THEATRE REVIEW: Maria Williams – Anxiety... the Musical!? (New Zealand International Comedy Festival)

My passion is movies, but I love watching the stage shows at the Basement Theatre (for those outside of NZ, it is in the CBD of my home city Auckland). I may not like or understand everything I see there but I am always energised by it. There is something so inspiring about the shows that play there. I have watched theatre in other spaces but for me the real energy and imagination is at smaller venues like the Basement. There is something about the limitations of the space that attracts some really exciting unique experiences.

I have not been to the Basement in a long time. I did review a show for Theatrescenes a couple weeks ago but prior to that I had not gone to the theatre since November. Generally shows start on Tuesdays, and with my current schedule I would not be able to review any new shows. Outside of the reviews, I do not get to see a lot of theatre because I cannot afford it. Long story longer, I thought that I would not be back for a while. 

NARRATOR: Little did he know...

I have been retraining this year for a new career and this past week was a real low point. I was considering dropping out. On Thursday night I got a message asking if I wanted to go to a show - I needed something to look forward to and said yes without caring what it was for.

When I arrived, my friends had already bought the tickets. I began to get excited when the bell rang and we were led upstairs. I have a special fondness for the smaller Studio - you might get a prestige production in the larger downstairs space, but you never know what to expect in the Studio. Physically it may be small, but its capacity for unleashing performers’ and audiences’ imaginations is limitless. 

When we enter, the stage was bare, aside from a mike stand and a table covered in posters and bits of paper. People were encouraged to share their own anxieties for Williams to share with the rest of us. In previous years, I would have scribbled something down, but I was still too burnt out. 

I regret that I did not because Anxiety... the Musical!? might have been made for me. 

Written and performed by Maria Williams, is a one-woman show charting her life, and  struggles with mental health.  

Williams’s show moves like a snowball down a mountain, rapidly growing in speed and mass until it overwhelms the audience. She sings! She dances! She changes costumes! She compares her life with Taylor Swift’s (complete with charts)! 

I hate adding myself to the review, but it was during this last segment in particular that I started making connections with the performer’s life:

We’re in the same age range, hated cross-country and I am training for the same day job she is currently in. The overlaps were so on-point it made me think a) some kind of cosmic order exists in the universe and b) whoever is writing it is a hack with no subtlety whatsoever. 

I was already laughing but that realisation sent me over the top. 

Williams is incredibly self-lacerating, but there is no nihilism to her perspective. Hilarious, brutal and self-exposing, but there is an underlying empathy beneath the barbs that is hard to describe.

I usually do not focus on audience reactions, but with Anxiety... the Musical!?, it feels necessary. While Willaims’ show is deeply personal, that specificity resonated. I am not versed in the language or concepts of mental health or therapy, but there was an incredibly visceral sense of community in that audience. It was electrifying. People were howling and cackling, in perfect sync with Williams as she continued her self-dissection.

 When it was over, the whole room was buzzing. The show felt like an hour of emotional release - whatever you brought into that room was expelled, or at least exhausted. It was the perfect example of why people go to live performances. It was a community of anxious people combining to form a very anxious Voltron - and it was great.

Anxiety… The Musical!? Is playing its last show tonight at the Basement.

2 Fast 2 Furious (John Singleton, 2003)

Ex-cop Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) is now in Florida, making money as a street racer.

His old life is behind him - until US authorities drag him back in to go undercover as a driver for a  local drug lord.

To assist him in his mission, Brian enlists childhood friend and fellow driver Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson). Will the ex-cop and the ex-con work out their differences to take down the bad guys?

I have never seen this movie before. I was aware of its reputation and no one wanted to see it with me. I remember the year it came out because 2003 was the last year where big budget action movies based around shootouts and car chases were a thing: The Matrix Reloaded and Bad Boys II came out that summer and I can recall several different rankings of the three film’s car chases. While it was a big hit at the time, it seemed like the franchise was kind of done. When the franchise rebooted in the 2010s, 2 Fast 2 Furious was always mentioned as the series’ nadir. That collective disregard made me way more interested to see this movie and get my own take on it.

Putting aside the movie, it also introduced two characters who would go on to become important parts of the current ‘family’: Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges’ Tej Parker and Tyrese Gibson’s Roman Pearce.

In building this film around Brian O’Connor sans Dom, 2 Fast 2 Furious revises his backstory a bit to make him a former young hellion who reformed only slightly when he became a police officer. An attempt to give O’Connor more edge, it does not really add anything. Walker is pretty likeable in the movie but there is not much going on with the character.

Watching this movie a week after the original, I felt the absence of Vin Diesel. Whatever magic chemistry he had with Walker is absent, and all you are left with is a pretty rote action drama.

The screenwriters have tried to replicate Brian’s uneasy relationship with Dom with Roman. I cannot get over the feeling that Roman’s role was intended for Dom. Roman and Brian’s relationship is based on distrust because of Brian’s job as a police officer - it is the literal extension of where we left our heroes at the end of the first movie: Brian is on the outs with Dom/Roman for being a cop.

I am not a fan of franchise continuity and the F&F’s approach has always appealed to me. They do not plan their movies ahead, and treat each installment as its own beast, with characters taking on and losing traits as the story (or stars) demand. Roman’s characterisation is the perfect example of this approach.

In 2 Fast, Roman is fresh out of prison and distrustful of everyone, especially Brian. 

In an echo of Justin Lin’s enlisting of Sung Kang from his feature Better Luck Tomorrow, Tyrese previously worked with director John Singleton on his movie Baby Boy, and Roman feels like an extension of that character. 

Watching this movie reminded me of how Gibson has grown as a performer. In his early roles, I found Gibson to be  a limited performer in terms of his emotional range. He has good chemistry with Walker, but he seems a little tense on camera. It is interesting to contrast his performance here with how he has relaxed into the ensemble in the recent instalments.

As for Ludacris, In this movie, Tej is a minor fixer in the street racing world - Bridges is fine although he does not get much to do. Tej does have a relationship with a fellow racer, Suki, played by model Devon Aoki. It is interesting how the diversity established in the first movie has not been dropped in this installment. It is one of the franchise’s key strengths.

As for the other major characters in the movie, Eva Mendes is easily the most memorable. As the undercover Customs agent Monica Fuentes, she is teased as a new love interest for Brian - any potential in that relationship is hamstrung by the weak script, which presents her as arm candy and does not give her a lot of agency. If Mendes was not playing this part, the character would probably play as more of a generic love interest. It is a testament to Mendes that the character feels enigmatic and interesting in spite of the bland plot turns of the story.

Considering how much Roman and Tej have become established parts of the ensemble, it is a pity that aside from a cameo in Five Mendez has not been brought back in a significant role. One of the advantages of Tej and Roman is that their characters do not get elaborate backstories and characters arcs, which allowed them to be fleshed out in later movies. Hopefully, Vin finds a way to bring Fuentes back into the fold, and the character can be rehabilitated as another member of the family. 

In the villain corner, Cole Hauser has a good line in simmering menace, but he does not do that much - there is some nasty business involving a rat, a bucket and a blowtorch, but he does not kill anyone and his big plan is to flee the country. He also survives at the end, which undermines the ending.

The action is odd - while there are real cars and stunts, the filmmakers overdo the virtual camera moves and indulge in a hyperspeed-style motion-blurring when drivers engage the Noz that makes the action harder to follow.

Viewed on its own terms, 2 Fast, 2 Furious lacks a strong sense of identity. The first movie at least had the distinction of being ‘Point Break with cars’. This movie does not feel big enough for the big screen - there are a couple of fun stunts but if you took those out you would be left with an episode of Hawaii 5-0. 

The plot is straightforward but the stakes never get that high. I also felt like the movie was missing a second act. The movie feels like all set up and then we are into the climactic car chase. This is one of the rare movies where I could have used a slightly longer runtime.

 

One minor pleasure is the score, which I recognised as the work of former James Bond composer David Arnold - he adds some contemporary textures, but he adds much-needed tension and pathos to the movie.

I am not a fan of the first movie but this movie is far more inconsequential - only in hindsight does it gain import. In 2003, when I was looking forward to the Matrix movies and X-Men 2, 2 Fast, 2 Furious did not seem that exciting - and sadly that still holds true post-viewing.

I am glad I watched it for the context, but I cannot see myself watching it again.

Previous posts

The Fast and the Furious

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Checked out the latest episodes of the James Bond Cocktail Hour?

 The third season of the James Bond Cocktail Hour is out now. 

The episodes are as follows:

No Time To Die Trailer 2 review

Nobody Lives For Ever (by John Gardner)

How to introduce James Bond

Casino Royale '06 Part One & Two

McClory v Fleming

Thunderball (novel)

Remembering Sean Connery

Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965)

A look at Kevin McClory's Warhead (1976)

Never Say Never Again (Irvin Kershner, 1983)

Remixing Thunderball

The Hunt for Red October

The Man with the Golden Gun

Bond Tropes Discussion

Ranking the James Bond ski chases

Die Another Day (2 hour cut)

Patriot Games

Last month's episodes are:

Clear and Present Danger

The Man Who Almost Killed James Bond

You can listen to these and future episodes wherever you listen to podcasts!

Follow the podcast on IG @jbchpod and on Twitter @jbchpod007.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (Brad Silberling, 2004)

When their parents die in an accident the three Baudelaire children (Emily Browning, Liam Aiken, Kara and Shelby Hoffman) bounce from one caregiver to the next. While the adults around them believe they are just unlucky, the children are more suspicious that all of these deaths have something to do with Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), a conman who is obsessed with gaining control of their fortune.

This movie sounds like a good idea - a mordant series of books about unfortunate children brought to life  in the visual style of one of Hollywood’s most distinctive stylists, Tim Burton.

The key problem is that Burton is not present, and the filmmakers have sought to bottle lightning by replicating his signature style.

This movie is a pure exercise in aesthetic replication - it has a superficial understanding of how it’s influence looks and sounds, but has no function beyond mimicry.

The people who made this want to reach for the pitch-black humour of The Addams Family (with a good dollop of Burton-style pop gothic), but the movie never comes together.

The whole movie feels dead - the art direction and the visual style weirdly lack the sense of humour and energy that the movie requires.

The key thing with Tim Burton’s work is that he believes in it, and he has a feel for how to make it feel like a living, breathing world. His movies are funny but they’re funny in specific ways that feel rooted in the real world. There is a pathos to Burton’s characters that may be heightened, but it is believable. 

A sad postscript to the film is that it ends up replicating the look and feel of later Tim Burton, when he had taken on CGI and started remaking other works that vaguely fit his established persona.

Jim Carrey’s performance as Count Olaf sounds great in concept but it feels like an improv riff with no focus or punchlines. 

The child actors’ performances are pitched for dry wit, but there is no naturalism or feeling to their characterisations. They are pieces of the mode-en-scene, moving from plot point to plot point.

Ultimately, beyond the economic motive, I just do not know why this movie needs to exist. 

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Haunt (Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, 2019)

A group of teens (Katie Stevens, Will Brittain, Lauryn McClain, Andrew Caldwell, Shazi Raja and Schuyler Helford) leave a party in search of more fun and end up at a ‘haunted’ house filled with contrived scares - which turn out to be considerably more lethal than they could imagine...

Haunt just popped onto Netflix.

I have been waiting to see the slasher movie Hell Fest - it is based around a group of friends getting stuck in a fairground fright house and getting stalked by a masked killer.

Hell Fest did not come out in theatres in NZ and I was not sure enough that it would be worth spending money to see it via a streamer. Plus, since it was a smaller genre movie, it always felt like perfect fare for Netflix. 

When I saw the premise for Haunt, it sounded like the perfect substitute

The movie features some effective scares, but it is never consistent in its tension or understanding what makes its villains scary.

There is something kind of anonymous about it - there are some gore-y kills and some effective jump scares but no real building tension. The effect might have been greater on the big screen, but the movie suffers from a monotonous tone that is just unrelentingly oppressive.

It is an issue that I have with a lot of modern horror movies - the tone is bleak from the outset and so when the killing starts, it does not feel like a significant development in the story.

The key issue I had was that I did not have any investment in the main characters. It is nothing against the cast - the script gives them nothing to work with.

I wanted more character development from the group of teens. I know this genre and the expediency of teens for the bodycount, but I could not even lock into what archetypes they are using - we are introduced to them at a party, which feels like a great opportunity to give us a sense of who they are, and how they relate to each other.

It means that when they start dying, I did not care and the movie became a bit dull.

The climax relies on some editing cheats and other contrivances to get our heroine out of peril that ruined any good feeling I had left.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge (Ethan Spaulding, 2020)

Earth is in trouble - if a group of human warriors cannot win an intergalactic fighting tournament, then the planet will be conquered by the evil Shao Kahn and his human emissary Shan Tsung (Artt Butler).

Can Liu Kang (Jordan Rodrigues), Sonya Blade (Jennifer Carpenter), Jax (Ike Amadi), Johnny Cage (Joel McHale) and Scorpion (Patrick Seitz) defeat this menace?

After watching Mortal Kombat 2021, I was keen to check out some of the earlier movies. I was not able to find the 1995 movie, but I did find this animated flick from last year.

It feels weird to say this, but after all the criticisms I had about MK 2021, this movie avoids all of them. This movie is leagues better than the latest movie. If they do make a MK 2, they should bring in the creative team behind this project to make it.

In fact, watching this movie, I was struck by how similar it was in concept - it opens and closes on Scorpion's story, and the main action is based around a human character who has no idea what is going on.

What is startling is how poorly the 2021 film handles this latter element, with Cole (Lewis Tan). Cole is not a character from the game, but that is irrelevant - the problem is that he has no personality. This is not Tan's fault - the script does not give him a character to play that will also be relatable to the audience.

His role as the audience surrogate is here taken by Johnny Cage, a Hollywood action star played with airhead confidence by Community's Joel McHale.Watching Cage bounce around this world really brought home how much the live-action film is missing personality. Kano has been held up as the film's saving grace, but he is ultimately a villain. Cage is a superficial guy who is forced to put himself in danger for the greater good - the movie does not really lean into giving him an arc, but he does change over the course of the movie. Cage does act as more of a second lead in this movie, and his overall dynamic with the other characters is comparable to Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China. While Cage's character is not the most original, he is a functional entry point for non-gamers like myself. I spent the movie wondering why Cage was not in the live-action movie, and why Lewis Tan was not cast as that character. 

Another strength of this movie is how unpretentious it is. This movie is 80 minutes long, and moves. Aside from Scorpion, we get the bare minimum of backstory from our characters - Sonya gets a flashback - and the other characters we gauge via dialogue and action. This movie feels like all the fat has been cut out, in the style of an old-fashioned genre movie: cut the filler, get to the money shots.

The other thing the movie does is set down clear rules for the world. My big problem with the live-action movie was that I could not follow the powers of Lord Raiden, Scorpion and Sub-Zero. That made it hard to understand the stakes of what was going on. This movie lays out the exposition of who people are and what Mortal Kombat is efficiently in the first 20 minutes. A lot of it is through dialogue, but any potential portentousness is offset by Johnny Cage's irreverence. 

The movie is not long, which was a nice change of pace. In some respects it does feel more like a pilot for a TV show than a movie, but overall it briskly gets through its premise with some good fight sequences and interesting characters. The 2021 movie could not even get to a proper tournament. So many movies are obsessed with laying out the tracks for future instalments, and Mortal Kombat 2021 is a prime example of that. 

If I have one criticism of this movie, it is that it takes its best tricks - like the ridiculous violence - and does them over and over again. While I enjoyed the movie, the blood-letting does get more repetitive as the film goes on. 

It also does not include the Immortals song, but I did not notice it was missing till the movie was over, so that's good.

Scorpion's Revenge is not a secret masterpiece - it is just a solid movie that works on its on. Hopefully the movers and shakers behind the live-action movie can take a few notes. 

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OUT NOW: Mortal Kombat

Earth is in trouble - if a group of human warriors cannot win an intergalactic fighting tournament, then the planet will be conquered by the evil Shan Tsung (Chin Han).

Can Cole (Lewis Tan), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Jax (Mehcad Brooks), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), and Kung Lao (Max Huang) defeat the alien menace?

Some movies become successful because they hit every aspect of production out of the park. Other movies succeed because enough of those elements work that it gets over the finish line. And then there are the movies that have all the elements, but they do not work together. Within this group of movies are movies which hit certain elements so well that viewers are willing to let them go.

This accounts for a lot of genre movies and franchises with established formulas. If the filmmakers execute the elements that are associated with the series effectively, then that can be enough: jokes in a comedy; the importance of gore in slasher movies; the James Bond formula.

Mortal Kombat definitely falls into this subset of movies.

Before anyone jumps in, just know that the only thing I know about Mortal Kombat is the song. I have never played the games and I have never seen the movie. I saw the trailer to this movie, which was so good Mortal Kombat shot to the top of my 'must-sees'.

The expectations for this kind of movie are not the same as other movies - I did not go into this movie expecting great characters or a complex plot. All you want is a straightforward reason for a collection of fight scenes. If those fight scenes are well-choreographed and cleanly photographed, then you have a winner.

Mortal Kombat ís a strange beast. It is pretty earnest and tries to give its protagonist - human fighter Cole (Lewis Tan) - an arc, but those elements almost felt like a drag on the movie. 

The movie has plot points - if I wrote them down in order they would resemble a character arc and a story. But the movie does not really cohere.

I almost wonder if the movie would worked better if the movie kept the structure of a tournament. With this movie I did not expect I would want the movie to be simpler and more familiar, but this plot line - based around an original character who is an entry point for new viewers - feels like it needs to be fleshed out AND tightened.

I expected clean choreography and disgusting violence - the movie has both - but I had trouble with the structure of the movie. 

I could have used some of the cliches - some training montages; an announcer clarifying the rules (Are Scorpion and/or Sub-Zero mortal?); and I wanted way more of the iconic theme song.

At the midway point, our heroes are at their lowest point, just before the tournament. But at this point our heroes come up with a plan to control the locations of their future combat.

Convention would dictate that we would get some set up for this plan, but the movie thrusts us into each set piece and intercuts between them.

I could have used at least an establishing shot so I knew where these scenes took place, and some boring voice-over to explain why each environment was important. 

Intercutting set pieces is such a difficult thing to do - you need to ensure that each scene builds in its own terms, but also complement each other. The back half of the movie is a little haphazard and does not build in a particularly satisfying way.

All this being said/written. I kinda liked this movie. The pre-credit sequence (which is already available online) is a nice self-contained little story. The filmmakers have also tried to avoid a lot of green screen: there are a variety of different locations in the movie, including a coal mine that serves as Outworld.

The movie has scope, but the third act kinda drops the ball by throwing our heroes into a couple of obviously green screened environments that lack the same visual pop.

The elements I thought would be good in the movie - the villains - were pretty good. My only problem (and it is a good one) is that I wanted more of them onscreen.

Weirdly, while the movie takes time with Cole and the other heroes, I wanted more of the villains. I am always a fan of great bad guys and I wanted more scenes showing just how bad and powerful they were. 

Josh Lawson adds some welcome swagger as the egotistical Kano, and Sisi Stringer licks a blood-encrusted blade.

Lawson fades away as the movie goes on, while hench-persons like Stringer’s Mileena, Prince Goro and that flying woman do not get as much action as I anticipated. I was surprised we did not get a few more scenes of the villains obliterating other champions. 

While the script is not great, the acting is pretty solid. Tan is stuck with a non-descript hero role. He is not bad but the character always feels like an archetype. He also gets his thunder stolen by having to share the final set piece with Scorpion, who has the best motivation in the movie.

It is great to see actors like Tadanobu Asano (as Lord Raiden), Chin Han (as Shang Tsung) and Hiroyuki Sanada (as 

Scorpion) in a big production like this.

I was particularly keen on the appearances of Sanada fighting Joe Taslim. Sanada is a fine actor 

who I have seen in so many different projects. It is cool that he was cast as Scorpion rather than 

some action star or stuntman.

Chin Han is also good as Shang Tsung, the villain’s big bad. As with most of the bad guys, he 

does not get that much to do but he brings a preening confidence that works for the character.

The standout of the cast is Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero - he’s a great actor and carries himself 

with such confidence and physicality. He is genuinely menacing, and the filmmakers give 

him the appropriate buildup as the film’s Big Bad.

Now to the main reason people will want to watch this movie: the fight scenes.

The movie is a vaguely enjoyable collection of fight scenes - some good, others less.

Some of the fights are good but once again the CGI works against it. Apart from the beginning and The end, the set pieces suffer from over-cutting and the camera is often too close. Combined with the CG enhancements, there is a blurry quality to the fighting which made parts of the scenes hard to see.

Part of the issue is that some of the cast are martial artists and others are not. The filmmakers resort to quick cuts and close ups to mask their abilities. 

The movie features some familiar comedic beats, including a joke about the spelling of the titular contest. While the humour is not great, I kinda wanted more of it. The movie is earnest, but I wanted it to lean more into  the silliness.

 I feel like I have been listing problems but I still liked the movie. This movie feels like a promise - the cast are strong, the aesthetic choices feel correct, and that song does show up eventually. This is an overlong way of saying I would be curious about a sequel - especially if it means more Joe Taslim v Hiroyuki Sanada beatdowns.

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