In short: Shazam! (2019)

I am all for, and actually very happy with, DC trying to save its superhero bacon by lightening up a little and actually putting out films with different tones and approaches beyond Grimdark Batman is Rorschach epics. David F. Sandberg’s Shazam! however, really isn’t how you do that, unless one can’t see a difference between light and completely empty.

It’s not that I would have preferred a grimdark reading of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel, but I’d rather have preferred one whose jokes aren’t quite as dumb and unimaginative as those in the film at hand, or one that actually knows how to shift between the silly stuff and the (theoretically) deeper bits effectively because it understands that both are sides of the same coin (say Guardians of the Galaxy style). Come to think of it, I would perhaps have been okay with the film if its jokes just were funny instead of inane and flat.

The more serious stuff is treated in the most perfunctory manner, clearly working from the impression that the kids I assume are supposed to be the film’s main audience are just too dense to understand even the tiniest bit of subtlety or complexity – as if something like Bumblebee that aims for the same core audience but doesn’t pretend kids are brain-dead didn’t exist. And man, are there wasted opportunities in the film concerning the nature of families of birth as well as of families of choice, or how a certain wizard who likes to kidnap kids and then tell them they are not “pure” enough is a bit of a creep and an asshole and actually responsible for everything bad happening in the movie (something that’s just barely acknowledged by the film).

Other disappointments belong to the more nerdy space like the incredibly unimaginative way the film wastes mad scientist Dr. Sivana (given by Mark Strong strictly phoning it in) and lets him become a guy who just punches people with super strength, instead of, say, having him preside over the anti-family to Captain Marvel’s family of choice like even the golden age comics knew to do. This, to me, seems symptomatic to the film’s greatest sin: a complete lack of imagination in how to use the material it has been given, superhero movie tropes as a whole, or just the possibility space modern superhero films open between the flying and the punching. In its whole feel of the filmmakers not actually knowing how this stuff works, Shazam! reminds me of pre Raimi Spider-Man superhero movies in its awkwardness.

Sandberg’s direction really doesn’t help the film’s case at all, presenting some surprisingly wonkily shot superhero action that culminates in a climax so badly edited, staged and conceived it boggles the mind how you can even manage to fail this badly at an action scene with all the technical expertise and money this sort of production has available to it.


But hey, at least it’s better than Venom.

Before I Go to Sleep (2014)

Christine (Nicole Kidman) wakes up every morning remembering nothing that has happened to her since her late 20s. The man she wakes up next to, her husband Ben (Colin Firth), explains - with the help of a useful photo wall in the movies more often used by serial killers - to her that some years ago, she had a bad accident that left her with a very particular kind of amnesia, erasing her memory with every night’s sleep.

However, things aren’t quite as simple as they seem to be. Secretly, Christine has been seeing neurologist Dr. Nasch (Mark Strong) for a few weeks now. Nasch has encouraged her to keep a video diary on a camera she keeps hidden, and reminds her of it with a phone call every morning. The therapy seems to be working too, but the bits and pieces Christine remembers lead to doubts concerning Ben.

Turns out Christine’s “accident” was actually a vicious attack on her. This will turn out not to be the only part of her past Ben edits out when he’s doing his daily info dump with her, but is this an attempt to protect her and survive a very difficult situation for himself, or is something sinister going on? And while we’re at it, what about Nasch? Isn’t he acting ethically rather questionable what with him making googly eyes at Christine and treating her in secret?

In general, I’m not terribly fond of thrillers with amnesia plots. It always seems to be a rather too convenient starting point from which to build a plot from, keeping protagonists and audience guessing without a film having to work for it.

However, if an amnesia film uses its easy starting point as well as Rowan Joffe’s Before I Go to Sleep does, I’m totally okay with it. The trick for such a film to make me happy is to create a narrative where the protagonist’s amnesia is more than just a plot tool, so Christine’s memory loss does have quite a few other functions than just enabling the thriller plot – though it does that too. As much as this is a well done “woman in peril – but from whom?” thriller, it is also a film attempting to think thoroughly about the way memory shapes a woman’s identity, and how memory and identity intersect with love and trust.

In putting the thoughtful bits and the thriller plot together, Joffe turns out to be a rather fine director and writer (he wrote the script based on a novel by S.J. Watson I unfortunately haven’t read) for this sort of thing, playing fair with the audience by keeping them clued in about what is going on as much as Christine is without going through awkward contortions to keep things mysterious. Sure, the way the plot relevant bits of memory return to Christine is a bit artificial (surely, she might remember drinking milkshakes or something else irrelevant to matters at hand from time to time instead of exactly those things that’ll make the film most interesting) but what the film does with these memories fits nicely into its thoughts on matters of trust, truth and love. And the suspenseful moments here are indeed exciting without looking as if the film were working too hard for them – which of course means it is working particularly hard for them.

Add to this expectedly fine performances of not particularly simple roles by Kidman and Firth, and you have an exemplary thriller.