Wafflings of a Cozmonaught

Divergent (2014 ) directed by Neil Burger -  Ah yes, the series that killed the YA dystopia hype. God, Divergent wants to be the Hunger Games badly. Sorry, but no. The Hunger Games would eat Divergent for lunch; pun intended.  Divergent is set in ruined Chicago and follows some politician’s 16 year old daughter, Tris, as she realizes she is “not like the other girls”. In this dystopian future, teens are sorted into “factions” which are basically houses from Harry Potter or districts from The Hunger Games. Our distinguished heroine is told by her sorting proctor that she is “divergent” aka she has an affinity for multiple factions—and that’s bad: “If you don’t fit into a category they can’t control you!” “I don’t get it.” Well I’m right there with you thrift store Katniss. Who tf is “they”? Proper nouns: use them. Also we learn later that divergents can be controlled, so that was a lie. Surely the point of our protagonist being “divergent” or there even being a divergent conce...

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) directed by Michael Chaves - If horror films could collectively stop acting like the cross of St. Peter is this ancient demonic symbol that would be great, thanks. TC:tDMMDI (try putting that on the back of the cereal box) is a movie that hits the ground running by starting literally mid-exorcism. Unfortunately it never really seems to know where it is running to. Whereas the first two films felt like a reasonably steady crescendo of events centered on a victim, this feels very much like a hodgepodge held together by gloss-over glue. “Because reasons” is a plot device that seems to be brought up a lot. Why must a demon need a soul to return to hell? Why did the demon jump bodies? Why in the heck does love suddenly have the power to pull a deus ex machina? Why is the baddie even doing what they are doing? None of these are too terribly well explained with easily missed throwaway lines of exposition being the most charitable answers proffere...

Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Alessandro Carloni - Kung Fu Panda 1 & 2 are some of my most beloved films; they’re guilty pleasures of mine for sure. Maybe it’s the nostalgia talking but the franchise had shown that it could mix just the right amount of emotion and light-heartedness to convey a profound universal message. Kung Fu Panda 3 never achieves that feeling though. It is silly but not funny -- loaded but not substantive. Also it retcons. Rather substantially in fact. So much so that it invalidates a key point of both the previous movies.  An antagonist who quite literally just pops in because reasons (maybe he’s on holiday from Naruto given that his abilities basically amount to the Rinnegan minus a few bits), magic that can be mastered in two seconds with the power of friendship, and an abundance of flippancy left me wanting.  Even the music and the art just don’t feel as endearing anymore. The stakes should have never been higher than...