Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (06.09.23)

 When I saw Avengers: Infinity War in theaters I was bit annoyed, despite the fact that I absolutely loved it. Seeing some of my favorite characters together for the first time was an incredibly fulfilling and fun experience up until the very end, at which point things just kinda stopped. There was no real resolution to anything, making the tale of Thanos and his quest for magical rocks half of a bigger whole instead of a movie that could stand completely on its own. Films that boil down to elaborate advertisements for the next offering generally bother me, but with the new Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the first of a two-part follow-up to 2018’s amazing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Into is the first one, Across is the new one, and Beyond will come out next year… keep that in mind, because it can get confusing), the feeling wasn’t too big of a factor, as was the case with Infinity War, just because the film itself is so darned good.

Like its predecessor, one of the coolest parts of Across the Spider-Verse is how perfectly it captures the feel of reading a comic book. The stylish animation, purposefully low framerate, and energetic busyness of it all takes a minute to get used to, but once one does it becomes a singular experience like no other on film. The sheer amount of creativity on screen at any given moment is incredible, from the fight scenes to the quiet moments to the scene transitions. The story itself is pretty straightforward, a miracle in and of itself for a film about multiverse shenanigans, but it works to the movie’s benefit as it instead has us mostly focusing on the characters and their relationships. For what its worth Across does have a slower pace than Into (and I do think that it could have been cut and streamlined just a bit), and I’m not sure how well this will go over with younger audiences, but I did not mind at all because these characters and relationships were just developed so well. The voice acting and script are what sell these, and if I have any criticism towards the former it’s that I occasionally had a hard time understanding a certain cockney-accented character, but I’ll let that slide. I’m sure I didn’t miss anything important.

Do I wish it was a more complete experience? Sure. Across the Spider-Verse doesn’t have any resolution whatsoever at the end and doesn’t have a typical story structure, namely rising action, climax, and all of that good stuff you learned back in high school English class, and that can be a bit unfulfilling if you aren’t expecting it (the scene that is probably  considered the climax felt more like another set-up scene to me). But the journey to that “to be continued” is so cool and heartfelt that it’s hard to not be anything other than wowed. If next year’s Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse sticks the landing (and at this point I have no reason to believe it won’t) then we might just have one of the best animated trilogies of all time on our hands.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is now playing exclusively in theaters. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on June 9^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

White Men Can't Jump (06.02.23)

 

Some movies just don’t need to be remade, no matter how much Hollywood wants us to believe the opposite. If the original is beloved then there is nowhere for the quality to go than down, because we humans love our nostalgia above all else. I never saw 1992's White Men Can’t Jump staring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, but I can still tell you with close to one hundred percent certainty that it wasn’t a movie that needed a facelift for 2023. I know this simply because I know the original has its fans, and I am sure no one is going to be a fan of this new version. Dull, led by boring and irritating characters, and offering nothing to say about race relations beyond a few surface observations, 2023’s White Men Can’t Jump offers a few chuckles but is ultimately unnecessary and forgettable.

It is clear from the outset that White Men Can’t Jump is going for broke on the whole unlikely bromance thing that other films have done so well in the past, but it is an attempt built on a flimsy foundation of two-dimensional characters and a complete lack of chemistry between the two leads. Kamal (played by Sinqua Walls) is a former high school basketball star that wants to get his former glory back, and that’s about it. Jeremy (played by Jack Harlow) has the same boring motivation with the added baggage of being the most stereotypical and unlikable douche (it’s the only word that really fits, sorry!) you can think of. They make for a thoroughly uninteresting pair, leaving the film to rely on its equally uninteresting story and a mere handful of laughs, most of which are provided by the tertiary friend characters Lorenzo and Speedy (Myles Bullock and Vince Staples, respectively) who are genuinely hilarious and thoroughly steal the show every scene they are in.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of White Men Can’t Jump is how safe the film plays it with its social and racial commentary. Instead of trying for something new, meaningful, and funny, Can’t Jump is content to merely reiterate already well-trodden material, making observations and jokes about as shallow as its title. Even though I have never seen the original film I still felt the distinct impression that I had seen White Men Can’t Jump already many times before as I watched the remake. And why not just revisit one of those films instead? Surely they at least have characters I want to root for instead of a self-obsessed hipster and a blank slate.

White Men Can’t Jump isn’t painful or anything, mind you. It just doesn’t do enough to justify its own existence and instead serves as a reminder that better entertainment of this ilk is out there. Ultimately this is just another unnecessary remake doomed to be forgotten in the shadowy edges of the Hulu catalogue, a place very few will ever tread and even fewer will ever watch.

White Men Can’t Jump is now available on Hulu. 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on June 2nd, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

The Mother (05.26.23)

 

Jennifer Lopez has had a uniquely interesting career. After starting out as a dancer on the sketch comedy series In Living Color, she went on to become a hugely successful popstar, a romantic comedy icon, and, according to a cursory Wikipedia search, the highest paid Hispanic actress in Hollywood. However, As far as I know she’s never played a Jason Bourne-esque killing machine, which she does in Netflix's The Mother. She is pretty good. The movie itself is fine, if perfectly forgettable.

The story of The Mother is fairly simple, which I actually find refreshing. Jennifer Lopez plays an army veteran with super-duper aiming powers who turns on some bad people and has to go into hiding as a result. She’s pregnant at the time, so she gives up her baby and then goes into action when that child is threatened by those same bad people. They bond, they participate in a climatic snowmobile battle together. It all serves as a nice reminder that motherhood can take many forms and that extended wolf metaphors are very useful at conveying that fact if the audience somehow doesn’t reach that conclusion themselves.

JLo’s turn as a tough-as-nails action star is a fun development that I would like to see explored in future films, if not necessarily a sequel to this one. She does the tough, quiet brooding thing quite well, and her dancing background makes the transition to a more violent form of choreography a natural one. The fight scenes in The Mother seem decent enough, but it was kind of hard to tell because one of the film’s failures lies in the editing of said fight scenes. The cinematography is so choppy when the action starts and has so many cuts that these brawls rarely look like continuous, fluid sequences, but instead come across as a Frankenstein’s monster of separate split-second clips spliced together. I don’t know if this was done in order to hide obvious stunt doubles or to make things seem faster paced and more exciting than they actually were, but either way it serves as a huge distraction to what otherwise might have been exciting set pieces. Another thing that would have benefited these fight scenes greatly is some semblance of a score. Jason Bourne got music during his fight scenes. James Bond gets music during his fight scenes. So why does JLo get complete silence?

The script of The Mother is also not the film’s strongest suit, filled with cliches and questionable FBI protocol as it is (I’m far from an expert, but I don’t think the Bureau has the jurisdiction to go and kill a bunch of people in Cuba while someone who should be in witness protection tags along, even if the people in question were bad guys). Everything that happens in this film can be accurately guessed far in advance, leaving little room for surprises or originality. But thanks to its lead, straightforward plot, and decent if sometimes hard-to-read action sequences, The Mother isn’t terrible... it’s just not really good either.

The Mother is now available on Netflix. 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on May 26th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/