Review: 'Superman' (2025)

 

Superman

Dir: James Gunn

Prod: Peter Safran, James Gunn

Scr: James Gunn

Pho: Henry Braham 

Leading Players: David Corenswet, Rachael Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult

129 min.

Superman has a dog.

If this seems odd to you, it’s probably because you were raised on the gentle and subdued Christopher Reeve in the super-role, or Henry Cavill’s forbidding seriousness. This is neither of those. It’s all part of a desperate attempt by the DC film studio to reboot their unsuccessful rollout of a DC Extended Universe, which faced diminishing returns in recent years.

Fortunately, they called on writer/director James Gunn to work his magic. Gunn, who created the wildly popular Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, as well as 2021’s successful adaptation of DC’s The Suicide Squad. Gunn knows his comics inside and out, and it shows.

This super-story doesn’t go back over our hero’s unique origin. We are initially given Superman at his lowest ebb, defeated and injured. This is a vulnerable Superman, a relatable and imperfect character that is given life by the excellent David Corenswet. He is still using the persona of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet. He is in a relationship with hotshot journalist Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), who in this film knows all about his secret identity.

But Superman has an enemy. The bald, evil billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) hates Superman, and seeks to destroy him by any means necessary. He invades his Fortress of Solitude, hacks into his database, and recovers a fragmented message from Superman’s Kryptonian parents – one that makes Superman question his identity and mission.

And he kidnaps Superman’s super-dog, Krypto. The Man of Steel having a pet humanizes him. Corenswet plays him like a regular guy with a big responsibility, instead of some kind of messiah. He leads with his humility, and that makes his performance the more appealing.

The production design is bright and primary-colored, better reflecting the movie’s comic book origins. The action sequences are well-staged, and moments of banter and the necessary snatches of exposition are integrated seamlessly into the film. Subsidiary characters – an obnoxious Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Mr. Terrific, and Metamorpho – are rendered in three dimensions and given their due. Importantly, Hoult’s Luthor is completely credible – not played with the sly wit of Gene Hackman, but grounded in an earnest thirst for power and control.

When all is said and done, the result is satisfying and affirmative. This Superman is a fun adventure for kids of all ages.

NFR Project: 'Fantasia' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Fantasia’

Dir: Samuel Armstrong, James Algar, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen, David D. Hand, Hamilton Luske, Jim Handley, Ford Beebe, T. Hee, Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson

Scr: Joe Grant, Dick Huemer

Pho: James Wong Howe

Ed: N/A

Premiere: Nov. 13, 1940

126 min.

One of cinema’s greatest achievements, Fantasia was a huge gamble for the Disney company. The idea of marrying great classical works to animation posed extraordinary technical problems, ones that took an extraordinary amount of time, effort, and money to solve. More than 1,000 workers labored together to produce the finished product – which remains one of the most honored films of all time.

Fantasia is a trip through eight classical music pieces, with animation set to each. The legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski worked in close collaboration with Disney to perfect edited versions of the pieces involved. They were as follows:

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor is the setting for a collage of abstract images designed to evoke the music. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite provides the soundtrack for a survey of nature’s seasons, complete with dancing flowers and fairies. Mickey Mouse stars as the hero of the sequence highlighting Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in which he plays the servant of a wizard. He uses the wizard’s magic to create inanimate helpers, who quickly get out of hand.

The prehistory of Earth is outlined in the segment devoted to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is the soundtrack for a fanciful sequence involving centaurs and the ancient Greek gods. Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours gives us comic ballet dancing by ostriches, alligators, and elephants. To finish, a dark world is conjured to the tune of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, and close with a serene rendition of Ave Maria.

There are few words that can indicate the scope and impact of the film. The animated sequences are painstakingly crafted, each colorfully vibrant. The different styles of each passage complement each other wonderfully, and the detail in each segment is still unsurpassed today. For audiences at the time, the sheer intensity of the finished film must have been nearly overwhelming. It is still a memorable viewing experience.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Grapes of Wrath.

NFR Project: 'Down Argentine Way' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Down Argentine Way’

Dir: Irving Cummings

Scr: Rian James, Ralph Spence

Pho: Leon Shamroy, Ray Rennahan

Ed: Barbara McLean

Premiere: Oct. 11,1940

89 min.

A decorative little bauble of a film, it exemplifies an escapist American impulse that was soon to be sniffed out by World War Two.

It seems that FDR wanted to improve relations with Central and South America due to undue Nazi influence down south. This Good Neighbor Policy of his spawned several pro-Latin extravaganzas such as Flying Down to Rio (1933) That Night in Rio and Week-end in Havana (both 1941), and Disney’s The Three Caballeros (1944), efforts to “understand our southern neighbors,” as the propaganda put it. These somewhat condescending outings into a variety of cultural experiences purported to increase awareness and true understanding of these diverse cultures; however, it served as an inaccurate depiction of a culture studded with star-making turns by Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda.

Here, in garish Technicolor, the gossamer-thin plot concerns the falling in love of two rich kids, wealthy horse breeders Ricardo (Don Ameche, an Italian-American) and Glenda (Grable), whose families, misunderstanding things, complicate their relationship through misplaced hostility. There are several white actors playing prominent Latin American characters, including J. Carrol Naish, Henry Stephenson, and Leonid Kinskey. They are supported by a cast of entertainers, many not native to Argentina. In fact, this film was banned in Argentina due to audience outrage at Hollywood’s impression of their culture, which is illustrated in the film with Mexican and Caribbean cultural activities – rendering the film culturally tone-deaf.

The highlights of this are the performances of Carmen Miranda, the fabled “Brazilian bombshell.” She gets three numbers, as opposed to Grable and Ameche’s two. Still under contract to her New York nightclub, her parts of the film were made in New York studios and shipped west, to be inserted into the larger film as needed. She’s undoubtedly a beautiful and accomplished singer . . . but she got stuck in her introductory stereotype of the fruit-wearing, beturbaned dervish, a role she was destined to play ad infinitum.

The other big find, filmically, is Betty Grable. A thoroughly wholesome and unobjectionable blonde, she could sing, could dance, could do a light and gentle kind of comedy that the viewer can float on. She had been around, appearing in dozens of films, but this marked her big break. She became, with Rita Hayworth, a war-time bombshell that all the troops adored. She was regally beautiful, but she had a screen persona that was very normal, very approachable.

She gets to strut her stuff in some numbers here, when not punctuated with visits from Miss Mirands, and from the fabulous and amazing Nicholas Brothers, dancers extraordinaire which behoove you to look up and watch all their fabled onscreen dance routines.

This feel-good kind of family entertainment would become the standard for studio-driven comic American musicals, a trend that would last through the early 1950s.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Fantasia.