Top 10 Films of 2020

10) Vampires vs the Bronx

The Lost Boys meets Attack the Block? Sorta… This was a deliriously entertaining and knowing slice of genre nonsense as teenage heroes realise the gentrifying property company forcing them out is actually run by vampires.

9) Yes, God, Yes

Karen Maine’s directorial debut was uncomfortable but rewarding as Natalia Dyer’s innocent teenager gets victimised by scandalous gossip, and is sent to a religious retreat as punishment, but learns more there than was planned

8) Possessor

Brandon Cronenberg’s second film, after an eight year wait, proved he is quite good at the family business of body horror as an assassin hijacking a mark’s mind finds herself in a fight for survival as the mark and her meld eerily

7) The Boys in the Band

Matt Crowley’s 1968 play gets a second big screen adaptation, with Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto heading the cast that gathers for a dinner party exposing the complications sinister and farcical of pre-Stonewall gay life.

6) Une Fille Facile

Rebecca Zlotowski makes the best Eric Rohmer film since he died in 2010. Mina Farid is the Cannes teenager at a crossroads who follows her glamorous cousin into high society, but like Pauline a la Plage learns too much.

5) An American Pickle

The dream team of writer Simon Rich and Seth Rogen (flexing his acting muscles) combined for a surprisingly more serious take on the absurdist comic novella Sell Out. Yes, Rogen was hysterically funny as Herschel the pickled immigrant, but he also conveyed the quiet desperation of Ben, leading to an unexpected affirmation of faith and family.

4) Wasp Network

Director Olivier Assayas made a sharp turn from last year’s French romantic comedy Non-Fiction with this multilingual sun-kissed thriller set in 1990s Havana and Miami following the exiles, spies, defectors, and double-agents playing merry hell with Castro’s regime, the CIA, and all points in between. Audaciously structured, this was always absorbing and frequently tense.

3) Spenser Confidential

Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg combined again for a thriller loosely based on the classic Robert B Parker PI creation. ‘Loosely’: because this took place in the sort of chaotic Boston milieu familiar from The Fighter, and seemed every bit as interested in setting up absurdist comedy riffs as it was in actually solving the mystery.

2) Tenet

In a normal year this film would’ve charted lower… The Protagonist’s quest to find pieces of an infernal machine dismantled in the future had a very enjoyable puzzle piece intricacy which will repay multiple viewings, but the Debicki/Branagh emotional motor did not hum, making me question whether this should’ve been a Memento noir rather than a plane-crashing blockbuster.

Cr. NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX

1) The Trial of the Chicago 7

I had the odd complaint about Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut Molly’s Game that it wasn’t Sorkin enough. No such concerns with this courtroom drama, this is a tour-de-force of Sorkin dialogue, once intended for Spielberg to direct. Every speaking part seems to have a zinger at some point, and the political import of 1968 to 2020 leaps off the screen without any need for the occasional anachronism. I watched this twice within a week with no loss of relish for the flashback structure, the fantastic ensemble, and the trademark Sorkin sincerity.

Miscellaneous Movie Musings: Part XXX

As the title suggests, so forth.

This could be how I see Tenet in 70mm later this year, if it or any other blockbuster gets released at all in 2020

The polling suggests cinema may be done

It seems somebody had the good sense last week to poll Americans on whether they would return to cinemas once this coronavirus unpleasantness has blown over. The answer was yes. Certainly. But not right away. Rather like the beach on the 4^th of July in Amity Island everybody would stand back and let someone else be the first to paddle out into the water and make sure there were no killer sharks lurking thereabouts. But if people are serious about waiting three weeks or three months before they’d dare venture into a packed cinema again, how can the cinemas survive? How many days can you survive as a going concern when your biggest screens showing the biggest blockbusters at the height of summer garner an attendance more usually seen at an Alex Ross Perry movie in the IFI? Big releases have been pushed into 2021 with abandon: Fast & Furious 9, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Morbius. I’d be surprised if MGM didn’t get nervous and shove No Time to Die from November to next April if they think that by November people will still be readjusting to the idea that going to sit in the dark with 300 sweating sniffling coughing strangers packed like sardines in a crushed tin can isn’t like asking for rat stew during the Black Death. I for one like the idea of taking a coffee into an obscure French film and listening to Jazz24 in screen 3 of the IFI after normal service has been resumed – but the kicker is, that would be a fairly empty screening. And too many years of press screenings, matinees, and unpopular art-house choices have made me unaccustomed to truly packed cinemas. I was already frequently exasperated at bustling audiences before the coronavirus; because of the constant talking, shuffling in and out to the toilets and sweets counter, and, above all, the feeling that I was looking out over a WWII night scene as the light from endless phones strafed the roof of the cinema on the watch for incoming enemy aircraft. To put up with that, and then be paranoid that anybody, not just the people sniffling or coughing, but asymptomatic anybody could have the coronavirus and I could end up with scarred lungs and no sense of smell or taste from watching a film makes me hesitant to go before the second wave.

Further thoughts on the xkcd challenge

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned re-watching Aloha and thinking about the xkcd challenge [https://xkcd.com/2184/]. To wit, it is easy to prove your independent streak by disliking films universally beloved, but less easy to prove your independent streak by liking films universally reviled. Randall Munroe gave a critical score under 50% on Rotten Tomatoes as the target, the other two parts of his trifecta being that the films came out in your adult life post-2000, and are not enjoyed ironically. Well, gosh darn if I didn’t find these ten films rated between 40% and 49% by critics on Rotten Tomatoes. And you know what, their critical pasting is, I would argue, largely undeserved. Some of them are rather good, some of them are not nearly as bad as reputed, and I would happily watch all of them again.

What Lies Beneath

I was astonished to see that Robert Zemeckis’ 2000 Hitchcock pastiche was so critically pasted when it features some sequences; in particular the agony in the bath tub; that rise to the height of genuine Hitchcock level suspense. Zemeckis’ increasing obsession with CGI-enhanced technical wizardry hasn’t yet completely swamped his interest in his characters, as he overtly toys with Rear Window expectations.

Orange County

Colin Hanks and Jack Black are the main players in Mike White’s knockabout comedy about a hopelessly bungled application to Stanford, courtesy of Lily Tomlin’s guidance counsellor, and increasingly ludicrous attempts to get the admissions kerfuffle all sorted out by any means necessary. It may not be as sharp as other White scripts but it’s always amusing for its less than 90 minutes.

xXx

Vin Diesel has valiantly kept the memory of this ludicrous 2002 film alive by somehow making it his only successful non-Fas & Furious franchise. The premise of an extreme sports dude being recruited into being an amateur CIA spook makes no sense what-so-ever, but it had better action, jokes, and humanity than the Bond film of its year by some measure – “Bora Bora!”

The Rules of Attraction

It was a genuine shock to see that this film was so critically reviled when I enthusiastically featured it in my list of best films of the 2000s. It stands beside American Psycho as the best adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, and Roger Avary draws career highlight turns from leads Ian Somerhalder, Shannyn Sossamon, and James Van Der Beek.

Daredevil

One of the last examples of the big blockbuster movie with the big blockbuster song complete with a big blockbuster video; the at the time inescapable Evanescence hit ‘Bring Me To Life’; this is an only semi-successful attempt at knockabout nonsense with the villains all trying to out-ham each other (and Colin Farrell’s Bullseye winning), but Jennifer Garner shines as Daredevil’s love interest Elektra.

Switchblade Romance

I will die on this weird Gallic hill! Alexandre Aja’s utterly blood-soaked shocker starring Cecile de France (and a chainsaw that spooked the next crew to use it) is a goretastic virtuoso thrill-ride, and the final twist, which was presented as it was on the advice of Luc Besson that it would be funnier that way, makes the film even more preposterously entertaining!

The Village

This was the final straw for critics when it came to M Night Shyamalan, but it’s actually a very engaging and deeply creepy film with a star-making lead performance from Bryce Dallas Howard. Sure the final twist is probably over-egging the pudding, and indicated that M Night was now addicted to twists, but it doesn’t undo the effectiveness of all the previous suspense.

Constantine

Keanu Reeves’ chain-smoking street magus powered a supernatural thriller with exquisitely deliberate pacing, courtesy of future Hunger Games main-man Francis Lawrence; here making his directorial debut. It had a fine sense of metaphysical as well as visceral horror, featured outstanding supporting turns from Tilda Swinton and Peter Stormare, a memorable magus versus demons action showdown, and was easily Keanu’s best film since The Matrix.

Super

I can’t believe that writer/director James Gunn’s delirious deconstruction of the superhero genre could actually have been this lowly esteemed by critics on release in 2010. Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page both give tremendous performances as the delusional heroes who decided to dress in absurd costumes and fight crime; suicidally going up against Kevin Bacon’s gangster, who is very much not a comic-book villain.

The Green Hornet

I will often stop on this if I catch it late at night while channel-hopping. It may not be a very smooth or coherent film, but it has scenes, lines, and ideas that still pop into my mind frequently; “You brought a gas mask?” “Of course I brought a gas mask!” “Just for yourself?”; and Seth Rogen’s DVD commentary is a hoot.

You didn’t build that, Disney

It’s been quite maddening to see bus after bus pass by in the last few weeks with huge ads on their sides for the launch of Disney+ and know that this lockdown is a gift from the universe to a mega corporation by making their new streaming service an obvious choice for harassed parents eager to occupy the time of housebound children with the Disney vault while they try to get some work from home done. Not of course that it’s really Disney’s vault, as is made plain by the attractions listed on the side of the bus. The Simpsons, which is to say 20th Century Fox. Star Wars. Pixar. Marvel. National Geographic. That’s Disney+? These things aren’t Disney. Matt Groening created The Simpsons, and I highly doubt Walt Disney would have approved. George Lucas created Star Wars and changed the cinematic world with ILM, and it was from Lucasfilm that Pixar was spun out, with the help of Steve Jobs. Not anybody at Disney. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko are responsible for most of the characters of Marvel, and without James Cameron and Bryan Singer and Sam Raimi there probably wouldn’t have been an MCU for Disney to buy. And Disney sure as hell didn’t found the National Geographic Society in the milieu of Alexander Graham Bell in the 1880s. Disney bought these. They didn’t build them patiently, they didn’t put in hard work, or exercise quality control over decades to build up a trusted reputation, they just waved a cheque book, and somehow regulators looked the other way at the increasing monopoly power being acquired. Disney bought these to accumulate monopolistic power and make mucho money, and in the case of Star Wars when they have attempted to build something themselves they have spectacularly managed to kill the golden goose, as can be seen by looking at the downward trajectory at the box office of the late unlamented Disney trilogy.

From the Archives: Good Luck Chuck

From the pre-Talking Movies archives.

Charlie (Dane Cook) has been hexed since adolescence, if he sleeps with a girl the next guy she sleeps with will be her true love. When he meets the girl of his dreams Cam (Jessica Alba) he must find a way to break the curse.

Jessica Alba, STARK NAKED!! Is not something that you will see in this film. Oh, I’m sorry. Did I just take away your only reason for going to see it?? Please grow up. This is the directorial debut of the man who edited Showgirls! Us adults need the multiplexes to watch films involving characters and emotions so can’t you just go to the embarrassing corner of the DVD store to satisfy your needs? The opening of Good Luck Chuck just screams Superbad as a fat kid obsessed with sex and a skinny kid nervous about it try to impress girls during a game of spin the bottle. The skinny kid is of course our ‘hero’ Charlie who gets hexed by a goth girl he sexually disappoints and so we jump to the present. Charlie is now a playboy while Stu is still fat, single and still obsessed with sex. He discovers that Charlie is famous on perfectmatch.com for being a good luck charm for single women who want to meet Mr Right. He convinces Charlie that he should sleep with all these eager women.

There follows a sex scene montage which plays like it was the ultimate fantasy of 13 year old male scriptwriters but here’s the thing, Superbad was written, at least in its first draft, by 13 year old male scriptwriters, the difference is you just know that Seth Rogen was FUNNY when he was 13 years old. Slapstick accidents that occur to Jessica Alba’s clumsy Cam are as sophisticated as the humour gets here. And there’s precious little humour which leads to the next problem…Who the hell is Dane Cook? He has no charisma and so can’t carry the film on charm alone. I have a memory for actor’s faces that can remember people from supporting turns in CSI and I recognise no-one among the undistinguished supporting players. I shouldn’t be surprised. Casting was probably done on the willingness of actresses to take their tops off.

Let’s be honest. This film is only getting a cinema release because of Jessica Alba or more accurately because of the slavering hordes of teenage boys obsessed with seeing Jessica Alba naked. Thus far thankfully she’s disappointed them but now that Natalie Portman has appeared nude it’s a safe bet that Alba will follow. I’m not sure exactly how it’s meant to be empowering for independent 21^st Century women to meekly obey the cry of ‘Get ’em out for the lads!’, but it’s a given in Hollywood that if you want to be taken seriously (i.e. win an Oscar) you need to take your clothes off. Let’s see how that works out for the actresses exploited in this wretched trash…

1/5

From the Archives: Superbad

Another rummage thru the pre-Talking Movies archives finds me grappling with the Seth Rogen paradox for the very first time.

Two sex-starved teenage boys Seth and Evan try to exploit the last high-school party before graduation by agreeing to get liquor for the girls they want to hook up with. However their plan goes hysterically awry when they run into two cops.

It seems to be becoming obligatory to kneel before writer/director/producer Judd Apatow and hail all his works as being The Second Coming of American Comedy. It’s all very well to celebrate the revival of the R rated comedy purely for being R rated but surely the first concern in judging a comedy should be how funny it is, not how dirty the jokes are. The truth is that Knocked Up and Superbad are filthy minded and mouthed comedies that are actually no more abundantly supplied with laughs than something like the work of Mike White and Jack Black. What distinguishes the Apatow/Rogen oeuvre is both the sheer amount of references to sex and the crudity of those remarks.

Seth Rogen, the star of Knocked Up, co-wrote Superbad and has a supporting role in it while Apatow of course produced in his capacity as a one man studio. The plot is concerned with how Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) can have sex before leaving High School. The answer? Alcohol: “You know when girls say ‘I was so drunk, I don’t know what I was thinking’? We have a chance to be that mistake!!”. But here’s the rub, the story sheers off into two strands. One strand follows Seth and Evan desperately trying to acquire booze for the party hosted by Jules (the husky voiced Emma Stone). The other sees uber-nerd Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) fall in with two lunatic cops played by Rogen and Bill Hader. Literally every scene of his adventures with these cops is screamingly hilarious. The other strand with Seth and Evan isn’t, as it’s so focused on gross out moments that it frequently forgets to be funny. Being extremely realistic about the stupidity of teenage boys is not a good enough reason for not having enough jokes in a comedy.

Indeed you can’t help but feel that all the talking dirty is some way of hiding away the sentimental soft-spot Rogen and Goldberg have for their characters, hiding away the most appealing side of their writing in favour of the most easy headline grabbing controversial side. Indeed the unlikely sweetness is reminiscent of previous Apatow /Rogen works. The characters of Jules and Evan are extremely likeable and in the denouement incredibly and sensibly honourable. Seth and Becca (Martha MacIsaac), respectively, learn from them how to behave like decent human beings. Was that emotional maturity the reason Rogen and Goldberg wrote the filth, as a necessary part of a character arc, or was it just a handy way of positioning their film in the marketplace? It’s impossible to know but it produced one of the best comedies of the year in either case.

3/5

Hopes: 2019

Glass

They called him Mister…

Glass, an unlikely sequel

to Unbreakable

 

Cold Pursuit

U.S. remake, but…

with same director, Neeson

in for Skarsgard. Hmm.

 

Happy Death Day 2U

Groundhog Day: Part II.

I know what you Screamed before.

Meta-mad sequel.

 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Cate Blanchett missing,

Daughter on her trail, thru time,

Very Linklater…

Pet Sematary

Stephen King remake.

Yes, sometimes dead is better,

but maybe not here.

 

Shazam!

Chuck: superhero.

Big: but with superpowers.

This could be great fun.

 

Under the Silver Lake

It Follows: P.I.

Sort of, Garfield the P.I.

Riley Keough the femme

 

Pokemon: Detective Pikachu

Ryan Reynolds is voice

Pikachu is the shamus

PG Deadpool fun?

The Turning

of the screw, that is.

Mackenzie Davis the lead,

can the ghosts be real?

 

John Wick: Parabellum

Keanu is back

On a horse while in a suit

Killers in  pursuit

 

Ad Astra

James Gray does sci-fi,

Brad Pitt looks for dad in space,

Gets Conradian.

 

Flarksy

Rogen heart Theron;

High school crush, now head Canuck.

No problem. Wait, what?!

Ford v Ferrari

Mangold for long haul;

Le Mans! Ferrari must lose!

Thus spake Matt Damon

 

Hobbs and Shaw

The Rock and The Stath.

The director of John Wick.

This will be bonkers.

 

The Woman in the Window

Not the Fritz Lang one!

Amy Adams: Rear Window.

Joe Wright the new Hitch.

CR: Chris Large/FX

Gemini Man

Will Smith and Ang Lee,

Clive Owen and the great MEW,

cloned hitman puzzler.

 

Charlie’s Angels

K-Stew’s big comeback

French films have made her, um, hip?

Just don’t bite your lip…

 

The Day Shall Come

Anna Kendrick stars in-

Um, nobody knows a thing

Bar it’s Chris Morris

 

Jojo Rabbit

‘My friend Adolf H.’

is Taika Waititi-

this could get quite strange…

They call this screening ‘The Mop’

There is a certain type of film that plays last of all at a multiplex for the purpose of mopping up late-comers and professional procrastinators.

Right now in Movies at Dundrum Blockers is on at 21:20 and A Quiet Place at 21:10. A Quiet Place is the kind of film that fits the archetype of ‘The Mop’, as is Cineworld’s final movie tonight, The Strangers: Prey at Night, on at 22:45. The Mop is usually a horror film. In fact a good deal of Blumhouse’s output (Sinister, The Purge, Happy Death Day, Truth or Dare) would be well-suited to mop purposes. The Mop ought to be a horror film, because it sustains horror week in week out. Horror films aren’t expensive to make. That is the secret of Jason Blum’s success. It is possible to make a very presentable film on the catering budget of a CGI-laden blockbuster. And horror films and late, dithering audiences have an easy to understand and easy to fulfil compact.

The audience that needs to be mopped has arrived without having booked in advance, something which admittedly is becoming less common. They have no firm idea what they’re going to see and are heavily swayed by the times of the films and the times of bus/Luas home. One of my greatest experiences in dithering saw myself, the man behind the online pseudonym E von Ludendorff, and John Fahey begged to leave Cineworld by a security guard who’d  suffered thru too many minutes of arguing over what to see – “Lads! Would you go outside for a few minutes, just DECIDE, and then come back in”. That resulted in an almighty tussle between Saw, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and Shark Tale.

Horror films don’t get much respect outside of Hallowe’en. But, just as Seth Rogen noted it’s easy to tell if a comedy is working as opposed to a drama, it’s quite easy to spot when a horror film is not scary. They are a matter of technique. Think of the sequence in Let Me In where Elias Koteas foolishly moves towards the bloodied door to see what’s behind it while Michael Giacchino’s string orchestration goes into a frenzy. In the hands of someone like Matt Reeves or James Watkins such a sequence is almost unbearably suspenseful. In the hands of a hack, the effect is lost entirely, and you become aware it’s just a guy slowly walking towards a door with a vampire behind it.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Director Greg Mottola returns to cinemas for the first time since Paul, but working with inferior material to his recent Rogen, Pegg, and Sorkin scripts.

Jeff Gaffney (Zach Galifianakis) is an ineffectual HR drone who is genially disregarded by all the people with security clearance at major weapons manufacturer McDowell-Burton International. His wife Karen (Isla Fisher) is dissatisfied designing an absurd bathroom for obnoxious neighbours the Craverstons (being a largely wasted VEEP star Matt Walsh as Dan and Maribeth Monroe as Meg). As the Gaffneys agonise over how to utilise their sons’ time at summer camp to revitalise their marriage new neighbours arrive; the uber-stylish uber-sophisticated Joneses, Tim (Jon Hamm) and Natalie (Gal Gadot). Jeff is surprised at Tim, the travel writer who blows glass sculptures as a hobby, befriending him. But Karen grows suspicious that Tim and Natalie are actually spies, and when Jeff takes his concerns to MBI security officer Carl Pronger (Kevin Dunn), the Gaffneys enter the sinister world of ‘The Scorpion’.

What exactly is Greg Mottola, director of Arrested Development, The Newsroom, Superbad, Paul and Adventureland, doing helming this action-comedy? This is the comediocre terrain of hack auteurs like Shawn Levy or (shudder) Paul Feig. Mottola has some fun playing on the remarkable coincidence that Gadot & Hamm are both 7 inches taller than their counterparts Fisher & Galifianakis. There’s a lot of looming… It’s a treat to hear Gadot berating Hamm in rapid-fire Hebrew insults, but there’s not a whole lot else going on. Mottola shoots action with pleasing commitment to practical stunt-work, and throws in gleefully parodic action-hero slo-mo and hero shots of Gadot and Hamm, but the lack of any real driving comedic intent is almost metatextually reflected in Andrew Dunn’s cinematography being remarkably soft-focus; as if he was massaging out the cast’s wrinkles in Murder, She Wrote.

Michael LeSieur’s screenplay is a strange beast, and it’s hard to see what in it attracted Mottola. This film is obviously in debt to Mr & Mrs Smith, and even that had longueurs, but Keeping up with the Joneses lacks that movie’s over-arching sense of fun; which kept the wheels spinning when there were no actual jokes. Here LeSieur has very few actual jokes at all, and, in sending Jeff on trips to exotic snake restaurants with Tim, slips into what feels like a tip of the hat to David Duchovny’s intermittently interesting satire The Joneses; where perfect new neighbours are actually a guerrilla sales team. Depressingly early on you realise this is another major studio comedy that has tidy plotting and neat character arcs, and basically no jokes. When exactly did that approach to writing ‘comedy’ become conventional wisdom?

Keeping up with the Joneses just about holds the attention, but given the calibre of talent involved you just wonder how nobody noticed that it wasn’t actually … funny.

1.5/5

Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates

Zac Efron and Adam Devine need nice girls to accompany them to Hawaii for their sister’s wedding. Instead they get Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick.

The inseparable Stangle brothers Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) live together in a chaotic flat, work together selling liquor to the harassed likes of Marc Maron, and party together just a bit too hard. And so their parents (Stephen Root and Stephanie Faracy) insist that they both find nice girls to bring as wedding dates or be barred from the wedding of their beloved younger sister Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard). The idea being that the brothers rile each other up when they go stag, whereas some respectable girls will calm them down. But when their Craigslist ad goes viral, they get royally played and end up taking Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick). Soon the self-absorbed co-dependent hedonistic BFFs Tatiana and Alice have wreaked more destructive chaos on the wedding than the brothers stag ever could have.

Bill Nighy at a 2009 L&H Q&A promised with perfect deadpan that The Boat That Rocked contained “a lot of stupid jokes … profoundly stupid jokes.” One might say that Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates is a stupid comedy, a profoundly stupid comedy, without many jokes. It is in fact a variation on the great transatlantic comedy chasm, but unlike previous summer puzzlers Let’s Be Cops and The Heat this is not an obvious thriller script repurposed as a comedy by the addition of crassness, crudity, and mugging for laughs rather than the insertion of jokes and comic characters. Bad Neighbours writers Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien have penned a cookie-cutter Apatow gross-out rom-com about accepting responsibility, but without Rogen or Hill to riff absurdly, the improvisation encouraged by SNL director Jake Szymanski produces little of true value.

Continuing the trend noted by Bret Easton Ellis whereby gay characters fade out of spectacle aimed at the international market but proliferate in domestic fare, we have stand-up Alice Wetterlund as Cousin Terry; a bisexual yuppie tormenting Mike in a fashion not dissimilar to Kieran Culkin’s constant poaching of Anna Kendrick’s boyfriends in Scott Pilgrim. Except that, as with Silicon Valley star Kumail Nanjiani’s bizarre cameo as a masseur, in the absence of charm and wit you find yourself unsure how to interpret this. Laughing at and with minorities at the same inclusive time? Is it a bold move or sheer laziness to have Jeanie’s black fiancé Eric (Sam Richardson) be so unambiguously boring? Is the movie’s apparent need for Beard to do what Plaza and Kendrick presumably wouldn’t slightly creepy or predictable? And can zippy pacing and breeziness overcome inanity?

Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates, like Suicide Squad, contains lines in TV spots and trailers that don’t appear in the movie. But we don’t need Szymanski’s director’s cut.

2.5/5

Mo Names, Mo Problems

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, Mos Def, 2005, (c) Touchstone

INT. THE FREGOLI HOTEL BALLROOM, LOS ANGELES-NIGHT

 

TITLE: SPRING 2015

 

DANNY McBRIDE, SETH ROGEN, EVAN GOLDBERG, and DAVID GORDON GREEN are sneaking outside, with questionable tobacco products hanging out of their pockets. As they approach the French windows Green veers off to one side to scoop up another glass of champagne from a table. The others continue on. Green then sees an entire tray of cocktail sausages being neglected. As he munches his way through the sausages a man on the far side of the ballroom observes him. MOS DEF, for it is he, stops talking to KANYE, squints at Green, and then roars across the ballroom.

 

MOS DEF: D.G.!

DG GREEN: (choking on cocktail sausage) Mos!!

MOS DEF: (looking annoyed, oblivious to Green’s choking noises) It’s not Mos.

DG GREEN: (coughs up half a sausage into his glass) It’s not?

MOS DEF: No, man, it’s not been Mos for three years and counting.

DG GREEN: Oh!

MOS DEF: DG, man, what exactly do I have to do to get a meeting with you?

DG GREEN: Huh?

MOS DEF: I tried like hell to get Our Brand is Crisis!

DG GREEN: You did?

MOS DEF: Uh, Yeah! I musta called your office a hundred times!

DG GREEN: I don’t remember that.

MOS DEF: Well, then you need a new secretary.

DG GREEN: What?! No way, no way! Janelle’s incredibly efficient. Delaney vouched for her. Well, I mean Delaney’s secretary Janine vouched for her.

MOS DEF: Well, if she ain’t telling you Yasiin Bey on the line then she ain’t that efficient.

DG GREEN: Yasiin Bey?

MOS DEF: Yeah, Yasiin Bey. As opposed to Mos Def, which I’ve not been using as a name for three years and counting, like I said earlier.

 

CLOSE ON: David Gordon Green’s pupils dilate.

 

INT. GREEN’S PRODUCTION OFFICE, LOS ANGELES-DAY

 

The camera observes JANELLE at her desk on one side of the split-screen, and on the other half DG GREEN at his desk, scribbling on storyboards, which he throws away in frustration when his phone rings. He punches the button for speakerphone.

 

TITLE: 5 MONTHS BEFORE PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY ON OUR BRAND IS CRISIS

 

JANELLE: A Yasiin Bey is on line 1.

DG GREEN: Don’t know him. (hangs up)

 

TITLE: 4 MONTHS BEFORE PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY ON OUR BRAND IS CRISIS

 

JANELLE: Yasiin Bey on line 1 again, he really wants to talk about the role of Ben.

DG GREEN: That’s nice. (hangs up)

 

TITLE: 3 MONTHS BEFORE PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY ON OUR BRAND IS CRISIS

 

JANELLE: Yasiin Bey on line 1 again. He wants to know if you have time for a lunch at The Fregoli, he has some great ideas for the role of Ben he wants to run past you.

DG GREEN: (stunned, then outraged) Who … the hell does this guy think he is?! (hangs up)

 

TITLE: 2 MONTHS BEFORE PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY ON OUR BRAND IS CRISIS

 

JANELLE: Yasiin Bey on line 1 again, sir. He says he’ll give you a soundtrack song for free if you just give him a chance to audition like anyone else.

DG GREEN: Well now we’re finally getting somewhere! He can have a chance to audition like anyone else because he is anyone else. Does he have an agent? Delaney? (hangs up)

 

TITLE: 1 MONTH BEFORE PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY ON OUR BRAND IS CRISIS

 

JANELLE: Yasiin Bey on line 1 again, sir, and, sir, Janine connected him to me.

DG GREEN: Oh! (reflects for a moment) It’s going to have to wait. I’m meeting Anthony Mackie in a half an hour. I don’t have time for any new people right now. (hangs up)

 

INT. THE FREGOLI HOTEL BALLROOM, LOS ANGELES-NIGHT

MOS DEF: Yo! DG! Anybody in there? You’re doing that thing with your eyes from Fantastic Mr Fox. Some kind of memory bells ringing?

DG GREEN: (stops doing that thing with his eyes) No…

MOS DEF: Well… So much for that.

DG GREEN: Yeah, sorry man. (turns to scoop the soggy half sausage out of his glass and eat it without Mos seeing) … … So, uh, Yasiin Bey?

MOS DEF: Yeah.

DG GREEN: Why?

MOS DEF: What do you mean why?

DG GREEN: Why the change of name? Did you convert to Islam?

MOS DEF: Did I convert to Islam?! Yeah, DG, I did convert to Islam. Twenty-sumpn’ years ago!

DG GREEN: Oh.

MOS DEF: You are unbelievable. Do you ask Snoop that every time he changes his name?

DG GREEN: Well he never changes it very much. If you’re not called Mos Def anymore, how will people know who you are?

MOS DEF: How will… How will people know who I am?! Do you recognise me, standing here in front of you, talking to you? I ain’t changed into a different person! Do you think nobody knew who Muhammad Ali was when he changed his name? All that’s different is I got a name now that reflects who I am now. (several beats) You’re doing that thing with your eyes again, man.

DG GREEN: Sorry I was just thinking about Snoop calling himself something reflecting who he is. Snoop M-Jane. Like a play on the Beach Boys song–

MOS DEF: I got the ‘Sloop John B’ namecheck, thank you, and you got Snoop on the brain.

GREEN: You’re the one who brought him up!

MOS DEF: Look, a man in his forties should not be carrying a moniker like Mos Def around. Can you imagine me hitting 50 and still basically being called ‘Aw Yeah!’?

DG GREEN: LL Cool J seems happy.

MOS DEF: (several Pinter pauses pass by) Do not compare me to LL Cool J. I will drown you in a jeroboam of champagne and sample your death-rattle as a bass track.

 

DG Green gulps audibly, and grabs another glass of champagne from a passing waiter, he then grabs the waiter and pulls him back to grab a second glass. He drinks both, and then nervously smiles at Mos Def.

 

DG GREEN: Look, Mos…

MOS DEF: Don’t … call me Mos! Come on, man! Make the effort.

DG GREEN: Oh! Sorry, my bad. Um, yeah, so, look, um. … … … … …

MOS DEF: (sighs) Did you seriously just forget my name in the middle of a conversation about my name?

DG GREEN: No! No. It’s … uh. … … (snaps fingers) Dante.

MOS DEF: No, that’s the name I was born with.

DG GREEN: Wait, of course, it’s, uh, uh, … … Terrell!

MOS DEF: No. That’s the middle name of the name I was born with. I can see why you’re such a good fit for directing stoner comedies…

DG GREEN: Hey! That was uncalled for. I’ve got a mortgage to pay. Look I am sorry about the whole Our Brand is Crisis mix-up, but, uh, look, have you booked a movie since you changed your name?

MOS DEF: Oh what the hell, DG? I’ve been in Life of Crime and Begin Again since I changed my name. People respect those movies, even if nobody saw them.

DG GREEN: Yeah, but had you booked them as Mos Def before you changed name?

MOS DEF: (several Pinter pauses) What are you trying to say?

DG GREEN: Could it be that people don’t know it’s you when you ring?

MOS DEF: Are you saying you remember me ringing you?

DG GREEN: No, no, I was just … running with your example. If people don’t know that, when you ring, maybe you could do like Prince…

MOS DEF: I am not introducing myself as The Actor Formerly Known as Mos Def.

DG GREEN: Maybe just have a symbol to go with Yasiin Bey?

MOS DEF: If I’m going to have conversations like this every time I get a meeting I think I’d just rather retire.

Deadpool

Seven years later Ryan Reynolds gets to play Deadpool properly, but X-Men Origins: Wolverine is neither forgotten nor forgiven in this uproarious scabrous assault on cliché, and the fourth wall.

Deadpool begins with a credits sequence insulting all the crew (save the writers), and listing not actors but their tokenistic functions (British Villain, Hot Chick). Riffing on Batman Begins’ chronology we begin with Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) shooting the breeze with cabbie Dopinder (Karan Soni) before a massive motorway bloodbath, and get his origin story in flashbacks between arguments with Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) over said bloodbath. Once mercenary Wade Wilson did bad things to worse people for money, hung out in a merc bar run by Weasel (TJ Miller), and hooked up with equally abrasive hooker Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). Then, attempting to beat terminal cancer, he said yes to a recruiter [‘Agent Smith’] (Jed Rees), and ended up being forcibly mutated by sadistic Ajax [Not his real name] (Ed Skrein) and Angel Dust (Gina Carano).

And lo, Deadpool… His mask looks like Spider-Man’s but there’s an R-rated lip under it; quipping about genre clichés, and anything else he might want to rip. There’s an Adult Swim vibe to proceedings, think Robot Chicken and The Venture Brothers: sarcastic questioning of the safety of Professor X’s mansion getting the immortal reply [from now Russian Colossus] “Please… house blowing up builds character,” Stan Lee making his most unlikely cameo ever, and Deadpool mumbling “It’s weird. This house is really big but there only ever seems to be the two of you in it. It’s almost like the studio couldn’t afford another X-Man…” FX’s Archer [Corinth is famous for its leather!] is also present spiritually in a festive sex montage [International Women’s Day – Ouchie!] and the abusive Archer/Woodhouse dynamic between Deadpool and his elderly blind housemate Al (Leslie Uggams).

Alas, the Fourth Wall. [And good riddance…] It never stood a chance against Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza’s creation. Imagine Seths Rogen and Green riffing over the first Wolverine and you’re close to how Deadpool feels. Deadpool’s origin is V’s in V for Vendetta, but such rehashing doesn’t matter because this movie knows the perfect Iron Man film would be all Tony Stark, no Iron Man. Deadpool’s fights are nifty, but the draw is the scatological absurdities director Tim Miller has Reynolds and Miller improvise over Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s script. Superhero landings, female superhero costumes, Hollywood; nothing is off limits [“Looks are everything! Do you think Ryan Reynolds got this far based on his acting technique?”]. Especially Hugh Jackman and the first Wolverine; there’s an inexplicable flight deck in a scrap yard in order to parody its finale.

Guardians of the Galaxy sprinkled absurdity over stale MCU story structure, but Deadpool mocks what little structure it doesn’t discard. Not since Wanted has a comic-book movie swaggered so unpredictably, and it’s to be hoped people respond to this the way they didn’t to Scott Pilgrim. We need more.

5/5