BLUE BEETLE (2023) stars Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes, living in a poor part of the Florida keys that’s now facing gentrification at the hands of Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), disgruntled sister of the late Ted. After Ted steered Kord Enterprises away from munitions and military contracting, Victoria’s now out to reverse course, using the Blue Beetle scarab as the template for her cyborg One Man Army corps. Only guess who winds up in possession of the scarab?
This was a lot of fun, particularly Jaime’s formidable grandmother (“Some day I will explain to you about her revolutionary past.”) and I respect their effort to work in not only Ted but Dan Garrett without making it unintelligible to newbies. It would double bill well with the Zachary Levi Shazam as they both involve the heroes’ families getting in on the action. “The universe knows it’s you. I know it’s you. You know it as well.”
THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) hooked me from the opening sequence in which Elizabeth Moss sneaks away from her husband, obviously in terror he’ll wake up and catch her. Once away she builds a new life with her sister and sister’s family but so many weird things start happening: work vanishes from her portfolio, someone drugs her bottled water, there are emails sent from her computer she didn’t write. Slowly Moss starts to realize her abusive, gaslighting scientist husband has found a terrifying use for his expertise in optics …
This shows how much power there is in old tropes when they’re done well. Here, Moss’s husband is a monster even when he’s just human; invisibility simply ramps up his capacity to stalk and hurt her. Lives up to all its good reviews, though if any of this is likely to trigger you, perhaps it’s better to stay away. “The only thing more brilliant than inventing something that turns you invisible is not inventing something but making you believe he did.”
Francois Truffaut’s MISSISSIPPI MERMAID (1969) is an oddball film in which colonial planter Jean-Paul Belmondo is initially thrilled to discover his mail-order bride is Catherine Deneuve. Why, he’s so happy he eventually puts her name down on all his bank accounts and financial paperwork … oops. Eventually Belmondo hunts her down in France but it turns out the chemistry between them may be stronger than the things that set them at each other’s throats. The results are oddly romantic, as if Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck had gone off together at the end of Double Indemnity. Enjoyable even so. “I made you believe that I had fallen in the bathroom.”
#SFWApro. Cover by Duncan Rouleau, all rights to images remain with current holders.
