Multiplex Madness
By Any Means
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Thriller
Director: Elegance Bratton
Starring: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Wahlberg, Nicole Beharie, Josh Lucas, David Strathairn, Giancarlo Esposito
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays an FBI agent who investigates the murder of civil rights activist Giancarlo Esposito, and he is partnered up with mob enforcer Mark Wahlberg to get the job done, even if it means cracking a few skulls. By Any Means has ambitions of being a no-punches-pulled portrayal of the violence that hampers political change but it winds up being a weird mesh between Miami Vice and Green Book. The movie is at a crossroads between being a civil rights drama and a hyperviolent crime thriller. The fact that it can't fully commit to either turns the movie into a dramatically dissonant display of anger at everything. Of course, African American civil rights in the 1960's did deserve anger, as well as fear and sorrow, all of which are displayed here. However, the rage the movie promotes is largely at the pushing of Wahlberg, who doesn't really seem to care as long as he's getting paid and as long as he gets to hurt people. Most of Wahlberg's actions seem to be because he prefers lawless anarchy over hate crimes. Of course, maybe he's just mad because of that stupid nose prosthetic he's wearing. Meanwhile, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is a great actor, and I understand why you would want him in your movie, but I personally think he is slightly miscast here because he's such a tall and powerful presence playing an accomplished man who is downtrodden by his environment and is forced to be meek at times. I think someone that carries himself with less confidence would have given the role something more.
By Any Means is a movie with an intentional rage behind it, but it's unfocused, muddled, and struggles to express itself. There is a haunting movie of political and racial violence somewhere in here, but these filmmakers didn't quite find it, settling for a violent movie with some on-the-nose moments. It's interest value drowns as a result, and it's not particularly thrilling because it's too busy seething to actually stimulate.
Fall: Deadpoint
⭐️1/2
Genre: Thriller
Director: Peter Spierig, Michael Spierig
Starring: Harriet Slater, Arsema Thomas, Tom Brittney, Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner
Fall is one of those movies that isn't very good but it's worth sticking through its worst tendencies to experience what it does well. I kinda like it in spite of itself, and watched it for the second time last month. Not in preparation for this, but rather because I wanted it fresh in my mind because it was a recent subject of an episode of the How Did This Get Made? podcast. They pretty much had the same take on it that I did.
Anyway, climbers get into more extreme worst case scenarios in this sequel, which is more connected to the previous film than I expected it to be. Harriet Slater plays the sister of Virginia Gardner's character from the first film (DANGER D!!!!!), who met an unfortunate fate (the title of the movie should tip you off on what happened to her). Slater meets up with a former acquaintance of her sister, played by Arsema Thomas, who talks her into honoring her sister's memory by going on a plank walk in Thailand. The cliffside breaks and the duo wind up stranded on a plank thousands of feet in the above the ground. I tried not to overly judge the movie too early on when it's dramatic beats feel over-delivered and unnatural. The first film had the same problem and it made up ground on interest value once it got to the meat of the story. I had hopes that Deadpoint would at least deliver excitement, but it doesn't have the same delivery. The original Fall compensated for its melodramatic script with a hefty sense of vertigo. Fall 2 is usually dark and murky and takes place against a wall, so its vertigo looks like a gray CGI blob. When everything looks so hazy and fake, the danger doesn't feel that dangerous. Some of the better suspense sequences happen during daylight, and while the film continues to struggle with CGI problems, the sequences have more power to them. This is especially true of the climax, which is probably the most lively sequence in the movie, and is also directed with a sort of flair that the rest of the movie was missing.
Dramatically, the movie hits similar beats to the first film, with the duo trying to cooperate, conceiving dangerous stunts to try and save themselves, and having a falling out for generic betrayal reasons. One thing that is lessened in this film is the problem solving element. In the first film, Gardner and co-climber Grace Caroline Currey spent a good amount of their screentime coming up with ideas to signal for help and retrieve their supplies. Slater and Thomas do that occasionally, but a lot of their time is spent simply sitting on a plank. The movie even seems to forget that they have no food or water, as that never really comes up. On top of that, Slater's character is not the thrill-seeker that the characters of the first film were and she spends most of the movie miserable and whiny because she didn't want to do this. For good long while in this movie, she is mostly useless. That is until the end decides it's time for her to get over it and do some extreme stuff pretty effortlessly. It's kinda funny, because the movie seems to be made with the thought of just making the same movie over again only slightly different but these small differences make it a far inferior experience.
Onslaught
⭐️⭐️
Genre: Action, Horror
Director: Adam Wingard
Starring: Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Eric Wareheim, Reginald VelJohnson, Michael Beihn, Alex Pereira, Drew Starkey, Rebecca Hall
Adam Wingard's latest is his homage to grindhouse drive-in fare, while throwing in little flourishes that see him honoring the likes of John Carpenter and Robert Rodriguez. Onslaught centers on a group of rampaging super soldiers, who are brainwashed with the single thought of killing every living thing in their way, as they escape confinement and terrorize a trailer park. Inside said trailer park is former sniper Adria Arjona, doing her best Michelle Rodriguez impression, who fights to protect her young daughter. Protect she does, as Arjona successfully projects the image of tenacious, feral badass, but the threat around her often fails to truly feel like the menace they're supposed to be. Despite its promise of relentless carnage, Onslaught has struggles in actually putting it on display for the audience to enjoy. Instead of pulling off intense action, most of the time it defaults to long takes of shadow people with glowing eyes just standing in place. Our villainous super soldiers have an intimidating look, sometimes being the striking image of a hulking slasher antagonist ala Leatherface or Jason, but they often feel like they aren't actually doing anything. Throughout most of their raid, Arjona and others are pinned down in a single house, and the soldiers seem keenly aware of where they are, but they don't actually act on it until their prey jumps out a door and runs out into the open, or just when the plot runs out and something needs to happen. It's weak suspense because it feels like just being behind any given wall is a safe space, which means the main selling point of hard-boiled mayhem is a wash because it is stunted and contrived. Outside of its action, the movie is primarily hammy kitsch, seeing Dan Stevens in silly mad scientist cosplay and Rebecca Hall as a high-ranking government ballsqueezer who has everyone on a leash. It's from the aesthetic that you can tell the movie they wanted to make, but they fumbled the ball in making it entertaining.
Netflix & Chill
Big Shark
⭐️
🏆"Hurts-So-Good" Must-See Bad Movie Award🏆
Streaming On: Tubi
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Director: Tommy Wiseau
Starring: Tommy Wiseau, Isaiah LaBorde, Mark Valeriano
Tommy Wiseau, you magnificent bastard, you've done it again!
It has taken twenty years but Tommy Wiseau, the visionary auteur who brought us The Room, has finally graced us with his sophomore film. This one was originally announced as a trailer that was filmed with The Room star Greg Sestero, who was evidently under the impression the trailer was just something silly they made for fun. Apparently, Wiseau did want to make a movie out of it, and when he finally managed to film it, Sestero dropped out. The movie screened in 2023, but that appears to have been limited, and it's finally hit wide release on Tubi. The film takes place in New Orleans, where Wiseau and a pair of fellow firefighters watch as the streets flood and a BIG SHARK begins sliding through the streets and eating people. Wiseau and his friends set out to save the day.
My main concern with this movie is that I didn't want a self-aware movie from Tommy Wiseau. If the man behind The Room makes a comedy, that could be an experience infinitely worse than just a bad movie. What I failed to take into account is that Wiseau is such an eccentric that, even if Big Shark is supposed to be a comedy, it's unclear as to what about it is actually humorous. The movie is goofy, but that's because it's so odd and aimless. The Room is also odd and aimless. That's what makes a Wiseau movie a Wiseau movie. The movie could possibly be a comedy, but it also could just as easily be Wiseau doing his genuine take on a disaster movie. It's hard to be sure. What I will say is that The Room probably has more sincerity behind it, which will likely make it the preferable option to Big Shark. The Room was someone trying to make a masterpiece. Big Shark is the result of a madman who knows he can sell a project with his name and made whatever he wanted.
To an extent, Big Shark feels like Wiseau making his own version of Birdemic. Wiseau is taking a trope-laden genre and putting his own stamp on it. It might be his homage to Jaws, but I suspect that Wiseau might also be trying to pay tribute to kaiju cinema. The rampage of the Big Shark kinda plays out like Godzilla attacking the city, and the heroes of the film's scuba diving third act almost feels like a hybrid of Godzilla's 1954 climax and the Orca scenes of Steven Speilberg's famed shark movie. It also seems interlaced with Wiseau's own brand of commentary, which is delivered almost indecipherably but has little hints of a Global Warming message (like Birdemic). It's hard to understand the intent because so much of Wiseau's drama is stream-of-consiousness mumbling, but there are oddities that can be picked out every so often. One of my favorite examples happens during a scene where Wiseau and another character are having a nonsense argument on a couch and it's hard to make out any of their dialogue because there is an angry newscaster who is upset about delivering news about penguins. It does, however, result in my favorite line of the movie:
"Penguins are usually found in the South Pole, where they are eaten by Polar Bears."
And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the coherence of this movie. So much of this movie is just dicking around, muttering about nothing. It starts with Wiseau's firefighter squad saving children in a burning building, which turns out to, apparently, be footage that is also being screened in a movie theater that is celebrating them. They go around town and people hero worship them, though nobody believes Wiseau when he tells people he saw a Big Shark. This is likely because he tells them in a very Tommy Wiseau way, where he flails his arms around and goes "BIG SHARK!" When it turns out there is a Big Shark, the firefighters take the initiative to be the ones to vow to kill the Big Shark. That doesn't mean they'll do anything about it. They'll play pool and lounge around, saying something needs to be done about the Big Shark, and just spend several minutes muttering in agreement. When they do act upon this urge to kill the Big Shark, it's usually in a digressive way, such as the most amazingly pointless section of the film where the firefighters get live pigs for bait, take them to a butcher to get slaughtered, only for the butcher to say "I have pigs already slaughtered, so take those," then they put the butchered pigs in the truck with the live pigs and ar like "Don't worry, piggies, we'll let you go." Also, Wiseau is having some sort of issue with his girlfriend, who at various points gets angry at him, rekindles with him, throws him out of the house, and just forgets about that several scenes later. There is no real continuity or plot to this movie. There is just a Big Shark and also Tommy Wiseau is here. Frankly, that also might be just enough for this to be a must watch.
The Runner
⭐️1/2
Streaming On: Prime
Genre: Thriller
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Starring: Gal Gadot, Damian Lewis, Alfred Enoch
I think I'm only watching this movie because it's called "The Runner" and next week there is a movie simply called "Runner" and I started getting the press for the two movies confused and only just realized they were two different movies, so I need finality on which one is which.
Gal Gadot plays a lawyer who is out running when she receives a phone call telling her that she needs to murder her own client or her son will die. Because this murder plot needed a gimmick apparently, she needs to run across the city in order to get there at a certain time. I'm not sure why this is plan A for our bad guy, because there are too many outliers that he seems unprepared for and, honestly, she leaves a lot of carnage in her wake. There is mention of "contingencies" and I'm curious of why this, of all things, is the preferable option. I guess there would be no movie otherwise, and the movie is taking a wild stab at a Hitchcockian thriller, probably closer to Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth than actual Hitchcock. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't have the mojo of the best of its kin because it's just so senseless. I'll give the script credit for coming up with scenarios for this concept it came up with, but it struggles in paying them off. Often, the movie will make Gadot do something big only for paltry consequences. That's also in conjunction with the fact that there seems to be a disconnect between how the film is crafted and what the movie thinks it is. The movie is too flatly made for action and doesn't have much kinetic energy. Gadot, herself, even seems to have intermediate interest in any given scene. It makes what could have been a decent time-waster and turns it into an empty experience.
Movies Still Playing At My Theater
Buddy ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Coyote vs. Acme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Dog Stars ⭐️⭐️
The End of Oak Street ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Idiots ⭐️⭐️1/2
Insidious: Out of the Further ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Magic Faraway Tree ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mutiny ⭐️1/2
The Odyssey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2
Spider-Man: Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Toy Story 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
New To Digital
I Want Your Sex ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Brink of War ⭐️⭐️
The Wrong Girls ⭐️1/2
Coming Soon!
