In a pre-pandemic world we all would have seen Free Guy in the theater by now and everyone would have been raving about it since August. Now it’s arrived for a wider audience on streaming platform Disney Plus. Is it worth your time? Absolutely. It’s so much better than advertised, you’re certain to be surprised at the layers of storytelling found in this mix of Ready Player One (but 50 times better) Tron: Legacy, Mr. ROBOT, The Truman Show, The LEGO Movie, Elf, Sleeping Beauty, and lots of other great shows. Yes, it’s another video game movie, but it’s bigger. It’s another Ryan Reynolds action movie. But lots more fun.
The first two episodes–a full third of the series–have arrived for Marvel’s fourth live-action series of the year on the Disney+ streaming platform and it’s a good start, already faring better than those prior series. Hawkeye is about Jeremy Renner’s unassuming superhero Clint Barton aka Hawkeye from the Avengers movies–and yet it isn’t. Although the first episode gets off to a slow start, it’s Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop, who replaces Hawkeye in the comics, who proves quickly she’s going to be an exciting fixture for the next iteration of the Avengers line-up. She’s in good company, joining Black Widow’s Florence Pugh’s new Black Widow to take the franchise forward, along with Natalie Portman as new Thor in next year’s movie Thor: Love and Thunder, and Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk in next year’s series She-Hulk.
Hawkeye is billed as a holiday show and it is, but it falls short in that department, probably because Marvel/Disney didn’t use a key arrow in its quiver: the creator of your second favorite Christmas movie.
A year ago here at borg we previewed the first look at Marvel Studios’ new series WandaVision, and based on the unusual trailer we asked the question: What audience is WandaVision aimed at? The series at last began this weekend on Disney+ and two half-hour episodes in, I’m no closer to answering this question. In any other time that hasn’t been sidetracked by a pandemic, audiences would have already seen the big-screen release of Black Widow by now. The commonality is that each is a story focused on characters that have already been killed off in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We won’t know until this summer about the prequel movie with Scarlet Johansson returning as Natasha Romanoff (killed off in Avengers: Endgame), but it is a welcome sight to see the return from the dead of Paul Bettany as cybernetic superhero Vision (killed in Avengers: Infinity War) reunited with Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch aka Wanda Maximoff in this short, nine-episode mini-series. But here we don’t even know when it takes place in relation to the Avengers movies.
Two episodes in and you’re going to ask: What the heck did I just watch?
November of course means Novembeard–where participants grow beards to raise awareness of men’s health issues. Or, just because beards are cool and it’s become an annual tradition. So who better to celebrate than the actor who has made a beard work for him throughout his career? That would be Kurt Russell. As Snake Plisskin in Escape from New York. As MacReady in The Thing. As Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China (stubble counts). (Russell only had a moustache in Tombstone so we’ll skip that one). As the sheriff in Bone Tomahawk. As John Ruth in The Hateful Eight. As Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2. Even his son Wyatt knows how to sport a cool beard–He wore won this year as the star of Lodge 49. So what’s left for the guy with the cool beard to take on next? How about playing the guy with the best beard of all time? That’s Santa Claus, of course.
The best part? In this trailer for Netflix’s new The Christmas Chronicles, Russell isn’t playing just another “Bad Santa” role. Sure, it looks like a traditional family Christmas show, but Russell revealing how cool Santa is (and always has been) and lines that sound like they were written for Jack Burton? That’s an inspired choice.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so you’d better clean up your act right now.
The movie stars Benji star Darby Camp and The Babysitter’sJudah Lewis as kids who want to film Santa in action. Look for co-stars Kimberly Williams-Paisley(Father of the Bride, Darrow & Darrow) as their mom, plus Lamorne Morris (New Girl, The Guild) and Martin Roach (Kick-Ass 2, The Shape of Water).
Check out this new trailer for The Christmas Chronicles:
The visionary behind the groundbreaking 1997 science fiction film Gattaca has at last delivered his next worthy sci-fi follow-up. The direct-to-Netflix movie Anon is equal parts future crime and noir detective thriller. It stars Clive Owen(Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Children of Men, Sin City) and Colm Feore (Thor,The Chronicles of Riddick,Paycheck) as police detectives in a near-future Earth where smart phone and computer technology has merged with the mind. Technology and science have evolved to allow humans to instantly identify and search their minds and a database shared with everyone as they move through their day–as if Google Glass tech was inside a contact lens wired to the brain. Written, produced, and directed by Andrew Niccol, writer/director of Gattaca and writer of The Truman Show, Anon features a police detective nicely synthesizing Rick Deckard, Frank Bullitt, and Dirty Harry Callahan. Only an actor as unique as Clive Owen could pull that off.
With a world similar to Gattaca–but a colder, stark, and concrete-filled version of a rigid, totalitarian future close to that of the Prime side in the world of the Starz series Counterpart–telling lies has become a thing of the past. The detectives must track down an unidentifiable woman, the anonymous hacker of the title played by Amanda Seyfried (Veronica Mars, Ted 2, Mamma Mia!), sought as the criminal behind a string of murders. This hacker can erase memories and replace real thoughts with replaced images, and we see the best example of this as Owen’s detective pursues the hacker in a busy subway. Oddly, this dystopia doesn’t feel as horrible as that of Mad Max: Fury Road, or Blade Runner, or Terminator. It’s just not that far removed from the wired life of today. Which should be enough of a cautionary warning.
Stark but slick and cool like The Adjustment Bureau, not only the visuals of Anon but the music is haunting and cold, thanks to an inspired score from Christophe Beck (Ant-Man, Edge of Tomorrow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Surreal camera angles and the use of shadow firmly plant the audience in this future thanks to cinematographer Amir Mokri, and you can credit production designer Philip Ivey (District 9, Elysium) and art director Aleksandra Marinkovich (Crimson Peak, Kick-Ass 2, Total Recall) for a stunning, new vision that leaves behind tech noir for something fresh and different.
Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the Hulk haven’t done it. Along with Captain America and Thor, now Ant-Man adds another Marvel Cinematic universe film that matches the spirit of its first solo film. That’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, premiering this weekend in theaters across the U.S. If you count Ant-Man as one of your favorite films of the MCU, you won’t be disappointed in the sequel. As with the original, Ant-Man and the Wasp is the rare superhero movie that will appeal to all ages of moviegoers–not a single scene will pollute the minds of the littlest kid, and for the older generation that loved that classic sci-fi trope from The Incredible Shrinking Man, moviegoers don’t need to follow the MCU to jump right into this film. Better yet, Ant-Man and the Wasp has heart like nothing else on the big screen from Marvel, except for Paul Rudd’s first adventure as Ant-Man only three years ago.
For those not paying close attention, this film takes place before the events of Avengers: Infinity War, and two years following the events of Captain America: Civil War. Each of the character-led superhero films have those elements special to that character. The trademarks of Ant-Man return for this sequel: a slightly daft and bumbling hero (played by Rudd) enjoying his superpowers, a friend whose rapid-fire banter steals every scene (played by Michael Peña), a romantic co-lead ready to bust out and make her own name (played by Evangeline Lilly), even more cutting edge special effects that show today’s actors playing scenes looking just as they did 20 years ago, and the return of the great Michael Douglas with every bit the acting chops he had back in his The China Syndrome, Coma, and Romancing the Stone days as the incomparable Dr. Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man. Rudd’s Scott Lang has only three days left under house arrest before regaining his freedom, as Dr. Pym and daughter Hope (Lilly) attempt to secure the last piece of technology required to try to reach Pym’s wife, long ago left in the quantum realm. But they aren’t the only ones after this new technology.
The film doesn’t stop at mere fan service, bringing in three new characters that take the quantum universe story arc from the first film into new territory. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer as Dr. Janet Van Dyne–the original Wasp, Laurence Fishburne as former Pym colleague Dr. Bill Foster, and a stunningly good MCU debut by Hannah John-Kamen–at last in a major big screen role after playing supporting characters this year in Tomb Raider and Ready Player One. John-Kamen’s character has the same fierce grit and badass determination as Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok, and like Valkyrie, we hope she’s back in the sequel to Avengers: Infinity War next year. As with Thor: Ragnarok, Ant-Man and the Wasp brings the comic book page to life, and like Black Panther, the film has an antagonist you may find yourself rooting for. And make no mistake, Lilly’s Wasp could take over the reins from Black Widow as Marvel’s lead superheroine.
Once again Tom Cruise proves he can’t make a bad action movie. This Friday his latest, American Made, opens in theaters nationwide. It is absolutely a Tom Cruise movie for anyone that loves Tom Cruise movies, and everyone else will find a 1980s flashback blast waiting for them. Cruise has had starring or recognizable roles in 42 movies. As with star actors like John Wayne and Arnold Schwarzenegger, many expect to see Cruise play Cruise in every new film, but that’s not quite what happens. Like many actors you can bundle their performances into categories, although it’s easy to find some overlap. There are Cruise’s cocky maverick hotshots in Jack Reacher, Collateral, Mission: Impossible, Days of Thunder, Rain Man, Cocktail, The Color of Money, and The Outsiders. That’s a bit different Cruise than the renegades of Top Gun, Oblivion, Valkyrie, Minority Report, Born on the Fourth of July, and The Last Samurai. But that’s not the Cruise you’ll find in American Made. This is Cruise as flawed, cavalier everyman–and a bit of a dope–the kind of roles you could see Gary Cooper or Kevin Costner cast in. Early buzz suggests this new role is Cruise as cocky maverick hotshot, but that’s only on the surface because he’s playing a pilot. In American Made you’ll find the more casual but layered Cruise of War of the Worlds, Far and Away, Edge of Tomorrow, A Few Good Men, The Firm, and Jerry Maguire. This is also the more likeable, more relatable Cruise persona.
Cruise’s character Barry Seal was a real person who fell into some crazy, impossibly outlandish situations as a pilot in the 1970s and 1980s. This isn’t a true biography–the real events in Seal’s life are far different than as portrayed in the first half of the film, but the second half tracks much closer. The Barry Seal of the film begins as a well-trained pilot that gets bored with the mundane. He starts small, smuggling cigars from Cuba into the states while a TWA pilot. Then a CIA agent named Schafer catches him and offers him a deal: Seal’s evasive techniques are perfect to take spy photos in Central America. For Seal it beats boredom, and it’s a breeze for him, despite the frequent heavy gunfire. Seal gets in deep but never really seems to understand how deep, because underneath what would appear to be your typical hotshot pilot is that bit of a dope. He is so clueless he can’t fathom that his wife, played by Sarah Wright Olsen (Parks and Recreation, Enchanted, 7th Heaven), won’t respond affirmatively that she trusts him when he gives her a smile and asks “do you trust me?” Twice. He’s actually taken aback, despite the impossible situation he drags his wife into (like Jerry Maguire trying to convince his new girlfriend that all isn’t as bad as it seems). And his new pal list includes Manuel Noriega.
CIA agent Schafer (an amalgam of agents the real-life Seal had worked with) is played by Domhnall Gleeson (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Ex Machina, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). Gleeson is a ringer for Timothy Busfield in Field of Dreams or Sneakers and has great chemistry with Cruise–and he’s surprisingly strong directing the much older Cruise’s actions in scene after scene despite his youth. Together Schafer and Seal build-up some CIA successes, but Seal has a growing family and needs some extra money on the side–and Schafer isn’t providing more money–so the CIA success is coupled with Seal’s casual assistance in the rise of the Medellin Cartel as he begins smuggling cocaine. The DEA learns about it and Seal bounces back and forth, playing for both sides, ultimately smuggling weapons for the White House and Ollie North in what became the Iran-Contra scandal. And then the FBI gets involved. And all the while Seal literally can’t figure out what to do with all his proceeds from his smuggling, burying some piles of cash in the yard, his wife stuffing shoe boxes full of money in closets, after buying up much of the small town they arrive at in Arkansas.
The challenge will fall to the coming years. Watching and re-watching Edge of Tomorrow to count how many days take place in the movie. How many days Tom Cruise’s character dies. How many days Emily Blunt kills him, putting a new spin on the phrase “blunt force trauma”. if you read movie ads or trailers none of these are a surprise. Live. Die. Repeat. No more apt tagline has ever been attached to a movie.
For decades soldiers could look to classic war movies for inspiration. John Wayne performances, like his Sgt. Stryker from Sands of Iwo Jima or Gregory Peck’s General Savage come to mind. Michael Ironside left an enduring mark with his Lt. Raszcak in Starship Troopers. Now there’s a new movie to absorb some inspiration to take action, survive, and maybe even win in that next impossible battle beyond the next trench.
Loosely based on the world created by 39-year-old Japanese author Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s war novel All You Need is Kill, which we gave rave reviews to earlier here at borg.com, Edge of Tomorrow is also completely different. If you think you want to read the novel before the movie, hold off. The first 30 minutes might leave you frustrated. If you haven’t read the novel, Edge of Tomorrow stands by itself as a butt-kicking, take no prisoners, tale of a future in its last days before domination by an otherworldly threat. That said, after the movie you’ll be in for an even better ride with the book.
The action and war sequences will have you comparing it to Aliens and Predator. The otherworldly threat is of the Ender’s Game and Starship Troopers variety. The story’s hook will have you thinking of the best video game you ever played. Sakurazaka’s well-developed world, steeped in good science fiction tradition, is key to making this otherwise improbable story play out in an engaging way that will have you quickly jumping in for the ride. The hook is the Groundhog Day reset of each day, and that part is a good part of the fun, but you’ll find a lot more with these characters and their persistence.
Somehow the adaptation of the Dark Horse Comics series, R.I.P.D., came and went last year with little fanfare and plenty of negative reviews. Did the critics simply not understand the film? Most seemed lazy and dismissed it as a Men in Black knockoff. Admittedly it’s a good film, not a great film, yet it has so much going for it that you may want to check it out now that it’s out on Blu-ray and DVD.
R.I.P.D. stands for the Rest in Peace Department. Like the Men in Black, this worldwide squad tries to keep the peace between our world and their world. That hidden world has simple rules: when you die you go to heaven or hell, but sometimes the dead get caught in between. It’s up to R.I.P.D. to track down those in-between souls. It sounds serious but it’s mainly all comic book fun and over-the-top action movie antics.
R.I.P.D. has the feel in parts of several classic movies about ghosts and “hidden worlds behind our world,” like Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice, Ghost Rider, and yes, Men in Black. But it’s not as great as any of these. It also has a dramatic thread from movies like The Crow, Always, and City of Angels. But it’s not a drama and only touches on the seriousness of what is at stake for the characters in the story. Yet it’s worth watching for some standout components that make for a fun rental.
If you ever wanted to see a live-action Yosemite Sam, you can see what that would be like with Jeff Bridges’ performance as Roy Pulsiphur, an undead ex-U.S. Marshall and Civil War soldier. Bridges completely immerses himself in this Old West coot and the result is another classic and unique Bridges performance. (How the heck does he manage to drive his car side-saddle?). There’s definitely some Sam Elliott inspiration here. Green Lantern star Ryan Reynolds plays Nick, a cop who is killed on duty as a Boston police officer. It may be Reynolds’ best film performance as he, too, is believable as an undead cop in this strange otherworld. Bridges and Reynolds have some strange chemistry, which amounts for some good buddy cop moments.
The eighth big-screen film starring Jim Henson’s wacky, lovable Muppets hit theaters a couple of weeks ago, and for lifelong fans of the franchise, it’s a big win. The 2011 film Muppets, written by and starring Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother) was a heartwarming, family-friendly comedy, reviewed here. We liked the 2011 movie but wished for more celebrity cameos. Muppets Most Wanted, written by returning director James Bobin, returns to the kooky, offbeat humor of the original TV variety show and first motion picture, 1979’s The Muppet Movie. And it delivers cameos aplenty.
In a plot somewhat reminiscent of various Muppet films past, this latest movie involves the intrepid troupe on a world tour, hot on the heels of the success of their last venture (meaning, in typical Muppets metafiction style, the 2011 film, or the reprise of the act as depicted in the film, or both, or… well, you’ll get it. It’s the Muppets). Along the way, no one suspects that their new tour manager, Dominic Badguy (“It’s pronounced ‘Badgey'”) (Ricky Gervais, The Office) is moonlighting as the sidekick to a criminal mastermind named Constantine–who also happens to be a dead ringer (almost) for Kermit the Frog. Badguy books the Muppets into surprisingly sold-out gigs all across Europe, connives to have Kermit kidnapped and sent to a Siberian prison, and plots ever-more ambitious jewel heists along the way.
Human leads Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell (Modern Family), and Tina Fey (Saturday Night Live) turn in stellar performances that recall classic costars like Michael Caine (The Muppet Christmas Carol) and Charles Durning (The Muppet Movie). The lively story, er, hops along, darting among Kermit and Fey in Siberia; Burrel and Sam the American Eagle as rival Interpol/CIA agents tracking Constantine; and the Muppets’ efforts to launch a successful European tour, despite lackluster direction from Fake Kermit and zany acts competing for space in the show. Watch for wonderful classic Muppet-show-style performances like Gonzo’s “Indoor Running of the Bulls,” all featuring cameos from actors like Salma Hayek (Wild, Wild West) and Oscar winner Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained).
stands for the Rest in Peace Department. Like the Men in Black, this worldwide squad tries to keep the peace between our world and their world. That hidden world has simple rules: when you die you go to heaven or hell, but sometimes the dead get caught in between. It’s up to R.I.P.D. to track down those in-between souls. It sounds serious but it’s mainly all comic book fun and over-the-top action movie antics.
