By Jacob Jones 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 6.5/10 - The Friendly Film Fan
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By Jacob Jones The Bikeriders was written and directed by Jeff Nichols, and is based on the 1967 photobook of the same name. It takes place between 1965 and 1973, as Kathy (Jodie Comer) recounts the early days of the Outlaws MC (or the Vandals) – an old-school biker club from the streets of McCook, Illinois – to Danny Lyons (Mike Faist), who would go on to eventually author said photobook. From her first day, meeting Benny (Austin Butler) and Johnny (Tom Hardy), to her marriage to Benny, to club picnics and rides across the American Midwest, to meeting members of other clubs, to the introduction of new members of the crew and the departures of longstanding friends, to the eventual evolution of the club into a proper gang, Kathy helps Danny to assemble a portrait of an American society which has since faded into relative obscurity, and hopefully, give their legacy one last good ride. The film also stars Emory Cohen, Boyd Holdbrook, Damon Harriman, Michael Shannon, and Nordman Reedus.
It’s been nine years since writer and director Jeff Nichols last released a feature film, and the movie world as a whole has felt his absence. Since Loving was released in 2016 to very little fanfare (which it ultimately deserved to have), few filmmakers have been able to replicate or even approximate what Nichols brought to the table as an artist. Here was one of the few filmmakers left making mid-budget films for adults that were centered around movie stars but didn’t seem to be especially interested in whatever awards contention they could possibly be slated for along the way – the kinds of movies summers and falls were chock-full of and used to be built around. (Midnight Special is the sci-fi exception.) There are still a select few who do this kind of work – hell, Richard Linklater, who released Hit Man this year – is one of them, but they’re becoming fewer and fewer as studios seem increasingly to only be interested in pushing large-budget projects for large box office returns. (Disney even ultimately let this movie go after removing it from the schedule following the SAG-AFTRA strike of last summer; originally produced under the 20th Century Studios banner, the film is now distributed under Focus Features, one of the few major studios left that seems genuinely interested in these kinds of projects beyond their awards prospects.) Now, Nichols has returned to the silver screen to deliver not only one of the best movie of the year, but exactly the kind of film that movie fans like me have been craving to return to theaters for a long time. There will be inevitable comparisons to Goodfellas based on the earlier stylization of The Bikeriders, especially in the first act, and they wouldn’t be unfair comparisons, generally speaking. The overall edit and – to put it simply – “vibe” of the film feels very much like the Scorsese epic of 1990, complete with freeze-frame title cards, voice-over narration, and a soundtrack reminiscent of the time in which the film takes place. But Nichols is no Scorsese (who are we kidding, no one is), so as much as the film initially attempts to replicate or otherwise embody those stylistic choices, it can’t stop itself from moving too fast at points, which ends up leaving the first act as a whole somewhat of a mess; not one that can’t be cleaned up, and it’s only a spill really, but somewhat of a mess, nonetheless. That said, the film does eventually settle into its own groove, a thoroughly masculine endeavor of honor, legacy, loyalty, brotherhood, etc, without ever feeling as though it’s obsessed with the masculinity it offers. And who better to carry that cool masculinity than one of the biggest movie stars of the moment, Austin Butler. The Bikeriders has other stars doing good performance work – Jodie Comer in particular is quite underrated here as she gets to be the emotional core of the film – and of course there’s a bit of bizarre vocal experimentation (we will never know what Tom Hardy truly sounds like and while Comer’s accent does eventually stop being as distracting, it takes a minute for it to get there), but none of them come close to replicating the true “movie star” power that Austin Butler has in holding the camera’s gaze. He has a presence on screen that’s difficult to quantity exactly, but can only remind the viewer of someone like a Brad Pitt or Robert Redford to Glen Powell’s Clooney or Paul Newman. Audiences may see the film for all sorts of reasons, whether they’re Jeff Nichols fans, Tom Hardy fans, Mike Faist fans, or otherwise, but they’ll leave talking about Austin Butler. It’s his effortless cool that lets the engine of the movie come roaring to life, and it’s his scenes in the movie that keep it from losing focus too often to recover. All that said, this isn’t a perfect movie, and just as the first act feels a little bit too fast for all the stylization it offers, the third act is perhaps a little bit too slow and lacking in some much-needed stylistic adrenaline. That’s not to say the ending isn’t good – that’s in safe hands – but from the break into act three almost until the ending itself, the film sort of feels like it doesn’t know how to end the story it’s telling, as if it’s simply waiting for the credits to eventually fade in and let us know it’s over. Even as much as we enjoy hanging out with all the guys in the club (the original ones, anyway), we know that the journey has to end, but we’re made to wait too long for that ending to get started, which only serves to feed the slight-but-noticeable pacing problem the film occasionally falls back into. Still, even with a few minor complaints like light pacing issues and strange accents, there’s little that can damper the movie’s “good hang” time. My biggest hope for this movie, even if it is a stretch, is that audiences will turn out for it enough so that studios get the message that these kinds of movies are wanted in theatrical spaces, and that we want to see movie stars looking cool with great screen presence in a movie about dudes just rocking so hard. Maybe that’s a pipe dream, but it’s a dream film fans need to keep alive, and it’s a dream quite clearly that filmmakers like Jeff Nichols believe in as much as we do. I’ve waited for a long time for a film like The Bikeriders to come back to the silver screen (even Hit Man didn’t get that opportunity properly) and I’m happy to say that, at least for me, it was well worth the wait. I’m giving “The Bikeriders” an 8.2/10 - The Friendly Film Fan by Jacob Jones When Pixar first released Inside Out in the summer of 2015, I had just begun working at my local movie theater as floor staff, fresh out of my freshman year of college, and for the first time had gained total control over how many movies I got to see, and when I got to see them (relative to my work schedule). Of course, I had begun my embracing my cinephile self a few years earlier, often going to see things like Gone Girl or the premiere of How to Train Your Dragon 2 by myself, or Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Pacific Rim with friends, while I sought other contemporary films out elsewhere, usually by taking a chance on blind-buying blu-rays. I was also coming to terms with battling depression around this time, understanding why I felt so much and yet seemingly unable to control my own sensitivities to how different things affected me emotionally. In short, I was in the perfect place both emotionally and physically for Inside Out to hit me like a ton of bricks. I saw it no less than four times in theaters, two of those times being on back-to-back days, and can still recall vividly each of the four spots where I cried during the movie (the Michael Giacchino score certainly didn’t help). It eventually landed at #2 in my Top 10 Films of 2015 – surpassed only by John Crowley’s Brooklyn – and still holds a high placement amongst my favorite Pixar releases.
Cut to nine years later, and Inside Out is still largely considered one of the last of the truly genius original works Pixar has made, as the studio has struggled to recapture the magic they once were the pinnacle of, instead focusing on sequels to other beloved works like Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. There was even a fourth Toy Story movie released, as well as a Lightyear spin-off film. Any other original properties Pixar has made thus far, from their pandemic releases like Soul, Luca, and Turning Red (all of which went straight to Disney+), to movies like Onward and Elemental, have all been generally well-received, but none have been as beloved or as big of hits as that first Inside Out film. In fact, only Coco seems to have come close in either capacity. And now, here we are at Inside Out 2, as Pixar once more attempts to re-capture the magic, or at least replicate the success, of one of the their most iconic original works. Riley is now thirteen years old and moving on up in the world. She has her loving parents, her two best friends, and her own sense of self, and is ready to experience new growth as she prepares for high school life. All her emotions are in complete sync, as Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust have mastered the mind console to help Riley become her best self. There’s just one small problem: puberty is here to wreck shop. As she and her friends are invited to attend a three-day hockey camp intensive with one of the high school coaches, her sense of self is put to the test, and with these evolutions of inner and outer life come new and more complex feelings than the last ones, such as Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui. These new emotions threaten to destroy or irreparably alter the very foundations of who Riley is as a person, and it’s up to Joy and the gang to save Riley before her sense of self is altered forever. This sequel has an ambitious task ahead of it, not only in terms of the evolution of filmmaking in simply being a sequel to one of Pixar’s greatest works, but in how the movie itself tackles this intricately complicated subject matter across multiple planes of conceptual storytelling; how do you evolve the character of Riley while at the same time evolving the characters inside her mind that we already know and introduce new characters and concepts which must also evolve in just over ninety minutes? To put things lightly, that’s not an easy ask of any storyteller, so it’s admirable that for the most part that Inside Out 2 largely fulfills the ambitions it sets for itself, and the journey, for all the flaws it has, still feels natural and cohesive. Nothing feels forced, or as though the storytelling so desperately wants Riley to experience her new emotions that it forces the old ones out of the story entirely, nor does it so desperately want to create conflict out of nothing that it mischaracterizes the emotions we already know by having them force the new ones out at the first opportunity. In fact, the film handles its delicate balance of characters quite well; almost all of them feel as though they have an adequate amount of screen time and attention despite how many there are to juggle, even if some still feel a bit like back-burner joke characters overall. Anxiety, embarrassment, and Pouchy (you’ll get to know this one rather quickly) are all stand-outs from the new line, while Disgust gets a little more to do here than in the first film. It’s also still very creative in how it accomplishes showing the audience the ways in which different emotions effect Riley’s actions, particularly one climactic scene late in the film which may be the most accessibly-depicted version of that particular experience ever put to screen (I won’t spoil what it is, but you’ll know it when you see it). The film also evolves Riley’s outer life – the scenes outside her mind – in much more engaging ways than in the previous film. The real-life sequences in Inside Out aren’t bad by any stretch, but they’re a little plain overall, acting more as templates for the real story going on inside Riley’s mind than as fully fleshed-out plots in and of themselves. With Inside Out 2, following Riley herself is much more interesting; we actually enjoy seeing how she evolves as a person, how she navigates her friendships and her relationships to authority and those around her. As she makes new friends, we actually care about how this affects her current ones, and we’re invested in her successes and failures inside the hockey camp she attends. For something that didn’t necessarily need a bump in audience engagement, it’s nice that the filmmakers and writers gave us reasons to want to get out of Riley’s mind as much as we wanted to be in it. Where this film unfortunately runs into trouble is inside that very mind, not so much in terms of the characters, but more in terms of the worldbuilding aspect that the first film nailed so beautifully. Riley’s mind in Inside Out is a tapestry of rich, interesting worldbuilding, with so much variety in how concepts of identity, emotion, and memory are explored even in the smallest of dialogue exchanges that it truly feels like her brain is a genuinely fun place to explore. There are certainly new mental concepts introduced in Inside Out 2, but they’re almost all relegate to headquarters, and we spend so much time there just focusing on what Anxiety is doing that we don’t get to explore the rest of Riley’s mind that much. Without getting into spoilers, there’s really only one scene that expands the world in the same ways the last one continually did, while almost all the rest of the new stuff outside of headquarters is just alluded to, without actually being examined. Of course, it doesn’t help that as the story continues, it becomes somewhat repetitive: anxiety is sort of helping Riley navigate growing up in an uncertain time in her life but is mostly steering her towards a disastrous break, and Joy and the gang need to stop this from happening. The film never really breaks from this line or even entertains the idea that things might go in a different direction. Even in the progression of the plot, no matter what obstacles the emotions face, the goal remains the exact same, and while lessons are learned, those lessons don’t ultimately change the goals or ultimate ends of any of the characters we already know. And as far as the new characters to whom we’re introduced, it makes sense that Anxiety would just take over and run the show for most of the film’s runtime, but we do feel the lack of variety in the new emotions (Envy gets the shortest end of the stick here) because of that choice in the storytelling. (Also, this is a little nit-picky, I’ll admit, but the musical score and the comedy just did not hit the same this time around. Many of Giacchino’s original themes are present, but are so burdened by other instrumentation being layered on top of them that they fail to get a chance to really shine through or punch the emotion of certain moments. Additionally, there are a decent number of jokes to keep things entertaining – including one callback from the first film that’s easily the best joke in the movie – but the emphasis on a more serious tone and more dramatic plotting somewhat sap the film of the same comic cleverness the first film was practically covered in.) Overall, while I admire Inside Out 2’s creative swings and ambitious storytelling, it can’t measure up to the magic of its predecessor. Maybe that’s simply due to how the storytelling evolves with more serious subject matter, or maybe it’s because I was simply in the perfect spot in my life for the first one to release, and the spot I’m in now doesn’t quite match with this one, but nevertheless, it’s a fact that must be faced. It certainly tries its hardest to evolve the storytelling from the first film in a way that makes sense and honors that legacy, and it largely succeeds in its ambitious task of making that progression feel natural, but the lack of more exploratory worldbuilding and somewhat repetitive story end up stifling the rest of what it could have been. Still, it’s decently well-balanced, the evolution of Riley’s outer life was nicely-handled, and it’s still one of the better Pixar sequels outside of the Toy Story franchise. I’m giving “Inside Out 2” a 7.6/10 - The Friendly Film Fan I’m not doing the “it’s a hit…man” joke. By Jacob Jones There’s a certain kind of soul death in cinephiles that occurs when Netflix acquires a major summer movie from a beloved auteur filmmaker and seems all but set on burying it instead of giving it a proper theatrical release; in the now seemingly eternal release war between streaming and theatrical movie exhibition (and don’t get me started on the “windowing” problem), the worst thing a service can do is not allow a film deserving of buzz to generate that word-of-mouth by playing on a bunch of silver screens nationwide, especially after the service itself failed to properly market that film to a wider audience, leaving it to the filmmakers, stars, and critics who saw the movie to generate interest seemingly on their own. After all, wouldn’t it be better for a film that was greenlit to get eyes on a service to debut theatrically – the way it was meant to be seen – and then for the service to later offer people a chance to watch that film again, exclusively on their platform? Sure, this wouldn’t need to be the case for all streaming projects, but it should have been for Richard Linklater’s new movie, Hit Man, which stars Glen Powell and Adria Arjona (among others), and is based on the true crime Texas Monthly Article of the same name by Skip Hollandsworth. (It is at this point I must tell you that, deservedly, the film seems to be a hit for Netflix, but I still contend it was not Netflix that made it so.)
The plot herein focuses on Gary (Powell), a college English professor whose unique skill set in all things electronic ultimately leads to him working undercover with the New Orleans Police Department, who just had their number one undercover operative in stings suspended for overuse of force. Given his interest in human behavior, they ask Gary to take the lead on one sting operation involving solicitation for murder; after discovering he has a natural talent for these encounters, he becomes the department’s go-to guy, a fake hit man who tailors his personas to the specific individuals he meets, and always gets the confession. But things change when he meets Madison (Arjona) on the job, and she threatens to alter not only his perception of objective reality, but of himself. To say too much else would be venturing into spoiler territory, but the kind of fun this movie has isn’t what I’d call spoil-able. Richard Linklater operates in a few different modes: there are the contemplative, existential time-piece modes of the Before Trilogy and Boyhood, there are the “hangout” modes of films like Dazed and Confused and Everybody Wants Some, and there are the more commercially-oriented modes, most famously the 2003 film School of Rock. I’m not entirely sure where Hit Man falls amongst these modes, but I do know that it feels every bit like the Linklater mode of those latter three, a breezy time with snappy dialogue and characters we want to keep hanging out with because they’re just so much fun to be around. Sure, it moves more, it has more of a plot and story than those others, but it still feels very much like a quasi-“hangout” film; it’s just that instead of hanging out with a bunch of different people, or a specific group, we’re chilling with a specific individual – Glen Powell – and he’s a lot of fun to be around. A lot of that feeling is aided by the film’s zippy editing, which is paired with a very fun, dialogue-heavy script by Powell and Linklater, in a perfect matrimony of pacing and character that allows the viewer to jump right in at any point and exit at any time they have to; crucially, however, you never want to. And that is not simply because of a few fantastic set-pieces (a notes app scene comes to mind) or some genuinely tension-filled moments, but in all truth, because of one entirely too charismatic performer. Yes, the key sell of Hit Man is not the snappy Linklater-Powell dialogue, the direction, or even the characters themselves, but the spectacle of watching Glen Powell simply be a true blue movie star for two hours, which is not an easy thing to do. Powell has always been a great actor, but after taking the Tom Cruise crash course in how to be a movie star, his version of that is out in full force; you can see it in Top Gun: Maverick, for all the film’s issues you could still see it in Anyone But You, and you can definitely see it here. This kind of part is perfect for an actor like him; he gets to show off a little range with every persona he adopts, culminating in Ron, the coolest guy on Earth. This is also in perfect lock-step with Adria Arjona’s Madison, the only one who can match Ron’s freak, who starts off a little shy but soon transforms into the hottest woman on Earth for the same two hours. All of this may seem like an oversimplification of what the movie has to offer its audience, but in all truth, the movie really is that simple. There’s nothing exceptionally deep or complex about it in the way that something like Before Sunset or Boyhood offer; it’s really just about Glen Powell and Adria Arjona being movie stars, Powell in particular. His sheer charisma carries the film on its back all the way to the finish line. My only complaint in this regard is that because the film moves so fast, we don’t really get to spend enough time with his initial persona of Gary, which to my mind, is when Powell gets to be funniest (apart from a great montage in the first half hour). If the film has flaws, the side characters do leave a bit to be desired. Powell and Arjona are great, ditto to the singular excellent supporting character played by Austin Amelio, but the others don’t so much feel like characters in and of themselves as they do like set-up fodder for our main stars to do their thing. The performances are good, but the performers themselves don’t have much of an opportunity to embody something more fully realized. To be fair, one doesn’t need every side character in a movie like this to be a memorable piece of a pretty light puzzle, but it doesn’t hurt either. In the end, there’s not a lot to say about Hit Man beyond that it’s just a damn good time and a lot of fun to watch. The script is clever, the dialogue and editing are pretty close to perfect, and most importantly, it gives Glen Powell the movie star part he deserves and Adria Arjona a massive career boost. This one really should be seen in a theater with an audience, but since Netflix is just gonna keep dropping the ball on that, at least checking it out would be worth your time. I’m giving “Hit Man” an 8.6/10 - The Friendly Film Fan By Jacob Jones It’s been nine years since Mad Max: Fury Road roared the once-thought-dead action franchise back to life with one of the most perfect action spectacles ever put to screen, and while there is still no direct sequel to that film (though The Wasteland remains in pre-production), Australian mad lad and franchise director George Miller has resurrected that film’s principle character for an origin story all her own. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Furiosa, a young girl belonging to a place of abundance who is kidnapped from her home by the madman Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Over the course of many years, Furiosa must learn how the wasteland works by way of trade and road war, how to survive its many cruelties and trials, how to rise through the ranks in order to eventually seek revenge on the man who took everything from her, and above all, how to find her way home.
The best of the Mad Max films have never been all that concerned with complicated stories, which makes this Mad Max Saga an especially interesting test case in seeing whether or not Miller and company can pull off a slightly more nuanced version of the Fury Road feeling without it seeming like they’re just trying to do the exact same thing again, and to that degree, it largely succeeds. While Furiosa absolutely makes an excellent companion piece to Fury Road in tying everything together in way that doesn’t feel cheap or condescending from the origin points of certain character traits to the introduction of specific vehicles to even some musical motifs from the original Tom Holkenberg score, it is still very much its own movie, with its own ideas, its own story, and its own sense of place. The plot mechanics of our titular character’s odyssey across the desert are decidedly more complex than those of its predecessor, which thrived largely due to its magnificent craftwork overlayed on top of its simplicity, rather than attempting to weave it into a tale requiring more finesse. This movie a tale of the blood-soaked tragedy behind all the rage and resolve our titular character possesses when we meet her in the previous film, which by nature invites further complications into determining how those parts of Furiosa came to be, and its deliberate avoidance of peddle-to-the-metal pacing present in Fury Road – along with the longer runtime – is the clearest indicator that Miller is attempting to paint a complete and all-consuming portrait of who Furiosa is as a character; he is not crafting an action extravaganza, but a revenge epic. That said, the action sequences that do appear in this film – at least most of them – all carry the same visceral adrenaline that those of Fury Road did. There is a chase sequence towards the middle of the film (which is broken up into five distinct segments) which could easily outclass all other action sequences made this year; at one point, the man next to me’s jaw actually dropped in response to one of the fighting mechanics introduced during the scene. It’s the kind of action filmmaking only the truly insane are capable of performing at this level, and despite the fact that it is clearly laden with more visual effects than any singular scene of Fury Road has, the way it’s shot and edited makes it feel like something no one except George Miller ever could pull off. And while that scene in particular was the definite highlight of the film for me personally, there are a few others that deserve near-equal praise in how they utilize the sound design, as does the entire film in that specific respect; you can feel the rumble of every engine, the power of the tires in the sand, the crack of the gunshots across the desert air. It’s the sort of sound design that forces one to realize just how much better great sound can make an already great movie. There are a few admittedly nitpicky areas in which Furiosa falters, chiefly in the visual makeup of the film (some of the green screen is a bit obvious and the color grade doesn’t feel as saturated as Fury Road does, making it less vibrant) and the fact that unfortunately, that epic sense of pace does mean that this movie feels longer than it probably should, despite the fact that everything within that length is working about as well as it can be expected to, but the craftwork in this still operates high above almost anything else being produced in Hollywood right now. A great film can’t rest on craftwork alone, though. All the performers have to step up to the plate, and dear reader, they all knock it out of the park. There are, of course, some familiar faces involved which we get to know later on in Fury Road, and Tom Burke’s character does ultimately feel a tad superfluous when all is said and done despite his admirable performance, but this film truly belongs to the new blood. Anyone even remotely familiar with Anya Taylor-Joy is aware of her immense talents going all the way back to The Witch in 2015, but she gets to turn on a new mode here of feminine rage that feels not so much like a reaction to what was done to her, but an evolution of who she was destined to become; that’s a very hard line to act with minimal dialogue across two-plus hours, and she nails every moment she’s asked to. That said, Chris Hemsworth is the performance everyone is sure to be talking about coming out of this film; he's chewing scenery left and right, clearly having the time of his life playing the despicable (and occasionally hilarious) Dementus in what might be his finest performance to date. I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to hop on that train yet as we can only see how his part in all this stacks up with time, but it’s certainly the most fun he’s been to watch since at least Thor: Ragnarok, and probably ever. In the end, though, this is still very much a George Miller film, and although Fury Road may be a better movie on the whole, this – I believe – is a better-directed piece of work, if only because the direction is more visible without a whole lot of other masters at work sharing the spotlight. It may seem trivial, but refusing to just play the hits again, even if they are hits for a reason, is an exciting thing for a filmmaker at Miller’s caliber to commit to, and despite any shortcomings the film may have, making this a different kind of movie than Fury Road was still absolutely the correct approach to telling this story, which he has rendered into existence with an exciting fervor. It’s so clear he cares about this world and these characters to such a degree no one else has even tried to make one of these, and if I had my way, no one else ever would, even after he’s long passed from this Earth. I’m giving “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” a 9.2/10 - The Friendly Film Fan By Jacob Jones With their debut feature, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, director Jane Schoenbrun burst onto the scene as a voice with a particular talent for examining gender dysphoria through coming-of-age horror, utilizing found footage and screen recordings a la Unfriended and Searching to explore how online spaces may exacerbate or further complicate the uncertainty of youth and our innate desire as human beings to belong to something…or somewhere. Hoping to pull off the hat trick a second time, Schoenbrun now has set their sights on the world of late-night 90s television in an effort to relay the experience of queer dysphoria primarily through the lens of trans identity using old-school, analog psychedelia as a means of telling their story. The central premise revolves around the relationship between Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who meet on an election night at the local high school. The two bond over their shared love for a late-night show called “The Pink Opaque,” which somewhat mirrors real-life hits like Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark? Over the next several years, both Owen and Maddy begin to feel that something about their lives isn’t quite right; stuck or suppressed, they know that whatever experiences they share through The Pink Opaque feel more real than reality itself – could it be more than just a tv show?
The plotting of this movie may occasionally feel static, the characters within not fully drawn while their respective personal journeys stretch too thin for comfort, but further examination of these elements’ relationship to the film’s themes reveal their deliberacy in being crafted this way. I Saw the TV Glow is not merely concerned with the idea of trans identity, but the with the journey of its inherent and often terrifying uncertainty, prior to its embrace or rejection by the individual wrestling with it. It is in this way that we come to connect with Owen as a character; because he doesn’t know who he is, we also don’t, and any queer individual will instantly recognize just what that feels like – to not really know if the real you is just a bug in the system, an idea that requires suppression because the truth is a terrifying antithesis to the reality you know. When we first meet Owen, he is a husk, a shell merely watching life play out on a tv screen; we witness his journey from boy to man between cut-ins of him sitting at a fire, recollecting what it was like to have lived as himself at all, attempting to examine his own repression, recalling how Maddy’s presence in his life has altered it in a way that terrifies him. It is also in this way that Schoenbrun pleads with their audience to recognize the dangers of suppressing one’s true identity as a queer individual (in this film specifically, a trans individual); the melancholy that accompanies it leaves one in eternal night, a forever death that eventually subsumes all else, even as no one else can see it happening until it’s too late. To quote the film itself, “the longer you wait, the closer you get to suffocating.” Working at both a movie theater and the ironically-named “Fun Palace” where the only light sources are entirely artificial, Owen suffocates under the guise of living life how it “should” be lived; one of the quotes playing in the background film on display states that “machines now walk the Earth,” as Owen does. In refusing to let go of the life with which he is familiar, he becomes nothing more than a robot, a believer in the idea that even as he suppresses his true self, love will save him from the melancholy that plagues him, even as the viewer knows it won’t; it can’t – only though embracing his identity can it ever be conquered. But as much as the film is a warning against the suppression of identity, it’s also a call to those people who feel this dysphoria to embrace the truth, even if it’s terrifying to confront one’s true self; “there is still time,” written in chalk on a suburb street, reminds us that though time moves quickly, one can be free of the “midnight realm” and defeat “Mr. Melancholy” through true self-actualization. As Owen walks down the hallways of his school during act one, the first sign he sees states “to thine own self be true,” the last “without courage no other virtues matter.” There is, of course, other signage on the walls, including one just down the hall from the last, but for Owen’s walk, these are not coincidental placements. Immediately after he turns down a different hallway, he is bathed in the light of the trans flag colors as they make up the stained glass in the windows. In the opening section of the film, prior to the title card coming on screen, Owen can be seen participating in a group activity with a gymnasium parachute which also features the colors of the trans flag; he is the only one to get up and walk around underneath it, in direct contrast to the previous idea of his being a husk stuck in “reality.” I feel here than Schoenbrun is asking their audience to walk around as themselves for a while, just to know what it looks like – at the very least, it’s better than being stuck in a world where suffocation and melancholy are the alternatives. While the success of I Saw the TV Glow as a film is sure to vary from person to person, there is something entirely undeniable about its being; there’s no doubt this film comes from a very personal place, as it sees queer youth – specifically trans youth – through a lens that only a queer person really can. In one act two bar scene, the band Sloppy Jane performs their song “Claw Machine,” which features the lyric “I paint the ceiling black, so I don’t notice when my eyes are open.” If you have ever struggled as a queer person with your identity, you understand this lyric better than anyone. The confrontation of one’s true self is a terrifying thing; it can be so easy to just paint the ceiling black so one doesn’t even notice it anymore. Schoenbrun’s film is both an understanding of that temptation, and a plea not to follow it, with all the style and vision a story such as this would require. Queer cinema, horror cinema, and queer horror cinema have shown audiences a lot of ways to interpret identity dysphoria, but rarely has it been this clearly rendered. It’s an almost impossible feeling to apply language to, but suffice it to say, to bear witness to something that allows one to feel seen in this specific way – I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. I’m giving “I Saw the TV Glow” a 9.8/10. - The Friendly Film Fan “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” Review: A Worthy New Chapter in One of Cinema’s Great Franchises5/9/2024 The Friendly Film Fan Breaks Down the New Film from director Wes Ball. Franchise storytelling is difficult, to say the least. How many film franchises can moviegoers name off the top of their heads which have not only continued well past their original iterations into entirely new eras of cinema but have continued to evolve, innovate, and offer new and exciting ways of telling the same story? And how many of those have the same longevity of something like the James Bond films without having to reset or alter their continuities every few entries? It’s a rare feat to begin with – X-Men, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, and even Lord of the Rings to some degree have all failed to net a consistent-enough batting average across all of their films to be considered among the great franchises beyond their legacy contributions to cinema itself – but this accomplishment is rarer still when the sci-fi genre is involved. Alien, Terminator, Predator – in the history of sci-fi filmmaking, not one of these has scraped by without multiple true duds embedded in their being…but that story changes with Planet of the Apes.
With one notable exception (the failed 2001 Tim Burton remake), the Planet of the Apes franchise has perhaps the most consistent batting average in not only sci-fi filmmaking, but all of franchise filmmaking. Even with entries that work less than its best ones, or don’t work very well at all, there is at least offered some sort of innovative spin on the material these movies choose to tackle. The 1968 original – a sci-fi classic – has its twist ending, the third film switches up the environments, and the most recent trilogy takes viewers all the way back to the beginning of when the apes’ intelligence came into being with the original Caesar. It is that most recent trilogy, in fact, which made me a fan of this franchise, becoming not only some of my personal favorite films, but what I consider to be one of the greatest and most undervalued film trilogies ever made, thanks largely to the talents of those VFX teams and the director of the latter two films, Matt Reeves. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which is directed by former Maze Runner trilogy helmer Wes Ball and sports an entirely new cast of characters, sets its story some generations after the events of Caesar’s time. Noa, a young ape living in a small woodland village and this movie’s primary protagonist, seeks to impress his eagle master father by raising and training his own bird from birth. Right away, the audience is endeared to Noa and his friends on a difficult climb which they all make in order to collect eagle eggs for what is known as Bonding Day. Complications arise, however, when another tribe of apes which Noa does not know attacks his village and kidnaps his clan under the belief that they shelter a human. With no choice left to make, Noa sets out to rescue his clan, encountering two companions – an Orangutan called Raka and a human woman – along the way. What sets Kingdom apart from the preceding Apes trilogy, apart from the large-scale time jump, is the scale at which the filmmaking takes place. It may not boast the specificity of image-making that Matt Reeves’ films did, but it offers grandiosity in return, and that grandiosity is a wonder to look at on a big screen. Large vistas of woods, great mountains, enormous rusted tanker ships…even the runtime is the longest in the entirety of the franchise. That can sometimes lead to pacing issues, or an act three that’s a tad overwrought in its execution, but on the whole, this may be the most spectacle-driven Apes film to date, and it more than earns its place amongst the most beautiful-looking of them all, especially in regard to the visual effects, which stay remain the most impressive thing to see even within some already impressive set-pieces. The apes themselves have rarely looked better than this, and under Wes Ball’s steady direction, the performances aid that look admirably. The film also makes a brilliant choice not to ignore the events of the previous trilogy, but to instead mythologize them, echoing notes of what the original series does with its “law giver” character in making Caesar into a quasi-religious symbol whose words different tribes of apes twist to fit their own meaning, something Raka – the Orangutan – addresses upon first meeting Noa. As characters go, Raka (Peter Macon) is the most fun and Mae (which we learn is the human woman’s name, played by Freya Allen) is a more complicated character than one might give her credit for at first, but the real standouts are Owen Teague as Noa and Kevin Durand as Proximus. The latter of the two unfortunately doesn’t really come into play until the third act of the film, but when he does, Durand is the imposing presence the story needs in order to keep things interesting during what ends up being the most ill-paced part of the whole thing. He commands every room he’s in with a performance practically born for this sort of part and knows just how to carry himself so that he overtakes the film’s scenery without outright chewing it up. In contrast, Owen Teague’s Noa is a more emotionally-driven character, and Teague is well up to the task of carrying a film like this on his capable ape shoulders. It’s from Teague’s performance that the emotional notes of the film – when Wes Ball chooses to employ them – get their power, and it’s from his eyes and facial expressions that the viewer understands his character. There are a lot of close-ups and medium close-ups on him in which he’s made to hold the camera’s gaze, and he plays it all beautifully. The film does struggle – as noted – with pacing in a few spots, which seems to come from the idea that the film follows both of the distinct tones present in the preceding trilogy, rather than committing to one or the other; the first half of this film is closer to Rise in narrative flow, whereas the second half sits closer to what Dawn and War (especially the former) were going for in their earlier moments. This is most prominent in the third act, which feels as though the script had two different third acts in mind and simply smashed them together in lieu of throwing one of them out. The way that Mae’s journey plays out during this third act is also written quite broadly but without the necessary clarity of character that comes with having to paint with such large brush strokes. Freya Allen is executing on this admirably, but there’s only so much she can do with what’s not on the page. Still, these are relatively minor complaints compared to what the film offers on the positive end, and I certainly wouldn’t begrudge a filmmaker having to follow up one of cinema’s great trilogies a few lackluster elements here and there. In the end, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes may not carry the same gravity as its immediate predecessors, but given that very few films ever could, the fact that it’s still this good is a win for movie fans everywhere, and especially for fans of this franchise. It looks great, the performances are all very good, the scale is beautiful, and just being in this world again is sure to be enough to remind viewers why they fell in love with it in the first place. It’s clearly setting up for a further series of adventures with Noa and the rest of these characters, and if they can manage the same miracle as Caesar’s trilogy – a tall ask, but entirely possible – we’re in for something really, truly special. I’m giving “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” a 7.8/10 - 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 7.3/10 - The Friendly Film Fan The Friendly Film Fan reviews Zendaya’s new star vehicle. There’s a moment in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers where the energy shifts; up to that moment – viewers may recognize it as the hotel room scene from the film’s trailer – the film is bouncing back and forth on its feet, having stayed in the game just enough to keep things exciting but, at least in appearance, not 100% certain of how it’s meant to navigate whatever comes next…or even what comes next. But once this scene takes place, and the film finds its footing amongst what, up to that point, has largely been an unconventional but inspired edit, the electricity of the film could singe the arm hair off of any audience member paying even a modicum of attention to what’s really going on. This is the moment where the viewer will know if they are going to enjoy themselves or not, and for those clued into its particular brand of sensual tricks by this time, the subsequent thrill ride is intoxicating.
Juxtaposed against a climactic tennis match between its two rival hunks in Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), Challengers’ story revolves around the two men’s mutual obsession over tennis prodigy Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). After meeting the phenom at a party following a hot-blooded tennis match, the pair find themselves entangled in a will-they-won’t-they web of arousal, each magnetized by Tashi’s gravity and entirely unable to resist her pull (this would be the aforementioned hotel room scene). From here, the two men are pitted with and against one another over the course of decades in a mad scramble to determine who ultimately deserves Tashi’s attention, each perhaps too aware that Tashi is in turn playing her own game, and true victory – to her – is in the act itself. There are a great many things that recommend this movie to an audience hungry for cinematic excitement, but what ultimately makes it work beyond the simplistic synopsis offered above is that it just moves. That’s not to say it doesn’t ever slow down or that there aren’t moments which are perhaps a little less invigorating on the whole, but it never stops outright in what it’s attempting to do. Luca Guadagnino is obsessed with the sensual pull of people towards and away from each other; he’s obsessed with the match, the back-and-forth, the meeting of two, all set to a club-worthy score from Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross which recalls some of their best work from and, I would argue, is their best work since The Social Network. There’s an energy to Challengers that’s not simply irresistible, but invigorating as the camera takes the POV of the ground beneath and sweat drips down as a tennis ball hits. There may be more eloquent ways of phrasing it, but put simply: it’s hot. It’s sexy. Guadagnino is a director entirely taken with the foreplay of it all, in the tease of what it all leads to, and it’s reflected in his direction of this film – how he at first endears us to Tashi and then tells us how we shouldn’t be, and yet we can’t help but be pulled in by her power, which rests comfortably and perfectly on the shoulders of cinema’s new “it” girl. (And, for those curious enough to care, the tennis matches themselves are absolutely exhilarating in just the right ways. Eat your heart out, King Richard.) While everyone who’s witnessed her work on Euphoria is well aware that she could ace a more complicated part than her Spider-Man appearances (to say nothing of her brilliant work in Dune: Part Two), Zendaya’s turn in this is nothing short of magnificent, a movie star turn in the purest sense of the term. Not for one second does the viewer ever doubt that she’s in charge, nor for a moment does it feel as if the film gets away from her. In fact, one might go so far as to say the film can’t get away from her, so powerful is her pull. There’s a single shot in particular, wherein Tashi goes to sit down by a tree, which cinches the deal. Zendaya holds the camera’s gaze for no more than a minute at the most, and yet one can’t help but be enraptured by how she holds it, how it’s entirely her frame and hers alone. Tashi, to put it mildly, is not exactly a likeable individual and yet when Zendaya is on screen, she becomes the center of it no matter where or how she stands in the frame. This of course is not merely confirmed but supported by both Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist’s not-quite-equally excellent performances, and it’s their dynamic which ultimately drives the plot forward. Faist continues to improve with every second of screen-time he gets, but it’s Josh O’Connor whom American audiences – at least those who didn’t watch The Crown – will likely be the most taken with. There’s a certain shit-eating charisma to him one can’t help but be excited by, and O’Connor is more than up to the task of playing that up whenever the script requires it. Challengers may not be entirely flawless – there’s not one moment in the whole of its runtime where I would believe Mike Faist could be 40, as the script at one time claims – but it is the movie of 2024 most comfortable with the flaws it has; they’re bugs, not features, sure, but they don’t actually matter because the movie itself knows that it has you regardless. When sweat looks this cinematic, when characters are this complicated, when filmmaking is this sexy, how it could it not? It may not end up being the year’s best movie – there’s still a lot to come – but when all is said and done, barring a truly bonkers contender for the title, this will undoubtedly be its hottest. I’m giving “Challengers” a 9.1/10 - The Friendly Film Fan The Friendly Film Fan Reviews Alex Garland’s Directorial Swan Song. What is the point of journalism? What is its essence? Is it objectivity, or truth? And who’s to say the two aren’t always the same? What responsibility do we bear in observation when atrocities occur before our very eyes? These questions lie at the heart of Alex Garland’s latest and perhaps last directorial effort, Civil War, a film set in the modern day which follows a group of rogue photojournalists as they traverse a divided America in the midst of an ongoing and increasingly deadly conflict – a literal civil war. But while the script offers a perspective on these questions, it doesn’t exactly answer them, preferring instead to present the audience with ideas that films such Jordan Peele’s Nope have also wrestled with regarding the human obsession with spectacle, the perfect shot, and what level of ethics we find ourselves sacrificing in order to attain it, whether in service of ourselves, or in this case, in the pursuit of objectivity. Even then, to focus on the act of journalism itself may be missing the point. As a largely apolitical film which doesn’t simply refuse to present the ideologies of either the in-power American government or the Western Forces (henceforth referred to as the W.F.), but actively avoids even hinting at them, Garland’s story lacks a point-of-view in the traditional sense, but to watch the film play out, one gets the idea that the mere observation of all the havoc wartime violence wreaks – not a stance on whether that violence is justified or not – is exactly what he’s aiming for here.
The story, as it goes, is largely centered on Kirsten Dunst’s Lee – a wartime photographer whose previous efforts in the field she viewed as sending a warning back home against the very idea of war – and her colleague Joel (played by Wagner Moura). Lee’s ultimate endeavor is to capture the shot and get the story every photojournalist is after: the President of the United States on the brink of invasion. However, in order to acquire those two things, she needs to get to Washington D.C. before the W.F. is rumored to be reaching the White House on July 4, which in turn brings reluctant but respectful rival newspaper writer Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) along for the journey. Joined by a young up-and-comer named Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) with dreams of being a wartime photographer like Lee, the group needs to cross over 300 miles of dangerous terrain, passing through the front lines of the conflict on their way, where any threat could be the last one any of them ever meet. By and large, the plot of Civil War is rather simple and often fairly repetitive as our protagonists run into conflict, manage to narrowly escape it, run into a different kind of conflict, escape that, and so on and so forth. What ultimately sets this film up for success is not the unpredictability of its plot or complexity of storytelling, but the ways in which – despite knowing that certain scenes haven’t happened yet, so there’s no way they die in this scene or that scene – one constantly feels as though these characters’ ultimate peril is imminent. There are but one or two moments where things feel safe or restful, thanks largely to the film’s exceptional craftwork. This is some of the best pound-for-pound filmmaking in Alex Garland’s entire career, particularly as a director, and especially vis-à-vis the on-the-ground action sequences along the road to D.C., which are filled with fantastic camerawork and terrifically-crafted sound that could very well be competitive at the Oscars next year. The third act in particular is one of the most harrowing and visceral of any film in recent memory, a non-stop military raid on D.C. that belongs with the likes of Zero Dark Thirty in terms of sheer intensity. The film is also near-perfectly acted; readers may recall a thrilling sequence in the film’s trailer which features Jesse Plemons with bloodied finger grooves asking Wager Moura’s Joel “what kind of American are you?” before lifting his rifle to fire on him, presumably for offering an answer Plemons’ character wasn’t too fond of. The scene in question is every bit as rife with tension as the trailer presents it to be, and while it unfortunately largely bears little weight on the film as a whole, the performances contained within it are second-to-none. Stephen McKinley Henderson is as excellent as ever, though he doesn’t get any “moments” – even small ones like he did in Lady Bird – and Wagner Moura is consistently engaging, but the movie really belongs to Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny. What Dunst does with this performance is subtle, but all the more effective for it; she essentially has to be the rock of the group, but one can see in real-time that she’s slowly getting to the point where an at-home conflict where she can’t ever remove herself from the environment (such as with the others) is wearing her down to her last bit of resolve; I don’t think I would call it a career-best, but it’s certainly up there with the best of her work, even if the technical elements of the film are clearly what shines brightest overall. The slightly showier part – as “showy” as one can be with performances this wisely unassuming – belongs to Cailee Spaeny, who is now sure to have a firm grip on the attention of moviegoers everywhere after putting out this and Priscilla back-to-back. Spaeny’s ascendency from eager-to-please tagalong to somewhat tragic master of her craft is remarkable to watch; she carries so much in her eyes, and the performances she’s been able to pull off from one point to the furthest thing from that point in just over two hours without a second of it feeling unnatural (and she’s done it twice, no less) indicate a once-in-a-generation-level talent. Overall, while Civil War struggles to offer any real point-of-view or substance in terms of its themes or vision of the world, the good contained within it far outweighs what it lacks, making a not insignificant hole in its center seem more like a missing feature than an outright defect. The excellent cinematography shines on large-format screens and the visceral sound design worthy twice the admission price by itself. Any answers to the questions it presents may be a bit muddy when all is said and done, but the film nonetheless remains an exceedingly well-crafted piece of work which puts Alex Garland firmly back near the top of his game. I’m giving “Civil War” an 8.8/10 - The Friendly Film Fan |
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