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. (read the rest of this shit…)
“There’s a lot of priceless stuff in this movie, like where we have cars flying between an obelisk. Why they allowed me to have flying cars by an obelisk that’s 800 years old, I don’t know.” —Michael Bay
By popular demand I watched 6 UNDERGROUND, Michael Bay’s mysteriously straight-to-Netflix movie starring Ryan Reynolds (R.I.P.D.). Not that I was against watching it when it came out in December, but I had other shit to do, and you know how it is without a theatrical window – less urgency.
I say “mysterious” because I really couldn’t figure out why Bay – who has spent his entire career with pretty much no other goal but to make the biggest, loudest, fuck-you-est, blockbuster spectacles he can manage – would be willing to make a DTV movie. The explanations I heard were not convincing:
1. “For the money.” I just cannot believe that Bay needs more money than a studio will pay him
2. “They’ll let him do what he wants.” Having seen TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT I also cannot believe that anyone ever says “no” to him.
But now that I’ve seen it I guess I sort of get it. Other than an opening that earned a seizure warning – Bay intentionally trying to be disorienting is a hell of a thing – his messy action plays well on the small screen, and it’s nice to see him applying his anti-social tendencies to R-rated action again. As long as he for some reason doesn’t mind skipping theaters, and Netflix continues to have a magic money tree to dump into expensive things that nobody pays extra to see, they make a good team. (read the rest of this shit…)
a survey of summer movies that just didn’t catch on
July 19, 2013
Most art is derivative of something or other, but jesus christ is it uncomfortable how flagrant R.I.P.D. is about trying to repackage MEN IN BLACK. Instead of a secret government agency investigating aliens who secretly live among us it’s a secret police department investigating dead people who secretly live among us. But you got the younger guy recruited and learning about this real world beneath our sugar-coated topping and partnering with an older, grumpy guy and they have goofy ray gun looking guns and go around questioning weird informants who turn into crazy cartoon special effects creatures (though Rick Baker is retired, so they’re mostly digital). I swear RIPD even has a headquarters that looks like they built it over the set from MiB.
The young guy is Nick Walker (Ryan Reynolds, BLADE TRINITY), in life a Boston PD detective betrayed by his partner Bobby Hayes (Kevin Bacon, ELEPHANT WHITE) over some kind of gold treasure they stole from a crime scene. Nick was having regrets and wanted out so Bobby shot him in the face during a raid. Instead of Heaven or Hell, Nick goes to RIPD to continue as a cop and help them round up “deados” who illegally stick around on Earth. Not really a noble calling, in my opinion. (read the rest of this shit…)
CRIMINAL is way too generic a title for this distinctive Kevin Costner action thriller, another enjoyable under-the-radar, higher-minded-than-advertised b-movie to put on the shelf next to 3 DAYS TO KILL. Costner would be the criminal of the title, a gruff, uneducated death row inmate with the strong action movie name of Jericho Stewart. He’s said to have some kind of condition that leaves him no capacity for empathy, like that creepy kid in MALEVOLENCE and BEREAVEMENT, so he experiences what the internet calls “the feels” for the first time when he’s the subject of an experimental surgery that implants another man’s memories into his brain.
I couldn’t help but think of FACE/OFF. Not that it has any of John Woo’s heightened filmatism or outlandish action – the tone, grounded world and love of intelligence agency war rooms are closer to a BOURNE movie – but that’s the only other movie I can think of that uses a sci-fi gimmick in a non-futuristic world and then puts an emphasis on exploring its emotional consequences.
The story starts with Bill Pope, not the cinematographer of THE MATRIX, but a CIA agent on the run in London, played by an uncredited Ryan Reynolds (BLADE TRINITY). He’s in the middle of a mission gone south – something about Spanish anarchists and a hacker and a buy, and people chasing him around town trying to trap him. When he ends up dead, CIA director Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman sporting another action movie name that’s not messing around) is desperate to find out what Pope was working on, because he was the only one getting close to a hacker (blackhat?) who may be able to remotely control military weapons. So Wells – actually, can I call him Quaker? – Quaker turns to this guy Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones, UNDER SIEGE) who has been developing this memory-implanting theory for years. (read the rest of this shit…)
DEADPOOL is a smart-ass, hard-R super hero revenge movie for the 14 year old boy in every man, woman and child. The feature directing debut of FX artist Tim Miller (who designed the opening credits for Fincher’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) has show-offy digital camera moves, fourth-wall-breaking narration, meta and self-referential humor, frequent jokes about dildos and other things going up butts, gun fetishism, jerking off, juvenile homophobic name-calling like “cockgobbler,” and is convinced that it’s hilarious to know the names of different gross sex acts and talk about doing them with old ladies. Sounds exactly like a Neveldine/Taylor style headache. But I really enjoyed it.
I saw commenters here predicting I would hate DEADPOOL like I did KICK-ASS. I understand the comparison, but here’s why I think it’s different: it has a different personality. Both are trying to push buttons with foul-mouthed costumed characters going overboard with the violence and seeming real proud of themselves for it, but to me KICK-ASS seems like it’s trying to shock and outrage some hypothetical prudes and squares that would never watch the movie anyway, while DEADPOOL seems like it’s trying to win everybody over with its obnoxious charm. There are tons of childish jokes in the movie that didn’t make me laugh, but they felt less like jokes failing and more like me smiling and shaking my head at a dipshit friend trying to make me uncomfortable to amuse himself. And the X-Men seem to feel kind of the same. He’s basically a bad guy but they keep going easy on him because they want him to be a good guy. (read the rest of this shit…)
GREEN LANTERN stands out among comic book movies for its combination of crappiness and expensive-looking-ness. The details that flesh out the classical super hero arc are dumb and juvenile, and the effects often look ridiculous, but it never seems like it’s due to a lack of resources. Just a lack of taste.
Very sophisticated, expensive animation of weird aliens who only ever stand on dark, rocky spacescapes. Motion capture used to create a corny green glow from the sinews of Ryan Reynolds’s muscles. I guess it’s hard to get around with this character, but some day filmatists gotta learn that green glowing energy is not really that cool looking. Call it the METEOR MAN rule. (read the rest of this shit…)
Carnahan fans have been waiting a while now for his follow-up to NARC, and it seems crazy that it’s almost here.
If you’re a fan, you might want to hop over to CHUD, where Devin Faraci has been fielding questions that Carnahan’s been answering on his very own blog.
In the meantime, let’s see what our own Vern has to say about this film that I’m eagerly looking forward to:
You know what this movie is, it’s a remake of BOBBY. Almost the whole movie takes place in and around this hotel. And you got your huge all-star cast of characters with their various intersecting stories going on. But instead of them all living their lives and making corny speeches not knowing Bobby Kennedy is about to be assassinated, they are all trying to sneak into the hotel to kill Jeremy Piven. And instead of tons of stock footage of Kennedy speeches there is all kinds of fighting and guns. So it’s a reflection of our times. Or a very loose remake. A reimagining. (read the rest of this shit…)
Man I tell you, I wish it was possible for lightning to strike 3 times in the same spot. It would be useful for many things including meteorological research and movie trilogies. But it’s not possible. Never happened. Not once. Only once has it hit the same exact place twice. And that place was the exact spot where Blade was standing at the time. Both times.
What I’m saying obviously is that BLADE III – and I will not call it BLADE TRINITY because what the hell kind of name for Blade III is BLADE TRINITY – is no BLADE or BLADE II. And there are many reasons why. The most immediate thing you notice: it just doesn’t look as good. Steve Norrington and Guillermo Del Toro were both so careful and artful. BLADE felt so exact and carefully composed, II was so spooky atmospheric with shiny gold tinted edges. III (directed by the guy Dave Goyer who wrote all the other ones but only directed the small indy drama ZIG ZAG) tries hard to imitate some of both of those looks. It has the same cinematagraphist as the last one, and I mean it’s not an ugly movie. But you can tell it’s not quite real. Not it’s own look, not quite capturing the previous looks. I think I read this was more expensive than the others but to me it feels cheaper. Almost like a really damn impressive TV version of the Blade universe. But not quite the real Blade universe. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
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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.
“There’s a lot of priceless stuff in this movie, like where we have cars flying between an obelisk. Why they allowed me to have flying cars by an obelisk that’s 800 years old, I don’t know.” —Michael Bay
CRIMINAL is way too generic a title for this distinctive Kevin Costner action thriller, another enjoyable under-the-radar, higher-minded-than-advertised b-movie to put on the shelf next to 
DEADPOOL is a smart-ass, hard-R super hero revenge movie for the 14 year old boy in every man, woman and child. The feature directing debut of FX artist Tim Miller (who designed the opening credits for Fincher’s 
GREEN LANTERN stands out among comic book movies for its combination of crappiness and expensive-looking-ness. The details that flesh out the classical super hero arc are dumb and juvenile, and the effects often look ridiculous, but it never seems like it’s due to a lack of resources. Just a lack of taste.
SPOILER ALERT !!
Man I tell you, I wish it was possible for lightning to strike 3 times in the same spot. It would be useful for many things including meteorological research and movie trilogies. But it’s not possible. Never happened. Not once. Only once has it hit the same exact place twice. And that place was the exact spot where Blade was standing at the time. Both times.
