Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Director: Shawn Levy

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen

Have I Seen It Before: Nope. Did a quick survey of MCU films since Avengers: Endgame (2019), and I’m running at just over 50%. So the fact that I made a point to see this on opening weekend has to count for something.

Did I Like It: I’m not sure if I did love it.

I almost want there to be some calamitous reshuffling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this point, where there’s a promise that anything—good or bad—can happen from here on in. This film threatened it, promising a traffic jam with all of the non-MCU movies, but everything is put to essentially back to the status quo by the time we reach the post-credit tag. I was more intrigued/flabbergasted (and equal measures of both) by the announcement at Comic Con that Robert Downey Jr. will make a return paycheck—er, performance—as Victor Von Doom in the forthcoming Avengers films than anything that happens in the film.

A best, the film seems to acknowledge the errors—both forced unforced—in The Multiverse Saga, and want to poo-poo the whole practice of multiverse movies totally. Will it even be called The Multiverse Saga anymore? One has to wonder. But try as it might not to complete re-write the formula, Deadpool (Reynolds) and company seem to want to let the fanboys know that the studio is aware there’s a transition going on, and so it manages to be at least nominally weighed down by the same table-setting that soured the fun in some of the weakest entries in the series like Iron Man 2 (2010) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).

But who cares about all of that? Was the movie, despite all of the fan service that it needs to accomplish—funny? Largely, yes. I was laughing throughout. Some of the comic sequences are pretty inventive—especially the opening where Deadpool puts to rest how the movie will handle Wolverine’s (Jackman) death in Logan (2017). Word play abounds. But is it a great sign—for me as a human being, or the film as an enduring comedy—that the two jokes which I laughed at the loudest and are stuck in my head a day later both deal with famous people divorce? One of those jokes even appeared to be delivered without the subject being aware—thanks to Deadpool’s easy to ADR costume—but the other one had full—if appropriately weary—participation from the part involved.

Alien 3 (1992)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Lance Henriksen

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I get the complaints about the film. Hell, I feel the complaints about this film. Having an opening sequence designed solely to take the air out of any positive feelings one might have had at the end of Aliens (1986) feels like an injury one is not likely to overcome over the next nearly two hours. I think it is probably pretty fair to say—and Fincher would likely to agree—that David Fincher with one arm tied behind his back is not the filmmaker that James Cameron or Ridley Scott are in their prime. Editing problems abound. Early CGI effects abound that seem less designed to wow than to try and paper over some of those aforementioned editing problems. It all ends in a bummer. For a big summer movie, it’s a sad, not very thrilling affair.

And yet…

I’ve had the weird misfortune of watching a lot of misbegotten 90s sequels lately, and the more misbegotten those films are, there’s a rash of “Where’s Skippy?” moments. A beloved—or even liked—character from previous entries is missing from the entry. Inevitably, the actor reads the script and bows out of the prospect of more-of-the-same. The script isn’t re-written to be not include the character. Instead, there’s is fifteen seconds of dialogue about why the character is just off camera (“I broke up with Jack” Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); “Taggart’s retired in Arizona” Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)), after which we are introduced to the same type of character so that the script wouldn’t have to be re-written and… gasp… the movie might lose its release date.

That doesn’t happen here. We can be horrified by Newt and Hicks’ fate (or lack of one in this film), but at the very least the filmmakers have something akin to the courage of making Ripley (Weaver, still good despite doing one film too many) always seem as if she is in mourning. The film may not care about characters from Aliens, but at least they didn’t send them to Arizona. It’s a film about mortality and mourning, and while the mangling of a big studio movie that would make any big studio nervous dulls that theme somewhat, the theme can’t be extinguished.

Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)

Director: John Landis*

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, Héctor Elizondo, Theresa Randle

Have I Seen it Before: Never, and it’s a weird thing because I know I have seen moments from this film any number of times, as each of them tweaked a memory as the film unfurled. Swinging for the big Memorial Day weekend movie of 1994 as it was trying (and failed) to do, 30 second spots for this appeared all over my excessively re-watched VHS tapings of the series finale and fan-favorite marathon of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Did I Like It: Reviled for thirty years, and basically ensuring that we would have to collectively agree to eradicate even the faintest gleam of memory of the film before a fourth movie could even be considered, I went in thinking surely the film couldn’t be that bad. Certainly not as fresh as the original Beverly Hills Cop (1984), but Eddie Murphy in an R-rated comedy directed by John Landis** has to have some redeeming value to it.

And yet, no. This is some kind of weird void of anti-comedy. Did the editor lose a bet and have to come up with the worst possible takes for each shot? Was this the true start of the several years in which Murphy couldn’t find a joke in a film with a flashlight and the Lord on his side? Maybe all of these things, but I found this a surprisingly laugh-free endurance test, weirdly focused on the ins and outs of jurisdictional issues and theme park management.

Most people—including Murphy himself, if memory serves—have said that the problems center on him, not feeling the mood of Axel Foley during the filming and only taking on the film because it was a guaranteed big paycheck at the onset of what would prove to be a bit of a career downturn.

And then something occurs to me. I know now why I have such a weird memory for moments in this film. There’s only about 30 seconds of Murphy being light on his feet—or, for that matter, smiling—through the film, and that was what made it on TV way back when.

But you’re telling me that Landis*** couldn’t have at least made something lively out of this? Didn’t he make The Blues Brothers (1980)?

*Insert your own “what’s the worst thing John Landis has ever done” joke here, and be duly awarded your bad taste points.

**One more chance for that joke. Nothing yet? I’ll see if I can check back in before the end of the review.

***Last chance!

Air Force One (1997)

Director: Wolfgang Petersen

Cast: Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Even at the tender age of 13, I knew I was being sold a carefully crafted bill of goods. That’s probably not a great sign. At 13 you should just take a movie on its face and think that everything—especially the R-rated stuff you managed to sneak by your parents, as they were fine with violence, but squeamish in the face of sex--in a movie is just great! More, please!

The film is a rather brazen Die Hard (1988) clone, in an era where Die Hard clones proliferated at the point to define them as an epidemic. This at least has a hook beyond the same summer’s Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997). Die Hard on a… the President’s plane. Sure, let’s watch that. And the President is the one who has to re-take the plane? Bonus points, especially in a time where we had a President who—even if you supported Clinton—you couldn’t imagine taking any kind of actual active role in a situation…

Is it possible that a Jerry Goldsmith score is all I really need out of a movie? Well, that and Harrison Ford being demonstrably awake for the runtime will paper over quite a bit.

Come to think of it, have we ever had a President for which such a heroic role doesn’t seem like the height of silliness? Eisenhower? Washington? Even both of those guys feel like they’re going to be more at home in the scenes taking place in the Situation Room (which here looks more like the Roosevelt Room). Now that I think about it maybe Teddy Roosevelt could take something back from terrorists. Now there’s a movie Die Hard, but its Teddy Roosevelt.

Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, Jürgen Prochnow, Ronny Cox

Have I Seen It Before: Maybe pieces of it? Probably not a great sign that I can’t honestly differentiate cable airings of either of the first two films from each other.

Did I Like It: That sameness can be somewhat of charming in a film series I  already love (I’m awkwardly looking in your direction, Back to the Future (1985)), but here going through the same beats and the same lines (I don’t know why I’m mainly thinking of Paul Reiser’s “This is not my… (blank)”, but I am) means that the whole affair is an exercise in everything that is bad about a sequel*.

In fact, there only seems to be two main difference between this and the first Beverly Hills Cop (1984). The only real difference seems to be is that you can see it in Murphy’s eyes. He’s not happy to be here like he was in the original. This feels like the beginning of a long slow descent for Murphy into frightfully unfunny family films. He only lights up when he meets Hugh Hefner, in a moment that seems to have been built solely to fuel a trailer. Murphy isn’t helped by Tony Scott, primarily not a comedy director, although he does do what Tony Scott does well enough.

If the film were smarter, and fresher, you’d think there would be plenty of room for Tony Scott to do his Tony Scott thing. But no, the Tony Scott-ness takes all the air out of the room and what we’re left with is a pretty okay action movie.

*I will admit I am saying all of this having as yet watched Beverly Hills Cop III (1994).

**I will admit I am saying all of this having as yet watched Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) (dumb title). Maybe he gets better?

Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)

Director: Jan de Bont

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jason Patric, Willem Dafoe, Temuera Morrison

Have I Seen It Before: Never. It’s always hung out there as some sort of ominous chore from the summer of 1997*, and I’ve missed it for this long.

Did I Like It: The movie presents a fundamental critical question: Is it the wretched, ill-considered sequel which simultaneously no one requested, and which sent de Bont’s career on a decade-long nosedive just as it was starting to get off the ground? Or is it the underappreciated gem which brazenly sported that peak 90s movie imprimatur: “Two Thumbs Up!” ~ Siskel & Ebert.

There are moments where the film does have the same breathless charm of its predecessor. Divorce it from any other context, and one could be forgiven for thinking it is certainly above average for an action movie of its age. Bullock is at the peak of her charms. Dafoe is giving us just a taste of his movie baddie skills, but it is a pretty good taste. Mark Mancina does the score, and while he is absolutely no Hans Zimmer, Jerry Goldsmith, or (hilarious even to bring him up in the same breath) John Williams, he has a singular 90s movie action charm that people like Harold Faltermeyer brought to the table ten years earlier, and Steve Jablonsky or Ramin Djiwandi did ten years later.

In short, you’re likely to get your money’s worth out of the movie, depending on how much money you spent on the endeavor. So, maybe that doesn’t apply to 20th Century Fox.

And yet…

The movie does lose one pretty quickly in its climax. A bus keeps moving and with some speed, but the cruise ship always seems improbably slow. That feels like something that should have buffed out in a screenplay that wasn’t written as quickly as possible, because the PC they were typing on would explode if it went below a certain amount of pages per hour. Now there’s an idea. It’s also probably a victim of its own time, coming six months before the cruise ship disaster movie to end all cruise ship disaster movies.

But let’s not kid ourselves, the real problem is all over this thing. I mentioned that the script seemed to be rushed. With all that extra time they saved writing as fast as possible, you would think the production would have been able to do some more serious work on their film when Keanu passed. Instead, Jason Patric plays some guy who is a hot-shot LAPD officer with more bravery than sense… He’s playing Keanu’s character. A control-F and a couple of lines about this being a new guy was all they could manage. It makes the whole film seem like the type of garment you buy on vacation. It never quite fits right when you get it home, and everyone looking at it can kind of tell it was a misguided decision.

So the answer to the big question lands—as most answers to profound questions usually do—somewhere in the middle.

*Is there are more disappointing summer of movies out there. Between The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Batman & Robin (1997), franchises were laid low. Even with Men in Black (1997) things were a bit on the ho-hum, and we didn’t get a really memorable film out of the year until Titanic (1997) and that came out in December.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

Director: Martin Brest

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Ronny Cox

Have I Seen it Before: I mean, sure. A guy has cable growing up, he’d almost have to.

Did I Like It: A movie like this, so firmly established as one of the great action comedies can really only be analyzed through a series of questions.

How can a film that weirdly defaults to casual homophobia still be charming or even amusing several years later? I’m not sure I have a lot of answers for that one, or at least any satisfying ones. Eddie Murphy is charming, but funny foreign voices are sure carrying quite a bit of the weight here.

What happened to Eddie Murphy? Your mileage may vary, but this is about as good as Murphy gets on film. He’s funny, but it’s more than that. There’s a fierce intelligence to Axel Foley that makes every laugh stick harder than it might otherwise. He’s a hero for the cinematic ages, not unlike the wily nonconformists found in Bugs Bunny and Charlie Chaplin shorts.

But let’s get to the big question: What happened to Martin Brest? He made great movies (I have a vague but insistent desire to watch both Midnight Run (1988) and Scent of Woman (1992) right now. I’d even be up for taking in Meet Joe Black (1998), crazy bus crash and all, as long as I could run the trailer for Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) beforehand and have everyone leave before the movie starts. He makes one notable flop in Gigli (2003) and never gets to make a film again? What about Tim Burton? He hasn’t made a really interesting film in thirty years! What if we decided to return Steven Spielberg to the store after 1941 (1979)? Can anyone really account for the litany of do-overs we keep giving to J.J. Abrams.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)*

Director: John McNaughton

Cast: Michael Rooker, Tom Towles, Tracy Arnold, David Katz

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I remember being unnerved and nauseated by it even back then. Before my fellow Polterguides on Beyond the Cabin in the Woods ask, yes. I was the one who put it on the schedule for this year. I did know what we were getting into, and I did put up fair warnings.

Did I Like It: And that’s pretty much held up until today. Is it possible to truly “like” something so willfully repugnant? Probably not, and this thing continues to seemingly delight in nauseating. This is all before it—and by “it,” I do mean both the film Henry and the character Henry (Rooker)—really pulls the rug out from under you and confidently declared that monsters are not charming, nor do they secretly have a heart of gold, but are instead malevolent forces walking among us.

And yet, the film should be watched and is made with more skill than many of the horror movies of the era. Unflinching as it is, it is impossible to quietly root for Henry as we do for several of the other horror baddies who dominated the 80s. Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, Chucky, and Pinhead all became cult heroes despite their depravity. Just as we might think that Henry is depraved but has at least a little bit more heroism to him than his buddy Otis (Towles) could ever dream of…

But he doesn’t.

As Roger Ebert** often noted, Jean-Luc Godard said the best way to criticise a film was to make your own film, and McNaughton is offering an indictment of unthinking horror-fandom here, to the point where the viewer can’t—or at least I can’t—look at other horror films and ignore that somewhere in all the quips and mystery lies something with which we may not be collectively prepared to effectively deal.

*Some confusion about just what year spawned the film. Produced in ’86, it appears to have wound its way through the festival circuit before getting any kind of wide distribution in early ’91.

**Eagle-eared listeners of Beyond will note the recent addition of the Roger Ebert rule, but I say this one doesn’t apply, as I had both seen and had a reaction to the film before ever knowing what Ebert or Siskel thought about it.

Girl Shy (1924)

Director: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Richard Daniels, Carlton Griffin

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: It’s been a little while since I last saw a Harold Lloyd film, well over a year if my reviews are any indication, Dr. Jack (1922). In that time I’ve watched more than a few silent comedy films. In all that time, I’ve tried to piece together what separates the big three of the era, Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin. Ultimately I’m increasingly of the opinion that comparisons between those three might not be the most productive way to think about the genre. All three must trade in pantomime in order to get their laughs. All three have moments of sublime perfection in that pursuit, and those moments are the perfect blend of thorough planning in the attempt to depict pure chaos. Each of them do it, and the only valid comparison between the three is a question of how much they engage in this transcendent pursuit, and then you’re basically not engaging with the movie at hand, but instead stating your preference for a performer’s body of work in total.

The better framework for judging silent comedies is on their own merits, and with that in mind Girl Shy runs squarely in the middle of the pack. The longer portion of this film is a slightly repetitive romantic farce, which can be enjoyable enough. However, just as things begin to settle into a pattern one might want to call monotonous, the final chase begins. Harnessing the power of the short, and later inspiring the final sequence of The Graduate (1967), Lloyd is allowed to let loose. As he careens towards the pending nuptials of his leading lady (Ralston), Lloyd surprises and bounces from conveyance to conveyance, reminding the audience why he belongs in the pantheons with the other greats who for a time could blur the line between comedy and ballet.

The Truman Show (1998)

Director: Peter Weir

Cast: Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, yes. The summer of 1998 was one of those summers where I diligently saw everything on tap. I remember so clearly going to see this one with some friends. I arrived on time, but later than everyone else. While they grabbed seats, I grabbed popcorn for myself. When I returned, the movie had started. I couldn’t find my friends, and eventually had to give up and find a seat. It took a solid five minute to realize I had wandered into the wrong theater, which was currently about an hour into running the film. So, that first day I saw the scene where Truman (Carrey) is reunited with his father (Brian Delate) twice.

Did I Like It: And the film worked pretty well in both contexts then, and it ages insanely well today. It’s nearly impossible to peg this as a 90s film, and indeed could have been produced (with maybe some slightly tweaked special effects in just a few spots) ten years early or ten years later. It may be the most ageless summer comedy ever produced.

It’s the perfect vehicle for a Carrey looking to diversify his image from the broadest possible comedies and Batman villains*. Allowing Carrey to occasionally indulge in his instincts, but ultimately needing a fully-fleshed out performance to deliver a real story, it’s the perfect stepping stone between The Cable Guy (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999)**.

Ultimately, though, it is that thing that was rare enough in its day and is almost unheard of today: a big Hollywood movie with some ideas. I remember that day after my friends and I had seen it the first time (while I saw it 1.25 times). On the way home we talked about free will, and the inclination of powers greater than us to thwart the exercise of free will. It was heady talk for a smattering of 14-year-olds. I can reassure you we didn’t have anything like the same conversation on our way out of Armageddon (1998).

*Not that there is anything wrong with either of those things. I happen to like both of those things a great deal.

**Again, two things I happen to enjoy a great deal.

Angel (1984)

Director: Robert Vincent O’Neil

Cast: Cliff Gorman, Susan Tyrell, Dick Shawn, Donna Wilkes

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Before the all-night filmfest that had this as second batter (behind MaXXXine (2024)), I had never even heard of the film. Not to knock the lineup of that night, but I had the hardest time remembering the movies that were on the list, which really couldn’t be a great sign. Long story short, I had a hard time admitting I had heard of the film right up until the moment it actually started.

Did I Like It: God help me I enjoyed this film a whole lot. I enjoyed it certainly more than I might have thought I would have enjoyed a film about a straight-A teenager who moonlights as a prostitute in order to afford the private school that will get her off of Hollywood Boulevard.

This is an exploitation movie through and through. A scene involving the killer (John Diehl) and a raw egg goes on for long enough that you’re laughing uncontrollably at the end, but I’m also wondering if Stallone suffers from a lack of ambition when he was playing Rocky Balboa.

The film rises above its trappings by making us care about the characters immensely. We have wall-to-wall eclectic characters including a Chaplin-esque Yo-Yo performer (Steven M. Porter), a drag performer with an acid tongue and a heart of gold (Dick Shawn, stealing every scene), and a man who might be senile, but might actually be a cowboy movie star long past his prime (Rory Calhoun). No spoilers, but: When one character eventually dies at the hands of the killer, it is impossible not to feel sad. The crowd I saw it with voiced their objection. When another character nearly dies but survives at least long enough to bring the killer to his appropriate fate, we all cheered. That’s all you need out of a movie whether or not there’s a child prostitute in it.

You want to know how much I enjoyed the movie? The distributor of the remastered blu-ray had a shop set up in the lobby of Circle, and I immediately bought a copy. There are two more films in the series? I’ll probably end up watching those, too.

That was not how I thought the evening would end.

MaXXXine (2024)

Director: Ti West

Cast: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Kevin Bacon

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Finally managed to catch a new release on opening weekend. What a luxury. It was appended to an all-night marathon with a series of other films with similar settings and themes. I had the ambition to make it the whole night, but you can imagine how that went.

Did I Like It: I had a little trepidation going into this. I’ve seen X (2022) but haven’t gotten around to watching Pearl (2022), and I figured I would be more than a little lost. Thankfully, you dear reader will really only need X to follow what is going on. Pearl—the villain of the first film—is an incidental presence in the film, which only makes me worried that Pearl is something of an incidental film, but that’s an issue for another review.

Where X was a straight-ahead (if well-crafted) slasher, this trucks in a lot of the same trappings of a slasher film, but ends up being a fairly serviceable mystery as well. You might be saying to yourself that such a description doesn’t really distinguish itself from Scream (1996) or any of its sequels. But there’s an undercurrent of tension in this film that I really think sells the possibility that Maxine herself is the killer, and makes that possible ending not a complete betrayal of everything that has happened before. That uncertainty alone makes the film worth a watch.

I won’t spoil what is happening in the film here, but it certainly helps matters that by the end of the film anyone who survives is not going to have any degree of innocence. Everyone has blood on their hands, and almost none of that blood owes itself to madness, but instead to ambition, ruthlessness, and a reflexive, compulsive desire to keep things “the way they ought to be.” This is Hollywood, after all.

Short Circuit 2 (1988)

Director: Kenneth Johnson

Cast: Fisher Stevens, Michael McKean, Cynthia Gibb, Tim Blaney

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, yes. Many, many times. For many, many years the only copy of the film I had was a hastily record VHS taping from an airing on HBO. So hasty, indeed, that we only got the tape started after the rather charming sequence where a toy Johnny 5 careens through a Simpson’s department store. Until DVDs could finally set me straight, for all I knew this movie began with the line “Silence is better than Little Richard?” Weird that I could be so enamored with a film I’ve only seen a part of.

Did I Like It: Ok, so we all know what the problem is with the film, beyond the fact that your relative enjoyment of the film might be directly tied to how close to the age of 5 you were when you watched it. And this is a difficult age to compartmentalize the elements of art, to say nothing of light entertainment. But if you’re wondering whether this movie holds up nearly forty years later, let me assure you with this: When the movie is about (and I am choosing to believe this is canon in the film) a clearly disturbed white guy (Stevens) in brown face trying to get his US Citizenship, despite clearly living in a truck in downtown Toronto, it’s an unblinking, if awkward, dark comedy. Taken on its own terms, however, its really awful.

When the film is a light comedy about a haphazard jewel heist thwarted by a robot with a soul (Blaney) who just wants to understand people better despite losing all self-control when he is within eyesight of a book store (relatable) it is still the film I remember, the one I kept only part of for years, with “SHORT CIRKIT 2” scrawled on its label, that was punctuated with an episode of the short-lived Encyclopedia Brown tv series from the 80s.

There are parts of the film to still enjoy.

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024)

Director: Kevin Costner

Cast: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Giovanni Ribisi*

Have I Seen it Before: No. Tried to orchestrate a delicate movie watching schedule for the 4th of July, only to pick this one, then find my choice for second movie had sold out. The best laid plans, I suppose…

Did I Like It: Which might be the perfect point into which I should enter the review proper. I spend the first half an hour of this film really gearing up for the reality that I’m going to have a uniformly bad time. The villagers of Horizon we meet in the opening of the film are dumb. They are a gentle kind of dumb, but they have invited the disaster that befalls them. Granted, I tend to think that about a lot of people in our own chaotic day and age, but it became clear I might not be the right audience for this.

Then the movie makes it pretty clear that they were duped and are pretty dumb for it as well. That almost wins me over, but the reality is a film that has a wide array of engaging moments, is more often than not content to be pretty run-of-the-mill western, and is pointedly disinterested in having any kind of catharsis (see the apt reference in the footnote about Giovanni Ribisi). It’s stuffed to the brim with characters, and edited with enough lag to the proceedings, I’m really not sure why this didn’t become a prestige television series. It’s going to spend the vast majority of its life watched in essentially that format, why hang everything on theatrical grosses?

The question isn’t really if I’ve ever seen it before, remains will I ever see it again, or watch any of the other parts… Eh. I might wait for it to show up on streaming.

*This year’s winner of the Mark Hamill Award for getting high billing on a movie, despite only appearing for a fleeting, wordless moment at the end of the film… Which was really only a trailer for the forthcoming Chapter 2. That would be kind of like Mary Steenburgen receiving near-top billing for her extensive work in Back to the Future: Part II (1989). I feel like I should get a lot more credit for only mentioning Back to the Future in this review in a footnote.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Director: George Miller

Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne

Have I Seen It Before: Yes, and now we’ve reached another moment of necessary confession. When this one came out, everyone thought it had reinvented the wheel (despite making extensive use of them, har har). When I finally came around to it—I did miss it in theater; at the rate I’m going these days, that surprises even me—I thought it was well made. It had what at least appeared to be a lot of practical effects, and it would be hard to deny that the thing moves along at brisk pace, but I really didn’t see what the big deal was.

Did I Like It: Now that I’ve given you the appropriate amount of time to at least think through your admonitions, given that I kind of liked the rest of the films in the series now that I’ve had occasion to watch them, surely I’ll be set straight.

And for the most part, either the hype has long since passed or I got my head out of my ass long enough to enjoy what was present. The series proves to be the most adaptable of the action franchises. Any series that began as testosterone filled as this would have been forgiven for having difficulty embracing feminism in its old age, but this creates a new hero in Furiosa (Theron) that—had we been diligently going to the theater this summer—would have no problem being the face of the franchise, and with no diminishing of its hard edge.

I’m also cured on the second viewing of this movie of a wrong-headed desire I’ve had for the films. After Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) I keep wanting to see some sort of catharsis for Max (Hardy) I the future. By continuing to break Max a little bit with every film, Miller is proving that catharsis is not what these films are about. Obviously they’re about survival, and if a post-apocalyptic film can get me on board with survival, that’s got to be worth something.

*Including all of the ones which awkwardly star Mel Gibson, whom I could ignore/tolerate for longer than I would have thought, and including Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), which I was surprised by how much I enjoyed even on first viewing.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Director: George Miller, George Ogilvie

Cast: Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, Helen Buday, Bruce Spence

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: It’s a weird question about which to ultimately be on the fence, but this is either the worst of the Mad Max series, or the best one. It’s entirely possible that it exists in a quantum state, where it is both the worst and the best film in the series.

The hard edge simplicity of the film previous (and to a large extent, the latter) films in the series is gone, and in its place are an array of kids and a couple of power ballads from Turner. This is fundamentally a run of the mill American action movie of the 1980s. It doesn’t really need to feature the Australian Wasteland, or even Max (Gibson) at all. The way I know this is that somebody like Kevin Costner could—and did, now that I think about it—make similar movies for the next ten years. As a whole this series seeks to thrill more than it makes one want to feel, but here the mixture is tilted in the other direction.

Perhaps sensing that the series might be getting too big for its origins, we are served with more than a few great action sequences—especially the fight in the titular Thunderdome, the power ballads are actually quite good (I’ve been singing “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” to myself for days now), and that pathos brings Max to as close a conclusion as his world and trauma might allow… Which is, of course, reset years later by Mad Max Fury Road (2015)*.

But do you want to know the most insidious part? With this film approaching a thematic ending for the character (while still not quite pulling the trigger), and the power of Max maybe finding redemption (or at least an ending) I would kind of be interested in one more Mad Max film with the old road warrior reaching his conclusion, either with some peace or with complete destruction. With Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) not doing so hot at the box office, and Gibson ramping up to release a sequel—yes, you read that right—to Passion of the Christ, it’s probably not going to happen.

*While the series is supremely disinterested in continuity or canon, today I learned that you van form a loose continuity by tracking the injuries to Max’s eyes and knees. Now you know, too.

The Big Combo (1955)

Director: Joseph H. Lewis

Cast: Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I worry I’m slowly running out of things to say about the noir genre, or at the very least I’m running out of things to say about the rank and file of the genre. Some of the dialogue is very much like the other examples, the plot is relatively cookie cutter, and I’m becoming increasingly of the opinion that at some point someone shot a few dozen feet of a squad car pulling into the covered garage of the Los Angeles Police Department and leading a clown car’s worth of local hoods into the station for questioning. I think I’ve seen it in at least three films now.

That’s not to say the experience is negative. If you are both inclined to and have the opportunity to watch this film*, you’re probably going to have a nominally good time. The film’s characters are a bit more on the eclectic side. Two button men (Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman) are far more obviously in love with each other than one might have thought would make it through in the 50s, and if you ever really wanted to see a scene heavily imply Richard Conte performing oral sex on a woman, then brother, are you in luck**. The real pleasures, though, are likely in the cinematography from John Alton. A—if occasionally frugal—symphony of playful shadows keeps one interested in the film when the trappings and restrictions of the genre blend into the background.

*Such opportunities should be plentiful, as the film tripped over itself into the public domain. Could you imagine a film released today that just “forgot” to register its copyright? It boggles the mind.

**Why that had to be more obliquely displayed, where two men in a healthy and committed—if murderous—relationship is completely beyond me, but that’s a topic for a different time.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

Director: George Miller

Cast: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Kjell Nilsson, Emil Minty

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Maybe? It’s going to be hard to watch Gibson do much of anything anymore, that’s just the reality of it, but it’s always a little bit easier to look at him when he’s still got youth and the apparent ability to hide some of his more hateful tendencies. Is that a reasonable way to judge a movie? I’d say yes. He’s a pretty bad guy, and it’s probably not a great idea to grade him on a curve because only some of his worst traits might engender an assault charge if he weren’t rich.

Well, now that we have that out of the way. I felt like I went to easy on him in my review of the original Mad Max (1979).

Where the original film felt like an entry from an entirely different movie series, this all feels like a Mad Max movie. Anyone who loved Mad Max Fury Road (2015) or Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) will probably find plenty to enjoy here, if they can get over any of the stuff I complained about earlier, and are fine with a film that is happily of an era unconcerned with injecting feminism into its action films.

There is grime, and despair, and yes, Virginia, there is a tanker truck. What would one of these films be without a tanker truck? Probably the original film, or, worse yet, Waterworld (1995). Ultimately, though the film has that secret sauce that I think makes these films as watchable as they are: very little dialogue. Nothing will ruin an action movie set “a few years from now” more than the need to explain how things came to be this way, and Miller understands this. If anything else, the less we have to hear Gibson, the more we can still tolerate him in the here and now.

Mad Max (1979)

Director: George Miller

Cast: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Is the question whether or not one recommends this movie, or if one would recommend this movie to audiences who have enjoyed the rest of the series, and especially Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) or Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)?

This first adventure into the bleak and desperate with Rockatansky (Gibson, improbably baby-faced here) has a lot of what one might ask from a film like this. Yes, there’s testosterone and petrol-drenched action for long stretches. The future is bleak. Everyone has an Australian accent. You are unlikely to ask for your money back.

If we’re going by the second question, I’m not sure I would recommend it. Everything is incredibly detached from what follows. We’re told society is breaking down, but society is everywhere, or at least it seems like a vaguely recognizable version of the austere level of society we all claim to enjoy today. This would be pretty easily forgiven. Miller and company were working with a shoe-string budget and still figuring out what they could or wanted to do in the movies. The problem becomes that offering this much back story into Max and offering us a glimpse of the world before everything went wrong, I’m stuck watching the movies to follow and can’t help but wonder how things went from some sub-Robocop level of lawlessness to the highly stylized anarchy—let’s call it Planet of the Aussies—of the later films. I think if you’re going to watch Fury Road wondering how things could get this theatrically bad in the hypothetical lifespan of one man, then you’re probably going to have a bad time. This is not the film series for those kinds of questions.

The Watchers (2024)

Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré, Oliver Finnegan

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: One doesn’t want to blindly impugn the work of a first time filmmaker, and there are things to recommend here. The film has an agreeable dark fairy tale vibe throughout, and much of the cinematography is pretty stellar. For the most part, when the script isn’t getting in their way, Fanning and the cast are solid.

That’s all I’ve got, unfortunately. The rest of the movie is a vague but insistent disappointment. All of the mood rather adeptly set up in the film’s first half beings to crumble away just as soon as the story feels the need to hemorrhage exposition to explain and give any degree of sense to its army of fairies*. Rules are spat at us and just as quickly ignored. Beyond that, the dialogue just gets plain dumb. “It’s a door!” one character exclaims, when a door is suddenly revealed. The creatures depicted are pointedly nothing special, made all the more derivative when the A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) played right before. These fairies jump out of the far end of the frame and rattle with the same vibe as the aliens in that series.

All of this might be tolerated if not completely forgiven when we see this as the first exploratory attempt of a new filmmaker. The inescapable problem really comes from the fact that this might only be remembered as one of the great missed opportunities in film. I won’t indulge in any sort of discourse around nepo babies, but if I had the opportunity to direct a major motion picture before I turned 30 largely because my father is one of the more iconic—if not consistent—filmmakers of the last 30 years, I would be desperate not to make a film so insistently like the films my father produces. I’m not sure if the studio needed something that fit in with the Shyamalan brand, or if it never occurred to the filmmaker that something else would not only be needed, but appreciated. But more creative heads should have prevailed.

*Spoiler alert? Maybe.