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‘SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME’ and The Multiverse of Monsters

Undisputedly the superhero event of the year, Spider-Man: No Way Home is a breakneck collision of past and present that explores the generational legacy of Spider-Man in unrelentingly entertaining fashion. The script from Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers wastes zero time, hitting the ground running as No Way Home picks up precisely where the previous endeavor, Far From Home, left off: with Peter Parker’s  (Tom Holland) identity revealed to the world by Daily Bugle alt-news tyrant J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons). Desperate to undo the fallout from his being unmasked, Peter turns to Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to conjure up an amnesia spell that would make the world forget his identity. Read More

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Del Toro’s ‘Nightmare Alley’ A Sordid Tale of Geek Love and Snake Oil 

In circus nomenclature, a “geek” is the most run-down of men, almost always an alcoholic or junkie, who performs grotesqueries, like biting the heads off live animals, in front of jeering – but well-paying – audiences. The geek puts the “carnal” in carnival; reliably dirty of soul and desperate for work. He is the lowest in the act’s hierarchy because his role is easily replaceable, for it requires no skill other than a willingness to debase oneself publicly. The geek is to be gawked at, pitied, and feared, for he has fallen as low as any man can.  Read More

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‘THE FRENCH DISPATCH’ Is An Inaccessible Patchwork of Withering Pretension

Structured like a New Yorker zine and just as wryly smug and pandering to the self-proclaimed intelligentsia, The French Dispatch is an ego-driven misfire for visionary director Wes Anderson who has done little more than projectile vomit his signature quirk on the screen in thick gobs, forgetting to actually make a movie along the way. Read More

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A Gambling Oscar Isaac Bets on Salvation in Stoic Drama ‘THE CARD COUNTER’

Nihilism pairs naturally with playing cards semi-professionally. Those hitting the poker circuit know this. The most improbable river (the fifth card in a game of Texas Hold ‘em) can render the best hand and best player a loser in the wings, drawing dead. They just don’t know it yet. It seems that odds are meaningless against the tides of fate. Cold, calculating, and reductive, the best poker players are those who remove the emotional element entirely, stoic ice statues playing odds, preying on the faintest whiff of weakness. The Card Counter, the newest film from auteur Paul Schrader (First Reformed) is a nihilistic meditation on the impossibility of redemption, as a broken military man turned gifted gambler wrestles with his demons around a card table. Read More

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He Did It, He Actually Did It: The Journey of ‘ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE’

Pluck the plumage off the bird because I’m prepared to eat some crow. For years, I doubted the fact that the long-rumored Zack Snyder director’s cut of Justice League would ever exist in a format suitable to be watched outside of a producer’s screening room. It just didn’t make one iota of sense. With WB having moved on from Snyder’s vision after the director was forced to leave the film mid-production when his daughter tragically committed suicide, the “Snyder Cut” was incomplete, with tens of millions of dollars in VFX shots never even brought into post-production. Read More

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Roommates are Awful, Especially in Eggers’ Brilliant ‘THE LIGHTHOUSE’

In the rundown of worst roommate habits, persistent flatulence has to rank pretty highly. But I can’t imagine even the gnarliest gas could possibly compete with the sour stench of stale pee stewing in a bedpan in a tight communal space. Which brings us to The Lighthouse, a film wherein, from the first moments, odors assert themselves. The celluloid reeks of old piss, beefy farts, caked-up spunk, “rotten foreskin”, man musk, and drinkable kerosene. This is a movie that would tear down the house in Smell-O-Vision. Fortunately, we do not have to endure its reek. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS’

You can heave a sigh of relief everyone, Johnny Depp doesn’t make it far in Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express.  An adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel of the same name, Murder quickly dispenses with the weaselly superstar, here playing a slimy criminal who ends up a pin cushion the very night the titular Orient Express departs. The attention then turns to the patrons of a first-class coach traversing the snowy countryside, each of whom may have reason to want Johnny Depp dead. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘THE GREAT WALL’

An unmitigated juggernaut of bad, pointless cinema, The Great Wall is what happens when globalization and movie-making meets. A historical epic-meets-monster movie ostensibly designed for Chinese and American audiences both, the latest Matt Damon vehicle fails on nearly every level. However if you can feign excitement for a sleep-walking Damon channeling Hobbit-era Legolas to shoot arrows at an endless horde of dog-raptors then please read no further; The Great Wall is the flick for you. If that does not describe your tastes then beware, you’re in store for a long walk off a short plank of stupidity. At only 90 minutes, The Great Wall somehow begins to strain credulity in the shallows of the first act and it only gets worse from there.     Read More

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Out in Theaters: JOHN WICK

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Shoot first and ask questions later is the mantra of Keanu Reeves‘ latest starring vehicle, a film that rotates around the question of “Who is John Wick?” and eventually “What is he capable of?” Going in blind to its main plot details will likely result in a better experience as the first act coyly plays with the idea of slowly unveiling who exactly this John Wick character is. First time directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski clearly had a lot of fun with the eventual reveal of the character and his past and, especially if you skip the trailers, you most likely will too.

Having just lost his wife (Bridget Moynahan), John (Reeves) is a vortex funnel of emotion. Conversations with him are as brusque as they are chilly. Telephone calls with John consist of grunts, one word utterances and silences. Condolences are met with the emotional sensitivity of a grandfather clock. You insert a coin and watch it disappear. The only sign of life comes when an unbelievably adorable Beagle puppy is dropped at his doorstep with a note from his now deceased wife. The puppy, she envisions, is John’s invitation to move on and find life anew. Even with the pup sliding around his hardwood floors, John’s still remarkably dead-faced, but might just be starting to soften. When a pair of Russian gangsters tries to intimidate him into selling them his classic car, we see a whole new side of John. He’s sassy in a delectably murderous kind of way. And he speaks Russian. And he’s no one’s bitch.

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When the trio of gangsters, lead by mob boss son Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), reappear under cover of darkness to smash up his home, kill his puppy (“the horror…the horror…”) and steal his 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle, John winds up on the receiving end of a kicking session the likes of Riverdance. Bruised and bloody, he stares the death of hope right in its bloody, puppy visage. Even in this hazy, intentionally vague introduction to the stable of characters, we sense something violently carnal to John Wick just as we can smell the privileged cowardice steaming from Allen’s Iosef. Thinking themselves victorious, the thiefs slink off into the night. What the trio of goons hadn’t planned on was Wick retaliating, a miscalculation that becomes their blood-soaked fate.

Trying to replace VIN numbers and nab new tags, Iosef is clued into exactly who he’s messed with with a hard punch in the face. Even criminal mechanic Aurielo (John Leguizamo) won’t touch the stolen vehicle and in a move of unchecked candor, whops the little mafiosa in the schnoz for picking on the wrong guy. Iosef spouts, “My dad’s gonna do this,” and, “My dad’s gonna do that,” but even Aurielo’s smart enough to know that his top dog pops will understand his punchy reaction. When daddy Vigo (Michael Nyqvist) puts in the perfunctory check up call, all Aurielo needs to say to justify his physical gesture is to drop the news. “Your boy killed John Wick’s dog.” All Vigo can muster is an understanding, “Oh.” Cue all out war.

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Once the wick is lit (pun, unfortunately, intended), the candle of vengeance burns for the entirety of the film. Action beats rage from one vantage point to another, making way for some well-timed comic beats and introducing us to a slew of characters who either share John’s former profession and or are played solely for dark colored comedy. One such example is Lance Reddick (Lost) who plays a polite, indistinctly African concierge who welcomes a recovering John with open arms. His concierge recommendation – doctors, bourbon and a telling dinner – represent the brand of deadpan comic relief John Wick offers, with much of its comic beats resting on Reddick’s narrow shoulders. The balance between balls-to-the-wall action and black comedy is often spot on and when Wick isn’t unloading clips on clips into the faces of bad guys, it simmers down to a tasty stew of remorseless, lethal laughs; a trigger-happy comedy of errors.

When John is squeezing the trigger though, the film is an absolute firecracker. Formerly working as stunt coordinators, Leitch and Stahelski have a preternatural sense of how to frame the action and move it along like a ballet. Capturing a sense of articulate entropy, they are painterly in their splooshes of blood and whirlwind of bullets. Everything is choreographed to the T and even Keanu’s wooden acting disappears when he’s a playing a one-man army, single-handedly leaving behind a body count that piles up higher than any other action flick this year. When he’s meant to emote though, yes, Keanu does still resemble Balsa wood. Thankfully, John Wick knows its strength and its weaknesses and there is very little room left for actual reflection, a fact that is both a gift and a curse to the production as a whole.

John Wick eventually admits that it is in fact just the straight-forward actioner you’ve hoped it would transcend – with an ending you could forecast from 30 minutes in – but the sheer amount of adrenaline, relentless violence and smooth gunman skills help significantly to make up for its lack of an actual soul. This being the case, John Wick is a movie that dudes – be they of the male or action junkie femme variety – will have a lot of fun with but won’t find much else to talk about aside from its ceaseless  violence and well-timed dark comedy.

B-

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Out in Theaters: A MOST WANTED MAN

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NOTE: I’ve tried to write something about this movie but I just can’t do it. It’s too dull to summon the energy to write more than one lousy sentence about. So that’s what I shall do. Behold: the one sentence review.

“Procedural to the point of blinding boredom.”

That is all.

D+

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