Monthly Archives: July 2024

Reel Views, Review

Deadpool & Wolverine

It’s been 6 years since the last Deadpool movie but quite a bit has happened in that time gap, perhaps most consequentially for the franchise: the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney. For those unaware: Fox owned the film rights to Fantastic Four and X-Men characters like Deadpool, while Sony technically still retains the rights to Spider-Man and his affiliated characters. Moving past the mergers and acquisitions business talk, the effect on the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that it now has its first R-rated movie of the series in the fitfully amusing and mercilessly metatextual Deadpool & Wolverine. It’s a team-up that comic book fans will no doubt be giddy about, given the history between the characters on the page, but one that could leave casual superhero movie fans confused with how convoluted the plot has to get to finally bring them together.

6 years after Deadpool 2, Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) has retired his mercenary cowl and works as a used car salesman with his equally checked-out friend Peter (Rob Delaney). In the middle of a surprise birthday party, Wilson is abducted by agents of the Time Variance Authority and is brought to Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), a bureaucrat character similar to Mobius from the Disney+ series Loki. Paradox tells Wade that their universe is collapsing due to the death of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in another timeline, which prompts Wade to suit up once again and nab a Wolverine variant from the multiverse to save his world. During their mission, they run up against the powerful mutant Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), who seeks the power to destroy other universes at will.

In terms of plot mechanics, Deadpool & Wolverine is most akin to DC’s The Flash from last year, which expected viewers to not only know everything that’s happening in the DCEU but also have background knowledge of both completed and uncompleted projects involving the characters. Without spoiling anything, it’s enough to say that audiences going into this movie who don’t have a firm grasp on both the MCU and the Fox run of superhero films over the last 25 years will face challenges keeping up with this storyline. The amount of prerequisites for Marvel movies has been steadily rising since Nick Fury uttered those famous final words after the end credits of Iron Man in 2008 and the now collegiate-level requirements border on farce.

But behind the fourth-wall breaks and the winks to the camera — I mean those both literally, as self-referential humor is a big part of Deadpool’s schtick — there are fundamental story issues with Deadpool & Wolverine that the movie would prefer we laugh and shrug off. I doubt I caught every single Easter egg that director Shawn Levy and company threw my way but I never felt out of the loop with the multi-layered jokes that come at a machine gun pace. What I struggled with were fundamental questions like “why are the heroes doing what they’re doing right now?” or “what does this villain actually want?” I think Levy wants us to forget about pesky things like character motivation and narrative inertia but most MCU movies have excelled at prioritizing these basic filmmaking aspects while still including some laughs along the way.

Having said all of this, I laughed numerous times during Deadpool & Wolverine, which is packed with cameos that mostly don’t just last for a few seconds but actually figure into the plot in more consequential ways. There are plenty of profane one-liners that few in the business can rattle off with as much cheeky aplomb as Ryan Reynolds. Even some of the ironic needle drops worked for me, although some felt like they were straining too hard for laughs. It could be argued that the whole film strives too hard to get a reaction from the audience and borders on desperation at times. If this were a pure send-up of the superhero movie genre that wasn’t beholden to the obligations of being one itself, it could’ve worked as a pure comedy but as an entry in the MCU, Deadpool & Wolverine feels too shallow to leave an impact.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Trap, a psychological thriller starring Josh Hartnett and Ariel Donoghue, which involves a father and his teen daughter who attend a pop concert, only to realize they’ve entered the center of a dark and sinister event.
Also coming to theaters is Harold And The Purple Crayon, a fantasy comedy starring Zachary Levi and Lil Rel Howery, adapting the classic children’s picture book about an imaginative boy who is able to conjure up anything that he is able to draw with his magical drawing utensil.
Streaming on Netflix is Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie, an animated adventure starring Carolyn Lawrence and Tom Kenny, which further spins off the SpongeBob SquarePants series to give the subtitular Texas-based squirrel her own time to shine in the spotlight.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Twisters

Released in the summer of 1996, the hokey blockbuster Twister is best remembered for its larger-than-life marketing and its (at the time) cutting-edge visual effects but not much else beyond that. As that’s the case, it likely wasn’t up next on many legacy sequel bingo cards but 28 years later, we have Twisters. Helmed by Lee Isaac Chung, the director of 2020’s superb indie Minari, it’s a disaster movie that wouldn’t need to be as good as it is to grab some cash from the cyclonic summer box office and dissipate as mysterious as it appeared. But against all odds, this is the rare belated sequel that not only justifies its existence but actually bests its predecessor in most every way. With help from Amblin Entertainment heads Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall and a story from Top Gun: Maverick‘s Joseph Kosinski, the film marries an old-fashioned storytelling sensibility with outstanding CG effects.

Following a stunning prologue that reminds us of nature’s devastating and overwhelming power, we center in on Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a brilliant meteorologist who has seemingly put her storm chasing days behind her. Out of her past comes Javi (Anthony Ramos), a former colleague who now runs a mobile radar company whose aim it is to 3D model tornadoes for research. After some convincing, Kate joins Javi on the road again and swiftly gets sucked back into the wild subculture of tornado chasing. Now at the center of this cyclonic coterie is YouTuber Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), the self-appointed “Tornado Wrangler” whose mile-wide, cud-eating smile has riled up over a million subscribers. Gusts of romance slowly swirl between Kate and Tyler as they track twisters across rural Oklahoma and try to get close —but not too close— to the action.

It would be generous to say that the character development in Twister isn’t terribly sophisticated and while Twisters doesn’t have exquisitely-rendered types by comparison, they’re an improvement nevertheless. The central conflicts between the two leads in each film harken back to old Hollywood, with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt giving big His Girl Friday energy in their Twister, while Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in Twisters conjure up a love-hate tussle out of The Shop Around The Corner. A big reason the bickering between the protagonists works better here has loads to do with the terrific chemistry between Edgar-Jones and Powell, the latter of whom is working hard to secure his Next Big Thing status in Hollywood. Between Kate’s measured approach and Tyler’s roguish impulses, we know the pair will find an overlap and it’s good fun watching them get there.

Twisters doesn’t quite have as deep a bench of supporting characters as its forerunner, which boasted memorable turns from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Lois Smith, amid a bevy of recognizable character actors of the era. But like Twister, there’s delight here in the colorful cast of characters that the movie is able to wrangle up for this slightly less ridiculous story. Tyler’s caravan includes wild-eyed turns from up-and-coming actresses Sasha Lane and Katy O’Brian, while Kate’s crew features future Superman actor David Corenswet and an irresistible performance by Maura Tierney as Kate’s charmingly pushy mom. While the two films don’t technically have any characters that overlap, the personalities that pack the cars zooming across the perilous plains are cut from the same cloth.

It may seem strange to talk this long about Twisters and not focus on the visual effects, which have always been the lynchpin of the disaster movie genre. While it’s hard to know how well they’ll hold up 28 years from now, the combination of CGI and practical effects certainly look convincing by current standards. The sound design is equally convincing, each gale whipping around terrifyingly in surround sound that is even more punctuated in IMAX screenings. Many films in the genre seem to delight in the damage and the scope of the spectacle but embedded in this film is a reverence for the human toll that dangerous weather can take. Those looking to leave their homes to escape for a couple hours will find a satisfying shelter in Twisters.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming only to theaters is Deadpool & Wolverine, a superhero sequel starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, which finds vulgar sword-wielding Deadpool teaming up with an alternate version of X-man lead Wolverine as they square off against a common enemy.
Also playing in theaters is The Fabulous Four, a road comedy starring Susan Sarandon and Bette Midler, following three friends as they travel to Key West to be bridesmaids at a surprise wedding of their friend’s from college.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Cirque Du Soleil: Without A Net, a documentary about the titular contemporary circus act which depicts their struggle to reopen their flagship production more than a year after an abrupt global shutdown.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Longlegs

After a months-long viral marketing campaign that put forth cryptic teaser clips and coded messages inspired by Zodiac Killer-esque symbology, the unholy and unforgettable horror-thriller Longlegs has crawled into theaters in its terrifying full form. It’s both a film that wears its influences —Silence Of The Lambs and Seven are givens — on its sleeve and one that keeps reinventing itself with every hairpin turn of the central mystery. Even with the presence of genre stalwart Maika Monroe and perhaps the most predictably unpredictable performer around in Nicolas Cage, there’s little comfort in the familiar here. There are horror movies that aim to scare audiences with spooky spontaneity and knee-jerk thrills and then there are those which actively work to unnerve and unsettle us. The latest from writer-director Osgood Perkins falls in the latter category.

Monroe stars as Lee Harker, a cloistered and committed young FBI agent whose next-level intuition helps her quickly break open an elusive case that compels her boss Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) to assign her to one that’s been even more beguiling. Over the span of multiple decades, a serial killer known as Longlegs (Cage) has seemingly been involved with numerous murder–suicides in the Pacific Northwest, with only coded messages left behind as evidence. Harker makes quick work of the seemingly indecipherable notes and finds a pentagram-predicated pattern within the clues, although there still aren’t precise signs who the killer’s next victim might be. Throughout her monomania in cracking the case, Harker maintains connection with her pious mother Ruth (Alicia Witt), who worries that Lee chasing a devil-devout deviant may cause her to lose herself in the process.

At the outset, Longlegs posits itself as more of a procedural thriller before slowly morphing into art horror by its conclusion, with some unexpected but much-needed chuckles peppered in. Four films in, Perkins seems to be most interested in telling scary stories from different subgenres, his I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House in the gothic ghost story tradition and Gretel & Hansel in the vein of dark fairy tale. His latest most closely resembles his 2015 outing The Blackcoat’s Daughter, a superb supernatural chiller about two students left behind a boarding school over winter break. While Longlegs is somehow even creepier than that film, it’s also Perkins’ most accomplished work so far, made of moments that exude ardent craft and nuanced precision.

Everyone in front of the camera is more than game for his vision, with Monroe as our audience surrogate into this twisted tale much in the way Jodie Foster was for Silence Of The Lambs. In films like It Follows and Watcher, she plays characters who just try to stay one step ahead of the evil forces stalking them but here, her Harker is much more capable in her ability to snuff out the nefarious forces at play. As we often see in movies about detectives whose job consumes their lives, Monroe taps into the social awkwardness that comes with someone whose head is always somewhere else. Mostly it’s underscored as a predominant personality trait among the most determined agents but sometimes it’s keenly played for laughs; when Agent Carter’s 8-year-old daughter asks Harker if she’d like to see her room, Perkins smash cuts to the agent sitting rigidly on the little girl’s bed through social obligation.

Underwood also puts forth easy-to-overlook work as Harker’s veteran superior but I imagine one of the main hooks for those drawn in by Longlegs this month will be Nicolas Cage, whose character’s full appearance has been withheld in promotional materials. Some may complain that Cage doesn’t appear in the movie more, while others may wish that he was used more sparingly but regardless, he predictably makes a meal of his deranged and haunting character. Perkins wisely gives us swift glimpses of the towering occultist figure before giving us the squirm-inducing close-ups of Cage’s face. While it’s only been out several days, Longlegs already seems to carry with it a staying power uncommon for the majority of current horror output.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Twisters, a disaster movie starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell following a retired tornado-chaser and meteorologist as they’re persuaded to return to Oklahoma to work with a new team and new technologies to track severe storms.
Premiering on Disney+ is Young Woman And The Sea, a sports biopic starring Daisy Ridley and Tilda Cobham-Hervey telling the true story of Gertrude Ederle, an American swimming champion who became the first woman to swim 21 miles across the English Channel.
Streaming on Netflix is Skywalkers: A Love Story, a documentary involving a daring couple that travels to Malaysia to climb a 118-story skyscraper, attempting a bold acrobatic stunt on the spire to salvage both their career and relationship.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Fly Me To The Moon

Lifting off in time for the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the crowd-pleaser Fly Me To The Moon deliberately fudges the facts of the Space Race to spin an alternate history yarn that plays like a cheeky counterpart to For All Mankind. That Apple TV+ series, in addition to recent films First Man and Apollo 11, have approached the subject of the moon landing under more understandably serious terms but in his latest feature, director Greg Berlanti seems more concerned with the central romance than the outcome of the momentous spaceflight. Even if the sparks between the two leads can’t quite compete with the fire from space shuttle ignitors, the playful story has just enough gas in the boosters to get things off the ground.

It’s 1969 and NASA launch director Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) is running out of money and time to make good on JFK’s promise to the nation at the beginning of the decade to land man on the moon. Enter Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson), a Don Draper-styled ad exec who is brought in to pitch both Congress and the American people on why the underfunded space agency deserves their attention. Though Davis and Jones routinely butt heads after an enkindled meet-cute — the former as straight-laced as they come, with the latter having no compunction about stretching the truth — a mutual admiration between the two emerges. A third party enters their orbit in the form of Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson), a Nixon-backed government official in charge of overseeing a “backup” production of the moon landing to save face for the Russians, should the cameras on the spacecraft malfunction.

While part of Fly Me To The Moon does invoke a faked version of the lunar landing, Greg Berlanti and his screenwriter Rose Gilroy don’t delve deep into the decades-old conspiracy theory and instead treat the subplot with a waggish “what if?” curiosity. Tasked with creating a realistic set that could pass for the moon, Jones recruits a perpetually flustered director — the self-proclaimed “Kubrick of commercials”, a nod to Kubrick’s purported role in the “staging” of the moon landing — played by Jim Rash. A little of his “I can’t work like this!” schtick goes a long way but the mechanics behind how the production crew attempts to disguise a sound stage as the moon are right in line with the film’s chipper energy. Think Argo by way of Green Book (with even fewer gravitas-bludgeoned pitstops) and you’d be on track with the kind of peppy timbre Berlanti is working to cook up.

Johansson and Tatum certainly lay on the charm as thick as they can but their characters tend to work better on their own terms as opposed to when they’re meant to come together. Johansson’s Jones is a fun gender-swapped take on a “Mad Men” Manhattanite, maneuvering the misogynistic marketing world of the era with wiles and wit to spare. Tatum’s Davis is a beleaguered straight arrow whose earnestness and traditional work ethic aren’t treated as punchlines but rather as obstacles for a mission with a dwindling deadline. Thematically, they’re believable as both foils and flirts for each other but the actors don’t quite have the out-of-this-world chemistry you’d hope for. Originally Chris Evans was slated to take up the Tatum role and based on his previous work with Johansson, that pair would have played excellently off one another.

Similarly, Berlanti was a substitute in the director’s chair for Jason Bateman, who left the project a few months in, reportedly due to creative differences. Based on Bateman’s recent directorial output for series like Ozark and The Outsider, it’s not hard to imagine he’d want to take this story in a darker and more caustic direction. Instead, we get a much more lighthearted tale that opens with a montage catching us up with Space Race headlines, concludes with a shot of a pesky feline that endlessly eludes escape and countless Motown needle drops in between. There have been so many accounts of the Apollo 11 mission which treat it with befitting reverence that it doesn’t hurt to have it as a backdrop for a more mushy iteration and those who prefer their movies to have more minimal stakes may even prefer Fly Me To The Moon.

Score – 3/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Longlegs, a horror thriller starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage following an FBI agent as she uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end the terrifying murder spree of a serial killer.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Divorce In The Black, a romantic thriller starring Meagan Good and Cory Hardrict about a young woman who is left devastated when her husband abandons their marriage and concerned about his actions when she tries to move on.
Premiering on Disney+ is Descendants: The Rise Of Red, a fantasy musical starring Kylie Cantrall and Malia Baker about the daughters of the Queen Of Hearts and Cinderella as they team up to stop an event that would cause grave consequences.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup