It is a well-known story amongst many people close to the movie world that when James Cameron pitched Aliens as the sequel to the original beloved 1979 film Alien, he merely walked up to the whiteboard in the meeting room, added an “S” to the original title and promptly converted that “S” into a dollar sign ($). Of course, Cameron had already enjoyed critical and commercial success with his second directorial effort in The Terminator, so it’s not as if the studio executives in the room had only the dollar sign to go on, but if the story is to be believed, that move is what cinched the film’s production “yes,” which would lead to Cameron becoming a household name following that film and the success of Terminator 2 just five years later. Unfortunately, no such story exists about Lee Isaac Chung’s jump from his intimate and indie-budgeted Minari in 2020 to the heights of helming a major summer tentpole for Universal Pictures in the form of a sequel/reboot of the 1996 disaster classic Twister, but it sure would have been a fun marketing joke.

As it is, Twisters is never explicitly clear whether it means to act as a sequel to the original film or to re-invigorate the franchise for a new run of disaster flicks, but in both cases, it more or less follows the same formula as its predecessor, with an all-new cast largely standing in for the same parts the old guard had back in 1996. Daisey Edgar-Jones stars as the headstrong professional scientist working out of a weather station following an earlier tragedy who’s asked to come back into the field, Anthony Ramos is the one asking her to get back in the field, Glen Powell joins the cast as Tyler Owens – dubbed the “Tornado Wrangler” – who runs a YouTube channel with his own, more rough-and-tumble crew, which includes Nope breakout Brandon Perea clearly filling in for Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s “Dusty” character. The only meaningful difference, plot-wise between the first film and this one is the protagonists’ ultimate goal: instead of simply sending sensors into the tornados, the goal is to collapse and disrupt one in motion.

Legacy sequels/reboots are hard enough to do in honoring the original film or franchise’s spirit while also attempting to bring something new to the mix, but in cases such as this wherein the originals are remembered and rewatched, but not exactly beloved, that something new is a critical piece of the puzzle. If a filmmaker can get both of those right, and especially if they can get the latter part elevated above the first film’s level, then a truly worthy successor has emerged. Is Twisters a worthy successor or just a barely-elevated copycat? Your answer may depend on how much value you place on the original film. Having just seen Twister for the first time directly before seeing this one, I can say that Twisters is more or less the same movie with a few inversions in its plot mechanics; it just looks a lot more expensive. 

This film has more of a handle on the emotional core of its story than the original does, that’s for sure, but not so much of a handle that it becomes a standout element. Beneath all the howling winds, yeehaws, and homages to the original, it still functions largely as a movie that doesn’t quite know what to do with all the elements it has put together, even when they work individually, apart from pulling the same moves that its predecessor did. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos are doing what they can to elevate the material they’re a part of, but with a script that plays things this safe, there’s not a lot of ground to mine as far as character work, and Ramos gets the short end of the stick in that regard. The one bright spot as far as characters are concerned – well, two bright spots – are Glen Powell and Brandon Perea; every time they were on screen, I just wanted to follow them, despite the fact that both of them are unforgivably underutilized. Powell in particular has a thoroughly natural and occasionally overwhelming charisma that’s practically tailor-made for a movie like this one, and yet even when he is on screen, the film doesn’t seem to want to take advantage of that very powerful tool despite how openly he offers it. In Perea’s case, whether due to the size of the part in the context of the film or the performance itself, the movie gives quite generously. (Harry Hadden-Paton more or less functions as the comic relief of the film, and he’s appropriately placed, but there’s not a whole lot to his character beyond that.)

Where I will give the film half-credit is in the manner by which it introduces disaster exploitation companies that profit off of people’s suffering for real estate development opportunities; I say half credit because it introduces the idea but refuses to actually engage with it in more meaningful detail. Director Lee Isaac Chung has gone on record as saying that he doesn’t want his film to be bogged down in “a message,” but for Twisters, there’s not even really so much as a theme to lift it off the ground it’s drilled into. (Even Alex Garland’s Civil War earlier this year – which also avoids delving into its political blood pool right at the center of it all – at least makes a point about our obsession with images and how culpable we are when we’re more obsessed with them than with the ethical ramifications of what those images contain.) To be fair, this isn’t a Twisters-exclusive problem – the original film also wasn’t too keen on actually having something to say about climate change’s effect on whether phenomena – but it was an opportunity this film ultimate leaves unfulfilled; as far as the original is concerned, the tornado action felt so visceral and the film is so well-paced, it was hard to get distracted enough to even wonder if it had anything to say. Here, the tornado action is also well-rendered, but it almost feels momentum-less, apart from two distinct sequences which stand-out far above the rest, one of which takes place at a rodeo and – just like the first film’s drive-in set-piece – is the best tornado sequence in the movie.

All in all, Twisters gets the job done for those who want nothing more than to watch the first film again on a larger-budgeted scale, and it has its fair share of crowd-pleasing natural disaster goodness, but for those who remember that original film well or want to see another Glen Powell movie star moment, it’s unfortunately rather lackluster in terms of novelty or innovation. (Which, visually, is saying something, considering how it was shot.) And if studios are going to keep bringing talented directors from smaller, more intimately-rendered indie films like Minari onto larger tentpole projects the second they get noticed, the least they can do is not make the scripts for those tentpole projects feel as though they came off an assembly line. 

I’m giving “Twisters” a 6.3/10

- The Friendly Film Fan

​The Friendly Film Fan Breaks Down the Latest from director David Leitch.

Stunt work is – without question – some of the most underrated work in the movie business. Stunt performers are the true lynchpin of just about every action movie people have ever watched, and more often than not, a lot of non-action fare as well. They take hits, they fall down, they get back up to give a hit back, and they give their job everything they’ve got so the movie they’re in can work as well as it’s intended to. That’s the ultimate mission of The Fall Guy, a new action comedy starring (among others) Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt: to celebrate stunt workers as the unsung heroes of moviemaking, the ones who make it possible to actually make something larger than life. It’s a noble effort for what, in the end, is a fun, slightly zany comedy about the guys whom the industry would die without but who have not yet gotten their dues. There’s enough going for it that I would consider this a good movie; it’s just a shame it’s not a better one.
 
The story concerns our main character, Colt Severs (Ryan Gosling), who’s gone off the grid for quite some time after an apparent accident with a stunt rig which resulted in a back-breaking injury. Having heard that former flame Jodi (Emily Blunt) needs a new stuntman to head up the team on her directorial debut – and that the lead movie star on the project has gone missing – he suits up once again to discover if he may be able to save the production from imminent disaster, and hopefully, be able to rekindle what was once thought lost. The film also stars Hannah Waddingham, Winston Duke, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Teresa Palmer, and Stephanie Hsu.
 
The issues The Fall Guy experiences can essentially be attributed to this: David Leitch is just not a good enough director on his own. Sure, a lot of the scripts he works with have the right among of wit, action, and engagement to keep audience entertained, but rarely have I come out of a David Leitch film – pretty much all of which I’ve enjoyed – and made note of how good the direction of the movie was. (I even like Bullet Train.) Unfortunately, the same is true of this film. Essentially coasting off the strength of its two key elements, those being the stunts and performances, the direction of the film feels very flat, as if it doesn’t quite know what it’s meant to be doing with itself. As a result it feels as if the film is simply waiting for someone with a clear vision to steer it along, and no one ever really takes the wheel. This could be attributed to a few script issues as well; between the stuntman love story and the missing movie star story, the film never really establishes which is its A-plot and which is its B-plot, so the two are sort of fighting over screen space for longer than the climax of the film takes to finally wrap up. It’s a very wonky mashup of genres which features some great editing choices and other not-as-great ones, forcing the structure of the film to compromise both genres rather than elevating one or the other.
 
All that said, The Fall Guy does offer enough entertainment for summer audiences to sit back and relax to as an opening summer tentpole. The stunt work is genuinely great, and it’s nice to see a film with a mainstream reach and mass-audience appeal highlight stunts in such a major way. From car rolls to being set on fire to large falls to jumping boats, every action sequence is well-choreographed and exciting to watch, thanks in no small part to the talented stunt team this movie has. I’ve got little hope that the Academy will now do the right thing and add some form of a Stunts category to the Oscars before the next decade has wrapped up, but that’s better than no hope at all, and frankly, the possibility of that happening is closer than it’s ever been.
 
The performances also really sell a lot of what the script has to offer in the positive sense, particularly for Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, whose on-screen chemistry sizzles when they get to share scenes, as unfortunate as it is that they don’t get to share quite enough scenes together to make the romance work in this story. (The romance itself always seems on the edge of the frame, like a tantalizing bit we can’t commit to because the movie has to follow this other missing persons plot.) Gosling and Blunt have been on the road promoting the movie since the Oscars when they each showed up for their “rival” Best Picture contenders, and it’s clear that the film takes full advantage of each of their strengths – Gosling’s comic timing, Blunt’s action abilities and line-reading skills – in order to elevate what’s on the page. But I’d also like to give a shoutout to my man Winston Duke, whose work in the film nearly rivals that of its two main stars, especially in the one action sequence he gets to share with Gosling. He gets a lot more screen time than one might expect, and he makes the most of every moment.
 
As summer movie season openers go, we’ve certainly had better than The Fall Guy, but we’ve also had worse, and this film feels appropriately positioned as a movie star-driven action comedy with enough mainstream appeal that it’ll attract a decent-sized audience back to theaters. As unfortunate as it is that it needs to coast on the stunts and performances in order to keep its sub-par direction and scattered storytelling from overwhelming the two hours it has to get everything done, those performances and stunts are well worth the big-screen treatment, and in the end, it’s a fun enough movie that I would say without question it is worth seeing. At the very least, we could all do our part in supporting a pure celebration of the stunt community to get the Academy’s attention on their importance.
 
I’m giving “The Fall Guy” a 7.1/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​The Friendly Film Fan Reviews the Actor’s Directorial Debut.

​Dev Patel has always been one of the most interesting people to follow in Hollywood. While following his breakout film performance in Danny Boyle’s Best Picture-winning Slumdog Millionaire to his latest work alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in the Wes Anderson short films Poison and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar has not always yielded perfect results, there has always been something about him that draws the viewer in regardless of each film’s varying qualities. Don’t get me wrong, no one escaped The Last Airbender unscathed, but beyond that, there’s almost nothing Patel has done that I haven’t either watched or at least wanted to watch. He's come a significantly long way since starring in Skins back in 2007, and there’s been a lot to celebrate in that time: Lion, The Personal History of David Copperfield (a grossly underrated movie, in my opinion), and The Green Knight all speak to Patel’s immense talent in front of the camera. But acting and directing are two very different beasts. Now, Patel finds himself behind the lens for his feature directorial debut, which he also co-wrote and stars in.
 
Originally intended as a Netflix release before producer Jordan Peele bought it from the company to put it in theaters with Monkeypaw Productions (a bit on the nose there, eh Mr. Peele?), Monkey Man follows Kid (Dev Patel) as he seeks revenge on those who killed his mother and burned his childhood village to the ground. Along the way he encounters friends, foes, and a whole host of bodies to hit the floor with as he works his way toward completing his mission. What he doesn’t know is just how many corrupt people are involved in some of India’s political circles…or just how high up those circles go.
 
One of the greatest compliments anyone can give a debut filmmaker is that they want to see what this person does next, and after seeing this movie, I’m more than ready for whatever Dev Patel wants to do next. While the story itself is rather plain and the film’s structure does little to lift it out of that plainness, Monkey Man still pulses with energy and passion in every step. Setting Kid’s journey as both parallel and homage to the tales of Hanuman may seem like an obvious choice at first glance, but it’s in how the film forges its own path outside of that parallel that makes it stand apart from other action fare like it. That said, the first half of the film does feel as though it’s unsure of just how to forge ahead, which one can feel when watching how often the editing jumps around from beat to beat without much of a breath or even a bridge between plot points. Long stretches go by without much in the way of action, and when the action does happen – again, first half only – the shaky-cam effect only serves to obscure the talent and work put into those sequences. Extreme close-ups in action sequences can be big moments, but only if used sparingly. Perhaps the point of the film being made in this way is to reflect the character’s initial mental state – fractured, on edge, etc. – whereas later he becomes more confident in his ability, so the film eases up on the viewer; that said, there are other methods of demonstrating that sort of blind rage that don’t involve shaking the camera that much or that often. Where the film truly excels is in its second half, which I won’t spoil except to say that the camerawork sees a significant improvement in establishing and wide shots, and the editing doesn’t feel so scattered as it did in the film’s early stages.
 
If there’s one thing Monkey Man has going for it that few other directorial debuts – especially in the action space – could match, it’s style and personality. While comparisons to other films like John Wick are simply inevitable now whenever a new, highly-choreographed action film is set to be released (and this one drops that franchise by name), there’s no denying that this movie is still very much its own thing. From the costumes to the narrative to the filmmaking itself, this film has an identity it doesn’t share with almost anything else, and one can tell that real blood, sweat, and tears (plus a few broken bones, to boot) were put into making this thing the best it could be with what they had to work with. You can feel the passion for this film just oozing off the screen with every scene. The very notion that the film almost lost funding at one point makes even the existence of this film an outright miracle, but Patel’s hard work to haul it over the finish line himself is up there in every frame (especially in the film’s occasionally frantic but always impressively-designed action sequences), and that in itself is a beautiful thing to witness.
 
What I hope for this film, and films like it, is that audiences will buy into and take a chance on them the way Jordan Peele took a chance on Dev Patel as a filmmaker. Mid-budget flicks like this are all too rare already, and while Monkey Man may be a simple tale of revenge without much in the way of narrative innovation, what it lacks in structural originality, it more than makes up for in sheer verve. Dev Patel’s efforts to get this movie made are all right up there on screen, and that effort was clearly a concentrated one given how the film’s identity is able to (mostly) spring free of comparisons to others that inspired it. The performances are fun (who doesn’t love a good Sharlto Copley appearance), the action is kinetic and occasionally brutal, the comedy mostly hits despite how little of it there actually is, and it’s very clear Dev Patel has as much of a future behind the camera as he’s had a past in front of it. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

I’m giving “Monkey Man” a 7.8/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​The Friendly Film Fan Discusses Jordan Peele’s Return to the Big Screen.

In many ways, Jordan Peele is a bellwether for both the best and worst kind of movie fans. On the one hand, the now-iconic director of Get Out – the first horror film to be nominated for Best Picture since 1999 – and Us, is one of the few, if not only, filmmakers able to attract large crowds to the cineplex based solely on his name and reputation as both critic and craftsman. Get Out, in particular, was lauded for its searing depiction of white liberals’ use of Black bodies to achieve their own selfish ends without regard to the damage it causes. Us, perhaps less successfully, was more about class divide and the ways in which people take up and drop causes based solely on the moment they’re in. (It’s also more focused on the horror elements than its own subtext.) Both of these films were highly praised for their cinematography, haunting storytelling, standout comedic moments, and stellar performances from majority-Black casts. People loved going out to the theater and discussing the films after the credits ended. The former of them was itself a cultural reset for the whole of the horror genre, and is oft credited with being the picturesque portrait of horror mega-producers Blumhouse’ style and mission (Jason Blum himself even said it was the “perfect Blumhouse movie”). On the other hand, many of the moviegoers Peele attracts to the big screen now come laden with an expectation that whatever he puts out must have something inherently meaningful to say, and that to not lace his scripts with social commentary or some sort of political ideology or thesis simmering underneath is akin to failing or “slipping” in his directorial efforts. It is at the crossroads between these two forces that Peele’s new film, Nope, finds both its greatest success and its most challenging disconnects.
 
Nope is a straight-up thriller through and through. There are no hidden messages here for viewers to parse, no underbelly for them to wade through between Oscar-season cocktail parties or campaign events. Indeed, it seems to be the first of Peele’s films to not only avoid creating anything to drum up awards season chatter in its narrative, but to actively dismantle the hope of generating it. That’s not to say that it doesn’t deserve to generate awards season chatter, only that unlike Get Out or Us, there’s nothing here that viewers can latch onto to create an “Oscar narrative,” even if that narrative is stretched to its absolute limit in terms of plausibility. This is just rock-solid thriller filmmaking bolstered by some of the best craftwork moviegoers can see on the big screen; and make no mistake, people should see this on a very big screen.
 
The decision to shoot with IMAX cameras by Peele and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema proves to be an ingenious one, even as much of what viewers ultimately wish to see within their lenses is kept out of frame or shrouded in shadow. The scope of the movie is one of its greatest assets; wide open spaces where anything can go wrong are often the driving force of the tension within the film. If characters need to get to one place to feel safe, and by proxy make the viewers feel safe, the best way to create tension is to separate those spaces as far apart as possible, something that Nope not only understands but continually repeats as it rachets up the intensity from moment to moment; even in its quietest scenes, the looming spectacle of whatever threat the characters face is held together by the frames of Hoytema’s lens, as well as stellar sound design which is given far more power here than even in Peele’s previous feature work. (Every shot also just looks absolutely beautiful. The score, too, though less prominent here than in films where it usually is one of the more notable elements, is utilized almost perfectly, though I would have liked to hear more of it in certain moments.)
 
But frames can only work as well as what’s contained within them, and Jordan Peele’s directorial efforts are most evident in the performances of yet another stellar ensemble cast, including a world-class Keke Palmer and returning (now Oscar-winner) muse Daniel Kaluuya, whom Peele directed to his first Best Actor nomination in Get Out. Kaluuya is in the film more than viewers might expect given how much of the initial marketing was focused on the Keke Palmer character, but when one has a performer as thoroughly engrossing to watch as him, why limit oneself to minimal use? Kaluuya once again, and often, draws the camera to his face and holds it there, the only true measure of his immeasurable talent being the image of his eye movements in silent moments, saying everything without a word being uttered. Other notable performances include a wonderfully wry Michael Wincott, a vulnerable-yet-commanding Steven Yeun, and supporting cast standout Brandon Perea. The star of the show, however, is the formerly noted Keke Palmer, who here stands out not only as the most charismatic and funniest of the main characters, but has the most to do in terms of what the narrative requires of her character. Palmer is already well-known for her work outside of Nope, but her performance here should rocket her into the stratosphere of the most sought-after talent Hollywood has to offer.
 
Where Nope begins to dip into what could be metaphor or commentary, but ultimately ends up more confusing in its inclusion than clarifying, is in its sub-narrative regarding a sitcom episode that features a monkey. The sequence is heavily tied to the Steven Yeun character, but while the sequence is arresting on its own, and frankly the most terrifying part of the film as its opening image cements that this will not be a light-hearted or comic subplot, its place in the larger narrative never seems to gel quite the way it seems to hope it will. While Yeun’s undersold and fairly brief performance is yet another in a string of successes for the actor, the inclusion of his character’s backstory seems to be its own story within the story, meant to shed light on what’s happening in the main plot but ultimately only used to reinforce a point the audience doesn’t really need to be reinforced.
 
On the whole, Nope may not be the cultural force Get Out was or even as tinged in commentary as Us, but it remains far better than it ever needed to be thanks to the efforts of world-class craftsmanship and dynamic performances. Jordan Peele’s thriller is one of the few in 2022 that genuinely embodies exactly what its mission is, and accomplishes that mission (for the most part) with tact and genuine excitement. It looks great, it sounds great, it’s chock-full of great performances, and it’s a perfect big-screen theater experience to round out the main portion of the summer movie season. Even as various directors have attempted to capture the same stylistic flourishes and filmmaking tricks of his trade, the truth remains for better or worse: no one makes movies like Jordan Peele.
 
I’m giving “Nope” an 8.2/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan