Deadpool & Wolverine

Better than the ill thought out slop Marvel has been releasing but not close to the heights of the finest entries. There is no story to spoil and the villain is underwhelming. The only spoilers you need to beware of are cameos and pop culture jokes. This is a fan service movie on steroids for long-time fans. It builds on Deadpool 2's finale and then tucks itself into the Disney+ era of Marvel.

No one loves Ryan Reynolds as much as he does but he's okay with that and it works here. The Deadpool franchise is about extreme violence, winks to the camera, meta-narrative dialogue, X-Men references and Wade Wilson growing as a person. The first movie did it best, with Wade trying to figure things out. Now he has figured it out he realises it sucks. He's in a mid-life rut.

What's the cure for a mid-life rut? Five pop culture references a minute, a lot of blood, bullets and discarded parts of the 20th Century Fox Marvel timeline. Hugh Jackman represents the most impressive part of Fox Marvel movies and has grown into Wolverine the longer he's been at it. Footage of the fresh-faced mutant in the original X-Men movie makes you wonder how he pulled it off in the first place. The Jackman of today has the on-screen presence his younger self did not.

The weakest part of the movie is Emma Corrin's bland villain of the week. She's very Disney+. Highlighting, once again, Marvel's difficulty in making a villain more than a story obstacle. Like a locked door. You shouldn't think too much about them because you won't see them again after the credits roll.

The flat looking cinematography, a side effect of digital filming, means you can watch this at home. But if you're looking for a reason to visit the cinema this is as compelling a reason as you'll get this summer.

Twisters

The good news is dumb big budget disaster movies are back. The bad news is the same as the good news. Twisters has a lot in common with the 1996 original. The plot is nonsense, the characters are paper thin and you'll never think about the movie again after seeing it.

Unlike the Jan de Bont movie with Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton the leads here have no chemistry. Something I put on Daisy-Edgar Jones as Glen Powell had chemistry with several co-leads in past films. He has good chemistry with Maura Tirney in this movie. And she's onscreen for five minutes and plays Daisy's mother. The romance in this movie is undercooked and there isn't even a hint of comedy. After hours in the cinema I still did not understand why these two stay together at the conclusion.

As a big disaster movie this is well done on the big screen. The tornadoes are chaotic, large and have good effects. The tornado chasing is high energy, with the more professional types engaging in juvenile races with those wacky live streaming storm chasers. One side is doing it for nefarious profit, the other for the love of it and that sweet YouTube ad money.

The storm chasers are walking clichés. Some get sucked into a vortex and are never seen again but they don't matter so meh. That sums up the movie. Meh. If you want a better romantic comedy with decent stunt work that came out this year you should watch The Fall Guy instead.

The bar has been set that low this summer.

The Boys: Season 4

With the trashed audience scores you'd be forgiven for thinking something has changed with The Boys. But the only thing that has changed is the show runner trying to distance himself from a part of his audience for his career.

Here's a Stan Edgar moment. No one wearing a red hat can damage that career. However, those in the entertainment industry unsophisticated enough to believe the show runner wrote this show for "undesirable people" can. So, in that position, you produce the work you always have, reaffirm your support for...whatever, and move on.

This season, Homelander is still trying to cauterise the parts of himself that react to others' disappointment. As he runs on adulation that's not possible. While Homelander sees his emotions as an impairment, Billy Butcher is only able to keep moving because of his cold rage. Butcher has nothing else in his life. If either man was happy there wouldn't be a show. That's always been the show.

Yes, the other characters have stories to tell, but those are just distractions. This is a story about two broken men building up to a merciless showdown. I expect the audience scores to remain in the toilet next season as well but people will watch it because the show itself has not changed. It has exemplary acting and top-notch production value.

Interview with the Vampire: Season 2

This is one of the better fiction series currently airing. A reworking of the novel of the same name, and drawing from Anne Rice's body of work, a wonderful sense of unease flows from the screen. This isn't a show that tries to be clever, it is clever. It can also be funny, dreadful, supernatural and humane.

The dialogue crackles as an older Daniel Molloy, his body failing him, trades venomous barbs with art world magnate Louis de Pointe du Lac. Louis might be immortal but his psyche hasn't aged well. There are cracks in the foundations and this second interview is Louis' attempt at a talking cure. The hostility flows in equal measure to the hypocrisy as both men excavate Louis' past of blood and fire.

Louis needs someone to understand his thoughts. His daughter, Claudia, lacks interest in such endless conversations while his lovers Lestat and Armand choose not to or cannot see his point of view. Molloy in his youth was more modern than them. In his older years he's more worldly. To the vampire he is enjoyable and infuriating. But he is not a fixed point and has grown and changed. The vampires are all stuck. Claudia is stuck with an underdeveloped body, while the other two are stuck with pettiness and pain.

The vampire leads, male and female, are handsome. Their acting is great with Claudia's outbursts almost operatic in their portrayal of the emotions involved. The sets and cinematography make the show look bigger than its budget. Though with the limited number of locations and theatrical blocking, with the use of an actual theature, you see the budget wall at times.

I watched the 1994 movie and enjoyed it but I have not read the books. Too many novels and not enough personal motivation. Approaching this as a viewer with no interest in the purity of the source material I can say that this is an enjoyable series that deserves another season. But just one. We don't all need to be Louis's therapist for as long as he lives.

The Acolyte.

This is a kids show. The plot nor the characters have any sophistication and the story operates on a level just above a 90s television sitcom. Instead of twin sisters separated at birth and reunited as teenagers it's twin sisters separated as children and reconciled in their early twenties. Neither set of reunited siblings can wield a lightsaber so it's not that far away from the TV show Sister, Sister. It's Sister, Sister: A Star Wars Young Adult series.

While I expect a flap about the show's checklist diverse cast from those who make money from YouTube video ads breaks, the true issue is the lack of diversity in the story. The first two episodes are a simplistic crime procedural without stakes or a sense of threat. We get two assassinations in the first two episodes. They're nothing. In episode 2 of Shogun an assassin slices her way through people and paper walls to get to her target. It's on screen for seconds. It's horrifying. That couple of seconds of screen time in Shogun is more compelling than the first two episodes of the Acolyte.

For a streaming show, the production value is fine. The acting is not memorable and there's an over reliance on reusing classic Star Wars phrases absent in other Star Wars streaming shows that I find puzzling. It is like the writer convinces herself she's a fan too but needs the audience to know it if they suspect she isn't.

I understand Disney looks at Star Wars as a property, sees the median age of its fans as 40 and its viewer demographic as male. The company worries the franchise has no future as those men age. With Disney being the largest seller of entertainment merchandise for girls, expanding Star Wars as a property for girls in their early teens makes sense for the company. But it makes for poor viewing for their current audience.

I think Disney could get a larger female audience for Star Wars. But only if they moved in a True Crime direction. God knows why women of all ages enjoy guzzling down stories of brutal murders but the stats show the audience for that stuff is 85% female. No one wonders how to get more men to watch that. Where's Making a Murderer: A Star Wars Story, Disney?

The bottom line. The Acolyte is Star Wars for a female YA fiction audience. If you're not into that you're better off watching something else for your Star Wars fix. Like Andor. Again. Until season two comes out.

The Fall Guy

A stunt show movie as flimsy as an empty bucket of popcorn but it has a summer romantic comedy charm. It's very early 2000s in its Hollywood commentary. That kills the momentum after the first hour as it is not presented well enough to hold interest.

For what the producers were looking to do it needed action, humor and adventure. It has plenty of action, with bone-crunching stunt work. Gosling and Blunt deliver humour with skill, but there's a large sucking void on screen where adventure should be. The lack of adventure comes from a weak script. With several different elements crammed into the second half of the movie it feels like it was the product of several rounds of studio notes and reshoots. If there was an adventure here it was overwritten in later drafts and edited out in post production.

Ryan Gosling's Colt Seavers is likeable. Woman may find him gentle and dreamy but he's not so much of a drip that other guys wouldn't enjoy hanging out with him. Emily Blunt is more upbeat than I've seen her and there's some chemistry between the two of them. However, the relationship doesn't develop throughout the movie.

Gosling could be a movie star. He hasn't landed the roles that will make him a movie star but he's a guy the old Hollywood studio system would have supported. This could have been a better movie if it had a stronger story. There could be a great movie about stunt performers in Hollywood but this isn't it. Unless you want that trip to the cinema wait until this hits video on demand or streaming.

Late Night with the Devil.

What do you want and how much do you want it? That's the question faced by the horrified guests on "Night Owls with Jack Delroy." Delroy (David Dastmalchian) has everything a successful talk show host needs. He's articulate, comfortable bantering with the audience and has a comfortable rapport with his celebrity guests. He does the shallow opening monologue, makes jokes at the expense of the band leader/sidekick, gets into the audience, and conducts interviews. This is the work done by every talk show host night in and night out. The difference between success and failure is how many viewers like the host as a person.

For Delroy it all works and he's rewarded with a TV show. Then punished by going head to head with Johnny Carson. And more people like Johnny. A decade into a 30 year TV career, and after moving the Tonight Show from New York to LA, Carson was a juggernaut. Delroy's show is suffering so for Halloween he goes all in. It goes all wrong.

Presented as an unedited archival broadcast this is a horror movie where the kick comes at the end. The tension builds through the broadcast as both the filmmakers and the guests manipulate the viewer. Dastmalchian shows good range as a man close to losing what he has left. Ian Bliss's skeptical Vegas magician channels Orson Welles and James Randi. As for Ingrid Torelli, she's unsettling from the moment she gazes into the studio camera.

I'll admit to an involuntary shiver in that space after the finale but before the end credits.

Fallout.

The spaghetti western turns post-apocalyptic in this high-budget production of a gritty tale. We have cringe-worthy but endearing optimists. Antiheroes whose cruelty disfigures them more on the inside than radiation has on the outside. Striving zealots of gleaming order and anarchic savages who'll wipe themselves on the drapes. And that's just the first two episodes.

The show's burnt out 2150s are mirrored by an alternate 1950s. Bing Crosby croons as one of our protagonists walks across endless scorched dust. Johnny Cash sets the pace for a bone-crunching fight. Violence here can be comical, but it's always bloody.

It's a great looking show with money on the screen. Long shots make the world before and after atomic armageddon seem huge. Characters are framed to highlight their interesting faces. Be they natural or prosthetic. The HDR also looks good as it's colour graded in a way that enhances shots and doesn't overwhelm them.

Its story telling is conventional enough to appeal to a wide audience. This was a concern I had when I saw who the show runners were. In the past Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have been cerebral storytellers. Not as smart as their West World audience as shown when viewer theories nailed plot twists. But this isn't that. This show lacks jigsaw puzzle plotting.

There's no point in turning what happened to the world into the driving mystery of the story. The constraints of the Fallout IP mean anyone who plays a Fallout game will know a lot. Instead we get a call to adventure that sends a capable extrovert into the horrors of a nuclear wasteland. If you know nothing about Fallout you will learn it as she does.

I have several episodes left to finish but I like this show. It has an unusual vibe and a great cast.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

This is the dumbest movie in a franchise that includes the brainless Godzilla: King of The Monsters. Kaiju fights are awesome. Everybody knows this. Even if you don't know it you do. But this movie is so dumbly dense it's a Saturday morning cartoon playing in the heart of a neutron star.

When we meet Kong, we see how clever he is. The Hollow Earth is a lurid and dangerous Playstation 2 CGI environment. The prime ape has mastered tactics and tools. Local wildlife doesn't know what's hitting them. He's Kratos from Sony's God Of War, no family no home and a big axe but for the first hour there are no stakes. It takes more than 60 minutes before the driving force of the story appears.

There is a poor attempt to generate a mystery for the cardboard cut out humans to solve. The mystery doesn't matter and neither do the humans. I forgot about the mystery until one of the characters looks, points and all but says "Hey, that's the mystery!" Dan Steven's Hawaiian shirt wearing titan vet is fun. He should return whenever Monarch does. Everyone else is forgettable. Apart from Godzilla and some of the other titans.

Godzilla has moved to Europe and taken to napping in the Coliseum. Showing the monster's enduring popularity the nuclear powered lizard still gets top billing even though he's more of a guest star. The movie delivers the battles Kaiju fans want though I had a problem with a lack of scale in some of the fights. Seeing the monsters destroy things that you recognize above ground gives you an idea of how large they are. When they fight in the Hollow Earth, which they do a lot, I lost that sense of scale.

There will be another one of these and when there is the film makers should be more careful with the foreground scenery. Two giant creatures smashing each other as people flee for their lives is engaging. Two creatures you can't tell are giants smashing each other? Well that's just a punch up.

Road House

Road House is stupid and enjoyable. I'd watch a sequel. When we first see a ripped Jake Gyllenhaal his character comes across as one of life's losers. Why this man, Elwood Dalton, with his warrior's physique is so unmoored from existence is the mystery in the early part of the film.

He is not doing well though in body and attitude he appears solid. His life is squalid, his choices are careless, and we see he's in the grip of suicidal ideation. Warriors without a purpose don't do well, but there is more to this than that. Transplanting himself to the sun blasted Glass Keys, Dalton, guitar strumming theme music and all, slips into the role of the bouncer for the Road House of the title.

The plot here doesn't matter but it is serviceable if a bit choppy due to running time. The humour made me laugh. The setting and cinematography were beautiful. Gyllenhaal is both charismatic and dangerous when required.

Conor McGregor's Knox is a gleeful force of chaos. Knox is here to have a good time, like the best hammer characters in movies do. When Dalton and Knox fight it's like high speed heavy machinery smashing the hell out of each other. But with quips.

I liked this movie and want to see these characters again.