Thor: Love & Thunder

I must admit to reflexively preferring Star Trek's classification of the Gods, in the age old episode of The Original Series where the Enterprise's crew encounters Apollo.

He had to leave Earth long ago and set out to the Heavens in search of worshippers, along with his Greek and Roman brethren, eventually settling on an isolated planet.

Upon encountering the crew of the Enterprise, he seeks to coerce their admiration, but the imaginative space-faring ill-disposed citizens soon find a way to outmanoeuvre him.

Thor is rather chill for a God preferring to sleep in and engage in horseplay, when the people need him he courageously responds but otherwise disdains regal pomp and pageantry. 

Thus, he fits in well with laidback demonstrative interstellar particularities, and is much easier to actively root for than someone demanding obedience and loyalty.

I thought it was cool that Marvel included the less widely known Norse Gods in its narratives, because it was fun to learn more about them while watching the athletically staged theatrics.

But Love & Thunder introduces every God the all and sundry you can possibly imagine (even Q: The Wingéd Serpent), it's out of touch with the creative genius that led to the X-Men and the Avengers.

The abundant Gods no longer seek worship but rather inhabit a far off realm, where they lounge about and entertain as decorum permits with unheralded alacrity. 

Thor fittingly disrupts their balanced order keeping in tune with contemporary shenanigans, functioning in a similar way to Captain Kirk in that Star Trek episode from long ago.

Marvel and D.C's creative brilliance has no doubt been proven time and again, but as their films continue to exponentially multiply has Star Trek's multivariable imagination been overlooked?

Gods no doubt exist within the diverse multilayered Trekkian sagas, but the emphasis is usually on how human ingenuity can resourcefully outwit them.

Star Trek isn't as reliant on superhuman strength or exceptional idiosyncrasy, to find a logical working solution to the crafty predicaments it faces week after week.

Rather it champions science and the ingenious solutions expediently found, by a group of curious travellers who search the universe to expand their minds.

Marvel and D.C etc certainly deserve a place in the forefront. They've dynamically carved multiple scenarios overflowing with daring and remarkable teamwork.

But something's lost if Star Trek's focus on the human factor loses its cinematic edge.

Not just human, alien as well.

Interactively engaged in inclusive environments (where you'd also find Thor). 

Thor: Ragnarok

Sibling rivalry basks psychotic in Thor: Ragnarok, as the God of Thunder's (Chris Hemsworth) necromongesque sister (Cate Blanchett as Hela) escapes her prison to bring death and destruction to those worlds who would forthrightly oppose her, challenge her, spurn her, mock her.

In possession of seemingly limitless power which Odin's (Anthony Hopkins) death helplessly releases, she ungraciously overwhelms Thor and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) before returning to Asgard to assert her dominance.

Boastfully awaiting their bellicose return.

The defeated brothers find themselves playing different roles upon a chaotic planet, perhaps modelled upon the last days of Rome's imperial pretension, ruled by a comic tyrant (Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster [it's the best Goldblum I've seen in years]) who loves gladiating and humiliating, the gladiators themselves intent on revolting, Thor forced to fight and plot amongst them, Loki cleverly seducing the oligarchic elite, with a beautiful Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) haunted by battles fought long ago, in the heavens, who has taken to drink and collecting random strays, and remains unimpressed upon encountering her devoted liege.

Old friends pop up as Thor remains evergreen, the film's actually quite funny despite its violent extremities, an unsettling kind of apocalyptic autocratic resigned athletic humour that emboldens the democratic subconscious by turning masters of war themselves into subjects of gladiatorial intrigue, to be criticized and championed as they interact cinematically.

It's the best Thor film I've seen, even if it seems like a diagnosis for a mental illness, Heimdall's (Idris Elba) shepherding diminutively contrasting the conquistadorial ostentation, Thor's cheery undaunted good spirits making everything seem stable and safe, frenzies notwithstanding, even if he still needs guidance from his deceased progenitor, new characters introduced and developed with crafty eccentricity, a hulking universal ferocious manifest, in that leather, the world Marvel films has created is expanded with fascinating conspiracy.

It's like they're not just trying to voraciously cash in, they're often delivering high quality products that make going to the cinema so worth it.

Ragnarok's music gives it an oddball artistic touch born of the 1980s.

Like Tron could have been.

Hoping Loki figures prominently in the next Doctor Strange film

How do they choose which characters end up in which films?

It must be fun to make such decisions.

Will every Asgardian have superpowers on Earth?

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

A self-sacrificing angel emerges from the voluminous depths of contempt and disregard to unite two trouble making misfits in her overflowing celestial bounteous embrace.

Bucolic style.

Yet cruellest fate seismically disillusions their blossoming intimacy and the two are left unsheltered and forsaken as child services demands young Ricky's (Julian Dennison) return, and he would rather dwell in the forest than suffer neverending urban severance.

So to the forest they go, where Hec's (Sam Neill) scrappy knowledge cantankerously ensures they avoid capture, until what begins as a minor local disturbance becomes a nationwide media sensation, every detail wildly blown out of proportion, unknown contingencies, flexibly furbishing controversy.

Endured.

Respiration.

With neither plans nor provisions they prosper in plight.

Tangential tandem.

The film's hilarious.

Taika Waitit's Hunt for the Wilderpeople slowly and patiently ruffles fecund empiric feathers, the kind of film which might have flounced in less capable hands, but, rather, continuously stylizes lighthearted yet hard-hitting situations which leave you eagerly anticipating the next fundamental improbability, interest compactly impacting, like a tumbledown tapestry with auriferous attitude.

Two people who can't fit in anywhere are hunted down like British fox as they begin to forge a friendship which the Man instinctively seeks to tear asunder, the irony a profound critique of the system hoping to otherwise civilize them.

The soundtrack backs this up.

Some cool Terminator references.

A film the whole family can watch, even family members who dislike watching films the whole family can watch.

Lol!

Music by Lukasz Pawel Buda, Samuel Scott, and Conrad Wedde.

Evidently.

What We Do in the Shadows

Heightened rationalized improbability permeates What We Do in the Shadows, productively enlivening the confines of the undead, with shattered/rebuilt staggering susceptibility.

Incinerator.

4 vampires have been living together for some time in Wellington, New Zealand, tediously, nonchalantly, constructively, and impetuously approaching eternity, sort of learning and growing together as one, individuality integratively asserted, within their infernal domestic.

A camera crew is granted access and follows them around as they socially interact.

Debating, observing, feasting.

The film successfully works its way into the mockumentary cleavage, adding a bizarre sense of feisty unrealistic yet applicably pertinent ironic existential banality to its hemorrhage, asinine arteries and viscous veins wickedly yet lovingly distributing its worn permanence, like the genre itself is transformatively expired.

A skulking pantheon.

As they explore the external world and attend festive gatherings, favourite representatives of various divergencies emerge, their conversations occasionally fraught with bitterness and decay, a clash with the lycans, everything held together by Stu (Stuart Rutherford).

Stu is the human friend of recently converted vampire Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer), and he aloofly yet essentially stylizes the film.

Nick builds Deacon's (Jonathan Brugh) character by contrasting his youthful rebelliousness with rash exuberance, the two growing ensemble, clueless direct un/concerned advice intact.

Some of the jokes don't work, like swearwolves/swerewolves.

More could have been done with the vampire hunter and the Unholy Masquerade.

Still, as far as people awkwardly placed within a time period they neither understand nor care to get to know goes, taking the time to formulate opinions and conclusions which both validate and empower them regardless, even if they subconsciously recognize their inherent weaknesses, What We Do in the Shadows serves to obscure while lucidly contemplating, as discoveries are made, and friendships develop.

It would be nice to see what Clement and Waititi could pull off with a larger budget and more time.

What We Do in the Shadows could make a funny show, there's plenty of material to work with.