By: Henry J. Fromage –
This weekend, well, I went ahead and caught up on some mid-range Hollywood movies with a vengeance, as promised.
309. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Well, this one wasn’t mid-range at all, I’m happy to report. The team behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse knocks it out of the park again in the first half of an ambitious at least two-parter that both delves into the what makes our heroes from the first film tick even more and sets up more multiversal shenanigans and a sense of palpable anything can happen danger that will continue to drive this series further. Funny, heart-tugging, and visually spectacular, my only complaint was it didn’t keep on going at the end. A Toast.
310. Emily
I missed this modernized portrait of Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights and the most emo of the highly artistically talented, tragically fated Bronte family (Charlotte and Anne were both accomplished authors themselves, and brother Branwell was a poet and painter and none of the lot saw 40). There’s style and irreverence to Frances O’Connor’s period piece that bodes good things to come, and Emma Mackey leads a capable cast, but it’s also a touch overlong and overserious, perhaps. Three Beers.
311. Fast X
Listen, at this point you know exactly what you’re getting into with this franchise, and this installment delivers all the gravity-defying car stunts, homilies to the importance of family, beefy men being beefy and sexy ladies being beefy, and convoluted and nonsensical plotting you can wish for. Jason Momoa outdoes himself as an effete, charismatic and strangely purely joyful bad guy who really puts the gang up against the wall all the way to the cliffhanger end. I’m here for the next one day one, like there was any doubt. Three Beers.
312. Influencer
This Shudder horror flick starts off satirizing those globe-trotting, every day is the best day brand of lifestyle jealousy-cultivating influencers before flipping the story all at once into one of a predator of the same who spreads their spiderweb in picturesque Thailand. Don’t worry, t this is no Hostel, but it doesn’t skimp on the gore, either, and has several quality twists up its sleeves. Two Beers.
313. Shazam: Fury of the Gods
Witness the last gasps of the DCEU, or at least the first iteration of it, as nobody seemed to care enough about this actually rather fun and not half-bad Shazam sequel that, yeah, gets a little Percy Jackson with its plotting and a little more self-serious with its stakes, but also grew its principal teen characters in logical ways and always left time for some wisecracks and goofing off. I wouldn’t have minded more of these, but I’d be very surprised if we get them. Three Beers.
314. Hypnotic
I read one good review of this Robert Rodriguez-directed, Ben Affleck-starring thriller that outweighed the not terribly complimentary overall RT score it has, which convinced me to watch. You may want to as well if you can get past the awfully generic production values and plotting until the twists really start getting crazy (which is the kind of thing that can happen when your antagonist is a master of hypnosis who can literally reshape the entirety of your reality). The twists really are nuts, though, and worth sticking around for, especially considering the whole thing has the decency to clock out at 90 minutes. Four Beers.
315. Magic Mike’s Last Dance
I may never understand why Steven Soderbergh devoted essentially three films of his career telling the increasingly unbelievable story of a male stripper (he was “only” the cinematographer for the second). There’s no denying that Channing Tatum can still writhe around with the best of ’em, but why that would convince a billionaire divorcee (Salma Hayek, having fun) to give him creative control over a storied London theater that’s apparently doing just fine financially is never quite convincing. Anyway, he makes a big strip show there and the last rain-soaked dance is pretty spectacular. I’m not entirely convinced this is the last of these. Four Beers.
