If you've heard the elevator pitch, you've pretty much seen the movie. There are some fun ideas, but overall it feels careless: the two leads (such as they are) give terrible performances, the pacing is mostly languorous, the characters are too slow to catch on to anything (including some everyday common sense stuff), and the effects on the characters seem to come in fits and starts and at varying time rates. Sad to say, this very much feels like a mid-COVID production.
Rating: Meh.
Having never really read Peanuts or watched the previous movies, and so only picked up on the key elements and tone of it via cultural osmosis, I enjoyed this adaptation. They use a bunch of clever tricks to retain the 2D imagery (having characters always standing 3/4 on to the camera in the classic Peanuts pose, flipping their noses to match the camera angle, low animation rates etc), and they don't have the town invaded by aliens or anything awful like that. It's just a gentle slice-of-life comedy-drama, with some sitcom tropes (crush on the new girl, misunderstanding leads to high social standing), light slapstick and fantasy sequences thrown in.
It's not quite as melancholy as it could be, and you could ask why the need to go 3D at all if they're going to put so much work into making it feel 2D, of course, but assuming that these were unavoidable decisions for a big Western theatrical release animated movie in this day and age, this is the best adaptation you could hope for.
Rating: Good.
Surprisingly restrained and tasteful, this is a very gentle, sweet movie with lots of touching, underplayed performances. It reminded me of E.T., not least in how successful it is in creating emotional scenes between a child actor and a CG creature. The only possible criticism really is that there's not a lot to it - it eventually gets into the Harry And The Hendersons type 'misguided hunter' territory, but most of the focus is on Pete's emotional journey when he rediscovers the wider world. If you're looking for a family movie that is the second half of Cast Away with some ET sprinkled in, this is it.
Rating: Good.
SPOILERS BELOW
Effective low-key look into the mindset of someone who gets drawn into a cult and then escapes, especially the paranoia and the inability to discuss it with those around you despite that making things worse. It doesn't have much of an ending, but I guess that's the point - she's going to feel the sword of Damocles hanging over her for the rest of her life now.
Rating: Good.
SPOILERS BELOW
The Ohio opening was fantastic, thrilling and emotionally affecting. Then the movie basically spends the rest of its time getting stuff in place for the climax. The action isn't awful, but the use of Flubbering CG doubles and choppy editing make it feel cartoonish and unsatisfying. The comedy banter falls flat consistently. The villain is crap (wish they'd got Julie Delpy back).
Taskmaster was kind of cool, I guess, and it was a clever Bourne-y idea to have this interquel (or whatever) based around Natasha dealing with her red ledger, so even though we know what's going to happen to her after the events of this story it doesn't cause that common prequel issue of no dramatic tension. Also, that post-credits scene got me more excited for Hawkeye (which I'm already looking forward to because it seems like they're going to take a lot of influence from the Matt Fraction run, which I loved), so well done there.
Rating: Meh.
Utterly charmless, wholly derivative, and smugly self-satisfied at how distanced and post-modern it's being as if Fight Club, The Running Man and Death Race 2000 to name but a few didn't do all this decades ago. It's not even effective on the genre level, with no one acting remotely like human beings, super-fighters suddenly losing the ability to aim straight and the wimpy dweeb thrown into a world of violence able to survive back-alley surgery, gunshots and car crashes without missing a step. It also attempts to offer a treatise on humanity's relationship with violence, but can't even decide whether it's really bad or really cool.
Rating: Awful.
(Addendum: having now read about the director harassing a couple of critics, both women of colour, by falsely accusing them of bullying, it makes a lot of sense that this movie feigns condemnation of the fetishisation of violence while simultaneously enacting it.)
