Captain Marvel

The 21st film of the MCU and the first to cast a female lead, Captain Marvel also acts as a primer for the big event to come, Avengers Endgame (as seen in the mid-credits sting). I quite liked the film as a stand-alone prequel to most of the wider universe and the introduction of the Skrull-Kree war scenario opened things up a bit. I reckon I prefer the space MCU to the more Earth bound fare. Much has been made of Captain Marvel's feminist angle but rather than dive into gender politics, I, maybe naively, saw this as a well made superhero film first and a kick in the bollocks to the neanderthals second. Win-win.

Behind the camera, there's been a concerted effort to have women in important roles - Anna Boden as co-writer and director with Ryan Fleck, all of the other credited writers, music by Pinar Toprak, Debbie Berman as co-editor, and so on. In front of the camera, Brie Larson rips it up as tough, smart-arse fighter pilot Carol Danvers. Her best mate is another pilot, Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau, a black, single mother in a macho fuckwit world. Carol's mentor is Dr. Wendy Lawson, played by Annette Bening, who is one of the most multi-faceted characters in the whole MCU. And aside from these clearly defined female-led aspects of the story, you wouldn't know the gender of the aforementioned crew if you didn't watch the credits. Or even really need to.

Samuel L. Jackson is solid fun and you soon forget that he's basically a de-aged replicant of himself. Ben Mendelsohn is great as the Skrull leader, Talos. It's slightly odd but welcome to hear an Aussie accent in a film like this. Even Hemsworth goes faux-Gladiator as Thor. Jude Law was well cast. I'll leave that one there. It's also tidy to see Djimon Hounsou and Lee Pace pop up as Korath and Ronan the Accuser, the same characters they played in Guardians of the Galaxy.

A couple of misfires need to mentioned. As valid as the theme of female empowerment is, there was a montage underlining Danvers' tenacity that felt like a TV commercial for women's cricket. And the 90s jukebox soundtrack was up and down for me. Elastica up, Salt-N-Pepa down. I reckon they may have overreached musically in an attempt to emulate the Guardians films.

I enjoyed the fact that Stan Lee was reading the script to Mallrats on the train. He made an appearance in that film in 1995, the year Captain Marvel is set. Chaos is a ladder indeed, Littlefinger.

See also:

Hmmm, maybe an early Mendo film, Idiot Box (1996), directed by David Caeser and Kevin Smith's Clerks (1994), which links Mallrats, the 90s and video stores. Job done.

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The Guilty

Once more to the Luna in Leederville to see The Guilty, a Danish real-time thriller set in a police  emergency dispatch office. It's directed by first-timer, Gustav Moller and stars Jacob Cedergren and.....well, he's pretty much it, aside from a handful of voices over the phone. This may sound a bit boxed-in, a bit restricted, but that's the point of the film. It plays on the audience's helplessness by NOT showing us anything except Cedergren's character, Asger's creeping sense of futility.

Sensibly, there's more at play than just an emergency and the problems of Asger himself run somewhat parallel to the abduction that pivots the film. Slices of information are fed to the viewer at intervals regarding what has happened (and what is about to happen) to Asger and this leaves us to build the flanking narratives as they occur. Setting this film in a couple of rooms makes it tricky to show the 'action' but Moller has dealt with this by regular slow zooms into Asger's implacably resolute face while nailing the timing of the calls or interruptions.

The Guilty joins a select list of films that run in real time. Not one continuous shot, like Victoria or Russian Ark (or edited one shot's, like Rope or Birdman) but films that play out in the exact time it takes us to watch them. High Noon does it, but the scale is greater. 12 Angry Men gets a little closer to the cramped feeling of The Guilty, United 93 possibly even closer. Locke is set in a car (haven't seen, so can't really judge) but I reckon Phone Booth takes the biscuit for real-time claustrophobia films. Pretty niche genre, I know.

See also:

For real-time films, I can't go past Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957) and for superb Danish cinema, Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt (2012). Both excellent films.

SPOILERS IN POD!!!

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