By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
Slam! Bam! Pow! “Captain Marvel,” the first female-led installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is so action-packed that there’s barely room for a coherent origin saga.
On the futuristic planet Hala, Vers (Brie Larson) is a Kree soldier being trained by Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) to control her emotions, instead of shooting powerful photon blasts from her glowing fists.
When she’s captured by green-skinned, lizardlike, shape-shifting Skrulls, General Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) probes her mind for memories on primitive Planet C-53 (aka Earth).
In the 1995 back story, Vers crash-lands through the roof of a Blockbuster Video store on C-53, wearing her Starforce uniform, drawing the attention of skeptical cop Nick Fury (digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson), who’s an undercover S.H. I. E. L. D agent and devoted to a ginger cat.
While searching for her mentor, Tesseract inventor Dr. Wendy Lawson (slyly played by Annette Bening), amnesia-stricken Vers is reunited with her best friend, Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), who has a feisty little daughter (Akira Akbar).
Maria tells Vers that she was Carol Danvers, an adventurous test pilot in an era when females were not allowed in combat: “You know why they call it the cockpit?” And repeatedly warned: “Girls shouldn’t do that,” “It’s too dangerous for you,” or “You’ll get hurt.”
While Larson won an Oscar for “Room,” she’s no Wonder Woman, although she banked $5 million in a seven-picture deal — $3 million more than Chadwick Boseman for “Black Panther.”
Perfunctorily scripted by directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck with Geneva Robertson-Dwore, Nicole Perlman & Meg LaFauve, it’s a sturdy, low-key, retro-nostalgic, sci-fi prequel to “Avengers: Endgame,” as Captain Marvel joins Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and The Hulk.
Problem is: the use of stunt doubles is all too obvious, and Brie Larson lacks superhero gravitas, looking a bit too much like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Captain Marvel” is an underwhelming, escapist 6 — but stay for two significant post-credit sequences.
Meticulously assembled by director Todd Douglas Miller and a team of archivists/editors, the new documentary “Apollo 11” delves into the details of space exploration and NASA.
Tracing the Apollo 11 mission from launch to splashdown, it recaptures the suspense, excitement and drama of Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind” a half-century ago.
Beginning with the crawler-transporter hauling the massive Saturn V rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the Cape Kennedy launchpad, it details the complicated tasks the team had to execute in order to succeed in their historic eight-day mission, inspired by John F. Kennedy’s rousing 1961 challenge:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon — and returning him safely to Earth.”
Never-before-seen material shows the astronauts donning their spacesuits, the 500 men and one woman (JoAnn Morgan) in Mission Control and the 18-day quarantine when they returned.
As Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin move around the lunar surface, they describe what they’re seeing and experiencing. “(This) is a way to see it as I still see it in my memories,” notes Aldrin.
Todd Douglas Miller utilizes stunning 65-mm found-footage and excerpts from 11,000 hours of uncataloged Mission Control audio recordings that were discovered in the National Archives, employing split-screens and countdown clocks, set to Matt Morton’s background score.
“The film quality was so good, we didn’t have to do much to it,” Miller noted after analyzing the 165 Panavision reels. Surviving Mission Control participants, along with astronauts Michael Collins and Aldrin, served as consultants.
FYI: The 40-minute IMAX version will be released to museums on May 17, and CNN will broadcast “Apollo 11” in July.
On the Granger Gauge, “Apollo 11” is an awe-inspiring 8, an immersive cinematic achievement marking its 50th Anniversary.
How did a concussion injury become a romantic comedy cliché? Following “What Men Want,” “Isn’t It Romantic” is the second cinematic instance in 2019 when a woman’s life suddenly changes — for the better — after she suffers a brain injury.
Natalie (Rebel Wilson) is an Australian architect who works in Manhattan designing parking garages. While an admiring co-worker, Josh (Adam Devine), believes in her, the firm’s new real estate magnate client, billionaire Blake (Liam Hemsworth), mistakes Natalie for the coffee girl.
Although her supportive, sentimental assistant Whitney (Betty Gilpin) loves romantic comedies, cynical Natalie stopped believing in that kind of fantasy years ago after her mother (Jennifer Saunders) told her that plus size girls who look like her don’t experience the kind of sappy romance found in Hollywood’s dream machine: “Rom-coms are toxic.”
Then one night, after thwarting a mugger, Natalie smashes into a metal beam in a subway station and is knocked out. When she awakens, she’s in her own delusionary rom-com.
Suddenly, an ER doctor (Tom Ellis) flirts with her, the Big Apple smells like lavender and her surroundings are beautiful: “This isn’t an emergency room; this is Williams Sonoma.”
When she gets home, Natalie’s dingy, dilapidated apartment in an outer borough has become swanky and spacious, her closet filled with superbly tailored clothes. Debonair Blake is suddenly smitten, whisking Natalie off for dinner on his yacht.
And Josh, who’s never had a girlfriend, is set to marry a seductive swimsuit model/yoga ambassador (Priyanka Chopra). Plus, there are a couple of Bollywood’ish flash mob numbers.
Formulaically scripted by Katie Silberman, Dana Fox and Erin Cardillo and directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson, it evokes the ‘concussive’ concept that’s been around since Mark Twain wrote “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and recalls Amy Schumer’s “I Feel Pretty.”
On the Granger Movie Gauge, “Isn’t It Romantic” is a silly, satirical 6, yet subtly subversive.
(Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
