OUT NOW: Deadpool & Wolverine (Shawn Levy)

Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine join forces.

I remember enjoying the previous Deadpools.

In the six years since I never watched them again. It feels like more than a decade thanks to the pandemic.

In that time, whatever remaining interest I had in superheroes had truly cooled.

The genre itself seemed to be running out of juice last year.

But then this movie came out and became a massive hit. So who knows.

I have nothing original to say about this movie. I am not a Reynolds fan, and this movie is written and produced by the star. So this is Ryan unleashed. 

To its vague credit, this film tries to bring some pathos.

Like its star, it wants so bad to matter. And by matter, I mean it is terrified of coming off like a soulless cash grab.

People wondered for years how Deadpool can fit in Feige's house, but the Marvel movies have had a penchant for puncturing any sincerity with snide asides, so having the Merc with the Mouth comment on everything is not that big of a jump. More of the snake eating its own tail, if the snake was making jokes about ass-eating.

This movie is exhausting.

I do not talk during movies but there was a point toward the end where I yelled at the screen, "shut up!"

Deadpool never stops talking. Wolverine never stops telling him to shut up.

Does Deadpool actually learn or change? Who cares?

Emma Corrin is good as the childishly sadistic godling our heroes have to confront. The opening credit sequence is clever. Jackman is good. And it is nice to have some unapologetic bisexuality in a mainstream movie.

Ugh, whatever.

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 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

OUT NOW: Blink Twice (Zoe Kravitz)

Cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) cannot believe her luck when tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) whisks her away to his private island…

“You having a good time?”

Channing Tatum’s Slater King spends the movie repeating this question.

It feels like the movie - trying to thrill and unnerve you, but there is no real danger under it.

From the outset the film is discombobulating.

We are introduced to Naomi Ackie fixated on Channing Tatum, scrolling news stories about the billionaire unstated fall from grace.

Every shot is too close and edited a touch faster than it feels like it should be. The film is agitated, off-centre.

It is almost like the film is in too much of a hurry to get to the island, and set the viewer on edge.

But because every scene is shot in cut in a similar manner, the tension never has a chance to really rack up.

There is no sense of our heroine slowly realising something is wrong - particularly when every filmmaking choice is already pointing the viewer toward that.

Channing Tatum is interesting casting. Not the right casting for this role - but there is probably a world where his specific brand of earnestness would work as a misdirect. 

Sadly, the role of Slater King does not have that much to it.

But the real void is Frida. We have almost no context for her - no motivation or sense of her life outside of what we see. She is obsessed with Slater King. She does not have money. She has a best friend (Alia Shawkat).

Ackie is a fine actress but the performance is reduced to a series of reactions. Who is this person? How does she feel about this situation? 

And what does the film have to say about said situation?

I don’t know.

When the film starts, it feels like it is going to say something about the way our culture centres and idolises the Uber-wealthy - maybe it will even get into the gender and racial disparities between the central characters.

But the film never presents a point of view or even an angle on any of these ideas.

When we are finally given an idea of King’s debaucheries, they feel almost neutered in terms of shock value. We knew something was off with King from the beginning - give the viewer something more.

What he does is bad. He is evil. And the system that supports him is as well. But this movie is not interested in digging in.

The film does not have any deeper idea behind it, and because the central character is so undefined, the ending - in which our lead turns the tables - feels somewhat baffling.

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 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BITE-SIZED: Firestorm (Dean Semler, 1998)

When a sadistic criminal (William Forsythe) breaks out of jail during a forest fire, it falls to a veteran smoke jumper (Howie Long) to stop him.

I had seen this movie as a kid, and was curious to check back in with it.

This movie is not great, but in its lunkheaded way it is a solid action programmer.

It makes a lot out of its $19 million budget, and runs less than 90 minutes.

William Forsythe is a great bad guy, and Long is not bad in the lead - he is clearly charismatic, but in the way that an athlete is. But he does not have the kind of screen presence that draws you in.

Still, the movie does not make the mistake of burdening him with anything too emotionally nuanced. 

He spends most of the movie running or improvising fire-based solutions like MacGyver.

While there is some action, most of the movie’s mileage comes from trying to avoid the fire.

In this respect, Firestorm is reminiscent of a Desmond Bagley novel, in how it combines an action thriller plot with some kind of natural hazard.

Not great, but it gets the job done.

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 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

OUT NOW: Alien Romulus (Fede Álvarez)

When a derelict space wreck enters orbit, a group of desperate workers from the harsh mining colony below sneak onboard.

They see the wreck as an opportunity, a way to upgrade their ship to make the nine year journey to a planet far beyond the clutches of the company.

Too bad…

My relationship with the Alien movies is weird.

I first discovered them as a kid, through their novelisations by the great Alan Dean Foster.

I did not watch the movies until years later, by which time they had been spoiled and somewhat superseded by my imagined versions from the books.

Bizarre, I know.

So the movies have never really hit for me.

I can certainly appreciate them, but my ass-backwards introduction to them has always kept them at a distance.

It is tough not to reach for the AI-assisted facsimile of Ian Holm when trying to encapsulate this movie, but there is not much to it.

Alien Romulus is the perfect example of the Disney approach to franchise relaunches - take what worked before and repeat it.

If that includes recreating the face and voice of an actor who died years before the movie began production, so be it.

Alien Romulus has things to recommend it: it is the first film since the second to capture the idea of working stiffs getting screwed by the company.

There is some decent world building at the start, with our heroine trapped in a never-ending contract, always in debt to the company.

The catalyst for the film’s action is desperation.

In that respect it broadly follows the set up of director Fede Álvarez’s Don’t Breathe, but it is effective.

And the filmmakers do have some good ideas once the action shifts to the abandoned space station.

There is a decent slow walk through a corridor of facehuggers and an inspired beat involving zero g and acid blood.

But the overriding sense with this movie is of a checklist being ticked off: we get repetitions of famous lines, some familiar music cues, and even a third act that manages to combine Prometheus and Alien Resurrection. 

Heck even not-Ian Holm (a combination of puppetry and AI-assisted CGI) is a reprise of the scene from Alien 3 where Ripley talks to a puppet of Lance Henrikson’s Bishop.

Of course in that film, they had a flesh and blood actor on hand to provide the voice and soul.

The cast are fine, particularly David Jonsson as compromised android Andy. But the film is closer to a slasher with a group of vaguely likeable heroes who are meant to be dispatched.

But the film - despite some touches of gore - feels airless. And despite a few jolts, and the moments I mentioned, the film is never that tense.

It feels like the diet version of Alien - all the familiar tropes, but there is nothing new or unique to this iteration. All the previous films had something new to add to the mix, whether it was additional concepts like the queen or a prison planet, or changes to the tone or genre. This movie plays it safe.

And the film’s theme of a soulless corporation treating desperate plebs as experiments feels almost like self-parody when the film is exploiting the facsimile of a dead human being to play a facsimile of a human being whose prime directive is “For the good of the company”.

Indeed.

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 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)

 Two warring gangs.

One town.

And one stranger (Toshiro Mifune) who is going to tip the scales…

The progenitor of so many action, thriller and western plots, Yojimbo is a key cinematic text of world cinema.

So of course I only got around to watching it this year.

I had read Red Harvest, the book this film was inspired by, years ago, but I could barely remember anything. I have not watched A Fistful of Dollars in over a decade either so this was practically a fresh watch.

I have finally come around to the understanding that if a classic movie is playing on a big screen near me, I should go. It is not so much sanctity of the movie theatre at this point but the fact that I won’t have to worry about getting distracted by my phone or (if I’m on a computer) watching YouTube.

Anyway, back to the main event.

This movie is so effortless. The way it balances tension with humour is unbelievable.

And Mifune is the ur-text for every silent badass character to stroll into an action movie: everybody from Eastwood’s Man with No Name (for the one reader who does not know, Fistful of Dollars is a remake of this movie) to Jack Reacher.

The star is so gloriously minimal - you just watch him evaluating the people around him, giving away nothing within the story, but you can track every move that character is making.

And when he snaps into action, it is beautiful.

The most special aspect of his character to me is how he appears to be almost superhuman to everyone around him.

Yet thanks to Mifune’s performance, that facade is always presented as such to the audience.

He is a capable fighter, but he is still only one man.

He is very aware of the odds against him, and avoids direct confrontation as much as possible.

The one time he drops the facade is after he rescues the family. After disguising his massacre of the villains, he leaves their hideout to find the family waiting for him.

Terrified, he explodes and basically threatens them into finally escaping.

The film is packed with moments of humour such as this (the way the rival gangs advance and retreat, trying to avoid starting the fight is inspired), and they are so well-judged they never work against the stakes.

Just a great movie. If you have not seen it, rectify that now.

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 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.