"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Matthew Macfadyen’

Deadpool & Wolverine

Tuesday, August 20th, 2024

As someone who enjoyed the first two DEADPOOL movies, and loved many of the X-MEN movies, especially LOGAN, and has feelings ranging from a soft spot to a great love for some of the other characters featured within, it’s easy to find mild to moderate amusement in DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. There are chuckles. There are smiles. There are funny ideas. I had a pretty fun time.

It’s easy to forget what an underdog Ryan Reynolds (SMOKIN’ ACES) seemed like when the first DEADPOOL came out. He had stumbled in other comic book movies, even playing that same character in X-MEN’S ORIGINS OF THE WOLVERINE. But he kept pushing to turn it into something and after seven years of doubts he managed to get this R-rated, wise-cracky meta movie made. It felt new and refreshing at the time and it’s fair to say it was a phenomenon.

Eight years later it’s a whole different world. Deadpool is an overdog, his movie correctly predicted to make giant loads of cash in a summer when actual great movies did not. Reynolds is on his third full Deadpool movie, with plenty of non-Deadpool ain’t-I-a-stinker performances in between. Admittedly I didn’t watch most of those, but I did see the commercials, as well as the ones he does for the phone and gin companies he bought with his DEADPOOL money. You see quite a bit of Ryan Reynolds these days, whether you’re looking for him or not.

Also, the world has grown wary of super hero movies after they’ve dominated pop culture for so long, and after they’ve started to grow sloppier and less special. It’s supposed to be an event that corporate mergers have brought Fox character Deadpool to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, a franchise even gluttons like me are no longer that invested in. In the movie Deadpool tells Logan “Welcome to the MCU, you’re joining at a bit of a low point,” and it gets a big laugh because it’s undeniable.
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The Assistant/The Royal Hotel

Tuesday, January 16th, 2024

I saw this movie THE ROYAL HOTEL that came out on video last week, and I really liked it, so I watched the previous one by director Kitty Green, and that was even better. Let me tell you about them in this Kitty Green/Julia Garner Stressful Job Double Feature, presented in order of release.

THE ASSISTANT (2019) chronicles one day on the job for Jane (Julia Garner, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE), a junior assistant at a production company in New York City. It has a really engrossing fly-on-the-wall feel because it’s all presented very naturalistically, avoiding cinematic shortcuts, letting you piece together what’s happening instead of directly telling you. A more Hollywood version might have her narrating at the beginning about what a big deal her boss is, with a montage of camera flashes on a red carpet, fake magazine covers, she talks about dreaming of a dream job like this and wryly jokes about “What could possibly go wrong?” or whatever.

THE ASSISTANT doesn’t believe in that shit. It knows not to describe its world to us, but to just create it and drop us into it. I didn’t even know that her job was movie-related at first, it never tells us the name of the company, never lets us see the hot shit producer everyone walks on eggshells around or tells us his name. It kinda feels like we’re shadowing Jane for a day and we know better than to ask about that stuff. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Three Musketeers (2011)

Monday, February 15th, 2021

Well, I could’ve sworn it was a little more recent than this, but Paul World Series Anderson’s THREE MUSKETEERS came out in 2011 – two RESIDENT EVIL chapters ago, plus a POMPEII and a MONSTER HUNTER. I don’t remember if I just didn’t get to it or if I was immune to the charms of the Andersonography at that moment in time, but whatever the reason, I fuckin blew it. I can imagine the warm feeling I would’ve had watching an early afternoon show in a huge, mostly empty theater at Pacific Place. And I bet the 3D would’ve been amazing.

But at home on 2D blu-ray ten years later was good too. Maybe I should be thankful I saved it for a time when this specific type of escapism is more precious. Like that 2001 movie THE MUSKETEER that I reviewed recently, it’s loosely based on the Dumas novel and completely unembarrassed to pimp it out with modern cinematic trends and PWSA fixations, including but not limited to speed-ramping, acrobatic fight choreography and cool steam-punk weapons and vehicles. It takes the silliness much further than THE MUSKETEER, and has a much bigger budget – the climax involves two armed blimps engaged in a pirate ship battle in the sky – and I thought it was a whole lot of fun. (read the rest of this shit…)