MST3K, RiffTrax, and Beyond: Cinema Playground Journal 2024: Week 18 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

The Fall Guy

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Action, Comedy, Mystery

Director: David Leitch

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Winston Duke, Teresa Palmer, Stephanie Hsu

Loosely based on a television series starring Six Million Dollar Man star Lee Majors, The Fall Guy sees Ryan Gosling as a stunt performer who is sent to check on the missing star of his latest action movie, but winds up getting sucked into a bizarre mystery surrounding his disappearance. It's a movie that is constantly bouncing off its own walls, trying to barrel through a hopelessly convoluted plot. The movie's charisma gives it value at its most chaotic, as Gosling is constantly hilarious and charming, showcasing wonderful chemistry with costar Emily Blunt. It can even turn its chaos into a virtue, by showcasing wonderful stuntwork in what becomes a feature length salute to stunt performers in general. The movie is spectacularly entertaining, though it can leave its audience in the wind as it runs for the horizon.

Mars Express

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Science Fiction, Noir, Mystery

Director: Jérémie Périn

Starring: Morla Gorrandona, Josh Keaton (English dub)

It may look and act like an anime, but Mars Express actually hails from France, though anime nerds are probably the primary audience. It's a visually stimulating science fiction noir sees a cybernetically enhanced detective investigating a missing hacker but soon gets sucked up in a conspiracy. It's imaginative with its world construction and characterization, and it's plot is interesting enough to inhabit it's sumptuous surroundings. It plays into noir tropes pretty effectively, both with intriguing drama and sly humor. The movie does struggle with its ending, going for a reveal and tossing away satisfying plot payoff for a hopelessly bleak scenario to emphasize the noir influence, but it's certainly a movie to chew on until that point. Animated or not, Mars Express is a solid sci-fi thriller for genre enthusiests, which makes it an easy recommend for anybody who's looking for a engaging premise set against a futuristic setting.

Tarot

⭐️⭐️

Genre: Horror

Director: Spencer Cohen, Anna Halberg

Starring: Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Avantika Vandanapu, Wolfgang Novogratz, Humberly González, Larsen Thompson, Jacob Batalon

A group of teenagers find a deck of tarot cards in a musky basement and read each other's horrorscope, only to find that each reading comes true in twisted ways, resulting in their deaths. Pleasantries are quick in this strange ghost story that is seemingly wanting to be a PG-13 Final Destination, as it introduces the characters quickly, gets to the title tarot soon after, and leaves the rest of the movie seeing them run away from ghouls. It's not very ambitious, and it certainly isn't scary, as its horror is just ghosties popping out and screaming at the viewer. It earns some charisma points for its campy sense of humor, though it can't keep it up consistently, as it tends to lose it the more it mixes in the melodrama. One might yearn for it to be more creative, and in a rare moment it provides a glimpse at what a better version of this movie could be. The flashback scene that explains the origin of the terror tarot deck, for example, is the most stylish and interesting sequence in the movie, but it only amounts to a fraction of the runtime. The rest of the movie makes no qualms about maintaining itself as being dumb and simple, but it's has a silly tone to it that makes it more amusing than it probably should be. Some will probably walk out of this movie because of that. I'd argue that a certain type of viewer will just slap their knee and have a good laugh.

Art Attack

Limbo

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Drama, Noir, Mystery

Director: Ivan Sen

Starring: Simon Baker, Rob Collins, Natasha Wanganeen

Australian noir film sees a detective sent to a small town to investigate a dormant murder case in hopes of finding new evidence to reopen it. It's rare that he finds anything new, but he does hear details straight from the words of the Aboriginal citizens, whose tales highlight how the justice system failed them. There is a theme of systematic racism, particularly through apathy, in the film, as the residents are people of color who are left with an unanswered question in their lives that they were forced to move on from. The movie is playing with powerful concepts, though it does so in a meandering way. It seeks to frustrate the viewer with its lack of progression, and it most certainly does, though I'd have been more interested in it taking a path that felt less monotonous. The noir melodrama is laid on thick, as each character is given a distinct scowl that they maintain throughout the movie so the viewer can bask in their misery. It's an interesting idea. It probably could have been done better.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Abigail ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Boy Kills World ⭐️⭐️1/

Challengers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Civil War ⭐️⭐️1/2

Dune: Part Two ⭐⭐1/2

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire ⭐️⭐️

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire ⭐️⭐️1/2

Kung Fu Panda 4 ⭐⭐1/2

The Mummy ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Unsung Hero ⭐️1/2