"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Black Adam

Call it super hero fatigue, call it The Rock mistrust, call it what you want, but for some reason I, a guy who has seen most comic book movies, including ones everybody says are terrible, did not bother with BLACK ADAM. Until now. I don’t know, I was trying to figure out something to watch, I knew I’d be seeing that THE FLASH movie soon, and I kinda wanted to catch up beforehand, just for the sake of completism, I guess. So I put it on.

There was a point early on when I honestly wondered, “Am I gonna be the guy who likes this movie?,” ’cause the set up kinda had me going. But it pretty quickly shifted to that feeling you get at the climax of a big wannabe blockbuster you’re not into. A bunch of loud noises and bullshit. Oh well. I will have some nice things to say about it.

I dig that it starts as a fantasy movie. Narrator and everything. In the ancient civilization of Kahndaq, the tyrant King Ahk-Ton (Marwan Kenzari, BEN-HUR, THE MUMMY, ALADDIN, THE OLD GUARD) enslaves his own people to mine eternium (you know, eternium) so he can forge the magical Crown of Sabbac. Obviously. But a rebellious slave boy starts a revolt, and they try to execute him, so the Council of Wizards from the movie SHAZAM! give him the Shazam powers to turn into a big muscleman (Dwayne Johnson, BE COOL) and kill the king. And legend has it that the champion of Kahndaq will return some day when he is needed.

This prologue kinda reminded me of Stephen Sommers’ THE MUMMY. The part of it I like. And of course The Rock was in THE MUMMY RETURNS for about five seconds, and spun off into the (in my forbidden-because-it’s-so-clearly-correct opinion) far more entertaining THE SCORPION KING, one of the movies that made him such an exciting new star back then. That was also an origin story for a supposed villain, treated as a hero. So this had me thinking “Oh shit, is The Rock kinda doing a new SCORPION KING?” Because I really want to be excited about The Rock again.

But then it skips to… I’m gonna say present day, but at first I thought it was the future, because the city looks futuristic and there are hoverbikes. Kahndaq is a major metropolis, but it’s under western colonial rule. Or I guess technically it’s the rule of Intergang, a DC Comics criminal organization, but they have white guys in military gear enforcing checkpoints, so I’ll take it as western colonial rule. The narrator of the prologue turns out to be Amon (Bodhi Sabongui, WWE’s THE MAIN EVENT), teenage son of Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi, ROAD TO PALOMA), an archaeologist and/or rebel who’s in hiding from the Intergang police and headed to explore a secret tomb where she finds the legendary Crown of Sabbac and also accidentally frees the champion, Teth-Adam.

This is one of the cooler parts: heavily armed soldiers (from Intergang I guess?) come in after Adrianna to steal the crown, and try to kill Adam, posing dramatically in a hooded cloak. He just squints at them and says, “Your magic is weak” as their hundreds of high powered bullets bounce off of him. He hovers outside and encounters a helicopter, with similar results. He starts as kind of a Terminator character, which I’m happy to see from The Rock after he’s been leaning on his wackiness for a while. Later when he has jokes he plays them very deadpan, so most of them work.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for most of the humor in the movie. The Tomaz’s live with Adrianna’s brother Karim (standup comedian Mohammed Amer), a character I’m gonna have to describe as funny-coded. One of those characters who you can tell by his outfit and general demeanor is supposed to be funny, but they don’t give him many actual jokes. The main one is that he’s listening to “Baby Come Back” by Player in the car. You see, it’s funny because he’s listening to a cheesy old song. Can you believe it? They do that one twice. He also keeps mentioning that he’s an electrician, but if that ever had any narrative relevance, I’ve forgotten it already.

The director is Jaume Collet-Serra, helmer of the Liam Neeson joints UNKNOWN, NON-STOP, RUN ALL NIGHT and THE COMMUTER. And his Neeson-less films include HOUSE OF WAX, ORPHAN, and THE SHALLOWS, so I’d consider him a director of note, particularly in the sadly disappearing world of mid-budget studio b-movie type stuff. But in 2021 he did Disney’s THE JUNGLE CRUISE with The Rock, so he got this gig too.

I like a bunch of his movies, but could not tell you what the commonality is between them. For one of the early set pieces in this one, the score by Lorne Balfe (GEOSTORM) builds into a big orchestral version of The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” – later on they’ll start making a big deal about Adam’s costume being black – then cuts to the real song for a big Bullet Time battle scene. I was intrigued by the oddball choice until it occurred to me, “Oh, I get it. He’s asking himself ‘What Would Zack Snyder Do?,’ thinking about the opening credits of WATCHMEN, and this is what he came up with.”

He does okay I think. My problems are with the script, credited to Adam Sztykiel (ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE ROAD CHIP), Rory Haines & Sohrab Noshirvani (THE MAURITANIAN). Adam gets knocked out in his battle with the military, and wakes up in the bedroom of Amon, who becomes sort of the protagonist or the heart of the movie or something as he encourages Adam to be the legendary hero Kahndaq needs after centuries of oppression. Like much of the cast, this is a pretty likable actor stuck playing a dud of a character – the kid whose bedroom is completely covered in Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman posters, who keeps calling Adam a “super hero,” telling him he needs a catch phrase, being present to cheer or yell “AWESOME!” or whatever when he does stuff, etc. We’ve seen this exact shit a thousand times and it was corny the very first time. And this kid just stays that way, he doesn’t ever get turned into a shazam or a shrunken head.

Also the kid rebels against his oppressors by skateboarding. Which is not a crime, but is a pretty fuckin ‘90s kids movie, Shaquille-O’Neal-is-STEEL type of choice. He’s wearing a t-shirt with a star on it for the whole movie, like the way they might draw a generic skateboard kid in a bad Saturday morning cartoon. And it gets even worse at the end when some super heroes honor him by giving him a cape, and he starts wearing that around! They even make a joke about the fact that most super heroes don’t wear capes these days. Like, okay, we recognize that this makes no sense, but we insist on doing it, so if we point out it makes no sense, we get a freebie.

But I do give them credit for not making him wear a backwards baseball cap or sunglasses, or giving him a surfer dude accent. That must’ve taken incredible restraint.

The DC Universe stuff starts in pretty quick. Adam hovers around in public, super-tosses some asshole soldiers, examines the enormous stone statue of himself (admittedly a cool image). So Academy Award winner Viola Davis (LAW ABIDING CITIZEN) appears on a monitor as Amanda Waller, her scary government lady character who first appeared in SUICIDE SQUAD. (They didn’t make her wear old age makeup, that’s why I don’t think this is the future.) She assigns Justice Society leader Carter “Hawkman” Hall (Aldis Hodge, DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE) to arrest Adam, and he brings along gold-alien-masked-future-seer Dr. Fate (Pierce Brosnan, FINAL SCORE), spinning-lady Maxine “Cyclone” Hunkel (Quintessa Swindell, MASTER GARDENER), and growing-guy Al “Atom Smasher” Rothstein (Noah Centineo, CHARLIE’S ANGELS [2019]). Again, the actors are likable, but the characters and their powers just aren’t cool enough to make up for their generic, hollow characterization. Hodge gets the most to do, and has a good super hero presence, so I feel bad for him that his character is basically a cop, working for The Man, doing the wrong thing, and grimacing about it.

To be fair, that’s also one of the movie’s more interesting ideas. Amon, Adrianna and Adam all repeatedly remind the Justice Society that they’re occupiers interfering in a country they don’t understand. If you’ve seen THE SUICIDE SQUAD or Peacemaker you also know how immoral and treacherous their boss is. But they know some things the locals don’t – it turns out Adam was not a hero, he was a raging maniac, the Wizard Council disavowed him and tried to imprison him. The Justice Society plan to finish the job. Adrianna’s contribution is to tell Adam he may not be a hero, but he’s not a monster either, and convince him to protect the city he once loved. I thought his arc was pretty cool, especially when he willingly depowers (by saying “Shazam”) and tells them to make sure he never says it again.

You know what’s a pretty funny image though? The Rock’s face composited onto a regular sized body to represent Adam before and after getting powers.

There’s a pretty cool idea here that Black Adam is different from other super heroes because he comes from this ancient culture, and rose up from slavery, so instead of some kind of truth, justice and the American way type shit he represents people rising up against oppression, even when that oppression is considered the American way. Unfortunately they try to get this theme across in the clunkiest, most basic, most poisoned-by-comic-book-brain way of having everyone constantly question whether he’s a “hero” or a “villain” and describing him as “dark.” Dr. Fate has a ridiculous line where he says, “We were wrong about you. The world doesn’t always need a white knight. Sometimes it needs something darker.”

Why the fuck would you call a person “dark”? You’re not having a conversation, you’re trying to summarize the themes as described in a half-baked treatment. I felt bad for Brosnan having to try to sell that. He did his best.

I know there’s a long enough history behind this that it could be considered a passion project for The Rock. They tried to get him to play Shazam almost 20 years ago, but he decided it would be cooler to be the villain, Black Adam. Then it was decided since they had The Rock he should be the lead, so they started developing a separate Black Adam movie. Then The Rock pushed to get a (spoiler, but you already heard about it) mid-credits cameo by Henry Cavill as Superman, thinking that would lead to a crossover movie, and he got all WWE in the promotions, infamously claiming “the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is about to change.” After all that, few were sold on his vision, he found himself on Instagram making arcane arguments for why technically it wasn’t a box office disappointment, and then all the sudden he was willing to return to the FAST & FURIOUS series. Not what he had planned.

But now that I’ve seen it I don’t think of it as as much of an embarrassment for The Rock as I did before. I’m sure some of its flaws can be blamed on him as producer and his constant chasing of what he thinks will give him a massive audience instead of having his own taste and passion for what would be an actual kickass movie. But at least the character and performance are better than the type of shit that’s made him, in my view, fall off in recent years. He’s a charming guy and he found out he could get away with just being charming and not playing characters, but here he actually acts again. I would like to see more of this intense, mostly serious The Rock, just in a better movie, where he entrusts himself to a director with a strong vision. He’s got the super power, he just needs to learn how to harness it again.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2023 at 7:20 am and is filed under Reviews, Comic strips/Super heroes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

24 Responses to “Black Adam”

  1. It cracked me up how 90s this movie was. The teen protagonist is not only introduced on a skateboard, but a Smashing Pumpkins song is playing.

    The movie isn’t bad so much as it’s a missed opportunity. I do like that the Rock is doing something other than his usual Rock persona. Pierce Brosnan also does very well with what he’s given.

    Unfortunately, these big blockbusters don’t seem to be a good fit for Collet-Serra. I did think he fared better on the Jungle Cruise, but I wish he could go back to being the b-movie Hitchcock.

  2. This movie was the ultimate proof, as if any more were needed, that the Rock brand line of movie-flavored mass-market consumer products is utterly fraudulent. He’s been talking shit about this movie for longer than some of the kids who bilked their parents into buying tickets for it have been alive, swearing up and down that it’s something different, something brash and bold, something you haven’t seen before. And then when it finally arrives, it’s the most tired shit imaginable: derivative, watered-down, four-quadrant pablum, artificially injected with synthetic humor supplements slathered over with the very thinnest veneer of ersatz transgression and rebelliousness. Everything is stolen, borrowed, repurposed, repackaged with maximum smugness and lack of respect for its audience’s intelligence. I’m glad people are finally catching on to this used car salesman’s scam. Like Vern, I still think he has potential, but he’s gonna need to take a few years off to walk the land or stickfight in Thailand or some shit to figure out what, if anything, he actually stands for before he can make an actual movie that’s more than the sum of its marketing campaign. To put it in terms he can understand, he’s all show, no go, and we ain’t falling for it anymore.

  3. Its pretty much an okay middle ground film. I enjoyed it well enough, because of the occupation of the city elements, and its having a different background than usual. It seems to want to go Judge Dredd here but doesn’t have the guts. Instead everyone in the city becomes a cliche type, which kills the stakes.
    The plot seemed to be scared of any unusual ideas it might have and falls back on cliches of friends turning out to be villains, weird meanings in ancient writings and general superhero gags in the fight scenes that showed up every ten minutes as if timed to be there to avoid people from getting bored.
    Hawkman, The Atom and Dr Fate should all be strong characters, and have been done well in other mediums, but instead they had to be stoic, jokes or a bit depressed. Basically they’re better characters than Black Adam so we can’t have that. Let’s simplify them horribly.
    The teen is basically a John Connor riff with the strong mother and the ambiguous muscle-man who needs to develop a heart. So its basically a weak version of T2.
    Yet despite all the laziness, I did enjoy it. I am a sucker for these middle of the road superhero films for some reason.

  4. I regret to inform you all that I am the guy who liked this movie. Long have I wanted The Rock to be the new Arnold, and I thought he was at his Schwarzenegger-iest in this movie. I’ve been an Aldis Hodge fan since Leverage, so I dug seeing him as a badass Hawkman, who is nobody’s favorite superhero. And I can’t believe they got Pierce Brosnan into a mo-cap suit. I thought for sure all the Dr. Fate was CGI, but there’s definitely a scene with him wearing the suit without the helmet on.

    I did not take to the first SHAZAM! because of the Geoff Johnsification of the movie. Johns is a guy who works with big kid-friendly concepts but fills them with extreme violence, and SHAZAM! was a fun family movie except for a few scenes of tonal whiplash where it went to some unnecessarily violent places. BLACK ADAM is also kid stuff that wants to be dark and edgy and cool (yes, very ’90s), and commits many of the same sins that bug me about superhero movies today. And yet, thanks to the benefit of very low expectations, I had fun. The movie had the energy of a kid smashing his action figures together, and that carried me through.

    Unfortunately my good will did not extend to SHAZAM 2.

  5. Yeah, I also kind of liked it. Smashing action figures together, in different configurations, with maximum destruction is a perfect description. I’ve already forgotten most of it, but except for all the dumb antihero posturing it went down easy.

    At least the dumb-ass script is just there as an excuse to string together action scenes, not to be taken seriously. And said action scenes weren’t boring; that’s more than I can say about any Snyder or Russo bros movie.

  6. I also did not hate this movie. Did it give me back the Rock of PAIN & GAIN and SNITCH? It did not. But at his most villainous, in his earliest scenes, he gave a reasonably convincing portrayal of someone who was a) fueled by rage and b) genuinely did not give a shit about killing people. He was for a little while at least an interesting character. Sure, he became just another action figure by the end — how could anyone expect anything different? But the first third or so (and, I admit, the presence of Sarah Shahi) kept me around.

  7. I too did not HATE this movie, but boy does it have way too many muddy Size 12 footprints of the Rock’s Ego having tramped all over this.

    Any rational mind that’s thumbed through a couple of comics would have introduced Black Adam as an antagonist/anti hero in a SHAZAM movie first, but it says something about the Rock that he was scared of sharing screen time with…Zachary Levi?

    I find I kinda liked the movie AROUND Black Adam (Pierce Brosnan’s Dr Fate, Aldis Hodge’s Hawkman) while the character itself did nothing for me

  8. And Holy Shit, Vern! Your knack of tacking on an obscure or non-famous role to an actor in your review has reached new heights. As someone who watches all DIE HARD films once a year, I was wracking my brains as to where the hell Aldis Hodge was in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.

    Was he one of Zeus’ kids/nephew?

  9. Yup. One of Zeus’s nephews.

  10. “I’m sure some of its flaws can be blamed on him as producer and his constant chasing of what he thinks will give him a massive audience instead of having his own taste and passion for what would be an actual kickass movie.”

    Fully agree with you on this Vern… this is my main issue with The Rock nowadays, this ongoing search of the massive audience rather than being himself. I think he has what it takes to really be in R rated movies – I have a lot of love for Pain & Gain for example. I thought that Skyscraper was a missed opportunity to have a hardcore Die Hard copycat with lots of violence – instead it was very average family friendly film. Same maybe with Rampage… I sometimes wonder if he got badly influenced by Vin Diesel and is too much focusing on his ego and social media than actually delivering really cool work. The difference between Vin and The Rock is I don’t think Vin can act (sorry), while I know The Rock has what it takes to deliver his yet to come masterpiece. He should go back in developing Sgt Rock as he was doing at some point…

    Black Adam was not bad, but simply easily forgotten…

  11. I disagree about Diesel’s acting but also I think the difference between him and Rock is that his movies, whatever you think about them, are completely fueled by his passion. The evolution of FAST & FURIOUS came from his determination, his taking over as producer, and his weird obsessions (including with himself). He mortgaged his house to turn his character from PITCH BLACK into the star of a trilogy (soon quadrilogy, I think). Not as good, but he based THE LAST WITCH HUNTER on his Dungeons & Dragons character. I think his movies are much more joyful and sincere because they’re the nerdy shit he wants to do. He’s not just a salesman trying to align with the product he thinks will sell the most. Also, he’s just weirder, so his bad movies are bad in much more interesting ways than Rock’s shiny product. His big miss super hero movie, BLOODSHOT, was way may fun than this.

  12. Of course this wasn’t even the only Rock DC Film last year, there was also DC LEAGUE OF SUPERPETS, which was honestly a fair bit better than I expected, even if I bet it was a fraction as memorable as whatever a second LEGO BATMAN movie would have been. But it’s worth talking about here because the post-credits scene has The Rock-voiced Krypto the Superdog meeting up with a face-not-shown Black Adam and his also Rock-voiced dog, who tells Krypto all about how cool Black Adam is, how he’s an “anti-hero” (a term all 5-11 year olds know and understand), how all kids should watch him when he’s in theatres in three months etc. Dwayne *really* convinced someone at Warners that the world was going to get #TethAdamFever

    I was out taking a jimmy riddle or whatever when the hierarchy of the DCEU changed before it then changed again, but I watched BLACK ADAM a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was OK, even pretty good for the first two thirds or so, but then the film feels like it’s going to end early, and then it turns out there’s like half an hour left but it feels like maybe an entire film crammed in there. I agree The Rock is in much better form here than he’s been for a long time, but he still can’t help giving this tortured anti-hero some bland Instagram motivational quotes at the end. Which is funny, so I’m not sure if that’s a complaint.

    Also I liked that they used a hollowed out VCR to hide whatever it was they were hiding.

    Did anyone else see any of YOUNG ROCK? I saw the first few episodes of the Second Season. It’s as hubristic as you’d expect, with a wraparound segment where Randall Park interviews The Rock in 2032 where he’s running for President, while the flashbacks in each episode dot around different periods of The Rock’s life where he is played by various actors of different ages. It’s an odd indulgence, but as someone who has almost never watched live wrestling but has a fascination with Wrestling history and frequently watches documentaries, reads books, listens to podcasts etc about it I have to admit it was kind of fun.

    Bill- I thought that the odd nasty moments in SHAZAM put it in the tradition of a lot of “for kids buuuuttt…” movies from the 80s like GREMLINS, the INDIANA JONES movies, THE GOONIES and everyone’s favourite example BIGGLES ADVENTURES IN TIME. I liked it, but I can see how it’s not really in the long tradition of the superhero who is legally forced to be called Shazam. Although you could probably say similar things about most recent or recentish Films/TV shows and even comics featuring superheroes who were created before the 70s or even 80s? Maybe not.

    With all respect to you the true BLACK ADAM fan must be Matt Zoller Seitz at RogerEbert.com, who in his 3.5/4 review calls it “spiky and majestic” and compares it to THE AFRICAN QUEEN, LA STRADA and ON THE WATERFRONT. I’m not sure I agree, but that’s the proper way to continue the legacy of the man who called SPAWN as an “unforgettable” “visual experience” that “including visions of hell that are worthy of Hieronymous Bosch”.

    Black Adam movie review & film summary (2022) | Roger Ebert

    Black Adam is one of the best DC superhero films.

  13. I watched one or two episodes of YOUNG ROCK and I have to say as far as sitcoms based on celebrities’ totally interesting childhoods go, this one is okay. It definitely gets extra points for all those fictionalized versions of real life wrestling icons that appear in it. But EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS remains unbeaten.

  14. And yeah, it is sad that maybe 10 years ago the whole “The Rock runs for president” angle would’ve been seen as charming “Haha, he is being self ironic”, while now it’s a “Holup, is he really gonna believe that?”

  15. Thank you for that review, Pacman. I had no clue that Matt Zoller Seitz was such a Black Adam stan. It didn’t convince me that Black Adam was a good movie, but it did convince me that in about four or five years, there’s going to be a “Black Adam was good, actually” movement.

    I think another important difference between The Rock and Vin Diesel is that The Rock is somewhat self-conscious and, despite his big ego, has one foot in the real world. Vin Diesel, on the other hand, is just living his best life in his own reality. Like, you’re never going to find Vin Diesel on Instagram arguing that his film technically turned a profit. He’s just chillin’ in a world where Bloodshot was the latest superhero craze.

  16. Maybe I was a bit too harsh on Vin Diesel’s acting – but as it was mentioned by others, I think that the capacity of The Rock to sometimes not take himself too seriously, is what makes the difference for me. Vin Diesel had a promising start in Saving Private Ryan… I love Pitch Black and he had such a presence, and I do get Vern’s point that he is passionate and has been really driving project that he wanted to see. I am a big fan of the whole Fast & Furious saga – but his Torreto character is not the selling point for these movies. Over time, I feel Vin Diesel limited himself to one type of acting – the tough guy who takes everything very seriously. While The Rock has been navigating more diverse role – although as we seem to all agree, he seems to be stuck in PG13 roles for the last 3-4 years. There was a time where he seemed to have more fun in doing different things – I absolutely love his fake Bambi trailer that he did for Saturday Night Life (also making fun of Vin Diesel at the same time).

    But of course things can change – I remember back in my younger days in the late 80’s that I much preferred Schwarzenegger than Stallone exactly for the same reason – Arnold was able to take things more lightly and joke about himself, while Stallone (back in the Cobra/Over the Top/Rambo 3 days) seemed to be stuck in a very serious and obnoxious personality. A few years later, I actually felt that Arnold was too predictable and too business oriented (same formula again and again) while Stallone became to me more interesting by stretching his roles (see Copland, Demolition Man, Daylight)… while he was not always successful (far from it), Stallone’s approach felt more heartfelt… so maybe I will eventually find Vin Diesel more interesting if he goes that way too.

    Now – let’s see if the Rock will move into politics as he has been hinting for a while… then the parallel with Arnold will be complete!

  17. Completely agree with the assessment of Rock. He kind of takes the whole “I’m a brand” soul-less ethos to another level. Some of this I think was evident from the whole “franchise viagra” narrative that he has cultivated — like, great, you’re (maybe) good at goosing other franchises. Who gives a shit? What is your independent identity or personality? You have none.

    Ironically, I am a big fan of THE RUNDOWN, and I thought WALKING TALL was pretty great, too (like, not great-great, but “hey, this is a lot of fun”). After that, he fell off for me, which tends to happen once these people get comfortable and start believing their own bullshit.

  18. It is absolutely unacceptable that, 20 years later, THE RUNDOWN, which would be the seventh or eighth best movie on any other action star’s CV, remains his finest star vehicle. That is a damning record of mediocrity. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This man’s blood type is B-.

  19. This was… fine, I guess. I wish they let Black Adam attack more than just faceless Intergang fodder or JSA spinoff characters. You know, maybe do something actually morally ambiguous to make him different than just Revenge Man.

    Agree the themes may have been onto something if they had any confidence in telling a story about them. Yeah the JSA ignored the country until they had a superhero. Yeah a kid looks up to The Rock even when his own mom is an awesome rebel leader. I still don’t see how the hierarchy changed. Waller is still in charge.

  20. And I just want to make it clear for the record that Vin Diesel being somewhat delusional is a plus in my book.

    I used to defend the Rock around these parts, but eventually I had to give in. There was too much evidence against him. I still think he can be charismatic, and he is talented. He just wastes that talent on so much mediocrity.

  21. >> With all respect to you the true BLACK ADAM fan must be Matt Zoller Seitz at RogerEbert.com, who in his 3.5/4 review calls it “spiky and majestic” and compares it to THE AFRICAN QUEEN, LA STRADA and ON THE WATERFRONT. I’m not sure I agree, but that’s the proper way to continue the legacy of the man who called SPAWN as an “unforgettable” “visual experience” that “including visions of hell that are worthy of Hieronymous Bosch”.

    I used to like Seitz’s writing, but at some point he snapped and became the new Peter Travers, a guy who just likes everything and especially cheeseball crap, which he will then attempt to elevate with high-toned comparisons. He’s become completely untrustworthy, and it’s too bad.

  22. I used to like Seitz’s writing, but at some point he snapped and became the new Peter Travers, a guy who just likes everything and especially cheeseball crap, which he will then attempt to elevate with high-toned comparisons. He’s become completely untrustworthy, and it’s too bad.

    Seitz always had a ‘Armond White’s bland, unfunny little brother’ thing going on (and not only because he was junior critic at the NY Press under White)

  23. Just watched it yesterday and not even I could really enjoy this prime example of peak Dwayne Johnson ego trip mediocrity. So it is kinda funny that he apparently teamed up with A24 and talks humbled about how he now wants to make “real movies that matter”. If this is all lip service or not will be seen, but no matter what you think of A24, you can’t deny that it looks like a step into the right direction from him. I’m sure even Mr Majestyk prefers to see him in a movie that he hates for being too slow and artsy, than another one of his “I am a brand and play it as safe as possible” blockbusters.

  24. Freed from both the yoke of The Rock’s humongous ego and the template of a Superhero Movie, Jaume Collet-Serra returns to what he does best, helming mid-level action thrillers. And CARRY ON (On Netflix) lands squarely in the “Holy Shit I didn’t expect it to be this good” category.

    Gloriously channeling the spirit of DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER, CARRY ON is an action thriller you wish they made more of. The script by T.J. Fixman is mostly smart, ratchets up the suspense superbly, is paced like a rocket and gives you 2 nicely shot and edited action sequences. Most importantly, it has you believing the young Eggsy from KINGSMAN can be a credible action hero (don’t worry, he’s not McClane Jr, just a very resilient and smart young man trying to do the right thing even when he’s shit scared) and sells the frequently comedic Jason Bateman as a chilling villain, here tapping into his inner Kiefer Sutherland from PHONE BOOTH.

    An action movie that had me on the edge of my seat, with an all too human hero I cared about, a villain who remains smart and in control and doesn’t turn stupid and hysterical when shit doesn’t go his way, a script that stayed just on the right side of believable and peopled with peripheral characters I could actually give a shit about. And it’s a Netflix joint!

    Truly, Christmas came early for me

Leave a Reply





XHTML: You can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>