THE SUICIDE SQUAD and THE GREEN KNIGHT - Spoiler Free Reviews

One of these put my brain in a blender and the other is just an enjoyable fun watch.

I've been lucky enough the past few weeks to catch a lot of new movies, in theaters and on streaming services. The two most recent were James Gunn's The Suicide Squad and David Lowery's The Green Knight. Before we get to the meat and potatoes of this review though, I'll mention a few others I watched, but didn't feel I had enough to say to justify writing a whole post. Space Jam: A New Legacy was awful. LeBron has been in movies before and proved to be a decent actor, but he was just terrible in this. They didn't go to space and they didn't even really play basketball. Space Jam's only redeeming quality was the Looney Tunes and there was only like 6 of them there. Netflix has done well lately with Gunpowder Milkshake starring Karen Gillan, which is John Wick-lite. It was very enjoyable as was the trio of Fear Street movies. The horror trilogy had a great story, which is essential for me to enjoying a horror movie, and they were reminiscent of old school slashers with a Stranger Things type of vibe. Maybe wait until fall to give those a watch, they'll be great Halloween movies. Jungle Cruise was cute. Not much to say on it other than Emily Blunt remains a queen and The Rock typically elevates everything he's in. It's a fun family film similar to Rocky's Jumanji movies. I do wonder, however, if we won't get Rock fatigue soon. The guy is everywhere. Now on to the main course.

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The Green Knight

Let's start with The Green Knight because it's the one that put my mind in a pretzel trying to figure it all out. The entertainment company behind this one is A24. They bring in a lot of award nominations but most of their movies people either love or loathe. The Green Knight is no different as it currently sits at a 51% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (love or loathe). I have no doubt that it will get Oscar nominations for costume and probably for cinematography. But sometimes, people will ask me for a movie recommendation and there are movies I will just blindly recommend, knowing it will be liked. The Green Knight is not one of those.

The Green Knight is a medieval fantasy film based on the 14th century Arthurian poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It focuses on Gawain, King Arthur's nephew, who is kind of a cowardly turd. He is on a quest for greatness and knighthood when along comes this mysterious Green Knight with a Christmas challenge for all the knights at King Arthur's round table. Any man who can land a blow on the Green Knight will be rewarded with his green axe, but that man must receive an equal blow in one year at the next Christmas. Gawain decides to do the challenge and promptly lops off the Green Knight's head, only to watch the headless corpse stand up, pick up his head and ride away laughing. Confused yet? Yeah I was too.

The Green Knight looks amazing. It was shot on location (not greenscreen) in Ireland and the cinematography is phenomenal. The castles are all awesome and it really transports you back to Medieval times. The outfits are killer and the makeup job on the Green Knight is incredible. Dev Patel is a superstar and he crushes his role as Gawain as does the rest of the cast with theirs. I tried so hard but I just could not get into this. The plot seems to just meander about while Gawain plods along to his meeting with the Green Knight so he can return the beheading favor. I know there is a ton of symbolism and we're meant to see him grow out of his brashness and cowardice and be introspective.... I get all that, I just was not feeling the journey. And I won't be alone.

This movie is not for everybody. There are plenty of movies from A24 that I love (Ex Machina, Uncut Gems, Midsommar, Good Time, Lady Bird) this just isn't one of them. I had the Arthurian poem pulled up on my phone in the theater to keep up. Don't get me wrong, The Green Knight is not a bad movie, it's just not a very enjoyable one. It did a lot of things I liked. We got to see King Arthur and his round table of knights. We saw Camelot and Excalibur. I liked the fox being Gawain's spirit guide (because I learned foxes do that from playing Ghost of Tsushima on my PS4). I liked that the ending is very ambiguous because this is a tale told by many different people many years ago. Arthurian poems don't have a great track record of being great movies, but Lowery did a good job with this one. I find it really cool that a14th century poem can still hold up, and maybe it deserves a second watch, I just didn't find it all that entertaining. Doesn't make it bad. The Green Knight is like Tom Brady. I respect that it's good. I just don't like it.

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The Suicide Squad

This is the movie James Gunn was born to direct. It's weird, wacky, funny, gory, and kinda sweet. Unlike The Green Knight you can kick back with your popcorn and Coke and just enjoy the heck out of The Suicide Squad. The humor is twisted and there's ridiculous supervillain characters that can control rats, detach limbs, and throw polka dots at people. There's a rabid-looking, human-sized weasel and a shark with legs and a taste for humans. The Suicide Squad is not so much a sequel to 2016's Suicide Squad that bombed with critics and audiences as it is a complete reboot. And Gunn got it right. DC and Warner Brothers gave him the reigns to make his movie nuts and no one was safe.

We already knew that Margot Robbie is a perfect Harley Quinn, but Idris Elba's Bloodsport, David Dastmalchian's Polka-Dot Man and John Cena's Peacemaker were brilliant as well. Every single character got time in the spotlight and made the most out of it. King Shark (voiced by Sylvester Stallone) seems to be the fan favorite, but the squad's MVP for me was Daniela Melchior's Ratcatcher 2. I never knew I would like a character named Ratcatcher 2 so much. She provided some tender moments with King Shark and brought some niceness to a team of psychotic supervillains on a black ops mission. Controlling rats is such a disgusting superpower but The Suicide Squad made it work. There was just enough John Cena here for me. Any more and I think Peacemaker could have been unbearable. We'll see how he holds up in his standalone show. I personally would like to see more of Bloodsport in some standalone stuff. His outfit was sick and Elba is just such a phenomenal actor.

Just like in Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy movies, The Suicide Squad's soundtrack was fantastic. I've seen some people say that this is now a top 3 comic book movie, and while it is a ton of fun and probably DC's best movie to date, I'm not sure I'd go that far. See it on the big screen if you can, but if not, you can stream it now on HBO Max. (which is the best streaming service out there right now and you should all get it if you haven't.)

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There you have it. Two wildly different movies I saw in a two day span this weekend. Coming soon we'll have Free Guy with Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi, Jordan Peele's Candyman (if I work up the nerve to see it), and the next MCU entry Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. As always, be sure to leave your thoughts on this post and the movies!