Furiosa : A Mad Max Saga (2024)

 

In the ranks of Mad Max Films, this is probably at the bottom from my point of view. That turns out not to be a knock on this film, but an assessment of my admiration for all the other films in the series. This is still a terrific action film, with an elaboration of the world that writer/director George Miller has created, but it does feel like an appendix rather than another step in the Mad Max world. Part of the reason that this is true is that this is a prequel story, and it does not focus on Max at all, but rather the character of "Furiosa" from, the previous film in the series "Fury Road".

The comparison that can be made here is that of the stand alone Star Wars films, "Rogue One" and "Solo". These movies have a lot to offer by way of entertainment value, but they do not feel essential to the central story that is being told in the series. I found "Furiosa" compelling at times, but I do know from the start where the story is going to end. So although there are harrowing escapes and breathtaking action beats, the conclusion is forgone. While that may be acceptable in a superhero movie or a James Bond film, post apocalyptic films need more uncertainty to keep us engaged. This movie is exciting but not essential.

Charlize Theron does not return to play the character here. Since every iteration of "Furiosa" taht we get for this film is younger than the character we saw in "Fury Road", it makes sense to recast rather than do elaborate de-aging F/X work for most of the film. Alya Browne plays the youngest versions of the character in the story, and I thought she was great. In fact, the two segments of the movie that feature her, could easily have been their own separate movie.   I found the opening sequences of the film to be some of the best tension and emotional payoff of the story, The chases and the fights may not have been as elaborate as we get later, but the stakes feel higher and the character gets the most growth.

When Anya Taylor Joy arrives in the movie, the situation has shifted and we get something that is a lot more familiar, (at least to anyone who has seen Ben Hur). Furiosa has an escape plan that requires a lot of luck. She acquires an ally and lover along the way. She suffers loss and her need for revenge takes precedence over her goal of returning to her home. The whole process of her story sometimes get shunted aside by the story of her nemesis, "Dementus", the character played by Chris Hemsworth. Technically, the character is "Dr. Dementus"" but if I think of that, I'm going to be looking around for a Weird Al Video. Hemsworth gets to chew the scenery effectively as the main villain of the piece, and he hides pretty well under some make-up and costuming, so we are unlikely to thing too much of Thor. 

There are three different wasteland empires that all come under attack at some point in the story. There are also a half dozen various bands of wasteland scavengers that engage in these attacks, so there is always an elaborate combat sequence in the offing. The film is nearly two and a half hours long, and since there is virtually no down time between the sequences of road chases and combat, it feels a bit exhausting. The original Mad Max was under 90 minutes and The Road Warrior was barely over the same mark. The efficiency with which those stories were told should have been present here, but there is too much going on to get it done at that clip.  Yes we get more depth in the characters and the world building, but the action sequence may begin to run together because there are so many of them. 

You will have to commit to the movie because of the chapter structure that is used to tell the tale. Those segments are not really stand alone pieces, but the title cards are as close as you are going to get in a break during the film. I think Miller's ambition may exceed his audiences hunger for this world. If you still have a big Max sized appetite, this will hold you, but it feels like a side dish rather than a main course. 

Hit Man (2024)

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Hitman is a Nifty little Neo Noir from director Richard Linklater and his star Glenn Powell. It is based on the case histories of an actual informant in Houston Texas. The movie is based on an article written in the Texas monthly, which chronicled the numerous incidents in which a college instructor impersonated supposed Killers for hire in order to arrest those trying to hire someone to murder another person.

Incredibly they were over 187 cases where this police informant managed to interact with potential customers sufficiently to incriminate them adequately to have them arrested. Most of the arrests resulted in convictions. The problem with this fantastic true story, is that it is basically a series of incidents where our protagonist portrays himself in multiple different ways so as to convince the contracting client that he really was a hired killer. Now, the movie contends that outside of cartel or Mafia connections, The hired hitman is a myth. So most of these people bought into a fantasy that they could solve their problems by finding someone who is willing to kill for money. As interesting as that might be, it's not a narrative that would sustain a movie. What's happened here is that Powell and    Linklater have created a Noir to go along with these real incidents.

The film is primarily a comedy but it does go into some traditional Noir territory when it introduces a femme fatale who gets involved with our main character. This results in comedies traditional structure of one person trying to hide something from another person and going through desperate measures to do so. The conceit in this film is that the character that our informant creates in order to draw in this woman, becomes a persona that he inhabits a little too comfortably, and with comic consequences. The film is actually quite funny with several ironic components to it. The jealous police officer who has been replaced in these kinds of sting operations by this previously milk toast college professor, is turned into a dangerous rival with an agenda straight out of a 1940s film. Of course it also has a comedic element to it that is quite amusing.

I'm not sure if you can call it a Neo Noir if the result of the story turns out to have a happy ending. That doesn't really fit with the traditional dark themes of that classic format. But because this is a comedy take on the form, it doesn't really feel disingenuous to go in the direction that it does. The characters that we encounter are for the most part very likable, and it would seem unjust for them to end up in the negative for the experiences that they've gone through. Powell and his co-star Adria Arjona, have good chemistry together and they make us care about the outcome. When we meet her husband, the man that she originally wanted to hire someone to kill, we kind of understand that she is not the bad person that we might have assumed simply because she wanted to hire a hitman.

The early part of the film drives most of its comedy from Powell's disguises, characters, and the potential clients who are is inept, venal, and delusional as you might expect. The second half of the film the comedy derives from Powell's attempts to keep his true identity secret, and to hide the romance that has grown between him and the woman that he is steered away from committing a felony. The final third of the film does take a darker turn, but not so dark as to diminish the romantic comedy that has been growing up inside of this movie.

I found this movie to be completely delightful, cleverly acted and very intricately plotted so that it is engaging throughout. It may not be to everybody's taste but it's certainly fit mine, and as far as I'm concerned it is one of the critical hits of the year. This is a Netflix film that is getting a limited theatrical release, which is the reason that it got covered on this site. The screening that I went to was actually the premiere in theaters, and included a live broadcast to other theaters around the country, featuring the tars Glenn Powell, Adria Arjona, and director Richard Linklater. It was a lot of fun to be in the theater with the creators of this film and listen to their stories about how the movie was put together. Hopefully you'll get a chance to see this in a theater, but if you don't go ahead and take advantage of its availability on Netflix, it's better than hiring a hitman.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

 

I recently complete a podcast covering the rebooted series of  three "Planet of the Apes" movies, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes", and "War for the Planet of the Apes". These movies took a concept from the original film series and brought it up to speed with the world that we now live in. The most clever element in the series was the explanation of why humans declined and apes rose. It had less to do with apocalyptic war and everything to do with cataclysmic viral pandemics. Pretty prescient if you ask me. This new film tries to bridge the gap a little by tying in a human underground effort to restore humanity to it's place on the planet, while also confronting the ambitions of a striving ape king who has corrupted the beliefs of the hero of the preceding films. So this movie has set up a pretty tough task for itself. I would say it succeeds for the most part, but not with the clarity of those three films.

Hundreds of years have passed since the events of the three reboots. Ape society is largely at a bronze age stage when it comes to technology, and a tribal stage when it comes to culture. Noa, the protagonist of this story, is a young ape on the brink of adulthood, who is carrying on the traditions of his clan. This group of chimpanzees has created a symbiotic relationship with eagles. They assist in expanding the population of eagles by nurturing excess eggs from eagles nests. It is an interesting culture. Many audience members may chafe at the detail that goes in to setting up the clan and it's traditions, but the world building here is essential to contrast the society we are introduced to with the one that invades it as the story goes on. 

Eventually, Noa must engage in a quest to restore the clan to it's home, and simultaneously navigate a dangerous path between aggressive gorilla traditions and unique human contacts. On his travels he encounters an orangutang named Raka, who knows history better than anything else going on in the world. This is a character that I think most of us will have the greatest sympathy for. Raka becomes a mentor on social groups and political issue, almost by accident. It is his tutelage that allows Noa, to make key choices late in the story. Some of those choices pay off, others seem to be setting up a new trilogy of films to tell about what happens in the middle ages of the ape saga. 

The technology in making the films gets better every time out. The characters look more realistic and their behaviors seem more natural by the fourth time we are encountering this story device. The film seems a little long, but I am not sure that there is any element of story that needs trimming, mostly I think brief cuts to many scenes would have tightened thing up a bit.  Kevin Durand, who was in "Abigail" the last film I saw before this, plays the CGI King Proximus Caesar. His outsized motion capture performance is one of the strong points of the movie. All of the actors deserve credit for making us believe that these animals are real characters. 

This is positioned as a Summer film, and it should fulfill those expectations, although I don't know that it will be able to stand out from many of the other movies that are coming in the next few week. The ethical questions raised by some moments of the film, in particular those from William H. Macy, are important, but I don't think the storytelling is quite as strong as it was on those sorts of points in the earlier movies. I think you will be more entertained than enlightened, but there is promise in this type of branching out of the story. I hope future episodes pay off a little more deeply. 

Abigail (2024)

 

This is a movie that would have worked so much better if the premise had not been given away in all of the advertising and the trailer. What starts off as a tense kidnapping story, takes a turn a quarter of the way into the movie, and it's a very clever twist. The problem is that we all knew it was coming, which undermines a lot of the stuff they get set up at the start of the film. That said, there is still fun to be had here because when it hits the fan, there's a glorious amount of Gore, violence, and ironic comedy.

Basically this is a variation of 100 other horror stories over the years. 10 Little Indians, Alien, The House on Haunted Hill, and dozens of other movies where a group of people are trapped in a situation where they will be picked off one at a time. Will they be able to figure out a solution? Will the antagonist reveal a motive? Is there any point to the story? The answers to these and other questions will come if you stay to the end of the movie. As in a lot of contemporary films, the people involved are not particularly pleasant, and we may very well feel that as things go along that some of them are getting what they deserved. Let's face it, everybody in this house was there because they were kidnapping a little girl. Maybe some of them are worse than others, and maybe there is possible redemption, but we're going to have to get a lot of dead bodies before we get to the point where we're glad that anybody is surviving.

Imagine if you were Claudia from the film "Interview with the Vampire", and you had to spend your eternal life as a child. What kinds of amusements could you come up with to keep you interested and at the same time allow you to continue your cover as an innocent child? Well that's basically what this film attempts to answer. The fact that the house it's full of booby traps, secret passages, and dark foreboding images adds to the fun. Characters betray one another and sometimes they actually support one another, but we're never sure of which outcome we're going to get before the events play out. This is where some of the fun comes in. This movie is not quite as engaging as "Ready or Not", the film from the directors that preceded this, but it's unlikely that you'll feel ripped off by watching it. Especially if you enjoy over the top monster action that results in blood splattered all over the screen on the set.

Actor Kevin Durant is a Canadian performer that I have seen in movies since the late 1990s. He's a big guy with a distinctive face and I've enjoyed most of his performances. This week, after not having seen him in films for several years because he was working regularly on on several television series, he turns up in two movies that I saw back to back. In "Abigail" he is the muscle on the team of kidnappers, and in "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes", he performs and voices the King,  Proximo. It's strange sometimes how little things line up and create interesting coincidences. He's actually very good in this film trying to be a sympathetic monster of a human when faced with a real life monster it's even more evil than he is.

It's true that in most survival stories, the participants are going to be faced with choices that they have to make which involve moral dilemmas. It's also true that we can probably pick out some of the characters who will not have any moral qualms about stabbing their fellow survivors in the back in order to be the ones who are still standing at the end of the story. We got a couple of those in this film, Complicated by some storytelling that is a little shaky. The resolutions come however they're kind of satisfying.

Don't be too panicked, the people who deserve to go will. Some people who don't deserve to die will. And logic will go out the window pretty quickly, actually just as fast as the windows are shut to close people into the house. Then all bets are off and you should just enjoy the bloody Mayhem.

The Fall Guy (2024)

 

This is arriving two plus weeks after I saw the movie. I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to get to it, except that I did spend quite a bit of time with it on the podcast and then the video of that podcast, maybe I just needed a little space. I also have had a couple of my friends on Social Media disparage the film, and my temperature needed to cool down a bit. I understand when you are disappointed with a film and want to mouth off a bit at it. I've done that a couple of times. "Frozen II", "The Lighthouse" and and "US" I'm looking at you. Most of the time when I have disliked a film to the point of despising it, I bite my tongue and cryptically diss it (My posts on "Vice" and "Women Talking" are available on this site if you want to see. ). That said, it is usually the opposite when I am enthusiastic about a film. I am quick to praise and post, it just did not happen here.

"The Fall Guy" is a Summer Entertainment that aims to be fun, action filled and have some humorous moments punctuated by romance. It does all of these things pretty well.  Is it trying to please everyone to a degree that none are satisfied? That seems to be the knock that I have seen from the haters. Allow me to retort...this hit all cylinders with me, and I think it is an excellent argument for making stunt work an active category at the Academy Awards. The film is directed by a former stunt double and coordinator, David Leitch, and when I hear people criticizing the movies stunts, I wonder who they think put together most of the stunts that they unfavorably compare these to.  There are some terrific stunt sequences in the film, including multiple hand to hand combat style fights, which are done on screen in camera, not on a computer. When CGI is used, it is almost always used in environmental contexts rather than inserting a character into the stunt.

Maybe the premise of the film is a little weak. The idea that the stunt man becomes an investigator man seem a little far fetched, but my guess is that this was not a bigger stretch than any episode of the original TV series. The mystery plot is the least essential part for the film to work, what is necessary for the movie to function is the rom-com center, situated in the movie industry itself. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt have a natural chemistry together that I found completely winning. The opening section of the film is loaded with sly comic quips between the two of them, and I found their relationship to be very believable. Unlike most rom-coms, the complication here happens at the start of the film, and we spend two hours resolving it and looking in on the complications it created for both of our protagonists. You have two below the line movie people in love with one another, and they get broken up by an accident and some success. The way it plays out is not always logical but it is amusing

Blunt's character has a chance to step up as the director of a science fiction piece that she is shaping into a autobiography of her relationship with our lead. As Jody, a first time director, she seems very competent and has a clear vision of what she wants. When Colt, her former flame ends up on the shoot, she plays out some of her frustrations on him and attempts to humiliate him while still reflecting that there is a spark between them. Gosling's Colt makes no bones about the fact that their disintegration was his fault. The reasons become clearer as they go along, and the slow reconciliation between them keeps the charm of their story center to the film.

Of course the movie has to play with the stunts and that is why the thriller element has to be there, to justify some of the things that Colt ends up having to do. There are stunts within the movie in the movie. For example there is a great car roll that reportedly broke some records and it looks great on screen and there is no CGI substitution that I could see. Another big car stunt takes place near the end of the film, and while there may be some CGI enhancements in perspective and environment, the stunt, when it is shown externally, looks solidly real to me. Maybe they don't really crash a helicopter, but that is an actual stunt guy doing a long fall from the helicopter and it looks spectacular.    When it comes to the fight scenes, you can see that stunt men are falling down stairs, crashing through windows, being flipped and kicked across rooms. Sometimes there is a computer boost, but the hard work is shown in each scene. 

People who jump on this movie may be missing some of the satire that is clearly intended. Movie mavens will appreciate the not so subtle jabs at the marketing departments, the duplicitous producers or the striving wannabe producers. Aaron Taylor Johnson plays the entitled star of the film within a film, and he riffs on Tom Cruise, Matthew McConoughey and Brad Pitt repeatedly. Not in a sharp, dismissive way, but rather by poking at their film personas gently. His speech in the movie, was hysterical not because of the dialogue but because he had an impersonation down completely. Another way to tell that this is gentle parody and not biting criticism is the appearance at the end of the film of a Hollywood heavyweight, spoofing his own film role in a science fiction movie parallel to the one being made in this story.   

Maybe I was seduced by the music cues in the film. There is a Taylor Swift moment that almost makes me want to listen to Taylor Swift. Of course the biggest spoonful of sugar for me is the liberal use of a Kiss song that has been around for 45 years. It is a cheesy bit of pop, but it works perfectly for the tone of the film. If you don't buy into the tone, you will probably not like the movie. I bought in immediately because of that needle drop. 

It also turns out that "The Fall Guy" is really an idiomatic phrase that describes the plot more than the lead character. A bit of legerdemain that I approve of. At the end of the year, when I list my favorite films, I don't necessarily choose movies that are the best quality. I leave that to others. I pick films that I can appreciate for all sorts of reasons, This one might make the list simply because it reaches it's goal, to entertain us. 

The Mummy (1999) Revisit

 

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The 1999 version of The Mummy is mostly critic proof because it is full of the kinds of things that a summer movie needs, with a nostalgic feel, that even people who never experienced movies of this type will recognize. It's full of the kinds of things that I love in an old style Adventure. There are horrible booby traps, secret passages, and rooms and tunnels that have to be explored by Torchlight. I'm not sure that there's anything more satisfying, then sitting in the dark theater watching adventurers try to Traverse dangerous passages in the dark aided only by a flame at the end of a stick. Who knows how such Flames managed to keep burning for as long as they do, it doesn't matter because we are enchanted by the idea and ready to take the journey with them.

I first saw this film in the theaters when it originally opened, and I took my kids and we had an adventure on a Saturday afternoon, it was exactly what a family would want for a summer day. A few years ago "The Mummy" was chosen as movie of the month on the Lambcast, and I revisited it then, as a way of getting ready for our discussion. Like a character in this film, I had to go in search of some treasure, the recording of the original Lambcast for this movie of the month. This was one of the recordings that I had deleted when I took over the podcast as host and I was trying to make room on our hosting site, by deleting files. I finally gave up on that and just started paying for the site so that I can have unlimited storage. Unfortunately by then several years of old episodes, had been lost. I say lost but not completely. The former host of the Lamb does have a treasure trove of archived podcast episodes on a hard drive that he's still owns. I contacted him, he went searching, and now I have restored the podcast to its original link. I feel a little bit like the lead character in this movie.

Rick O'Connell as played by Brendan Fraser, is a dashing ne'er-do-well  who is basically the Han Solo of this adventure. He went on to do the character two more times in this series of films, and this helped make him a legitimate action star until injuries and other Hollywood insider crap took him out of the movies for several years. He recently won an Academy Award in a comeback film "The Whale", and of course he's put on quite a bit of weight and age but he still has a personality that is quite appealing on screen when given a chance. These films gave him the best chance to convey that kind of personality. Rachel Weisz, has also gone on to win an Academy Award since performing in this movie, and she is the Plucky Damsel in Distress, who is not a helpless woman but rather one slightly over her depths, but with enough intelligence and gumption to be a legitimate partner in the Treasure Hunt that these people are engaging in. Most people will remember the film as having taken place largely in the Subterranean temples of the lost city where the Mummy is located. There are however large sections of the movie, that take place in Cairo, and there's a segment where a group of treasure Hunters, is on a boat headed down the Nile and some of the adventure takes place on board.

The Mummy himself is played by Arnold Vaslovo, who had played Darkman in the two sequels to the original Sam Rami film. Of course half the time, The Mummy is a CGI creation, and the 1990s version of CGI would have been impressive at the time but now looks a little worse for wear. It's not bad but it does sometimes take you out of the film. I don't have a problem with casting outside of a racial identity, but I suspect that having Kevin J O'Connor, a white American, playing an Egyptian with dark face would not pass mustard these days. It is however his performance that adds much of the humor and satiric charm to the movie. When his resolution comes up we are both disappointed and satisfied that his end arrived as it did.

From my point of view maybe the best thing about the film is the heroic score by composer Jerry Goldsmith. I've said it on numerous occasions on this site, that Goldsmith is my favorite film composer, and his work here is excellent as usual. With a rousing heroic theme, and appropriate cultural motifs, the soundtrack for this film is something that you could probably listen to on its own, and enjoy with a great deal of pleasure as you remember the film that you saw.

I haven't yet listened to the whole Lambcast episode, but I have included it here, and I doubt that my opinion of the film has changed very much. It may not be a great artistic achievement, but it's one of those fun adventure films that you see as a kid, which make an impression on you and convince you that swashbuckling films are where you should be spending your time. I know my kids grew up loving movies like this, which were vague echoes of Indiana Jones, but sometimes you just take what you can get.

Alien 45th Anniversary Revisit (2024)

It's hard to believe that 45 years ago  “Alien" opened and I saw it at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood California. I was preparing to graduate from USC, and begin a graduate program in rhetoric of all things. I'd had a period of difficulty in my last semester as an undergraduate, including losing a close friend in a horrible car accident, and my debate partner also being severely injured in the same accident. I was in a mood to recover from the end of the term and some of the tragedies that life throws at you. Interestingly enough I've always said that the summer of 1979 may have been my favorite. That's because I didn't have to work, I had no active School responsibilities, and my girlfriend graduated at the same time and had her own place and a job that was taking care of her. Despite the fact that the recent past had been tough, the immediate future looked bright. That summer I did two things consistently, swim in the pool at our apartment building everyday, and go see “Alien” multiple times.

I've said it before in other posts, my favorite between Alien and Aliens is whichever one I've seen most recently. That means for this week at least, Alien is my favorite. Seeing it at a 45th anniversary screening, during a week in which it reappeared on the box office charts 45 years later was a lot of fun. It's easy to get caught up in nostalgia, because I always equate the movies that I see with the times in my life that I saw them. Of course they have their own qualities that make them memorable as well, and “Alien” is certainly memorable.

Thank goodness this was the original theatrical cut and not the enhanced Edition that has been released in several forms since the movie came out. Those versions add information and sequences that are unnecessary and frankly distracting. I found it much more mysterious and frightening that Dallas simply disappeared. Although there is some setup for a future film in those deleted scenes, I don't think James Cameron thought they were necessary when it was time for him to direct the sequel. So we'll stick with the best things about the original version. That's how I'm going to spend a little bit of time on this post.

The music score for Alien was created by my favorite composer Jerry Goldsmith. The theme, which plays as the title is slowly being spelled out, letter segment by letter segment, is mysterious and creepy. It's not, however the theme that makes Goldsmith's music so effective here. He created some mood sequences that are very effective. The excursion onto the planet, where they encounter the alien egg, is filled with suspense and fear in the background score. Toward the end of the film there is a torrid, energetic, and frantic musical sequence that accompanies Ripley's desperate attempt to destroy the ship and to cancel the destruction. When she's not successful stopping the self-destruction process, there's another musical sequence, as she prepares for a long rest, and is interrupted one more time by the unwelcome visitor. This score can be played over and over and you will get those images in your head, this is the way that film music should work.

Once again it's probably unnecessary to point to the fabulous production design of this film. The H.R. Geiger inspired look of the alien vessel, and the used space pallette that had been adopted to some degree from Dark Star, is just terrific. We have a very clear sense of the differences in the work responsibilities of the crew. Parker and Brett are trapped working in a dark environment with grease and steam all around them, and they're doing the tough work of keeping the ship and processing centers functioning. The resentment that they feel that their Shares are not equivalent to the rest of the crew is completely understandable. This adds a little bit of social reality to what otherwise would be a nondescript group of astronauts. The jobs of all of the space travelers, matter.

When we discover that the real monster is the corporation that all of them work for, it is a gut punch to these laborers, who have trusted their employer with their lives. The added surprise that one of them is secretly working on behalf of the company, and in fact is an artificial person, is another terrific element in this reality based setting. Yeah it's science fiction, but it's grounded in the economics and social systems that most of us encounter on a regular basis.

A 100 other voices have said it more effectively than I'll ever be able to, but Ellen Ripley is one of the Great Movie heroes of American Cinema. I think her role in this film reflects some of the issues faced by women in the workplace in the 1970s. In the sequel, the issues have more to do with military adventurism, and distrust of corporate profit seeking. Both versions of the character are excellent, but the second does require the existence of the first.

There are still jump scares that work, even though I've seen the film dozens of times. The race against the clock at the end, may be an overused plot device but it works anyway. All of the actors don't get as much screen time as they probably deserve, but they all make great use of what time they do get on the screen. Director Ridley Scott has come back to this franchise a couple of times with much less success. As a producer he will be overseeing a new episode that opens later this summer. We can only hope that it comes closer to “Aliens”, then it comes to any of the subsequent films.