situation, which is a lot more complex than anything her boyfriend is going through.

Instead of analyzing these deeper issues, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 spends way too much time having the characters laugh at each other's jokes. It starts to become seriously forced around the time a space pirate named Taserface has his name mocked for ten straight minutes. It is a very strange bit that reeks of body-shaming, and it would have made a nice DVD extra if it weren't for the fact that Rocket is not given anyone else to crack on.

This is a minor quibble, however, when the film's completely awful soundtrack manages to ruin most of the extended action sequences. Through careful analysis, I can inform you that outside of a single song by Fleetwood Mac, every single piece of music used in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is an unending horror on the ears. I understand that this gimmick was meant to offer something to spice up the lack of cohesion in the original film, but transplanting it to another feature-length audio mess was easily the worst decision Gunn made on this project.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.

In Which We Enter The Theater Of All Our Operations

The Only One

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Wonder Woman
dir. Patty Jenkins
141 minutes

When Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) sails into London in 1918, all she can think of is how ugly the city is. Long before landfall, Diana's mother Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) was fearful of how she might react to the idea that she is a mutant. Hippolyta create an elaborate mythology to explain why she has no living father and lives in a cloistered society of immortal women without men or children. As explanations from single mothers go, I have heard far worse. Herodotus placed this Diana's tribe of women on the coast of Northern Turkey – in Wonder Woman, this paradise has become a safe haven from the civilized world. When Diana goes to leave Turkey, her mother says, "You may not return."

I was very confused by this milquetoast comment: did Hippolyta mean there was a chance she might not make it back, or that she was not allowed back? Maybe I missed something. In any case, the disappearance of Diana's mother and aunt from the narrative of Wonder Woman is a massive loss, because in the rest of the movie she never has a significant conversation with another woman.

This turns Wonder Woman into quite a boring slog of male faces. It is Diana's mindless desire to reach the war's battles, because she has various abilities which could aid the Allies. Her assistant Steven (Chris Pine) is absolutely tiny, and in his fake German uniform that he uses to spy for the United States, he looks something close to Humpty Dumpty. Steven has no loved ones, or anyone in his life that he cares about, so when he meets Diana, he cannot wait to make her his entire life.

Other men react to Gadot's presence in a similarly typical way. In a meeting of various politicians, they all loudly object to the appearance of a woman. Steven's three associates are a Sunni Muslim, an American Indian and a Scotsman. They relate to Diana only as an object, but after they see her deflect bullets with the plates on her arms, they are devoted to her because of the protection from harm she offers during the war. Wonder Woman manages to make a film about global violence which barely ever shows death at all.

Gadot plays Diana Prince as a straightforward innocent. She does not really appreciate any of the subtleties of espionage, which is meant to be a credit to a direct approach in times of trouble. Wonder Woman goes to great lengths to excoriate generals who wish to pursue an armistice with the Central Powers, but by the end of the film Diana is giving everyone soft hugs, even the Germans who gassed a Belgian town.

Gadot herself unsurprisingly offers little as an actress. Both Robin Wright Penn as her mentor and Nielsen are fantastic in Wonder Woman; they look a lot more like warriors than Gadot does, and generally highlight the Israeli model's struggles to portray basic emotions in this role. When she becomes angry, her Diana Prince is frantic and hotheaded, but there is no acceleration between the two mental states. The saving grace is that her chemistry with Pine is very good, and it is a disappointment that the film leans so little on their romance.

It is unclear how such a person could become a hero to her gender, since we never see Diana's conduct appraised by any actual women in Wonder Woman, just men who are so overwhelmed with her physical prowess that they assume a greater wisdom behind it. Unfortunately this reductive attitude, while useful in identifying warriors, is mostly reinforcement of the patriarchy. All the best moments in Wonder Woman happen before she ever enters the male-dominated world.

After she thinks back on the events of her life, Wonder Woman evinces Diana Prince in an office inside of the Louvre. She is tapping away on a tablet and has become something of a typical bourgeois drone. It is quite sad to see her reduced to a normal existence, but I suppose if she was doing something important, she would have no time to team up with a bunch of yet another bunch of men for 2018's Justice League. Who knows? One day, in the far future, she may deign to speak to another woman again.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.