Action

Sasquatch Sunset, Ungentlemanly Warfare, and the Risk of Originality

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Eiza González in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare; a scene from Sasquatch Sunset

When it comes to intellectual property, cinema doesn’t operate in absolutes. There are great superhero movies and also terrible ones; there are great original movies and also terrible ones. Still, the franchise boom of the 2010s created an uneven playing field that lent a certain luster to smaller-scale films which weren’t rooted in comic books or young-adult literature. In fact, the continued survival of these types of pictures is what makes me confident that the medium isn’t on the verge of collapsing, despite the constant industry doomsaying about A.I. or tax write-offs or Netflix giving Zack Snyder a billion dollars to make seven different versions of an off-brand Star Wars rather than releasing any of its #content in theaters. The movies have been at death’s door ever since their birth over 100 years ago. They just never seem to die.

Currently, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe dwindling in dominance and audiences rewarding more ambitious storytelling like last year’s #Barbenheimer phenomenon, there seems to be an opportunity for studios to pivot away from the IP craze and toward more original movies. But again, the mere fact of a film’s putative originality doesn’t necessarily mean it’s, y’know… good. This past weekend featured two new releases that don’t feature masked heroes, magic wands, or talking animals. At last, real movies for adults! Except, well, suffice it to say that both have their flaws. Read More

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Monkey Man: Punch and Broody

Jeremy BeckReviews
Dev Patel in Monkey Man

Did you know that Dev Patel looks good with his shirt off? The actor isn’t widely regarded as a sex symbol, despite some sticky fumblings with women in The Green Knight and the underrated Wedding Guest. Monkey Man, Patel’s feature directorial debut, is primarily a chance for him to demonstrate his filmmaking chops, but it also serves to showcase his well-earned immodesty. With his careless mane of black hair, a square jawline covered by a trimly untrimmed beard, and enough abs to fill a supermarket soda aisle, he’s a matinee idol with the unforced charisma to match. It’s only fair that he spends much of the movie getting his face bloodied to a pulp.

In fact, when Monkey Man opens, Patel’s character routinely receives bone-crunching body blows, and not as a consequence of any vigilantism; it’s just his job. Credited as Kid—though he also goes by the alias Bobby, not to mention the title moniker—he moonlights at an underground Indian boxing club, where he functions as (to borrow from an upcoming release) the designated fall guy, wearing a monkey mask and throwing fights in exchange for a meager cut of the take. (Given that he never seems to win a match, it’s unclear how the house makes any money, but let’s not worry about plausibility.) His earnings are commensurate to his suffering; as explained by the establishment’s oily promoter (a welcome Sharlto Copley), he needs to really wow the crowd with his injuries in order to collect the coveted “bleed bonus.” It isn’t exactly a glamorous lifestyle, but Kid’s pain is a tolerable means to a very specific end. Read More

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Godzilla x Kong, the New Empire: Animal Kingdumb

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene from Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

The tagline for Roland Emmerich’s 1998 version of Godzilla proclaimed, “Size does matter.” Fair enough, but so do scale, weight, and clarity. The computer-generated beasts who rampage through Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire are undeniably large. But as creatures of action cinema, they are paper tigers—ephemeral and insubstantial, lacking in true force. They look like giants and punch like toddlers.

This is something of a problem, because the whole point of an enterprise like Godzilla x Kong is for its titular monsters to haul off and kick ass. Director Adam Wingard, who previously helmed Godzilla vs. Kong (the prior entry in Warner Bros.’ increasingly unwieldy cinematic universe), is no fool; he knows that the audiences flocking to this movie expect it to feature extensive footage of the King of the Monsters and the Eighth Wonder of the World laying waste to assorted animal competitors. He obliges immediately, as the opening scene finds a grey-bearded King Kong sprinting through the jungles and mountains of the Hollow Earth—the subterranean realm where he’s taken up a semi-peaceful existence, away from prying human eyes—as he’s chased by snarling predators that look like a cross between a jackal and an anteater. Kong’s predictable thrashing of these puny foes immediately emblematizes the picture’s failings. The issue isn’t so much that the creatures look fake—the special effects are impressively detailed in terms of color and design—but that the combat carries no tangible impact. It feels like an elaborate WWE routine—all posturing and preening, no real pain. Read More

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The Creator: Cries of the Machines

Jeremy BeckReviews
John David Washington in The Creator

Noisy, clunky, and conventional, Gareth Edwards’ The Creator is a disappointing folly. Yet it is also a worthy endeavor, attempting to wield boisterous blockbuster filmmaking in the service of an original, idea-driven story. It could have been great, if only it were good.

Originality is relative in mainstream cinema. It’s commendable that The Creator isn’t formally rooted in existing intellectual property; the screenplay, by Edwards and Chris Weitz, actually invents new characters and conceives its own quasi-apocalyptic future. It also exhibits minimal interest in jumpstarting a franchise, instead telling a complete and self-contained story. (Of course, Disney might have demanded otherwise had the film been commercially successful; in that regard, early box-office receipts indicate the studio has nothing to worry about.) At the same time, it borrows liberally (one might say shamelessly) from numerous science-fiction touchstones—most obviously Blade Runner and its sequel, 2049, but also the Terminator pictures, Star Wars, and plenty more. It’s a putatively original movie that nevertheless feels recycled, as though an algorithm spat out a vague approximation in response to the prompt, “new-age sci-fi entertainment.” Read More

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Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, Part One: Choose to Exceptional

Jeremy BeckReviews
Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, Dead Reckoning, Part One

The Mission: Impossible franchise doesn’t change so much as grow. It’s a creature of controlled entropy; it keeps getting bigger—longer runtimes, more elaborate plotting, increasingly crazed stunts—but it always subjects its maniacal absurdity to meticulous quality control. Two movies ago, in the spectacular Rogue Nation, a bureaucrat memorably described Ethan Hunt—the indefatigable superspy played by Tom Cruise as a cross between James Bond and the Road Runner—as “the living manifestation of destiny.” This time around, in Dead Reckoning, Part One, a beleaguered company man (Shea Whigham) calls him “a mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos.” You get the idea: This dude is committed, and he ain’t slowing down.

You might say the same thing about Cruise, though the one enemy that Hollywood’s most fanatical star seems unlikely to vanquish is Father Time. Yet one of the pleasures of Dead Reckoning is how it probes the tension between its 61-year-old lead’s eternal charm and the inexorable fact of his own mortality. I’m not suggesting that Cruise shows his age here; he remains extraordinarily fit and good-looking, and he performs feats of derring-do that would make actors of any generation blanch. But the man who leapt into multiplexes for Brian De Palma in the summer of 1996, hovering inches above the floor as a bead of sweat slid perilously across his brow, has gradually lost some of his invincibility. When this Ethan runs, you feel his muscles ache. Read More

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