Category: movies

In Asia, Michael Jackson never really lost his reputation like he did in the US. Here, he is apparently remembered as the King of Pop, and that’s it.

With the release of the 2026 biopic, which involved the cooperation of family members, the yuckiness surrounding his image seemed to recede substantially, returning his status to that of a fantastically successful and exceptionally gifted, if strange, artistic performer. In fact, my impression of him based on the movie (I didn’t know anything about his family life previously) is that he was for many years a pitiable victim of his father’s controlling tendencies.

Movies that are based on a true story tend to fail on one or both of two counts: they simplify, exaggerate, embellish, or otherwise bend history too much for the sake of manufacturing an engaging drama, or they keep too closely to the facts and wind up being boringly sequential—but I imagine that actually this latter happens seldom because it too obviously spells financial doom. In any case, the point is, real life doesn’t have plot; it doesn’t naturally supply one particular antagonist or challenge for a person to overcome. Life is messy. A film can’t afford to be, even though the process of making one, as in this case, is often anything but straightforward.

Continue reading Michael (2026)

Some scattered thoughts:

• I didn’t realize, until I read some reviews online, that this movie was… politically divisive. (Sigh. Can we please not polarize everything? Or is it already too late?)
• You may love dogs in spite of what they destroy, but me? I don’t want anything to do with such agents of chaos. That being said, Krypto was a pretty convincing CGI dog. (And has nothing to do with cryptocurrency.)
• I found it distracting that Lex Luthor had so many supporters who were emotionally invested in his success. I wanted the movie to reveal their motivation. (It didn’t.)
• It took me a while to recognize Nathan Fillion. (Green Lantern’s haircut truly is awful.) I didn’t recognize Alan Tudyk. (He voiced a robot.)
• Hawk Girl (played by Isabela Merced) reminded me of the character Skye (played by Chloe Bennet) in Agents of Shield.
• In the positive column: someone on the CGI team must have been familiar with bismuth crystals! They’re gorgeous.
• The fight scene at the site of the entrance to the pocket universe was a lot of fun.
• The best aspect of the movie might be the theme: you are not your destiny, as determined by your blood or your parents’ wishes; you are who you choose to be. Whatever else is going on in the movie, it does uphold that theme.

It was really weird seeing different actors for Superman/Clark, Lois, Jimmy, Perry White, and Clark’s parents, because I’ve been watching the 1990s Lois and Clark TV series. That show belongs to a completely different era. (I like the show better than this movie. No contest.)