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Deadpool & Wolverine Review

With painfully few exceptions, Netflix’s Beverley Hills Cop: Axel F being among the most recent, legacy characters and legacy IPs, especially male or male-centric ones, have been kicked around and treated like family members that the big studios that own them are ashamed to acknowledge. So, when it was announced that The House of Mouse was going to bring back one of the most beloved comic/comic book movie characters of all time, featured in a film franchise known for its diarrhea and masturbation jokes, one could be forgiven for puckering up in some warm dark places.

Fortunately, the main duo’s affinity for the character shines through in scene after scene as Jackman’s dour Wolverine plays rage-filled ying to Reynolds’ neverending diatribe of sophomoric yang. This dynamic was attempted in Deadpool 2 with Josh Brolin’s Cable but fell flat due to a number of factors, Cable’s lack of character development chief among them. In Deadpool and Wolverine, the chemistry sings.

Whereas 2 sometimes felt relentless and chaotic, by keeping the focus tight on its two charismatic leads and infusing it with the perfect combination of heart, humor, and brutal violence, Deadpool & Wolverine effortlessly soars past the dreg that has become the MCU specifically and Disney programming in general.

Another shining star atop the film’s refrigerator art, as Wade and Logan go on a worlds-spanning adventure, good-naturedly harpooning many of the MCU’s blunders and missteps via The Merc with The Mouth’s signature meta-humor, the Deadpool & Wolverine delivers scene after scene of the best fan service ever put to film. Do not go hunting for spoilers, and hide your eyes from all of the marketing because D&W’s cameos are beyond next-level, and each one discovered before its time will rob you of much of the movie’s magic.

All of these warm and fuzzies aren’t just good but are dearly needed because the film’s plot is only slightly more undercooked than its villain. Played with aplomb enough to almost make up for being little more than a glorified plot device, Emma Corrin, best known for her role as Princess Diana in The Crown, manages to squeeze out and amplify both drops of character development written for her Cassandra. Performing real-life magic, she manufactures a three-dimensional performance virtually from thin air.

Ultimately, Deadpool & Wolverine is a savagely hilarious action-adventure comedy that relies on a lot of fun action sequences, tons of charisma, and gallons of chemistry between its leads. By the film’s end, your face will hurt from smiling.

WOKE ELEMENTS

It’s The 3rd One

• There’s a sprinkling of sacrilege that inches its way past modern cinema’s ubiquitous overuse of the Lord’s Name. This is why I didn’t endorse the film as Worth it.

It’s Only Gay If You Don’t Laugh

• The marketing campaign had some fans worried that Deadpool & Wolverine would lean hard into the bromance that Reynolds has been hinting at since the first Deadpool. However, the movie avoids this like the plague and instead dishes out a continual barrage of gay jokes that lampoon homosexuality rather than glorifying it.

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Fly Me to the Moon

Fly Me to the Moon reimagines the Apollo 11 mission. Set during the first half of 1969, the movie follows an unlikely duo—a marketing maven and a NASA launch director—as they each race to the moon, one on a soundstage and the other from mission control.

Fly Me to the Moon Review

It took me a while to pinpoint exactly what’s wrong with Fly Me to the Moon. On it’s surface, it should be great. It’s a well-shot, well-paced piece that benefits from the incredible late 60s aesthetic. The problem(s) isn’t a lack of talent. The film has some heavy hitters in front of the camera. Scarlett Johansson is a pro with a career that spans three decades and boasts Academy Award-winning films, thoughtful indies, and, of course, billion-dollar franchises. Woody Harrelson always gives audiences something interesting. Channing Tatum, while best known for the Magic Mike movies and playing silly characters in comedies, is an underrated performer who nails what there is of his role in this film.

There are actually a couple of problems with the film. The first is one that seems to be a recurring theme in Hollywood these days: a lack of focus. It wants to be a delightful rom-com set in the between moments of one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind, but it also wants to be a sincere tale of redemption for Channing Tatum’s character who feels responsible for the tragedy of the Apollo 1 mission. Simultaneously, it attempts to be a historical catalog of the bureaucratic hoops NASA had to jump through at the same time that they were putting together the world’s most difficult and important jigsaw puzzle. But wait, there’s more. Fly Me to the Moon desires to put a comedic spin on the long-running and ever-increasingly-popular conspiracy theory that the Moon Landing was faked. Finally, the film mostly wants to be a showcase for Scarlett Johansson. The lion’s share of its “action” consists of her briefly turning up the charm and fast-talking her way into and around various issues, which are then quickly wrapped up with seemingly little effort just in time for the next one. There are actually a few other subplots, but you get the idea.

Despite this lack of focus, arguably, the film’s greatest flaw is that for most of its runtime, it seems as though it is yet another attempt by Hollywood to deconstruct and denigrate yet another moment of American greatness, this time for some very cheap laughs (oh look at the flamboyantly gay primadonna director cliché – hilarious – in fairness, Lance Rash, best known as Dean Pelton in Community, is a film highlight). So, half of the audience is alienated, the ones old enough to remember a time before smartphones and feel a very real and very personal connection to what America used to be. The other half, the ones who have had their unearned and arrogant cynicism strobed into their brains as children, don’t care and aren’t given a reason to.

This is a real shame because there are moments in which one can see the movie that should have been, with a frightened government smack dab in the middle of the Cold War racing its arch-nemesis to the stars. Having already faced setbacks like losing to the Soviets with Sputnik and Yuri Gargarin, not to mention tragedies like Apollo 1, the government decides to make a clandestine production of the moon landing and cheat their way to winning the Space Race. When key characters at NASA get wind of this it becomes a mad dash to see who can get to the moon first, actors on a set, or Neil and the Boys. It practically writes itself.

Fly Me to the Moon may be worth a rent for a date night, but if you’re dead set on going to the theater, go see Thelma. You’ll be glad you did.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Not All Mary Sues Carry A Lightsaber

• Scarlett Johansson’s character has a tragic childhood but perseveres in her adult life thanks to having all of the moxie. She’s a fast-talking gal who can do just about anything the situation calls for, be it schmoozing senators, driving like a car Mario Andretti, or just living in a man’s world. All she needs to do to unlock her full potential is accept how awesome she truly is and be herself.
• There’s an early scene in which Scar-Jo’s character puts one over on some male automobile execs, making them look like misogynistic fools and her like the brilliant dame who can practically read minds. It’s all very cliché and predictable, and it’s been done better many, many times before.

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Thelma

When 93-year-old Thelma discovers that she’s been the victim of a phone phishing scam, she decides to take the law into her own wrinkled hands.

Thelma Review

Thelma’s first-time writer/director, Josh Margolin, weaves a tale grounded in the delicious and often ridiculous reality of the human condition. Superficially a parody of the modern action flick, with panache, heart, and humor, Margolin and company deconstruct the genre’s tropes to spin a tale that, at its core, is about the importance of feeling self-sufficient and how the slow deterioration of age can rob us of this. More importantly, Thelma is about embracing the reality of you and adapting to overcome our frailties rather than wallowing in them.

June Squibb, who also voiced Nostalgia in this year’s Inside Out 2, is superb as the titular Thelma. Her first leading role in a career spanning decades, her deceptively deep performance perfectly embodies the very ontology of “grandma.” She is sweet and loving, confused but not senile, feisty but not cartoonish. Her character is the perfect blend of excellent, sincere storytelling and an actress who is the embodiment of the character she is playing.

The story is straightforward and artfully simple, but Margolin’s direction and Squibb’s sweet demeanor and wonderful performance make it impossible not to fall in love with Thelma immediately. Subsequently, her vigilante quest for justice quickly feels as though it is your own. As the audience quickly latches onto Thelma, the electric current between the material, direction, and performance grounds viewers in such a way that they experience the same heart-stopping sensations as Thelma navigates seemingly mundane obstacles, as they would watching James Bond maneuver through a deadly laser maze, with the added benefit of being able to laugh at yourself for your investment in such absurdity.

Unlike in last year’s 80 for Brady, in which a group of elderly women shared one last adventure that relied heavily on convenience and unrealistic happenstance, Thelma is almost completely believable and all the better for it.

With a simple story made gripping thanks to a great mix of characters, perfect pacing, and great performances, Thelma is a delightful way to spend an hour and a half at the theater. It is absolutely Worth it.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Nothing

• Nada.

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