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A review of “Deadpool” (2016)

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I’ve never read a single “Deadpool” comic book, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the movie.  It’s  a fun, creative and …  unconventional entry into the “X-Men” film  franchise that actually made me laugh out loud a few times.  I’d give it an 8 out of 10.

It isn’t high art.  It’s got a thin story based on a rickety plot device, nearly no exposition, and it includes some cartoonish action that I thought was just too over the top, even by comic book movie standards.  (Our hero dodges bullets and survives a stab to the brain.)

It helps to bear in mind this movie’s real purpose — fan service for the infamous niche character’s evident legions of followers.  “Deadpool” isn’t meant to be densely plotted, like “X2: X-Men United” (2003), or genuinely cinematic, like the Christopher Nolan “Batman” films.  It’s a long awaited, R-rated feature film to please loyal fans of this profane, adult-oriented antihero, who would be out of place and necessarily bowlderized in a mainstream superhero-teamup flick. (And I kinda get that — I loved the “Wolverine” comics when I was a kid, and, trust me, his film incarnation is tame compared to its source material.)

“Deadpool” is damn funny.  The movie succeeds by making us laugh.  And combining a raunchy comedy with an “X-Men” film gives it a weird, cool, subversive vibe.  It makes you wonder if Stan Lee would approve of this sort of thing … until you see Lee himself in a cameo at the story’s strip bar.  It’s fun to know that dirty jokes indeed do exist within the “X-Men” movie universe.

The lowbrow jokes made me cringe one or twice (“baby hand.”)  But you’ve got to give the movie credit for delivering its bathroom-wall humor if that’s what the original character is about.  (Are the comics like this?)  Ryan Reynolds is genuinely funny, and his deadpan delivery is perfect.  The film might not have even worked at all with out him.

By the way, this movie actually reminded me a hell of a lot of a long-ago flick that I absolutely loved, but which I’m guessing is largely forgotten — Andrew Dice Clay’s “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane” (1990).  That movie also had a foulmouthed, lone, maverick antihero who often broke the fourth wall, and that also made me laugh like hell.  I know it sounds like a strange comparison, but they’re very similar films.

Finally, I’d like to think that the Wade Wilson we see here actually IS a version of the Wade Wilson that we first met in the widely lamented “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (2009).  (And how can he not be, if that movie is canon?)  If “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014) rebooted the timeline, then the Deadpool we’re rooting for here was never recruited, corrupted and experimented upon by William Stryker.  So you can have your cake and eat it, too.

 

 

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“Ben Affleck was the bomb in ‘Phantoms.'”

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I revisited “Phantoms” (1998) the other night, and I thought I’d just speak up briefly here on its behalf.  For one thing, I really chatted up Dean Koontz’ 1983 source novel here at the blog not too long ago.  And for another, this critically and popularly panned movie is one that I happened to like.

Ben Affleck actually wasn’t “‘the bomb’ in “Phantoms.'”  (Referring to something as “the bomb” was, at one time, a high compliment in American slang.)  He mostly phoned it in, and even seriously flubbed a scene or two.  (Hey, I actually like the guy a lot, and I’m willing to give him a chance as the next Batman.)  The headline above is actually some particularly meta humor from another character played by Affleck, in Kevin Smith’s “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001).  Affleck was poking fun at himself a little here, along with his fellow denizens of Smith’s “View Askewniverse.”

Roger Ebert dismissed “Phantoms” as “another one of those Gotcha! thrillers in which loathsome slimy creatures leap out of drain pipes and sewers and ingest supporting actors, while the stars pump bullets into them.”  You can read his entire review right here:

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/phantoms-1998

No, “Phantoms” isn’t classic sci-fi-horror.  It’s sometimes pretty thin stuff on a number of levels … but primarily the levels of acting and screenwriting.

But, dammit, I still liked this movie a lot.  If you’re a fan of the book (I’ve suggested it’s Koontz’ best), you’ll be happy to discover that it indeed conscientiously sticks to its wicked-cool source material.  We see a small Colorado mountain town where all the inhabitants have vanished; a clutch of wayward visitors then try to escape the same grisly, mysterious fate as its residents.)

The book’s central plot device is a nicely conceived and executed idea for a monster, with some effectively creepy historical and scientific context.  (I can still remember a colonial victim’s warning, which is referenced in the book, but not the movie: “It has no shape; it has every shape.”)

Despite its clunky script, the film brings us a story that is pretty intelligent — thanks to retaining so many elements of the novel.  This is a thinking man’s monster movie — like somebody rewrote “Beware the Blob” (1972), but put a hell of a lot of smarts and creativity into it.  We’ve got two groups of bright people who fight back against “the Ancient Enemy,” and their actions and strategies generally make sense.

Also … Liev Schreiber does creepy incredibly well, and Peter O’Toole does everything incredibly well.  The former’s face and mannerisms do much to unsettle us.  And the latter brings the “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) treatment to the fifties-esque trope of the monster-fighting hero scientist.

Finally, this might be an odd thing to praise a film for, but I loved its sound effects.  Because that voice (or voices) on the story’s single working telephone was exactly how I wanted the adversary here to sound.

Slam it all you want.  I’ll watch this one again.

 

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“Oh mother, what tree is this?”

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“Oh mother,

“What tree is this?

“What wounds are these?

“I am Attis on the pine.

“Christ on the cedar.

“Odin on the world ash.”

— from “Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth,” by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean

People tend to think of either “The Dark Knight Returns” of “The Killing Joke” as the seminal “dark” Batman graphic novel.

I suggest that this trounces both of them.

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A review of “Deliver Us From Evil” (2014)

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“Deliver Us From Evil” (2014) pleasantly surprised me by being a pretty decent horror movie; I’d give it an 8 out of 10.

I expected a predictable melodrama between its two primary protagonists — the hardened, intractably “close-minded” cop and the wise young priest.  This, I thought, would upstage a thin, generic, supernatural backstory.

Well … there was some of that expected character interaction, but I admit that it was done pretty well.  And the old fashioned scares served up here make this an above average horror movie.

I say “old fashioned” because this seemed to channel the demonic possession classics that defined this horror movie sub-genre, for me, anyway — “The Exorcist” (1973) and “The Exorcist III” (1990).  It has an expansive story that begins in a nicely surprising battle scene in Iraq, then shifts its focus to several chilling violent crimes in New York City.  Then it effectively blends a horror story with a police thriller.  And the story is detailed, with some thought put into the demon’s modus operandi and choice of victims, as well as the their investigation by streetwise New York City cops.  A straight horror-thriller like this is a nice contrast to recent well made supernatural horror films like last year’s “The Babadook” or “It Follows,” which were ambiguous and heavily thematic, personal stories with virtually no exposition.

Eric Bana and Edgar Ramirez were both terrific; even they might have been upstaged by Joel McHale in a supporting role as Bana’s foul mouthed but loyal anti-hero partner. I was rooting for him more than the thinly drawn hero scripted for Bana. (Can any NYC cops really wield a knife like that?  If so, that’s totally badass.)  McHale is damn good — I’ll be looking for him in his regular role in the upcoming revival of “The X Files.”  If you were an NYC cop, wouldn’t you want a partner like that?  Seriously … that dude is BADASS.

Regrettably, this movie’s thought and creativity do seem to lose steam toward the end.  Certain scares and images were done wonderfully.  The scenes inside the asylum were great, for example, especially one shot that made me think of the Batman mythos’ Arkham Asylum.  Others fell flat.  Our Big Bad, when finally revealed in full, is just a generic ugly dude in drab whiteface.  And a sequence involving a piano is shot with little visual flair.

The most frightening subplot of all involves a troubled girl in her bedroom; it’s cut short and rendered irrelevant in order to move the plot forward.  And the finale features an exorcism that recycles mostly old tropes from the sub-genre.

Hey … this was still a good movie, though.  It certainly was better than I thought it would be.  I’d cheerfully recommend it.

Oh!  One more thing — this is supposedly based on a true story.  Scott Derrickson’s interesting screenplay derives from the 2001 book, “Beware The Night,” by retired NYC police officer Ralph Sarchie (Bana’s character).  I wonder what evidence anyone has gathered to either support or debunk the story here.

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This isn’t me.

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I’m a writer, my name is Eric Nolan, and I’m a comic book nerd who’s reviewed both comics and superhero movies.  And, at first, I had some reservations about Ben Affleck’s casting in the upcoming “Batman vs. Superman.”

But this is some other dude.  Weird.

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VOTE FOR DEEZ NUTS.

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The Iowa high school sophomore is doing nothing less than pranking America’s entire electoral process.

What’s the deal with Gotham City-style pranksters popping up in the national discourse lately?  I love it.

I’d love to see Deez Nuts team up in some fashion with the Internet troll impersonating Target’s online customer service.

And don’t think that Deez Nuts is too young to be among Batman’s rouges gallery.  Anarky was a kid.  And the General (Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong) was just eleven years old.

Check out the following article:

“A 15-Year-Old Going by ‘Deez Nuts’ Is Doing Surprisingly Well in the Presidential Polls, by Carlton Ferment, Vice.com, 8/20/15:

http://www.vice.com/read/all-hail-president-deez-nuts?utm_source=vicefbus

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I actually got this Bible reference from when I was a kid!!

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And it’s indeed funny that it appeared on an inspirational church placard.  Or maybe it’s just genius viral marketing on the part of a pastor somewhere … think about it.  This thing is really making the rounds on Facebook thanks to its (apparently) unintentional irony.

As many of you know, the words are Satan’s attempt to tempt Jesus to submit to him.  I think they were … standing on a hill?  And Satan was gesturing towards the lights of a city below them?  That’s how I pictured it, anyway.

I might have been six or seven when I first heard this.  I had only a muddy understanding of what divine or terrible powers figures from the Bible were supposed to have … I honestly was afraid that the Devil would produce a knife or sword from his tunic and just kill Jesus.  I had been taught that “Jesus was peaceful,” and I thought it meant he couldn’t fight back in the same way that Batman or the Lone Ranger could.  Yes, I did say “the Lone Ranger.”   The black and white television episodes were still in syndication when I was a little boy.

All my instincts as a boy told me that they SHOULDN’T BE JUST STANDING NEXT TO EACH OTHER.  Or that Jesus should at least have a sword to deflect an attacking blow.

It was one of two Bible stories that scared me as a child.  The other, of course, was the story of Herod and his pogrom against first-born sons.  I had a coloring book from our local Catholic parish, with a two-page spread showing little boys desperately hidden by their mothers throughout a village.  I definitely remember the drawing of a little boy hiding in a basket and peeking out from underneath its lid.  I wished him luck, and wondered where I would hide under the circumstances.

The story of the Great Flood actually did NOT scare me, even though that would have made sense.  All those animals stuffed on a boat was just too whimsical a notion for a little boy to let me meditate on the reasons for their placement there.

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