Zombieland Double Tap: "Zombieland" is innovative in its special effects and in an era when one out of every three movies has people shooting at people in some form, that's quite a compliment. The film is littered with clever narration and on-screen text but the use of both treads the fine line between additive and cloying.
More importantly, the film has chemistry between its quartet who form a found family and the introduction of Zoey Deutch as a valley girl along with cameos by Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch are comic highlights.
For someone who has no inherent attraction to the zombie genre, I thoroughly enjoyed this film and that's saying a lot.
Terminator Dark Fate- After three extremely underwhelming sequels, it’s pretty miraculous alone that James Cameron and company managed to make something halfway decent. Like “Logan”, a future-leaning genre is given n post-modern Western feel by setting it in the desert landscape of Mexico. While the return of Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor character was hyped up as the missing ingredient, she’s a disappointing straw man, and it’s really Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mellowed-out performance (as opposed to his annoyingly silly performances in “Terminator: Genysis”) that steals the show. The high-water mark of the franchise was “Terminator 2” which combined the state-of-the-art action and novelty factor with a Spielbergian story of a kid and an unconventional parent figure. Although McKenzie Davis and Natalia Reyes have their pluses, this film doesn’t capture that magic from “Terminator 2” but the action is a non-stop adrenaline rush.
Dolemite is My Name-The “film behind the film” genre can get pretty tired but Rudy Ray Moore was such an audacious anamoly (I was planning to use the word “original” until I realized he stole his act and still remained a likeable protagonist) that his biopic is worth exploring. The rags-to-riches rise of Moore is a tale of perseverance, adaptation to the times, and is laced with underlying racial commentary without being preachy. The show boasts a strong ensemble but no one overshadows Eddie Murphy which is the way it should be: His performance needs room to shine.
The Laundromaut-The film will garner comparisons to “The Big Short” because of the fourth wall devices, focus on financial fraud, and the loose cobbling together of different plot threads. This film is a bit more stylized (the typography is quite heavenly) but it’s a pretty apt comparison. Because “The Big Short” came first, this one’s going to look fairly derivative by comparison, but it also is a film that feels a bit pretentious and uninspired outside of its gimmickry. For an ensemble film, the film seems to put its focus in the wrong places as well. Some of the subplots don’t seem to have a suitably meaty arc and (some are going to differ from me) Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas’ characters are underused here. The two are treated as emcees to tie together the string of events rather when they could be more deeply involved in the story themselves. Still, the cast is rather impressive and the film has its moments.
Honey Boy-The film is difficult to take because it portrays parental abuse so barely, but it is an assured work of art. Shia LaBeouf has been a very unconventional star and this is a culmination of much of his grappling with himself that’s happened in public. He faced the same hurdles of growing up under the limelight that has befallen other child actors and he's been charged with drunk driving, plagiarism, bad relationships with co-stars, concealing on-set relationships, and and misbehaving so badly during a Broadway performance that he got thrown out of a theater and sent to jail. Rather than follow the script during his rehabilitation,his form of damage control in these situations, he used transparent honesty. This resulted in one of the funniest interviews I've ever seen on Jimmy Kimmel, the I'm Sorry Tour, and the thing where he watched his own movies. And now this film.
No comments:
Post a Comment