We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS (2022)
When it was first announced that the 2016 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange was going to be getting a sequel, the plan was that Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson would remain at the helm – and that he would be making the sequel, called Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the “first scary movie” in the MCU. But there was a creative shake-up as the project made its way toward production. Derrickson and Marvel had different visions for the film, as Derrickson wanted it to primary focus on the “fear lord” villain Nightmare, who rules over the dimension of nightmares, while Marvel wanted this to be a follow-up to the Disney+ series WandaVision that could pave the way for the multiverse-crossing events of Spider-Man: No Way Home. So Derrickson stepped away, while still retaining an executive producer credit... and while the creative issues meant that Spider-Man: No Way Home ended up being made and released before the Doctor Strange sequel, Marvel made the very interesting choice of hiring Sam Raimi, director of the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy and creator of the Evil Dead franchise, to replace Derrickson at the helm of the Doctor Strange follow-up. And, in doing so, gave my interest in and excitement for the project a significant boost. I like Derrickson, he has made some great movie... but Raimi is one of my favorite filmmakers. A cinematic hero.
Working with Loki series writer Michael Waldron, Raimi crafted a Doctor Strange sequel that gave Marvel what they were looking for while still delivering what could be called the “first scary movie” in the MCU – and he brought it all to the screen with that distinctly amazing and amusing Sam Raimi style.
At the heart of the story is a teen girl named America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), who has the ability to punch her way through dimensions when she’s frightened. She discovered this ability in a heartbreaking way, accidentally sending her moms into another dimension that she has never been able to locate... and now, her ability has made her the target of monstrous creatures that have been chasing her from world to world. As the film begins, we see sorcerer Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) trying to protect her from a monster while seeking a powerful spellbook called the Book of Vishanti, a magical tome of pure good. Strange decides that he has to kill America to keep her powers away from this creature – but the creature kills him before he can kill the girl and America moves on to another world. A world that happens to be inhabited by the version of Doctor Strange that we know from his previous appearances. This Doctor Strange decides to protect her with the help of Sorcerer Supreme Wong (Benedict Wong), who gives her shelter at Kamar-Taj, a community in the Himalayas where sorcerers are trained.
Strange and Wong are quickly able to deduce that the creatures that have been chasing America have been sent by someone practicing witchraft... which leads them right to Strange’s fellow Avenger Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), a.k.a. the Scarlet Witch. In WandaVision, Wanda had taken over a small town where she intended to live out her sitcom-inspired fantasy life of being married to her late android love Vision and raising twin sons, Billy and Tommy (Julian Hilliard and Jett Klyne). Although Billy and Tommy faded out of existence when Wanda gave up that fantasy, she knows they really do exist in other universes and she’s seeking to get her children back by using spells from the Darkhold, the Book of the Damned – which is basically the Marvel version of the Necronomicon, the book of the damned from Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise. And she needs America’s dimension-hopping abilities to make it all work.
And that’s the story. It’s the Scarlet Witch pursuing America across our world and others while Strange tries to keep the kid safe. It’s a simple set-up for some great, reality-bending action sequences... and since the story involves a superhero-turned-evil-witch causing death and destruction, it gives Raimi plenty of chances to work in some Evil Dead-esque horror elements. There’s a great assault on Kamar-Taj, where Wanda wipes out sorcerers and is able to emerge through reflections, whether they be in metal surfaces or puddles of water. She gains the ability to become a “Dreamwalker,” which is said to be corrosive to the soul and allows the Dreamwalker to project their consciousness from their own universe to possess the body of an alternate self in another universe. She uses this power to chase Strange and America into another universe where they cross paths with a group of heroes called the Illuminati – and her alternate body takes a beating from those heroes, leaving her a dirty, bloody, limping mess... but she still relentlessly goes after her enemies. There’s also demons, the Spirits of the Damned, and a sequence where Strange has to possess the decaying corpse of a dead, alternative universe version of himself.
The Illuminati was a cool addition to the story, as we get cameos from Patrick Stewart as a version of his Professor Xavier character from the X-Men films, Lashana Lynch as a version of her Captain Marvel character Maria Rambeau (and this one actually became Captain Marvel herself), Hayley Atwell as a version of her Captain America character Peggy Carter who was dosed with super soldier serum and became Captain Carter, Anson Mount as a version of his character Blackagar Boltagon / Black Bolt from the short-lived TV series Inhumans (which I haven’t seen yet), and John Krasinski as Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four. This was Richards’ first time appearing in an MCU movie, and it doesn’t go well for him. Also in the mix is Chiwetel Ejiofor as an alternative universe version of his Doctor Strange character Karl Mordo. The Mordo of Strange’s home universe dedicated his life to wiping out sorcerers at the end of the previous movie, but we don’t get a follow-up on that storyline. The only Mordo we see here is the one from another universe. At one point, the Mordo our Strange is familiar with was supposed to make an appearance, only to get decapitated by Wanda. But, since that’s not the finished film, he’s still out there, waiting for his story to be resolved.
Some interesting characters that were considered for the film but didn’t make it in there would have been a version of Tony Stark / Iron Man played by Tom Cruise (since Cruise had a near-miss with the Iron Man movie in the ‘90s) and Daniel Craig as an Asgardian called Balder the Brave, a brother of Thor who wasn’t featured in the Thor movies. That would have been cool, but it wasn’t to be.
In his world, Strange's ex-girlfriend Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) has just gotten married to another man. In the world of the Illuminati, he meets a different Christine who gets caught up in the Scarlet Witch action – and as the adventure goes on, he even has to fight an evil version of himself (Sinister Strange), with their encounter including a very clever moment where they actually battle each other with musical notes. A situation that must have been fun for composer Danny Elfman to score.
Although it was a hit that drew in nearly a billion dollars at the box office, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has caught a lot of grief from fans. Some didn’t like the story and would have preferred Derrickson’s approach, some didn’t like how it handled Wanda and followed WandaVision, some are disappointed by the Illuminati, some find Raimi’s stylistic tricks to be cheesy... but this Raimi fan has a blast watching the movie. Sure, it would have been nice to get an update on the proper Mordo, I do want to see Strange face off with Nightmare, and hope that Wanda will someday return to get her full redemption. But it’s a joy for me to see Raimi’s horror sensibilities get mixed with the MCU superhero world in an action-packed horror adventure that introduces variations of heroic characters only to quickly kill them off.
Plus, there’s a Bruce Campbell cameo!
DEXTER: NEW BLOOD (2021 – 2022)
For eight seasons, the Showtime series Dexter followed the story of serial killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), who had a day job working as a blood spatter analyst at the Miami Metro Police Department and a hobby of tracking down and murdering people who had gotten away with murder themselves. This all built up to one of the most unpopular series finales of all time, with Dexter deciding to send his young son Harrison off to live in Argentina with his serial killer girlfriend Hannah while he faked his death in a hurricane and went off to work as a lumberjack. Plus, the series finale also killed off Dexter’s adoptive sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter), a character who deserved much better than what she got. Fans were so disappointed with the ending of the show, Hall and Clyde Phillips, who served as showrunner on the first four seasons of Dexter, decided to revive the series with a ten episode limited series called Dexter: New Blood.
Coming along eight years after the original series ended, New Blood catches up to Dexter ten years or so after he faked his death. He’s living in a small town in New York, working in a sporting goods store, going by the name Jim Lindsay... and, in a very dumb move, he’s dating the local chief of police, Angela Bishop (Julia Jones). He sent Harrison and Hannah away because he felt that people weren’t safe around him, but now that they’re out of his life, he’s making friends with everyone in town and dating a cop. Dexter hasn’t killed anyone since the original series finale... but, of course, by the end of the first episode of New Blood he has crossed paths with another person who meets the rules of “the Code” he follows and ends up killing them.
This murder coincides with a teenage Harrison (Jack Alcott) coming into his life, revealing that Hannah has died of cancer and he was forced to be on his own for a while. Harrison seems to fit in at the local high school quite well. He makes friends, he joins the wrestling team, and even strikes up a relationship with Angela’s daughter, Audrey (Johnny Sequoyah). But it soon becomes apparent that Harrison has violent tendencies of his own... and while dealing with his son’s issues, Dexter also has to deal with the police activity he has stirred up by getting back into the murder game, avoid catching the attention of true crime podcaster Molly Park (Jamie Chung)... and figure out who has been abducting and murdering down-on-their-luck women in the area.
Clancy Brown turns in a great performance as local man Kurt Caldwell, who runs a truck stop, happens to be the father of the person Dexter kills in the first episode... and has some very dark and twisted secrets of his own.
Dexter: New Blood has a different style and setting than its predecessor series and, since there’s a new supporting cast around the title character, it makes for a different viewing experience than the original Dexter – but it’s a solid follow-up, and I still enjoyed my time hanging out with this troubled guy. Hall isn’t the only returning cast member, as Carpenter reprises the role of Deb, who is now sticking around as Dexter’s conscience, and David Zayas makes a couple of appearances as one of my favorite characters from the original show, Miami homicide detective Angel Batista. Throughout the original series, Dexter would also imagine that he was speaking to his adoptive father Harry (James Remar), a cop who taught him “the Code.” Surprisingly, Remar was not brought back to film anything for New Blood. The last time we saw him on the original show, he said, “You don’t need me anymore,” and apparently that was very true. Dexter never imagined him again.
This limited series was great for most of its episodes. But then we get to the finale, and Phillips’ attempt to give Dexter a more satisfying ending than the original show gave him. He didn’t pull it off. Fans were once again disappointed – which is why this series wasn’t the end of Dexter after all. The show goes on.
WOLF MAN (2025)
Back in 2020, writer/director Leigh Whannell and Blumhouse Productions teamed up for an update of the classic Universal horror property The Invisible Man that clearly connected with movie-goers, raking in almost $140 million at the global box office right on the edge of the pandemic. Five years later, Whannell and Blumhouse have reteamed for another update of a classic Universal horror property with Wolf Man... and what they did to this one clearly did not connect. The movie struggled to even pass the $30 million mark at the box office. And it’s not difficult to understand why. Whannell was asked to bring the wolf man into modern day, and he did so in a strange, almost baffling way.
Scripted by Whannell and his wife Corbett Tuck, the new Wolf Man begins with text on the screen informing us that a hiker went missing in the mountains of central Oregon back in 1995. This hiker would be sighted from time to time after that, and his appearance and behavior led some to speculate that he had caught an animal-borne virus called Hills Fever – or, as the local Indigenous people called it, the Face of the Wolf. This sets up the fact that Whannell basically approached this story as a virus movie rather than a werewolf movie.
Christopher Abbott stars as Blake Lovell, a man who was raised in central Oregon by a very intense, over-protective father. Like the hiker, Blake’s father went missing in the wilderness. Now, the man has been declared dead and Blake has inherited the old farmhouse he grew up in. He heads out to the property with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and their young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth)... but before they can even get there, they’re attacked by a humanoid figure that comes out of the woods, making them crash their moving truck, tearing into a hunter they crossed paths with, and scratching Blake on the arm.
The family is able to get shelter in the farmhouse. And while the mysterious creature lurks outside, Blake gradually transforms into... something else. Sure, it’s being called a new iteration of the wolf man, but the designs of both the attacking monster and the one that Blake eventually becomes is very underwhelming. Whannell came up with a new wolf man that isn’t going to match anyone else’s idea of the wolf man.
Taking place over one night and focusing on characters that are trapped in a farmhouse, this Wolf Man feels more like a zombie movie than a werewolf movie for most of its running time. Especially with the wolf curse being presented as something virus-like. There were times when I started thinking that this Wolf Man remake could have just as easily been marketed as a Night of the Living Dead remake, but with less characters and a “flesh eater” that has been lurking in the woods for thirty years. Thankfully, things get wolfier toward the end of the film... but it’s too little too late.
After being impressed by what Whannell did with The Invisible Man, I was very disappointed by his Wolf Man. I doubt I’m going to have many, if any, rewatches of this movie.
MS. MARVEL (2022)
Pakistani-Canadian teen Iman Vellani was a Marvel super-fan before she was cast to make her screen acting debut as a Marvel character who was an absolutely perfect match for her: Pakistani-American teen Kamala Khan, who is an Avengers super-fan (Captain Marvel is her favorite) before she becomes the superhero known as Ms. Marvel, the first Muslim character to get their own title at Marvel Comics. This character didn’t come along until 2014, so her introduction was too recent for me to be familiar with her – but through watching Vellani bring her to life on the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, I became a fan.
The six-episode series is a teenage coming-of-age story that also happens to have regular bursts of action. When we meet Kamala, she’s not having a great time. She crashes the car during her driving test and she’s getting a lot of grief from the adults in her life for being a “ fantasizing, unrealistic daydreamer,” much like her grandmother Sana (Samina Ahmad). Her mom, Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) is concerned about her because she has seen “what happens when people get obsessed with their fantasies.” But that doesn’t stop Kamala from spending her time doodling Avengers adventures and planning to go to AvengerCon in Captain Marvel cosplay – even though her mom doesn’t want her going in public in such a skimpy outfit. Her dad Yusuf (Mohan Kapur) offers to go to AvengerCon with her as a Hulk-themed duo, but Kamala shoots him down like a typical teenager, inadvertently hurting his feelings in the process. She’s forbidden to go to AvengerCon – but she sneaks out and goes anyway, adding a bangle that her grandmother had shipped to her home to her Captain Marvel costume. Muneeba had brushed this bangle off as junk, but this object happens to activate powers that Kamala unknowingly already had within her, allowing her to project constructs of cosmic energy. This is a change from the source material, as the comic book character was part of the race of super beings known as the Inhumans (and later revealed to be an Inhuman/mutant hybrid, as the TV series teases that she is a mutant) and has the power to enhance her size and elongate her limbs, like a mixture of Ant-Man and Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four. But these comic powers pretty much allow her to do the same thing, and they’re a cool visual.
Kamala starts training to master her powers and tries to figure out her superhero name (some people call her Night Light), while balancing all of that with doing teenage activities alongside her friends Bruno Carrelli (Matt Lintz) and Nakia Bahadir (Yasmeen Fletcher), and developing a crush on an older boy named Kamran (Rish Shah). But, public displays of her power not only catch the attention of agents P. Cleary (Arian Moayed) and Sadie Deever (Alysia Reiner) from the Department of Damage Control, but also the attention of a group of enhanced beings called the Clandestines, headed up by Kamran’s mother Najma (Nimra Bucha), who say they are Djinns that were exiled from the Noor dimension – and they want to use Kamala’s bangle to open a portal back to the Noor dimension.
As the story plays out, Kamala ends up travelling from her home in New Jersey to see her grandmother Karachi, Pakistan (which also happens to be where Iman Vellani was born), where she crosses paths with a group of vigilantes called the Red Daggers and, in one episode, even gets sent back in time to 1942, where she meets up with her grandmother, then a child, and realizes she was the reason why her grandmother has been telling fantastical stories for decades.
Carried by an endearing performance from Vellani, who was given a great supporting cast to work with, Ms. Marvel is a really entertaining show with some cool action sequences, great comedic scenes, and an interesting story. I also liked the soundtrack, especially when the likes of “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd, “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes, and “Livin’ on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi came up.
I wasn’t familiar with Ms. Marvel before watching this show, but I didn’t have to see much of it before I was counting myself as a fan of the character. In the end, I was left looking forward to seeing what she’ll do in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as times goes on.
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