"Clayface" - He's me-e-e-e-elti-i-i-i-ing.

I really want the new DC Universe movies to succeed. Not because I'm a DC fan, but because I just want good movies in general. Also, Zack Snyder's vision of the DC characters and universe was utter garbage and the brand deserves much better than sepia-toned slow-mo. Unfortunately, the new franchise is off to a very uneven start. Superman was really good and very well-received. I liked Supergirl, which flopped at the box office and split critics practically right down the middle (53% on Rotten Tomatoes). Now we have Clayface, a body-horror film featuring a minor villain in the Batman portion of DC. That certainly is a choice.

As I digested what I had just watched in Clayface, my mind wandered to why the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been so successful and DC has struggled. I think there are two main reasons for that success (and many minor reasons, but that's a discussion for another time). One is terrific casting and the other is never making a villain the main character of a film. Marvel hit the jackpot right out of the gate when they cast Robert Downey Jr. as Ironman, then, they did it again with Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, and many, many more. So far, with the new DC, David Corenswet (Superman) and Milly Alcock (Supergirl) were solid choices, but I'm really not sold on Tom Rhys Harries as Clayface.

Which brings me to that second reason - don't make a villain the main character of a film. The villain can be an equal to the hero (like The Dark Knight), but not the main event. If we've learned anything from Sony's disaster that was their Sony Spider-Man Universe, it's that (1) it should have Spider-Man in it and (2) audiences don't have much appetite for villain-focused movies. Especially those that try to turn villains into anti-heroes. Clayface makes both those same mistakes.

I know this new cinematic universe is young, but how did anyone think it would be wise to make a movie about a Batman villain without including Batman? And why Clayface? I get why they didn't do a Joker movie. After director Todd Phillips gave everyone a giant middle finger with his Joker sequel two years ago, the audience's anger is still palpable. But that still leaves well-known villains like Riddler, Catwoman, and Penguin, among several others. Clayface is just weird. And gross. My memories of the character are from watching Batman: The Animated Series and Clayface always reminded me of when Bill Paxton's character in Weird Science is turned into a giant turd. And not a fun whimsical turd like Mr. Hanky in South Park, but a nonmobile, squirty, juicy, Jabba the Hutt sized, talking pile of poop. That's not exactly the kind of visual that makes me go "Clayface movie? I'm in!"

The main reason why Harries is cast as Clayface is because he has a beautiful face. This is important for the narrative that writers Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini went with - dashing young actor and rising star Matt Hagen gets his face sliced up by mob boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik) after Hagen had sex with Szabo's girlfriend Mia (Joana Ribeiro). After Hagen experiences multiple failures trying to fix his face, he turns to Dr. Caitlyn Core (Naomi Ackie) who has invented nano-cells (nanobots) that can repair the damage. The only problem is the nano-thingies respond to Hagen's emotions, so every time he gets upset, his face starts to melt.

As you can probably guess, Hagen eventually learns how to control his cells and make his face (and body) look like anyone he wants. You can also probably guess that he wants revenge on the people that wrecked his life. And that's where the movie goes downhill pretty fast. Hagen starts out as a sympathetic character, but stops being sympathetic when he starts murdering people. It doesn't matter that the people wronged him; murder is always a turnoff for audiences. It gets worse when he professes his love for Dr. Core, whom Hagen is well aware has a fiance (Max Minghella) who is also a Gotham City police detective. And, if you remember from five paragraphs ago, this is a body-horror movie. That's a trifecta of yuck.

This same scenario is present in The Dark Knight in the form of Harvey "Two-Face" Dent, but it works because it's a side story that is really well-developed and also Batman is there. Clayface doesn't have a Batman to try to talk him off the murder ledge, just Dr. Core showing a very mild level of concern. In the absence of a better plot, the movie tries to cover for it with blood, cringy facial distortions (example: his eyelids sticking together the way Neo's mouth does in the interrogation scene in The Matrix), visually disturbing deaths, and female nudity. That last one isn't gross, but it's immediately followed by something that is. It's not gross, but it is mean.

This poor excuse for a screenplay doesn't do any of the actors any favors, but the acting just isn't very good, regardless. Harries is okay and you can see the possibilities of casting Harries during the climax scene in the nightclub. But most of the time he's very aggressively meh. Ackie fumbles around during her scenes, sometimes coming off as confident, other times come off timid and mousey. Minghella gives a performance equally as dry and bland as Dencik's performance is over-acted and hammy. The only memorable performance is that of the CGI team and that's not really a good thing in this case.

Hopefully, Clayface doesn't do to this young franchise what Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice did to the DCEU (i.e. mortally wound it). Unlike Superman and Supergirl, Clayface wasn't particularly expensive to make (somewhere in the $30 to $40 million range), so it probably won't hurt it at the box office. But, also unlike Superman and Supergirl, Clayface isn't fun to watch. Unless you're a fan of face-melting.

Rating: Ask for three-fourths of your money back and a barf bag.

"Klara and the Sun" - Pleasantville.

Klara and the Sun is the latest movie from filmmaker Taika Waititi. Chances are good you've seen at least one of his movies because he directed the last two Thor movies. You may also know him from his role as the villain Antwan in Free Guy or as the Oscar winning writer (and non-Oscar winning director) of Jojo Rabbit. No matter how you know of him, you probably liked at least one his movies. But you also are aware of how not-good was Thor: Love and Thunder. Like, really not good. Thankfully, Klara and the Sun hews much more toward Jojo Rabbit than Love and Thunder.

That's not to say Klara and the Sun isn't without problems. The film is adapted from a book of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro and a couple of people noted that it strays a bit from the book. They didn't elaborate on specifics, but did say that the book is much better than the film. That's not surprising in the least because 99.9 percent of all books are considered better than the movies (that remaining 0.1 percent are all of the Harry Potter movies).

Because I was curious, I read through the plot summary of the book on the related Wikipedia page, which describes the same major plot points that appear in the film. Klara (Jenna Ortega) is a robot known as an Artificial Friend (AF). She and other AFs pose in a store, hoping to be purchased so they can fulfill their role as someone's lifelong friend. One day, teenager Josie (Mia Tharia) spots Klara in the store's window and takes a liking to her. Josie convinces her mother Chrissie (Amy Adams) to buy Klara - despite Chrissie wanting to purchase a newer model robot from across the street - and Klara couldn't be happier.

Klara may be a robot, but her level of programming makes her the equivalent of a four-year-old. Since she had never left the store prior to meeting Josie and her entire knowledge-base is a combination of observing people through the store's window and what little the store manager (Natasha Lyonne) tells the AFs. Klara doesn't know how to navigate stairs, is terrified of walking through a wheat field, thinks the sun is a god who lives in a barn on top of a hill that she can see from Josie's house, and that automated street cleaners are monsters. It's adorable and you want Josie to ruffle Klara's hair on multiple occasions. Unfortunately, Chrissie is not amused with Klara. Chrissie is a no-nonsense mother who thinks Klara is an idiot, fully expecting to return Klara to the AF store within a week.

After Klara is taken to live with Josie and Chrissie, we learn that Josie had a past surgery known as lifting, a procedure that altered her DNA to make her super smart. The procedure also comes with the risk that the recipient can become fatally ill and, yes, turns out Josie is fatally ill. Upon learning this, Klara prays to the sun to heal Josie with its life-giving sunlight. Is that hair-rufflingly adorable or what?

Despite the movie's title and Josie's prognosis, this movie isn't really about Klara or Josie. It's about Chrissie. More specifically, it's about dealing with grief and loss. It turns out that Josie had a sister who died some time ago and Chrissie has not coped well with the loss. She drinks, she inhales some sort of drug, and she greenlit the lifting procedure on Josie to, in Chrissie's words, "give Josie every advantage possible." It's pretty obvious that the procedure was also intended to substitute for parenting. Ditto for bringing in Klara. Though, Chrissie has an ulterior motive for Klara that the film reveals later. Don't worry, it's nothing sinister. But it is the kind of thing that would piss off every teenager who ever lived.

All of that sounds pretty straight forward, but as I said, this film is not without problems. So much of the focus is on Klara and a plethora of other themes that the film's real plot often gets lost in so much noise. Besides family strife, the film touches on ideas like social classes, religious delusion, faith, individualism, self-image, slavery, discrimination, the Internet, World War III, jealousy, artificial intelligence, devices substituting for human contact, and pollution. Yeah...there's a lot of noise.

A lot of that noise is just that - noise. Take, for example, the social classes. Klara has a party and a bunch of other lifted kids are there. An entire scene plays out where the kids insult Klara, Josie, and Josie's un-lifted friend Rick (Aran Murphy). It's the only time in the film these kids are seen and does nothing to further the plot or speak to the relationship between Josie and Chrissie. Or another scene where Josie spots Rick giving Klara a piggy-back ride and becomes immediately jealous and suspicious that Klara is trying to steal Rick. Josie is super smart, but immediately forgets that Klara is a robot and an exceptionally naive one at that? Just, no. Klara may be an idiot, but Josie has been genetically modified to not be an idiot.

Luckily, the film has some good elements to balance out those problems. The most obvious one is Ortega's performance. She is absolutely believable as a naive robot, delivering every line and emotion with pure earnestness. I don't doubt for a moment that Klara truly believes the sun is a god, street cleaning machines are monsters, and wheat is scary. It's in every line of dialogue, every expression on her face, and every awkward step she takes in the fields or down the staircase. I also quite enjoyed a minor character simply called Scarecrow (Jesse Griffin), another robot whose entire job is exactly what his name says, but who also exhibits much of the same naivete as Klara. Then there's Adams, who is just killer as Chrissie. If you've ever wondered what "stares daggers with her eyes" really looks like, Adams demonstrates that expression multiple times. And that's when she's not showing Chrissie's vulnerability as a grieving mother trying to come to terms with losing another daughter.

While the movie could have been much better and more focused, I found myself mostly content with the film. The best way I can describe it is that it's is a pleasant movie. If nothing else, it's not Love and Thunder.

Rating: Ask for eight dollars back for all the noise.

"Whalefall" - Inner space.

Whalefall is probably the best movie one can make about a human being trying to survive being swallowed by a whale. That's not a compliment. Whalefall is not a very good movie. During the first half, I had a very strong urge to walk out of the theater, which is extremely rare for me. And I say that as someone who has sat through multiple entire Colleen Hoover movies. During the second half of Whalefall, I was laughing at how silly the movie became. But this movie isn't really about surviving a whale's digestive tract. It's about father and son relationships. Because nothing's as good a metaphor for father-son relationships as stomach acid and bile.

Let's get the big issue out of the way first - suspension of disbelief. Can a human survive being fully swallowed by a whale? No. Did I look into this at all? Of course I did. You think the guy whose top five movie concerns are plot, plot, character development, plot, and absolutely-no-Dakota-Johnson-ever-again wouldn't look up what's in whale innards?

But I didn't look it up so I could take the movie to task over it. It's the premise of the movie and I'm perfectly willing to accept the premise. Just like I'm willing to accept the premise of transforming alien robots or haunted dolls or Dwayne Johnson. I looked it up out of curiosity and discovered that (a) no and (b) the filmmakers added as much realism as they could, but they also took a lot of liberties because, again, no.

So how does this human end up in a whale's gullet? Jay (Austin Abrams) returns home for his father Mitt's (Josh Brolin) funeral. Mitt committed suicide by drowning himself off the coast and Jay decides to search for Mitt's body because "it's something I feel like I have to do." While Jay is searching the ocean floor, a sperm whale is trying to catch and eat a giant squid. As the whale is attempting to swallow the squid, the whale swims past Jay and the squid snatches Jay with one of its tentacles. I saw this entire chase sequence in a preview a couple of months ago and it is easily the highlight of the film. It's dramatic, it's intense, it's visually and auditorily fantastic. It's the kind of scene that's so well done you feel like you are experiencing every sensation that Jay feels and you find yourself peeling your fingernail out of the armrest of your seat after the screen cuts to black.

Before Jay wakes up, we're treated to the first of many flashbacks where a younger Jay is being berated by Mitt. Usually, he's being berated over scuba diving lessons or how the ocean is being destroyed by people or even just because Mitt condescends that aquariums are "fake ocean." These scenes aren't quite as uncomfortable as the scenes inside the whale, but they're in the same ballpark. If you had an overbearing father who was a mean drunk and verbally (if not physically) abusive, you might prefer the whale stomach scenes. On a related note, wow is Josh Brolin a good actor.

These flashback scenes aren't the reason I debated leaving the theater. About ten minutes into the scenes inside the whale, after Jay wakes up, my ick factor was through the roof. It's not that I can't handle body parts or gore or gross scenes in general. It's just that these scenes in particular repulsed everything in me and my brain went "Do you really want to sit through ninety more minutes of this?" I think it was the combination of the Dolby theater pumping the bodily sounds (muscular contractions, dripping, squishing) at a million decibels, Jay's panic-filled actions, the claustrophobic setting (Jay doesn't have much room to move around), and the visuals all working in the exact right way to trigger my flight response. Nothing about it was enjoyable and brain made sure I knew it.

I think that was the real reason for the flashbacks. From a narrative perspective, I know those flashbacks were for character development and metaphorically linking past events to each scene inside the whale. But really, it was to give our brains a break from the ick every few minutes. At least, it was until the movie decided to get an unintentional sense of humor.

Two scenes had me laughing out loud at their absurdity. The first was when the whale has half of its body sticking vertically out of the ocean and Jay is clinging to the whale's voice box, screaming for help at the top of his lungs at a distant boat filled with whale watchers (he can hear the boat and occasionally see it when the whale lowers its constantly-open-for-some-reason mouth). Hilariously, this scene is less silly than when Jay starts conversing with the whale and the whale is talking back in Mitt's voice. Obviously, this is meant to show Jay's reconciliation with his feelings about his dad. But it comes off like a pie to the face. Especially when it becomes a series of deus ex machinas. I think movies are allowed to have one deus ex machina, not six.

Ultimately, I made it through to the end of the film. I was glad it was over for multiple reasons and the ickiness ended up being the least of those reasons. A small reason was I annoyed at Jay for much of the movie for two things. (1) He decided to go searching for his father underwater, in a kelp field, on a cloudy, stormy day...without a flashlight. (2) He kept taking his goggles off inside the whale. Yeah, maybe his dad was onto something with all his berating. Mostly I was glad it was over because, throughout my viewing, I kept thinking of two other better movies that shared similarities with Whalefall. The first was Buried because it also featured a guy trapped in a tiny space trying to get out. The second was Innerspace, featuring Dennis Quaid zipping around inside Martin Short's body in a tiny little ship. Whalefall is the exact wrong ratio of Buried to Innerspace. For most of us, at least. Depends on how you feel about your father and/or whale guts.

Rating: Ask for twelve dollars back and don't say I didn't warn you.