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Cinema Briefing
Movie reviews by
Ian Flanagan
Ian Flanagan
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
3 (out of 4) Despite the twilight years, George Miller has been maxing out hard between his most recent efforts, if you don’t count Happy Feet Two — between Mad Max: Fury Road, Three Thousand Years of Longing and now Furious: A Mad Max Saga, it’s kind of insane how much vehement electricity is retained in these films vibrant, lucid frames. It’s odd that even with only Fury Road for comparison, the 80-year-old’s latest still somehow feels like its almost from a different hand, like Miller passed the beloved, unsullied series on to some digitally minded hybrid of Lucas, Rodriguez and especially the Wachowskis — Furiosa is wild and consistently inconsistent, visually cut from a much cleaner shade of crazy, yet the world is so much more grotesque than you’re used to, full of maggots and nipple rings. This advancement of even more sensory, kinetic delirious craft doesn’t make this anything less than authentically Australian or somehow unworthy of the Mad Max legacy of truly dreamlike, depthless, unimaginable yarns of future mythos, all the fire, blood, dust and diesel one can handle from the derelicts down under. I’ve fallen asleep on this movie twice, and it’s because Miller can send you to your own desperate dreamland like no one else. The editing is crisp and roomy, the storytelling is even more roundabout and freewheeling than the original trilogy can prepare you for — for about an hour longer than the usual Saga, the structure is the only thing apart from the cartoon-caliber Fury Road aesthetic keeping Furiosa on its own slightly lesser echelon, this oxymoronic attempt to make the slightest entry the most epic. It all makes something of a more than complete world-building spin-off out of a cinematic franchise that never felt the need to explain itself or it’s situation, let alone bother to care about any continuity between each installment. Even in between my first-viewing naps I could glean how much politicking and pulling from every corner of post-pockyclips lore was happening, as the fifth Miller/Max motion picture incorporates the original’s simple revenge rev-up (and sweetness upended), the patience and payoff of Road Warrior’s iconography, Thunderdome’s gonzo, Spielbergian giddiness and of course Fury Road’s rabid, modernized, hard-R blockbustering about. All we needed was Mel Gibson, which would’ve beat a pointless blink-and-it's-done Max cameo considering there’s already diet Mad Max (Tom Burke) as Praetorian Jack. Anya Taylor-Joy, boy if I was only in 60% of my own movie, I’d bring the little girl (Alyla Browne) on the press tour or else feel the guilt of undue credit! She does her best Charlize (and Max) impression, mostly by looking the part with occasional digital assistance and also saying very, very few words. Australian native Chris Hemsworth inherits the film's charisma, and with a protruding prosthetic schnoz he’s absolutely ridiculous but never winking the way the later Thor movies would have him. There’s a new Joe, and a host of other figures vying for the memory halls of turnpike biker pageantry (I ONLY ANSWER TO THE OCTOBOSS) but there’s nothing close to the The Nightrider or Master Blaster here, no way, though it at least contributes to an already full catalogue of memorable psycho-gearhead-gangsters. I can’t believe this eighty-year-old thought he was gonna make more of these in the even that this DIDN’T flop so very hard over Memorial Day Weekend. But dismissive audience don't deserve better than even the weakest in the Mad Max series, which still amounts to a handsome if uneven excursion into peak apocalyptic franchises, Apes be damned and that’s a good set of movies overall… Like Sam Raimi with Evil Dead (well before the 2010s), the Mad Max movies are just so strange, intimate, home-grown and unfettered by commercial concern. Even if Furiosa is the least of a fantastic series, that still makes it the best movie of the summer and then some, believe it or not (had Hit Man hit theaters for real there'd be a different story). As someone who likes Fury Road a lot but never jumped aboard the ‘best of the century’ brigade, I will say if you crave ceaseless excitement Furiosa will not satisfy — there’s not an action sequence proper til an hour in, but when they get to the fireworks, despite the more insistent CGI (Fury Road had its share) the film is still a singular visual delight, like if The Wachowskis jumped directly from Speed Racer to this, the energy is that pinpoint and utterly berserk. Even if it only amounts to a meager but marginally mighty companion piece to Fury Road’s stunning display of pyrotechnic, acrobatic, automatic immediacy, this Mad Max Saga makes you hope the series either stops in its tracks right here or never makes its way into other hands, at least not of those in the Northern Hemisphere. The Garfield Movie 1 ½ (out of 4) When I was younger and dumber and thought I was funny or artistic, I wanted to make comic strips, or I should say I did after I won a contest in third grade wherein you had to fill in Garfield’s thought bubble with anything at all. He was smiling and reading a book on the couch, and having heard the word onomatopoeia recently in a movie or TV show (Hey Arnold! maybe?), I thought it’d be a clever juxtaposition to fill in the spelling bee answer and “wow I’m surprised the Teletubbies know that word” even though what, are there Teletubby novels? Anyway I was one of 15 or so out of 1500 (or was it 15000?) nationwide, so I won some gifts and books and started to read strips — never had the comic books obsession. Through the years it became one of those weird collections one attracts and accumulates, like Criterion’s for me now or the Pokémon cards I stopped collecting probably around the same time as Garfield knick-knacks. I regularly enjoyed what Jim Davis’ delivered, particularly the earlier stuff — by the time I started checking the funny pages I liked the most recent compilations but thought the current daily comics were a little lesser. The old Garfield was really fat, had no skinny legs and the tiniest of eyeballs. The modern output just doesn’t compare, and in general I realized Calvin and Hobbes was the finest of the medium, particularly because of its lack of commercialization to go with the wit, insight and beautiful artwork. In contemporary stuff, Pearls Before Swine perfected the snarky talking animals thing for the newspaper comics by the time it picked up a groove. Regardless of 2004’s Garfield or 2006’s A Tale of Two Kitties, I don’t feel as though my childhood was ruined by The Garfield Movie, not that the billionaire merchandising magnate Davis would give a fuck anyway. All I know is Chris Pratt is no Bill Murray even on that washed up fart's laziest Monday, trained animals are more impressive than animation of Illumination ilk and I’d rather have a plot of Odie and Garfield becoming friends during the course of some adventure (or destroy Dickens with prince and the pauper shit) over some mishap of farm animal romance, trite daddy issues as emotional tethers and endless non-sequitur gags. At least Odie's still the bro who knows better than his bully, master, co-pet, though the poor, lovable beagle is underutilized. Even to mix my one early nostalgia with my current kind (though Spy Kids probably paved the way), all the Mission: Impossible references are too much — despite Ving Rhames playing an anthropomorphized cow, he nonetheless remains the tech guy behind the middle act heist sequence. There's a moving train climax, Tom Cruise references and they even using the M:I theme overtly, it’s like being trapped in that one parody moment from Shrek 2 for 30 minutes. It was probably even worse than Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget's own heist-lampooning jail breaks, but at least there are some personal stakes — Garfield has no motivation here, nothing, it's not an origin story and outside of cute references in the film’s final moments to, you know, a more accurate, interesting display of what Garfield media is (imaginary scenarios, at least something with NERMAL PLEASE...) this movie is just a quell-your-kids affair and a shoddy one at that — Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4, as money-back-guaranteed general audience entertainment, will lap circles around this crap financially if not critically. This isn’t Disney or Dreamworks, it's DNEG whose only other full feature on their own is Ron's Gone Wrong (no comment) plus a few assists for Universal and Paramount. All I know is this fits every definition of weak children's cinema — The Garfield Movie is visually textureless, kinetically exhausting, of course soundtracked by Pharrell or worse and plagued by the dullest wisecracks I could imagine thought-bubbling out of the world’s most sardonic kitty. It’s like my seven-year-old self wrote this shit for school.  3 (out of 4)
I am about as wary as one can be regarding those few valuable Fox franchises Disney has to quietly reignite under the 20th Century Studios moniker — Alien: Romulus, sans Ridley Scott, will be another test for them, as will their incorporation of the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the fold of the waning MCU, beginning with Deadpool & Wolverine. Planet of the Apes, however, has an enduring legacy that almost outstretches every other film franchise apart from Bond or Godzilla. Until recently the original Apes sequels were foreign to me and frankly I can’t tell you how off-putting everything about Tim Burton’s quasi-remake was and remains, otherwise I maintained a relative fondness, short of admiration, for the reboot trilogy after seeing them each once in theaters. Like Mad Max’s pre-to-post-apocalyptic, continuity-unconscious set-up, Planet of the Apes always succeeded in some even hand of spectacle and speculation, often functioning best, to my mind, when the ideas you could strip from the premise (be it evolutionary, science vs. religion, Cold War parallels, Civil Rights parallels, animal rights OBVIOUSLY) were presented more conspicuously. The reason the 2010s Rise and Dawn so neatly update the Caesar revolution (directing us from the present to the early days of ape domination) is because unlike Burton there isn’t just a world of difference in visual effects, but character nudges its way front and center every time. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the ideal sequel for finding the moral balance between good and bad primates and humans — the subtlety is most agreeable, as is Matt Reeves suitably Nolan-esque trimmings. Unfortunately Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes doesn’t have as many scripted nuances, nor anyone behind the camera to impose a noticeable stylistic shift; from Rises’ bright San Franciscan setting to Dawn’s industrial feel and War’s wintry Great Escape, at least Kingdom’s forests and beaches are visually memorable. The best Kingdom can say is it dutifully fits into a distinct legacy with infinitely more room to grow and breathe than just about any other film-universe. While the original and its sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes take place about 2000 years in the future, the time-traveled line of continuity in Escape, Conquest and Battle encompassed 1970s modernity up to the concrete future of the 90s and beyond, with Rise and Dawn shaking the etch-i-sketch and War’s end inciting the biggest forward timeskip yet, a few hundred years after the death of Caesar. All to say, we’re FINALLY chronologically navigating the most interesting epoch in the Planet of the Apes storyline — the mysterious, mythic time when apes have eclipsed mankind’s own humanity and sapiens have regressed to voiceless, feral, flailing things. As opposed to early sequels positing the premise of a virus wiping out cats and dogs, with apes becoming the obvious pet-substitute (quickly skipping to subservient slaves all in about 20 years), the reboots used an alternate mutated virus (James Franco's cure for Alzheimer's) advancing apes and wiping out most of humanity. By War, they left Woody Harrelson (as our most prominent villain since the suit from Escape or perhaps the gorilla general in Battle) speechless as is LORE, and its funny how Kingdom already has to exclusively deal in the savage humans who can still talk while featuring almost fully talking apes, and to its discredit this 10th Apes adventure doesn't inherit the impressive, almost silent film qualities of Andy Serkis’ history-making trio of mo-cap turns. The original film has a twist that seems completely apparent on rewatch, but what makes that film great boils down to Cornelius (Roddy McDowell, the only fellow to play parts in all five original films, three as Cornelius and two then as the son Milo/Caesar) and Zera, played by Kim Hunter, the key to Escape’s funny, satirically serrated edge. We get a sympathetic ape here with a new Orangutan (Raka, though its hard to replace the mute bro Maurice from the trilogy) but his time is too short and leaves us with less interesting individuals. The brand new NOVA (“um it’s Mae actually”) becomes a proper sanitizing Disney decision, updating the all too sexualized 1968/70 turn by Linda Harrison and later the pure bimbo/Barbarella look of Estella Warren in 2001’s Planet of the Apes to cast, of course, someone far too attractive — at least Freya Allen's draped in more than ridiculously skimpy rags and the make-up team had her properly dirty even after a shower, oh her having lines and actual acting ability helps. But my cynical mind sees them place the fairer sex in a prominent second bill role front and center (contrary to more sidelined roles for women in last decade's installments from Frieda Pinto to Keri Russell to little Amiah Miller) for the sake of steering female viewership to a storied, male-dominated series, just like they've done with Star Wars media, oh and that last Indiana Jones too. And I’m sorry but this new guy Noa ain’t just no Caesar, the young Owen Teague just isn’t Serkis, and that makes quite the difference, that and the fact that this mo-cap technology looked just as good 10 years ago, which is to say the string of visual splendor does still extend. The longest Apes ever tries to make narrative moves with a long-dead Caesar but Disney only takes so many chances — this newer series has yet to get insane with time travel, even without cutaway footage to missing spaceships in Rise there's plenty enough room to pull a rabbit out your ass at some point: "break in case of Apes emergency." But there’s like 1700 Goddamn years of history before the events of the original, so possibilities are pretty endless, especially when we’re all just aping from the Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel (known in the UK as Monkey Planet) and nothing else but more incrementally low-budget and shiftily edited 70s sequels. For the nearly 30 year gap between the fifth installment Battle and Burton’s redo, many scripts and directors were thrown about, all culminating in an ironic rush job after decades of waiting. The new films have been more respectable on whole than even the most promising reboots of the late 2000s and early 2010s — if The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t so dumb Nolan’s trilogy would be very close, to a lesser extent so would Star Trek despite the fan-fellating of Into Darkness, but Craig’s Bond and X-Men would eventually shit the bed, and despite my problems with Kingdom, the Apes still have not. The fact that Mickey Mouse retained the ‘blockbuster with less action, more character conflict’ mantra of the earlier counterparts and added to the visual future-historical variety in any way (a high-altitude falconry tribe is enough for me), all while letting go of the past as these entries almost always do in their mostly standalone, loosely sequential from-scratch feel, is more than I could’ve hoped for from Disney in disguise. We could use more marimba-heavy throwback scores skillfully served by Michael Giacchino as in Dawn, frankly more of everything interesting in that movie would be nice — more distinct drama, themes, philosophies, ironies and relationships, though Kingdom has the muted spectacle down pat. So yeah if this movie felt like it was getting deep as it turned to full adventure movie by its most exciting 2nd act, I wouldn't call this easily the weakest of the reboots and yet, while I could lament that Disney will stretch this out like a taffy I say let them. Despite the guy behind the fleetingly favorable Maze Runner trilogy (Wes Ball's entire resume, though he will be adding The Legend of Zelda) at the helm, Kingdom's scope and temperament is proof enough of artistic integrity. As it stands the Planet of the Apes series could stand to take another 10 installments after this one. The fact that it put up real box office numbers over the star power of The Fall Guy, and both the star power and recognition right there in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, just shows you how fertile this IP still is.  2 (out of 4)
“I deliver hits for all you little people!” Not in real life sister. This is one had me at the premise alone: a behind-the-scenes action comedy with a noir twist? See, regardless of David Leitch — stuntman (five times for Brad Pitt) turned capable action blockbuster magic man — or even Ryan Gosling — the coolest cat in modern drama or comedy, I’m sorry between Drive, La La Land, Blade Runner 2049 and Barbie he’s already one of the new greats — you’d still have enough genre potential to immediately intrigue the likes of me and YET, given my pleasure is theoretically prerequisite, why does so little of The Fall Guy land on its feet or some other loathsome pun? I can’t help but feel mildly disappointed, seeing as this is guy behind Atomic Blonde, Leitch's vivid, punchy debut outside of a partial hand in John Wick alongside Chad Stahelski. I’d just care for more economy, seeing as The Fall Guy is too forgettable and fluff-festered to somehow cost 50 million dollars more than John Wick Chapter 4 and sincerely, how did The Lost City, hell even Argylle churn out more acceptably tongue-in-cheek romantic wish-fulfillment than a will-they-won’t-they between Gosling and Emily freaking Blunt? How does your romantic action comedy fail to adequately deliver any of its three intents? Thank God the closest to quota is the stunt department, as Gosling’s human test dummy (from “I Drive…” to “I Fall…”) is forced into many situations where the regular action hero wouldn’t be able give the thumbs up, let alone stand. Occasionally there’s a tangible toughness but thanks to a totally silly tone even the best fights and most impressive physical feats are stripped of their “reality” given the enterprise’s forced, farcical folly. But as far as stuntman odes, it’s ridiculous that The Fall Guy invests so gladly in celebrity worship — Leitch doesn’t prop up any stunt performers, the Ryan look-alikes are still in the wings just like any other action movie. You know what actually gave prominence and some representation to a stunt department? When Leslie Odom Jr. couldn’t take the heat, Mission: Impossible — Fallout went with stuntman Liang Yang for that immaculate, practically perfect bathroom fight sequence and considering it’s probably the best moment of fisticuffs in the last decade just furthers my point. But then, despite such a solid homage to honest-to-god hard-boiled pulp fiction in story alone, this is one of those tangled plots that pulls apart with one tug. I think the double entendre of the title had me too hopeful even if the story did indeed gestate from the neglected stunt double scenario to the doppelgänger dope hung out to dry as is one typical noir fashion. So it better be laughs shoring up an altogether theoretically winning, shareholder-assuring setup and ultimately generously unedited film. Sadly, even before you roll your eyes at the movie’s half-baked tinder hookup pretending to parody a sizzling summer romance, it’s just unreal how unfunny this movie is — the little in-between gags are the best things going, like the fruit platter, not tired Gen X pop culture references like The Last of the Mohicans and The Fugitive, how many can you squeeze in? There's also some appreciated but fundamentally obtuse satire of Hollywood’s many ills (Egotistical stars! Lazy writers! Bloodsucking producers!). The Fall Guy even looks good as it was shot on glorious film, continuing Leitch’s penchant for garish, brilliantly contrasted throwdowns — so the visually rewarding stunt movie with pretty good stunts (but only a fraction of the visceral, paranoid fantasy-satire of 1980's The Stunt Man), starring talented folks, poking fun of Hollywood evil NONETHELESS adds up to something feigning breezy good vibes when half the time it just blows. It’s enough to make you think of how many exciting original movies could’ve been flubbed or hampered by the slightest misconception, under- or overdevelopment. Leitch is no stranger to keeping things light, but the far too improvisational, slapdash, shotgun-splatter comedy script (by Hotel Artemis director/Hobbs & Shaw scribe Drew Pearce) doesn’t have a singular force of fun to smooth it all over. When your best gag is the Goose sniffling in his car blasting T Swift and your most standout sequence is his character zonked out on some spiked cocktail, kicking ass by muscle memory in dark light, maybe your boom-pow-haha script should have been treated to a proper punch-up. The “it’s complicated/situationship” side of things has whispers of restraint, class and charm but I was ready to puke after the third or fourth of those ironic, fake-sincere love monologues where the plain subtext is the film’s to-be-fulfilled yearnings. The Fall Guy is a little too eager to please everybody — I can’t even say it wasn’t entertaining enough or decently crafted because of course it was, Leitch's storied stunt performer/coordinator career of 30 years experience rubs off on his every project. That's why I hate to highlight how David didn’t suitably honor stunt performers, your own unsung heroes — sure Gosling, as the incel’s champion, is well-cast as a fellow buried in the background. But even the behind-the-scenes blooper bullshit doesn’t really exhibit this movie’s stunt team, just a shiny world record for car rolls — it’s a self-congratulatory piece of work but in reality The Fall Guy is Leitch’s weakest movie next to his Fast and Furious spin-off. This love letter isn’t really reverent or respectful through unbelievable thrills, or outpacing The Stunt Man’s Hitchcockian wrong-man-wrong-time or movie-about-movie fakeouts. Speaking of, this freshly sarcastic, nihilistic, postmodern infinity mirror of Hollywood on Hollywood hollowness/hallowedness isn’t nearly as memorable or honest as Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time, the Coen’s Hail, Caesar! or even Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. It’s only self-aware insomuch as it sets up screenwriting shortcuts. Because of a recent Disney schedule shakeup pushing back many a Marvel movie, the PRIME first weekend of May was left WIDE OPEN and here I was praying The Fall Guy didn’t utterly waste it. Unless you count pandemic outlier years like 2020 and 2021, not since since Mission: Impossible III back in 2006 has a Marvel comics adaptation not kicked off a modern summer blockbuster season, and it’s sad how certain I am that 2025’s Thunderbolts* will be the better time next to this hodgepodge of richer genres than it deserves to clad itself in. |
Forthcoming:
Thoughts on Snow White Black Bag Mickey 17 Captain America: Brave New World Flight Risk The Brutalist Nosferatu A Complete Unknown Sonic the Hedgehog 3 The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Wicked Gladiator II Emilia Pérez Here Anora Megalopolis The Substance Longlegs Hit Man Dune Part Two Poor Things ... Follow me on Twitter @ newwavebiscuit To keep it brief...
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October 2024
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