Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part 1 (07.21.23)

 

For my money, there are few ongoing film franchises that deliver as consistently high-quality and enjoyable movies as Mission: Impossible. Smart, full of bonkers action scenes and more than a few suicidally dangerous Tom Cruise stunts, the series rarely misses these days, and once that iconic theme music starts playing you know you’re in for a good time at the movies. After twenty-seven years and seven films (and a TV series, but it has little to do with the current big screen juggernaut), the adventures of Ethan Hunt do have a tendency to blur together, however, and this is no more evident than in Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part 1, another fantastic entry that lives up to the high standards of the series despite its dependency on the same old M:I tropes and cliches that audience members have come to expect at this point.  

Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part 1 doesn’t really do anything that we as an audience haven’t seen before, but this was more comforting to me than annoying. Tom Cruise has some solid banter with his lovable crew, has to bend the rules to do the right thing, goes to a fancy European party, and does a whole lot of running. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Except not really, since the action set pieces are always fresh and the characters are always engaging, as is the case with M:I’s latest (I particularly liked the addition of Hayley Atwell’s character, who I have a hunch is being set up for a spinoff movie or two once Cruise finally hangs up his running shoes). Dead Reckoning may just have the coolest car chase of the entire series, and there is a sequence on a train that may have raised my blood pressure levels to dangerous heights. And really, isn’t that what we see action movies for? Potential heart attacks?  

Being a bit smarter than your average action franchise, the Mission: Impossible films for me always lie on the border between being just simple enough to understand everything and being a little too complicated for me to keep track of all the moving pieces and motivations. Dead Reckoning falls solidly into the latter camp, as I will have to see it again or read a couple of plot summaries written by smarter people to figure out what exactly was going on a couple of times, but I can’t dock the movie for that. I’m sure it all made sense to the people who weren’t distracted by how attractive Hayley Atwell is.  

Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part 1 ends satisfactorily despite the fact that it is (surprise!) the first of a two-parter, and I can’t wait to see what comes next. It is an action blockbuster that all of the other action blockbusters wish that they could be. Sure it might play things safe (it might be the only thing that does... stop jumping off of things, Tom, you’re in your sixties!), but why mess with the formula when the formula is this good? 

Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part 1 is now available in theaters. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on July 21^st, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (07.07.23)

 

Some heroes don’t wear capes; some wear puffy orange vests, accidently get hit on by a past version of their mother, and drive time traveling DeLoreans. Some heroes simply pretend to be these puffy orange vest-wearing, DeLorean-driving heroes for a few movies (among with other iconic characters in other productions that are equally as classic) before turning to more important matters like raising billions of dollars for Parkinson’s disease research. Michael J. Fox may not see himself as a hero, but to many his example of bravery and unrelenting optimism in the face of adversity certainly qualifies him for the label. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie is Michael’s story as told by himself, a story that is heartbreaking, heartwarming, funny, life-affirming, and entertaining all at once.  

Still triumphs not only because of its inspiring subject matter, but also because of how it tells its story. As its subtitle indicates, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie is not a documentary but a cohesive narrative that is cleverly told via footage of Michael J. Fox’s movie and television performances, news footage, home video, and the occasional talking head which is always given by Michael himself speaking as if the audience were a close friend. I’m sure there must have been a recreated scene or two in Still, but for the life of me I could not tell which footage was authentic and which scenes were reenactments because the two blended together so seamlessly. The parallels between the aforementioned movie and television clips and Michael’s own life are sometimes eerily apropos, and the editing work by Michael Harte (who also had the idea of using said footage to begin with) could not be sharper.  Director Davis Guggenheim does a fantastic job at keeping hints of his presence to a bare minimum, instead letting Michael’s humor, wit, and still undiluted charisma drive the show. Because despite the excellent directing and editing, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie ultimately works as well as it does because Michael J. Fox is Michael J. Fox.  

Despite Michael’s infectious upbeat attitude, Still is still sometimes hard to watch because of how honest it is when discussing and portraying the difficult circumstances that Michael has been saddled with, and I’m not just talking about the Parkinson’s. Michael is not afraid to share his experiences with alcoholism, his blessedly temporary ego highs, and depression, but if there’s one thing I learned from watching this film it’s that Michael not only refuses be pitied, but that he also refuses to let his difficulties bring his spirit down. So why should we as an audience let his struggles get our own spirits down? His story is an uplifting one because he refused to have it any other way, and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie is an uplifting film because of this stubbornness. If you’re a fan, check it out. If you’re not, check it out anyway. You’ll be glad that you did.  

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie is now available on Apple TV+. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on July 7^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

The Flash (06.30.23)

When it comes to famous superheroes, I’d say that the Flash is definitely up there, even if a lot of people don't know anything about him beyond the fact that he runs really fast. It is therefore kind of surprising that the Scarlet Speedster hasn’t had a movie of his own before now, and it is very unfortunate that when it finally did arrive it had to do so with as much baggage as it does. But despite the numbered days of its parent franchise (DC plans on rebooting their shared movie universe in 2025) and its star that should probably should have gone to prison once or twice, The Flash is still much better than I was expecting, dodgy CGI, sloppy cameos, and messy third act aside.

As a fan of the character, Ezra Miller’s casting as the Flash/Barry Allen has always been questionable to me, and that opinion has not changed. The Barry of the DCEU (DC Extended Universe) might as well be called something else for all the similarity he has with his comic counterpart, but I guess that’s a niche complaint coming from a comic enthusiast, because the reality is that Ezra Miller pulls off a super solid performance here, annoying laugh, goofy-looking run, and criminal history aside. The marketing may have leaned heavily into the return of Michael Keaton as Batman, but Barry is still very much the heart and focus of the story, a testament to Miller’s acting and comedic abilities as well as Christina Hodson's enjoyable script. And yes, it is just as fun to see Keaton's Batman back in action after all of these years as you’d expect, and the addition of Sasha Calle as Supergirl is also quite welcome, even if the character is undercooked and mostly goes unexplored.

The Flash's CGI, on the other hand, is very hard to look at. There were a couple of instances where I thought the horrid computer imagery had to be an odd intentional choice, but I think that was just me trying to justify the video game-looking nonsense I was beholden to for an entire third act that dragged on for far too long. The story kind of falls apart by that point, and the film’s overall lesson of learning to let things go is undermined completely by a certain questionable choice at the end as the filmmakers try to have their cake and eat it too, but the solid emotional core of the movie makes me much more forgiving of these missteps than I would have been otherwise. Equally as messy is the fanservice-y cameos, which range from genuinely exciting to cringingly cheesy to hilariously contrived. Why would that particular character show up? Because people want to see that person in that costume, that’s why. No other reason is given or needed.

In short, The Flash may not be the best superhero movie of the year, or even the season, but if you’re looking for a good time at the movies this summer you can do much, much worse.

The Flash is now playing in theaters. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on June 30^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/

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/

Air (05.19.23)

 

Last month I bought a pair of knockoff Hey Dudes at the local Costco, bringing my shoe collection up to a total of seven pairs, give or take a misplaced flip flop or two. I can afford more (thank you for asking and being concerned), but I would rather spend my money on literally anything else if I can help it because there are few things on this earth that I care about less than shoes. When I saw the trailer for Amazon Studio's Air in theaters I scoffed. When I saw the poster for Air I scoffed. This was the preconceived bias that I was bringing into the film when I begrudgingly sat down to review it, and although the movie did little to dispel this ambivalence towards shoes, I have to say… I really liked Air.

I felt a little gross watching Air because nothing screams soulless corporate sponsored art quite like a movie about Nike made by Amazon. Not only was I disinterested about shoes, but I was also disinterested in watching a feature-length commercial. But as films like The LEGO Movie have shown us in the past, sometimes feature-length commercials masquerading as movies can still be great movies in their own right. This turned out to be the case with Air, the story of how Nike signed the legendary Michael Jordan and created the Air Jordan line, a topic that makes me want to fall asleep outside of the context of Air, as much as I love and appreciate MJ himself (and not just because of Space Jam). The script, penned by Alex Convery, is punchy and sharp and does the impossible by making business talk engaging. The actors who bring it to life (Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, Chris Tucker, and Viola Davis, to name a few) do so in lively and convincing ways, making you root for them as if they were the true little guys instead of being mostly, you know, Nike executives.

Ben Affleck not only costars but also directs Air, once again proving that he is just as good behind the camera as he is in front of it. He does make one choice that adversely affects the film, however, and that is giving MJ himself very limited screen time and never showing his face. The logic behind this decision is sound— although he is obviously an important player in this story (pun intended), this is not an MJ biopic, plus we all know what MJ looks like, so showing a face that is clearly not his own and calling him Michael Jordan might draw people out of the illusion of the film—it does give the impression that MJ didn’t have much agency in the matter and reduces his personality to pretty much nothing. This is an odd choice considering the fact that much of the Air Jordan line was supposedly based around Michael Jordan’s charisma and personality, but ultimately this gripe doesn’t amount to much. For a short while Air made me care about shoes, and you won’t get a better recommendation than that.

Air is now available on Amazon Prime. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on May 19^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/