Speaking of movies produced by the lead actress, Scarlet
Johansson deserves a ton of credit for putting together
the _Black Widow_ project and stuck by her choice of Cate
Shortland as director. She has excellent taste; in my
view Shortland is the single best woman director working
today. _Black Widow_ is far, far better than _Wonder
Woman_, which the critics would once have you believe
to be the best film of all time. _BW_ has its share
of flaws, but that does not detract from its achievements.

It is interesting to read the interviews about
the making of this film in the Hollywood trade papers.
Turns out Florence Pugh was Shortland's choice; the
celebrated dinner table scenes, which saw the reunion
of the fake "family" that went undercover in Ohio, were
the results of brainstorming sessions that included the
cast. The singing of Don McLean's ionic "American Pie"
came, which broke the ice between Pugh's Yelena and her
fake dad, came out of those sessions. (The song came
to be used in the beginning of the film, during their
flight from US troops, with the word "die" beautifully
synchronized with the beginning of mayhem.)

I hate to be too mean, but I wish Johansson were as good
an actress as she is a producer. The things she do
on screen tend to be so obvious, telegraphed by a big
emotional wind-up that screams "I am ready for the
close-up." A case in point is her climatic showdown
with the villain; she goes from an exaggerated, frightened,
confused vanquished pose to her determined, invincible
face that we have seen so many times (and I have seen
all of half an "Avenger" movie in my life).

If Florence Pugh were to play Johansson's role, we can
easily imagine how she would have done it. Pugh would
have maintained her death stare throughout, giving away
minimum indication of how her character would be feeling.
When the dam breaks for her -- whether it is into violence
or tears -- *then* you think back on the previous minute
and slowly comprehend what the actress has been doing,
and be impressed. At such a young age, Pugh has
supreme confidence in herself and her audience. She
knows she does not have to lead the viewer by the hand
all the way through. After watching _Black Widow_ I
caught up with a couple of Pugh's earlier performances,
including _The Falling_ and _King Lear_. She plays a
modernized version of Cordelia, donning combat fatigue,
yet in the reunion with Lear she is every bit as empathetic
and heart-rending as Emilia Clarke in the latter's best
roles. But Pugh's muscular physique makes her a far more
formidable presence than most wire-thin actresses. She
radiance menace, malaise. Even more than the Khaleesi of
the Grass Sea, one feels that Pugh's best color is
camouflage, her calling that of a warrior princess.

Rachel Weisz finally gets her Bond-Lady moment; I can
never understand why she isn't cast in her husband's
Bond outings.

The film has too many action sequences and is too loud
at times for me to pay attention to Shortland's directing
nuances. The beginning is wonderful though; 10 am
sunburst through the trees, a girl riding high on a
swing, unmistakable homage to Terrence Malick. The
credit sequence, about child abduction, is intense.
The locations are well chosen, especially those in
run-down Budapest, which should be no surprise to those
who have seen Shortland's _The Berlin Syndrome_. I was
expecting an even darker film, with more consequences
(deaths are few and far in between), and in the
"black widow sisterhood solidarity" finale, one wishes
there is a reference to the sex trafficking in the opening
credits. But in interviews Shortland insists she does
not want too dark a vision.

I'll see it again; the box office is touch and go, but
it will likely be the years highest grossing film.
That means Oscar nominations, which will be well-deserved
in this case.
(for A.)

Rachel Weisz's calm, slow-eyed depiction of a scientist is such
a contrast with her spirited philosopher Hypatia in _Agora_. Both
are amazing though, and Weisz must have relished her moments as
a dressed-up assassin at the end of the film. I am sure she
has never taken on such physical, aggressive roles in her
storied career. Glad to see so many great actresses get to
become action heroes, like Jessica Chastain in _Ava_! Speaking
of which -- the newsreel elision/explication of large chunks
of back stories over opening credits seem to be a standard in
action films now, but is put too especially sombering use in
_Black Widow_.

I am sure it takes little training for Weisz to affect an
East European accent, given her Austro-Hungarian heritage.
The other members of her fake family wear their accents and
slow delivery well too. David Harbour's pot-bellied Alexei
is a good comic relief, and Florence Pugh seems to take five
seconds before each emotional response. They interact with
an intoxicating rhythm, miles from the smart-alecky tone found
in other comic book hero films. Pugh and Harbour really have
amazing chemistry. I suspect their characters share an aversion
to showering too! Weisz has a lovely line describing their
family reunion as clinging, needy, and overly emotional -- it
is so in-character.

That leaves Natasha as the outlier of this family. Granted
Johansson's character does not grow up in the East, and even
the young version (played as a blue-haired rebel by Ever
Anderson, Milla Jovovich's daughter who is already a better
actress than her mother) is a fireball not given to hesitation.
But Natasha just does not have the weight of character that her
fake-family share. She seems to change with the weather,
there is no core, no soul, to her existence. Maybe this is
unfair -- I haven't seen the other nine and a half Avenger
movies, maybe the fans can see in her something constant.
But good actors do research and fill in their characters'
back stories; props help them create distinctive personalities
too (like Russian accents in this case). In a way it is
Shortland's failure not to achieve this with Natasha,
although it may be hard to correct the lazy habit of
someone who is also the film's executive producer. But
this problem with Johansson is even more prominent in
the ridiculously overhyped _Under the Skin_. One moment
she is a stone-faced killer impervious to weather, the
next scene she is a little girl scared of the cold. That
is just bad movie-directing, but the actor surely can
do better too.

For all those faults, _Black Widow_ is clearly the best
of the superhero films I've seen, bar none. I hope it
wins its share of awards.

(for A.)

[Two paragraphs missing]

A second viewing of _Black Widow_ only reinforces my admiration of
the visual elegance in the film's quiet Ohio moments. A brownish
dusk look dominates the palette, but instead of the David Fincher-
style ugly greenish brown, the interior settings of _Black Widow_
have a lovely, penetrating look, complementing the lush but late-Fall
outdoor color scheme to foreshadow the end of a rustic paradise.
When focusing on the characters though, cinematographer Gabriel
Beristain uses a very shallow focus lense that blurs the background
into a gauzy haze, as if to emphasize that the backstory of these
Russian implants are obscure even to themselves. When the film
moves to Norway, Morocco, and Budapest, the lighting is much
harsher, like a dose of reality. The broken down apartments
and decrepit soviet helicopters there give the film much of its
charm (and are what you'd expect of director Cate Shortland),
but the shallow focal length on the characters remains almost
until the end.

The globe trotting pace reminds us of James Bond movies, and indeed
_Moonraker_ is a touchstone; Natasha streams it in her trail in
Norway. Bond films used to alternate between glitzy and grimy,
each installment overcorrecting the last. _Black Widow_ is
more _For Your Eyes Only_ (with its Eastern European overtones)
than _Moonraker_, but perhaps Shortland is having an inside joke
and lampooning the _Moonraker_-like, over-the-top skystation
destruction at the end of the film? If so, is Olga Kurylenko's
robot-hybrid the answer to the Bond film's Jaw?

Rachel Weisz's calm, slow-eyed depiction of a scientist is such
a contrast with her spirited philosopher Hypatia in _Agora_. Both
are amazing though, and Weisz must have relished her moments as
a dressed-up assassin at the end of the film. I am sure she
has never taken on such physical, aggressive roles in her
storied career. Glad to see so many great actresses get to
become action heroes, like Jessica Chastain in _Ava_! Speaking
of which -- the newsreel elision/explication of large chunks
of back stories over opening credits seem to be a standard in
action films now, but is put too especially sombering use in
_Black Widow_.

I am sure it takes little training for Weisz to affect an
East European accent, given her Austro-Hungarian heritage.
The other members of her fake family wear their accents and
slow delivery well too. David Harbour's pot-bellied Alexei
is a good comic relief, and Florence Pugh seems to take five
seconds before each emotional response. They interact with
an intoxicating rhythm, miles from the smart-alecky tone found
in other comic book hero films. Pugh and Harbour really have
amazing chemistry. I suspect their characters share an aversion
to showering too! Weisz has a lovely line describing their
family reunion as clinging, needy, and overly emotional -- it
is so in-character.

That leaves Natasha as the outlier of this family. Granted
Johansson's character does not grow up in the East, and even
the young version (played as a blue-haired rebel by Ever
Anderson, Milla Jovovich's daughter who is already a better
actress than her mother) is a fireball not given to hesitation.
But Natasha just does not have the weight of character that her
fake-family share. She seems to change with the weather,
there is no core, no soul, to her existence. Maybe this is
unfair -- I haven't seen the other nine and a half Avenger
movies, maybe the fans can see in her something constant.
But good actors do research and fill in their characters'
backstories; props help them create distinctive personalities
too (like Russian accents in this case). In a way it is
Shortland's failure not to achieve this with Natasha,
although it may be hard to correct the lazy habit of
someone who is also the film's executive producer. But
this problem with Johansson is even more prominent in
the ridiculously overhyped _Under the Skin_. One moment
she is a stone-faced killer impervious to weather, the
next scene she is a little girl scared of the cold. That
is just bad movie-directing, but the actor surely can
do better too.

For all those faults, _Black Widow_ is clearly the best
of the superhero films I've seen, bar none. I hope it
wins its share of awards.