Reviewing Deadpool & Wolverine is about as useful as tits on a duck-billed platypus. After two movies featuring the foul-mouthed merc, played with childlike glee by Ryan Reynolds, indulging in cartoonish violence, 13-year-old-approved potty humor, and gratuitous fourth-wall-breaking meta commentary, viewers have already decided if this slice of the intersectional superhero universe gets them going or not. If Deadpool is already your thing, Deadpool & Wolverine will likely be a phantasmagoric cinematic aphrodisiac, blissfully reveling in the filth and frenetic energy of this profane property, servicing the fans like a truck stop hooker on twofer Fridays. Though many were (rightfully) concerned that the ribald comedy, facetious tone, and hard-R nature would stifle under the transition to the censorial Disney, the Deadpool of yore has been well preserved. However, the resources afforded to Shawn Levy’s $250M production have become near limitless. This, folks, is maximalist Deadpool, with all the resources of an Avengers team-up tentpole but the same old shameless shtick. Read More
‘ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP’ Is Mindless Zom-Com with Neither Bite Nor a Point
Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) have taken up residence in the White House to brave the lingering zombie apocalypse. Their days spent coiled like dragons atop stockpiles of munitions and supplies have led to a general sense of longing. For Tallahassee, it’s the road that’s calling. Witchita meanwhile can’t calm her fear of committment while Little Rock longs for a romantic companion of her own. It’s only the group nerd Columbus who seems to enjoy a sense of post-apocalyptic calm, probably because the apocalypse has afforded him the impossible scenario of hooking up with Emma Stone. When the ladies unexpectedly pack up and head out one night, Tallahassee and Columbus meet a new tagalong in Madison (Zoey Deutch) and brave the great zombieland unknown to reunite the group. Read More
Out in Theaters: ‘DEADPOOL 2’
The novelty of a fourth-wall-breaking, F-bomb-slinging, crotch-grabbing “superhero” may be gone but Deadpool’s not backing down an inch in this full-brunt sequel to the wildly popular R-rated 2016 comic book movie. With Deadpool 2, audiences will get what they expect – Ryan Reynolds spitballing irreverently, kinetic action scenes, a garbage truck full of winks and jabs at other superhero movies – but the comedic blockbuster has been reworked as a whole (*insert Deadpool joke about “reworking” a hole*), ironing out some of the kinks of its lurid predecessor, and making for an all-around more streamlined and better product. Read More
Out in Theaters: ‘LIFE’
Life is deja vu. Not life itself mind you – let’s say that debate for the existentialist philosophers – but Life, the hacky, trashy alien thriller from director Daniel Espinosa. From a distance, the trailers for the film suggested a film that borrowed heavily from Ridley Scott’s treasured Alien but we’re all smart enough to know that trailers are just marketing tools, often constructed to stimulate nostalgia nodules to sell a product to audiences. So imagine my shock when Life was quite literally nothing less than a watered-down, unimaginative, worthless thieving of one of my favorite films of all time. Seriously, how in the actual fuck is this happening? Let’s examine. Read More
Out in Theaters: ‘DEADPOOL’
Deadpool has been lurking around the primordial soup of supers since his debut print appearance in February of 1991. Striking a nerve with comic fans fancying some bite with their bark and some rabies to their Cujos, Deadpool arrived on the scene a supervillian before slipping into the moral grays of anti-hero-dom and donning those infamously R-rated wisecracks into his persona like a latex-tight getup. By the time he was leading his own franchise, a cultly rabid surrounded the merc with a mouth like bush flies buzzing around fresh-squeezed dookie. When transported to tinsel town in 2009’s much derided X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Deadpool found himself properly trounced; literally nutless, drained of personality and wit, with mouth rendered useless. The character was as effectively brain-dead as the project he found himself housed within. The tongue-tied, tatted-up war boy that was Deadpool circa 2009 was quickly relegated to the bin of supers who couldn’t withstand the transition to the silver screen and even the suits at Fox did all they could to forget this whole X-Men Origins thing ever happened in the first place. Read More