The Fall Guy (05.10.24)

 

Movies are silly things when you really think about it, yet people can take them so unbelievably seriously at the same time. Some people will even risk their lives to see that just a few seconds of a film looks good, and it is these lamentably ignored thrill-seekers, the stuntpeople, that The Fall Guy, a movie loosely based on the 80s television show of the same name, looks to celebrate in style. I was not expecting much from this film, to be honest—I thought the trailers made it look rather unoriginal and unfunny. But boy oh boy was I wrong, as The Fall Guy was easily some of the most fun I have had in theaters all year.

Directed by David Leitch, a former stunt performer himself and the guy behind such films as Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and Hobbs & Shaw, the action in The Fall Guy is appropriately brilliant, creative, and exciting, and some of it actually features star Ryan Gosling doing his own stunts, a smart meta twist that plays well with his character being a stuntperson who finds himself thrust into a real-life violent situation. I am a sucker for meta-ness and movies about making movies, and The Fall Guy instantly charmed me with its double meanings and winking references, a feat that’s sometimes hard to pull off without being annoying. It is a fun peek behind the camera (well, not the actual cameras, but you know what I mean), and when combined with a slick (if fairly straightforward and uninspired) crime conspiracy it makes for a potent concoction, even with the third act feeling a bit excessive and overlong.

But as exciting as these factors are on their own merits The Fall Guy would be little more than a blip if it weren’t for the third delicious part of the metaphorical movie casserole: The rom-com. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are delightful to watch, their chemistry so electric that it would make me a little nervous if I were one of their real-life spouses (from my lips to God’s ears). The com part of the rom-com is very good as well, ensuring that there are plenty of laughs as you root for them to just kiss and make up already. These two, along with a supporting cast made up of hilarious people like Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, know how to handle comedy.

Action, romance, laughs, and a behind-the-scenes glimpse into some of the most underappreciated people in Hollywood... it’s really astounding how much The Fall Guy fits in, and even more astounding that it does each of these things equally well. Do I wish that the crime story was a little more engaging? Sure. Do I wish that it were a bit shorter? Definitely. But this is a film that has a little something for everyone no matter what their tastes, and just like the stuntpeople that made it possible if you decide to see it you will be in for a wild ride.

The Fall Guy is now playing in theaters.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on May 10^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com

What Jennifer Did (05.03.24)

 

You don’t need to do much to impress me when it comes to documentaries. As long as they report the facts and feature subjects that are at least vaguely interesting I can usually at least stomach them, all other factors like music and editing aside. That being said What Jennifer Did, a look into the 2010 murder of Bich Pan and the attempted murder of Huei Pan, turned out to be more engaging than I expected it to be— the twists and turns in the case are well parceled out, the usual film flourishes aren’t all that distracting, and the runtime is very palatable—but just how accurate is it? That is the big question surrounding Netflix’s latest true crime documentary, and it’s an important one, if not the most important one to me.

Not long after What Jennifer Did was released a couple of the pictures featured in it fell under scrutiny, with many armchair experts and actual experts claiming that they had all the hallmarks of AI-generated imagery. The pictures themselves are completely innocuous and irrelevant to the case, only being included as a little background flavor, but their presence does raise the question of whether or not the documentary can be trusted as a whole. If they manipulated these two pictures, what else did they manipulate? Executive producer Jeremy Grimaldi has responded to these accusations, claiming that the images in question are legitimate and that the telltale distortion in them was a purposeful choice in order to help protect the identities of those who provided them, and I am inclined to believe him—why create such banal images when thousands of actual pictures just like them must surely exist?

Questions of veracity aside, What Jennifer Did is solid entertainment in its own right. The revelations are well paced, new bombshells of information dropping frequently enough that the audience is always kept on their toes but not so frequently that things aren’t given enough time to sink in and breathe. The film mostly relies on interviews, those conducted in the course of the actual police investigation and those filmed after the fact, and when it does lean on dramatic reenactments they are understated and don’t pull any focus from the reality of the situation. And perhaps the best part of What Jennifer Did is its length—instead of opting for the excessive eight episode format that is popular with documentary makers these days it drops into your living room, tells its story in an hour and a half, and gets out.

With the AI image controversy surrounding it I would say to approach What Jennifer Did skeptically, but that’s really no different than how anyone should approach any documentary. It and others of its ilk exist ultimately to tell a story and entertain, and whether that story is distorted or not is up to better people than me to decide. But What Jennifer Did succeeded in what it set out to do—thrill and entertain—and that’s enough for me.

What Jennifer Did is now available on Netflix.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on May 3^rd, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

Fallout Season 1 (04.19.24)

 

As existentially horrifying as the idea of nuclear war is, I will say that at least it has inspired some creative fiction over the years. For a good example of this, look no further than Fallout, the hugely popular video game series where the radroaches are humongous, the mutants and ghouls are plentiful, and the Geiger counters enthusiastically sing their clicky song of death. It’s an interesting world to visit and one that was ripe for adaptation, and wouldn’t you know it, but Amazon Prime has given us a pretty great one, even if it feels like it takes a while to get going.

Fallout the television show is not based on any particular game in the series but is instead its own thing, a big positive considering how bogged down with minutia that straightforward adaptations can get. It starts with a bang (several bangs in fact, each one of the nuclear persuasion) before reigning things in a bit for a solid hour and a half of world building as we follow three characters—two heroes and a scene chewing villain played by the always fantastic Walton Goggins. Despite some (fairly gruesome) bloodshed that kicks off Lucy’s (Ella Purnell) journey things start out pretty slow, and it’s not until halfway through the second hour-long episode that things begin to coalesce a bit into a cohesive narrative. But the world of Fallout is just so interesting that it doesn’t matter much. As the bombs fell in a world analogous to our 1950s the tunes are all old-timey, the tech the dream of someone from that era imagining what the future would look like in the distant year of two-thousand-whatever. The giant budget that Amazon threw at this project is seen everywhere, from the ruinous sets to the CGI on the freaky mutated beasties to the grungy makeup that makes everyone but the two heroes look like grody little trash goblins.

Fallout was always a series that had its tongue firmly in its cheek, drawing satirical humor from such places as the naivete of the people who grew up in radiation-proof vaults or the borderline jingoism of the Brotherhood of Steel, a fairly fascistic organization that has all the subtlety of a bull driving a tank in a China shop. This humor is present in the show, if a bit dialed down, keeping things fun to watch even when things are bleak. A lot of humor is also derived from some over-the-top violence that would not seem out of place in an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon, so if head popping and silverware ballistics are not your thing you might want to look elsewhere.

But for existing fans and newcomers alike Fallout is a triumph, standing among some of the best video game to

              Fallout season 1 is now available on Amazon Prime.

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on April 19th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com. 

X-Men '97 Season 1 (04.12.24)

 

Saturday mornings meant one thing for me when I was a kid: Setting my alarm clock for 8:00 so I could tune into new episodes of Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh. Like most kids of the pre-streaming era, such moments were sacred; they were times to unwind, eat heavily sugared cereal, and, most importantly, not be at school. Kids WB was always my jam, but if I had ever deviated from my strict schedule and flipped over to Fox Kids I would have no doubt fallen in love with X-Men, the massively popular animated adaptation of Marvel’s classic band of merry mutants. The show was such a hit that Disney has decided to continue it twenty-seven years later with X-Men ‘97, an enjoyable cheese-fest with cool action, beautiful animation, and a bit of an identity crisis.

I tried going back to watch the original run not long before the revival and found myself having a hard time with it. Although I am a big X-Men fan in general, the show was clearly not meant for me as an adult with no nostalgic feelings toward it. But as X-Men ‘97 is Disney’s first attempt to bring the team to the screen since its acquisition of Fox back in 2019 I thought I’d give it a shot anyway, and I am glad that I did. It does have that corny 90s aura in abundance, from the silly one-liners to the bombastic, overly dramatic voiceover work of both new and returning cast members. But the animation has also improved greatly since the show’s previous incarnation, the motion of the characters having the fluidity and grace one expects from a television show made in the 2020s.

Nowhere is this animation bump more apparent than in the action scenes, which are pretty darn cool, each one utilizing each mutant’s superpowers in new and creative ways. Supplementing the action is a soundtrack worthy of the original’s iconic theme, a leitmotif that never fails to thrill whenever it returns.

But though I personally believe that X-Men ‘97 should be an intergenerational hit that both adults and children can enjoy, there is no doubt that not all adults will enjoy it, nor will all children. The corniness may be too off-putting for some grown-ups, and although I am a firm believer that kids are more than capable of handling heavier themes like prejudice and identity (and that these themes, which are so vital to the X-Men brand in general, should never be cut from any adaptation), I could definitely also see some kids getting bored with the non-punchy bits of X-Men ‘97. It lives in an odd no man’s land between adult and kid appeal, but I believe it does so quite well, bridging the gap in a way that many other shows would fail at.

If you do watch X-Men ‘97, learn from my mistakes and watch it in the morning with a bowl of Lucky Charms. There is no other way to do so.

The first four episodes of X-Men ’97 season 1 are now available on Disney+, with new episodes releasing each Wednesday.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on April 12^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

Road House (03.29.24)

 

Like a lot of millennials, I was first introduced to a lot of 80's movies via Family Guy. From that context I gathered that the film Road House involved Patrick Swayze in mom jeans and violence, but other than that I couldn’t tell you anything about it. I can tell you a bit about the 2024 reimagining with Jake Gyllenhaal, though. It's fine. It has the violence, it has that charmingly simplistic 80s DNA, and it wasn’t painful. Sometimes that’s all you can ask of a remake.

The 80s simplicity that Road House can’t help but wear on its sleave is in itself very reminiscent of classic westerns, but if you somehow miss that relationship don’t worry—the characters will explicitly tell you as much and continue to beat you over the head with it, no pun intended. Elwood Dalton, former UFC champion and current wanderer, is hired to be a bouncer at a bar and cleans up the town in the process, using arm guns rather than actual guns. The moral lines are very clear despite Dalton’s angst over whether or not he is one of the good guys, the objective even more so once the obligatory mystery is cleared up. Heads get busted, testosterone gets brandished, the bad guys get theirs. Road House is not high art, but it does deliver on a lot of the cheap thrills that are expected of it.

Jake Gyllenhaal and his shredded bod do just fine as Dalton, a protagonist who never seems to be in too much danger as he punches his way through countless mooks. The supporting characters are two-dimensional and bland, but the actors who portray them do the best they can. Real-life UFC champion Conor McGregor plays the most imposing of the villains with a scene-chewing ferocity that is sometimes amusing but more often than not comes off as obnoxious. The dialogue that all of these characters bandy about is poorly written but, to its credit, is also rarely outright cringy.

All of the negatives of Road House seem more indicative of its 80s roots than any particular failing on behalf of the film’s cast and crew. It was a time when action stars were unstoppable, spectacle was paramount, the dialogue was secondary, and cheese was abundant. This is Road House in a nutshell, but it is not entirely clear if the filmmakers did this on purpose, as it is not overtly corny but subtly so. It would have left much more of an impression if they went all in, but instead of glorious cheese we got something middling and fairly forgettable.

But the action is fun and there is some charm to the stripped-down, barebones plot. Road House is a relic of a simpler era of entertainment, and like its main character it shows up on a Greyhound bus, sticks around for a bit, and leaves with few people being the wiser. But unlike Dalton and his abs it won’t change your life, that’s for sure.

Road House is now available on Amazon Prime. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on March 29th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

 

Spaceman (03.22.24)

 

Adam Sandler has admitted that often he picks roles depending on whether or not they let him travel to exotic locations so he can essentially have a studio-paid vacation while only occasionally doing work in front of the camera. Sure, the result of this practice is often junk like Grown Ups 2 and You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, but Sandler gets paid and he has fun, and I can’t help but envy him for that. Like a lot of comedic actors who are getting up there in age, however, legitimacy and validation from his more serious-minded peers eventually beckoned, leading to Uncut Gems, a film which saw the perpetually goofy Sandler take on a decidedly more dramatic type of role. Netflix’s Spaceman continues this trend, and although the film itself falls short of its ambitions when it has them and can be boring when it doesn’t, there is no denying that it is also amongst Sandler’s finest work, unconvincing Czech accent aside.

Plodding and purposeful, Spaceman is a very cerebral film that essentially boils down to a lone cosmonaut (Why is he up there by himself? Couldn’t tell you.) getting marriage counseling from a giant alien spider stowaway that may or may not be imaginary. There are additional science fiction elements, of course, but they are fairly silly and basic, often go unexplained, and are ultimately beside the point. This is a film about relationships, and when it focuses on these relationships it mostly succeeds in no small part thanks to the strong performances put forth by the actors. Sandler is particularly engaging, his subdued turn as the cosmonaut Jakub carrying the bulk of the dramatic weight with his subtle sadness and fraying sanity, and Carey Mulligan is equally as believable as his put-upon wife Lenka who just wishes to be seen. The dreamlike, surreal quality of Spaceman is interesting to watch as the film mixes reality, dream, memory, and maybe even a hallucination or two, but that doesn’t mean that it is without its boring moments either.

Spaceman tries to make several profound observations on love and the human condition, and sometimes these observations land and sometimes they feel unearned and superfluous. There is a certain self-important quality to the film which can feel a bit off-putting, and it is when the film doesn’t shoot for the stars that it is the most likeable. It is in these moments, however, that the boredom occasionally creeps in as well. Why? Because the counseling that Hanuš the spider (soothingly voiced by Paul Dano) gives isn’t anything unique to Jakub and Lenka’s relationship... it’s all stuff that a person who has ever been in healthy relationships (or who has watched a lot of T.V. and movies) would know already. It may be a pretty good movie about marriage counseling, but it is still a movie about marriage counseling.

Spaceman isn’t bad. Far from it, in fact. I might not have learned anything new from it like it clearly wanted me to, but the journey was still worth having.

Spaceman is now available on Netflix.

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on March 22^nd, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.

Dune: Part Two (03.08.24)

 

I have never seen David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune, despite the fact that it is, by some accounts, a fun watch because of how spectacularly weird and bad it is. It has been sitting in one of my streaming service queues for quite a while now, gathering imaginary digital dust, and whenever I get some free time I just can’t find myself ready to commit to 137 minutes of silliness. Dune: Part Two was a slightly different beast—sure, it may be a whole 18 minutes longer, but I found 2021’s Part One to be exceptional. And even though Denis Villeneuve’s latest adaptation may have taken up a good chunk of my evening I gotta say—I loved every minute of it.

Dune: Part Two Is, in a word, big. The scope, the actors, the soundtrack… everything that Part One did this one does bigger, battering each of my senses into submission until there was nothing left in my life except the desert planet of Arrakis, giant Diet Coke and tub of popcorn at my side not withstanding. Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Greig Fraser (who won an Academy Award for his work in the first installment) instill every frame with sheer awe, their knack for finding the perfect angle never failing to bring forth the beauty and horror of Frank Herbert’s universe (the Harkonnen world of Geidi Prime is particularly striking with its black-and-white eeriness).

It's a dense and daunting universe, to be sure. David Lynch's previous attempt at adapting the novel in 1984 famously included a glossary of terms along with each ticket, the better to help audiences understand what the heck was happening and what those silly made-up words meant. Dune: Part Two feels significantly easier to follow, even in comparison to Part One, although I do recommend rewatching this previous installment first if you have another two and a half hours to burn (I caught a showing of Part Two with closed captioning, which also helped immensely).

The stacked cast is a who’s-who of Hollywood royalty and gen-z wunderkinds, and most of them have interesting material to work with (poor Dave Bautista is not one of them, as he once again only gets to be angry to varying degrees and Florence Pugh doesn’t have much to do) in this cautionary tale of revenge, love, and the dangers of religious extremism. The costumes are magnificent, the CGI is breathtaking, and the unusual but excellent score by Hans Zimmer (who also won an Oscar for his work on Part One) turns the entire experience up to eleven. Honestly I’m having a hard time finding anything interesting to talk about with Dune: Part Two that’s not just a boring checklist of things done well done. Watching it on the big screen is a transcendent experience that must be seen to be believed: This is why we go to the movies. Go see Dune: Part Two on the big screen before it’s gone.

Dune: Part Two is now playing exclusively in theaters. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on March 8^th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.