Watching “Hero” is just me saying, “This is my favorite part!” thirty times, and then it’s over.

Hero is a martial arts film about a figure called Nameless who claims to have killed three would-be assassins of the King of Qin. By bringing their swords to the king, Nameless can get within ten paces of the throne. The truth unfolds as Nameless tells his story.

This is in my top 10 favorite films of all time, even though I extremely disagree with its politics.

It turns out I actually don’t mind imperialist propaganda if it’s awesome.

In the style of Rashomon, Hero proceeds through three intertwined narratives: the stories Nameless first tells the king, the king’s interpretations of the story, and then the truth.

Every narrative is punctuated by distinctive martial arts sequences with different palettes. This remains one of the most visually stunning movies ever, twenty-one years after its American release. (Fun fact: Quentin Tarantino talked Miramax into releasing Hero in the USA.)

The use of CGI is sparing relative to modern movies. You can see where it’s used (mostly in water effects), but it kinda makes the places they didn’t use CGI even more impressive. The color themes are mostly achieved through set dressing and costuming rather than heavy-handed grading. Huge numbers of extras are used in the king’s palace and battle sequences. The divine casting allows for much of the fighting to be performed by the lead actors themselves.

Such killer visuals and a majestic score demand a worthy story, and the “he said/she said” story is beyond elegant. Most of what you learn about the characters telling their stories is expressed through the differences in the way they’re told. It’s paced brilliantly.

I disagree with the philosophy so much, though. Everything is in service of an autocratic message. Characters die to support the empire. We’re meant to believe this king-led war is noble, the king himself is soft-hearted, and all the dying is worth it. It goes against everything I believe politically.

Even so.

I often say, “I like movies that are good,” and I’m sorta joking…but not really. I will watch any genre. I don’t have a lot of preferences outside seeing art executed with intention, skill, and meaning. The meaning of this one is wholly unpalatable to me, but God, does it do it well.

Not once in my entire life have I looked as cool as Nameless walking away from something. Not even once.

(Image: Beijing New Picture Film)

Materialists is about a late-30s matchmaker who fundamentally doesn’t believe in love because she thinks she’s a bad person. She doesn’t value herself, so she can’t value anyone else, and she insincerely walks through her job saying things about love that feel hollow to her. She’s good at her job because the hollow things are generally true. She just can’t put anything into it.

Two men enter her life at a time when her job gets hard. She used to date one, and she dumped him because she didn’t value what he could offer. She tries dating the one who is “good on paper,” but ultimately doesn’t value what he offers either (which is actually economic security, in this case).

The heroine must learn to value herself in order to value her poor ex-boyfriend’s offering, which is simply love.

You’ll notice I keep saying the word “value.” That’s because the characters do, too. Materialists, in its title and screenwriting, is not going for subtlety of message.

I don’t expect a lot out of romantic movies (whether romcom or romdrama). What I want is a happily ever after, chemistry between the leads, and a fundamental belief in the redemptive power of love.

Materialists gave me two out of three of those. I never believed the chemistry. The other two are the more important elements, so that’s okay.

The acting is…not good. None of the leads seemed comfortable with the highly stylized dialogue. Please note it’s not *bad* dialogue; it’s just definitely not the way people actually talk, and everyone is talking to the theme of the movie, using the same keywords. And the lead trio simply do not sell it.

Their acting was worst when it needed the highest intensity, too. I swear, none of the actors believed what they were saying. Pedro Pascal’s emotional moment seemed almost like he was laughing at the material instead of crying with vulnerability. I think Chris Evans hated the way his character talked to Dakota Johnson’s.

Even so.

It’s quite a good script (which was not a good fit for these generally competent actors). I liked the airy editing and the gentle pacing. It had nice music. I enjoyed the themes that they were uncomfortably talking around.

My takeaway was pleasant because it’s hard to get fussed about a movie that does, genuinely, believe in love. Even poorly delivered dialogue doesn’t kneecap the heroine’s character arc.

It’s got a bit of a dreamy feeling, not unlike Serendipity. It’s a lot warmer and less cynical than basically anything post-Pretty Woman in Julia Roberts’s career. It has the grounded look at real love of a Reese Witherspoon movie. And the filmmaking of an Oscar nominee, of course.

I usually watch romcoms around the holidays, and Materialists will fit nicely in my rotation, which is the highest compliment I can pay. I think this will age well and perform favorably in the context of other romcoms. It’s not exactly an enthusiastic four star, but a very comfortable one.

(image credit: A24)

If this movie’s production was a money laundering scheme, does that mean someone can be prosecuted for the existence of Red One?

I haven’t seen a movie with such ineffective dialogue in a long time. It’s an unending line of uncomplicated events with characters existing in one set piece after another. I sincerely wondered how much of this was written by AI.

It is madness to pay enough to get a charismatic talent like JK Simmons and then give him this dialogue.

There are shallow character arcs for Chris Evans (who grows during his plot ride-along, though it’s totally unearned) and for The Rock, who frowns a lot. I imagined gay stuff happening between them, and that carried me through about an hour of the absurdly unjustified two hour runtime. Bear in mind that I can imagine gay things happening between anyone. There was no vibes, warmth, or genuine connection going on. They showed up to collect paychecks. I’m just really good at making anything gay to entertain myself. I enjoyed Argylle.

Highlights in this cast of paycheck-collectors include Kiernan Shipka, whose casting as a witch was spit out by an AI casting director, and Lucy Liu, who is fearless in the face of trash ever since Ecks vs Sever. Both of them look extremely hot. Good for you, ladies.

On the bright side, forked-tongue daddy Krampus seems designed specifically to get middle aged monster-loving moms horny, and I can get behind that type of pandering.

It feels pointless to complain about the Christofascism of a Christmas fantasy movie. I saw “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” There’s such a precedent for this. You already can imagine Red One’s global hegemony supporting corpo-Christian mythology without seeing it. This is a world where myths range from “American capitalism” all the way to “German-themed scary woman” and “Puritan-era spooky spook.” We can assume from the figures presented (billions of Christmas-celebrating households!) mean this Christian mythology encompasses the planet.

Fine.

If you like mushy dark Marvel-esque visuals with an urban fantasy twist, fine!

It’s possible the score was actually the worst part of this movie. It was intrusive and lacked any character whatsoever, like everything else about Red One. The score somehow just…really drove home for me the soullessness of what I was watching.

I kinda wish I was more offended by Red One because it would have meant I had more feelings about it. I wish I felt like anyone had been passionate about it. If we’re going to compare CG-heavy action movies with overblown budgets, hot women, and thin stories from 2024, I still prefer Argylle. Isn’t that bananas?

The one star of this review goes entirely to Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Liu, and Krampus’s forked tongue.

(image credit: Amazon)

I decided chronistic should be in use as an antonym for anachronistic. Die Hard is intensely chronistic. It’s so 1988, it couldn’t have existed at any other time without dramatic differences.

A year later and the Berlin Wall fell — deeply relevant in regards to attitudes towards German characters.

Three years later, Rodney King faced police brutality; in the movie, a prominent Black police character has been working the desk beat, so to speak, for killing a child. Attitudes would shift.

Thirteen years later and terrorism is synonymous with 9/11, Al Qaida, etc. The fight up and down a tower would be different.

Witty, clever John McClane is also in conversation with earlier action heroes, meaning he wouldn’t have been the same at an earlier date. I mean, literally, he couldn’t have been the same – he was originally intended to be played by Frank Sinatra. But he also fundamentally inverts certain stoic hero tropes.

The technology in the movie – the novelty of early touch screens; Argylle’s car phone – is just so darn 1988.

Attitudes toward California and hero cops is perhaps a bit more timeless in America (or at least not as narrow). Demonizing the federal level police while lionizing local police is interesting. But the way McClane just laughed off a man kissing him as being gross gay California stuff (homophobic, but not violently so, very good-natured) is also a microcosm.

Of course this is probably my favorite Christmas movie, warts and all. It might be the very best example of traditional screenwriting. It’s executed like clockwork. Everything matters. Causal chains are incredible.

Alan Rickman is the most delicious villain. I wouldn’t have been mad if he won.

My sibling and I watch this every Christmas season. It’s a holiday essential. This year was the first time my teenager watched with us, and they didn’t say they especially liked it, but they were RIVETED. Die Hard is extremely not-boring. The one thing my teen said they liked was the intensity of the gay-ass vibes between McClane and Gruber (very much my child). You could write entire essays just about McClane and Gruber as foils, but if I tried to do it, it would quickly devolve into naughty fanfic, so I shall resist.

(image credit: 20th Century Fox)

I went through a phase where I became a male revue connoisseur. In my defense, going to male revues is a great way to see a lot of hot women dressed up for a night out, drunk and having a great time. I developed a hierarchy of male revue quality, from least to best: Thunder from Down Under, Chippendales, and Magic Mike in Vegas.

The thing about Thunder and Chipp is that these aren’t really interesting shows at all, period. A bunch of beefcakes wear costumes and take their shirts off and dispassionately thrust. They can’t really dance. (Bear in mind this opinion is from around 2017 and may no longer reflect reality.) It’s pretty well sexless, all things considered. At least Magic Mike has a narrative, the guys can dance, and there’s some excitement to it.

If I were to place the revue in The Merry Gentleman in those rankings, I’d put it dead last. The dudes barely dance, much like Thunder, but there are fewer of them, and they seem to be having even less fun. Or am I having no fun because I’m not drunk among a bunch of hot middle aged women?

There’s never any sense of fun in this, period. The romance is also not very romancey. The male lead is kinda wounded because…his girl left him to go back to the city. And the female lead wants to maybe…go back to the city. He is SO HURT and BETRAYED. She chooses to stay so he won’t be all hurt. That’s…kind of the whole thing.

It feels like it was written by someone who doesn’t actually understand how romances work. It’s not really enough for two ostensibly attractive people to coexist until they decide to Be Together. Not all conflicts are created equally. This genuinely would have benefited from being a lot more tropey and formulaic!

I won’t be revisiting this one on future Christmases. If I want to be bored watching shirtless men, I can just swipe TikTok for a few hours. At least they have some energy.