FiLM

Break character

The happily profane superhero party continues with Deadpool 2, a sequel that brings the anarchic spirit of the original without necessarily blazing any new trails.

Ryan Reynolds, who has experienced a career explosion thanks to this franchise—and, of course, his undeniable talents—continues to break the fourth wall, Ferris Bueller style. While the gimmick definitely leads to some good laughs, it does get to a point that feels a little too cute and repetitive. He winks at the audience so much, he must have some severe eyelid muscle strains. He’s gonna have an eyeball pop out.

The film starts with Deadpool dejectedly blowing himself up, complete with a severed arm giving the finger. Then it goes into flashback mode as Wade Wilson cleverly and smarmily tells us why he did such a thing. We also get a repeat of the “Wiseass Opening Credits” gag that got the original off to such a good start. This time, instead of Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning,” the credits roll to a brand new ballad from Celine Dion, so the stakes have definitely been raised.

Directed by David Leitch, one of the guys who directed John Wick, the film definitely ups the ante on the action front, with gun and swordfights that have some major zip to them. No question, Leitch can more than handle a fight scene. He and his writers also provide a worthy Deadpool adversary in the time-traveling Cable (Josh Brolin, having a helluva summer), a half-cyborg mound of angst with a human side. Brolin has cornered the market on “deep” villains this summer, with this and his emotive Thanos.

Much of the movie involves Deadpool forming X-Force and becoming an X-Men trainee. Deadpool’s first mission with his X-Force is a screamer, especially due to the participation of Peter (Rob Delaney), a normal, khakis-wearing guy with a killer mustache who joins the force because he saw an ad and thought it might be cool. Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) return, while Julian Dennison climbs aboard as Russell/Firefist, an angry young mutant Deadpool takes under his wing.

Juggernaut is the film’s other major villain, and Leitch pulls off some fun casting for the nasty giant mutant role. Watch the movie without knowing who plays him and see if you can guess. I bet you can’t. I bet you can’t!

Deadpool 2 does have some of the funniest cameos I’ve ever seen in a movie, and I will not give them away. Some of them are blink-and-youwill-miss-it, others involve heavy makeup, and one involves a group of players that garnered the movie’s biggest laugh out of yours truly. If they continue with Deadpool movies, and there most certainly will be more Deadpool or X-Force flicks, they must always stick with this particular gimmick. It kills.

As for Deadpool constantly breaking character and the fourth wall, it works about half the time in this installment. Some of the jokes fall flat, sometimes because they’ve already played out in the marketing. The credits scene might be the best part of the movie, with some killer gags that, again, will go unspoiled here. There’s also a lot of Wolverine jokes, and one half-funny Basic Instinct nod (one of the film’s least inspired moments).

Deadpool 2 has a hard R-rating thanks to a steady stream of intermittently hilarious profanity and constant gore. Deadpool’s healing capabilities come in very handy this time out, with him riddled with bullets, torn in half, blown up, etc.

Whatever you do, don’t look at the IMDB cast list for this movie, because it does give away the cameos, and the surprise of those cameos comprises much of the fun in this worthy but slightly inferior sequel. (I liked the original a little more.) I’m not sure what the future holds for Deadpool, but the film’s ending provides a lot of opportunities. Let’s hope it includes lots more Brolin, and fewer Basic Instinct jokes. Ω

“i look like Spider-Whom?”

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4Avengers: Infinity War The Avengers team takes a swift kick to their remarkably muscular collective ass via a super baddie named Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, likely the best big blockbuster time you will have at the cinemas this summer movie season. While Marvel movies have been on a nice roll lately (Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Captain America: Civil War), the last “Avengers” movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron, was a misguided, boring dud. This third installment—the first of a two-parter, with the second to be released next summer—lets it all hang out with a massive collection of characters and a scary sense of impending doom. There are many, many storylines at play servicing many superheroes and villains. Infinity War feels like the Magnolia of Marvel movies in that it takes all of those storylines and balances them in a cohesive, vastly entertaining manner. It’s over two-and-a-half hours long, but it’s never even close to boring. The balancing act is performed by directors Anthony and Joe Russo, the team that made Captain America: Civil War such a winner. The magic of that film carries over into this one, which picks up directly after the end of Thor: Ragnarok. That film ended with Thor and his fellow Asgardians feeling somewhat triumphant after losing their planet after defeating emo Cate Blanchett. A mid-credits scene saw their ship coming face to face with one owned by the mighty Thanos (Josh Brolin). In one of the great performance-capture achievements, Brolin is the best of monsters, one who manages just enough of a sensitive side that he falls well short of stereotype.

3Cargo I’ve had it up to here with zombies. (I stopped watching The Walking Dead after season two.) But this genre film, set in the Australian Outback, is actually pretty good. Martin Freeman stars as a man surviving a zombie apocalypse on a houseboat with his wife and baby daughter. Things go very badly not long after the movie starts, and he must battle to survive on land to ensure a future for his family. Directors Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke, who also wrote the screenplay, keep the origins of the apocalypse shrouded in secrecy and that’s a good move. There are cool elements, like government provided survival—and disposal—packs for those who become infected, and the fact that Freeman has a baby strapped to his back during a rather harrowing medical emergency. The film relies more upon its sense of dread and impending doom rather than straight-up zombie violence. The humans who aren’t sick turn out to be a lot scarier than the ghouls. The movie is more The Road than Dawn of the Dead, and Freeman’s stellar work makes it worth seeing, even if you’ve had your fill of flesh eaters. (Streaming on Netflix.)

3Cobra Kai Nearly 30 years after last donning the headband in The Karate Kid Part III, Ralph Macchio returns to the role of Daniel LaRusso, and old nemesis Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) is along for the ride. As a 10-part series on YouTube Red, Cobra Kai gives us a chance to see how things turned out for Daniel. (He’s a rich owner of a car dealership.) While that’s fun, the real charm of the series is seeing more behind the character of Johnny, who isn’t doing so well three decades later. Prone to drinking, estranged from his son, Robby (Tanner Buchanan), and constantly beating up on himself, Johnny hasn’t adjusted well after taking that kick to the face in the karate tournament. Yes, it looked like Johnny learned his lesson and tried to be a good sport in the aftermath, but the defeat ate away at him over the years. Now, pounding beers and stuck in the past, Johnny decides to reopen the Cobra Kai dojo, much to the chagrin of Daniel, who doesn’t want his kids, especially his young daughter, Samantha (Mary Mouser), exposed to its bad teaching ways. Cobra Kai adds a great chapter to the Karate Kid saga by not making Johnny a cardboard cutout villain. (Streaming on YouTube Red).

1Life of the Party The great Melissa McCarthy suffers the Ben Falcone curse yet again in Life of the Party, a shitty Back to Schoolrip-off,

which makes it double shitty because Back to Schoolsucked. Falcone is McCarthy’s husband, and he has now directed her in three movies, all bad. The duo worked together on Tammy, one of McCarthy’s worst films, and The Boss, the best of their work together but still pretty bad. McCarthy plays Deanna, a frumpy, middleaged mom with a daughter, Maddie (Molly Gordon), going into her last year in college. Within minutes of dropping their daughter off at school, her husband (Matt Walsh) dumps her for a real estate agent played by the actress from Modern Family(Julie Bowen). A dejected Deanna decides to enroll in school—a shockingly easy process in this film—and finds herself not only attending college alongside her daughter but hanging out with her and her sorority sisters. She’s considered a square at first, but a quick makeover during a party in the bathroom has her emerge as the coolest new girl on campus with awesome hair. What follows are a bunch of predictable gags involving college life and McCarthy struggling to make material well beneath her talents go somewhere. There are hardly any laughs, but plenty of groans.

4Revenge Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz is dynamite as Jen, mistress to Richard (Kevin Janssens), a rich man with a fancy house in the middle of the desert. Jen and Richard are enjoying a romantic getaway when Richard’s hunting buddies (Vincent Colombe and Guillaume Bouchede) show up early and immediately commence ogling Jen. After a night of partying and some seductive dancing by all, Jen passes out in the bedroom. Richard goes away to take care of some business for a couple of hours, and that’s all the time his friend needs to assault Jen. Upon Richard’s return, rather than helping Jen, he escalates the situation until Jen winds up impaled on a tree at the bottom of a cliff. Where the story goes from here is where the movie gets its name; director Coralie Fargeat isn’t interested in Jen simply getting away. She patches herself up, gets herself a gun, and, when the boys hunt for her after her body goes missing, major, messy bloodletting ensues. Lutz takes her character from eye candy to kick-ass female avenger, and her every moment onscreen declares her a star. Janssens makes for a fascinatingly horrible enemy, as does Colombe as the moron who crosses the line with Jen and unleashes her fury. Hey, Jen is super hot and super fit. The woman has been to the gym, and she will go Rambo on your ass if you wrong her.

4Tully The hardships faced by a woman raising children while giving birth to another— with little help from the dad—are given the Diablo Cody treatment in Tully, the second movie in which screenwriter Cody, director Jason Reitman and actress Charlize Theron have joined forces. They worked together before on the caustic comedy Young Adult, and this one makes that one look like an ice cream social party featuring bounce houses and unicorns. (For the purpose of this analogy, the unicorns would have to remain outside of the bounce houses to prevent people from being impaled on their majestic horns.) Theron is all kinds of magnificent as Marlo, a mother of two getting ready to give birth to her third, and getting her ass kicked physically and emotionally. Her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston), while not complete scum, should probably take off the headphones at night and go the extra mile to help keep the household in order and his wife sane. Marlo’s well-off brother Craig (Mark Duplass) gets his sis a special gift: a night nanny to help with the baby and household chores so she can grab some sleep. Tully (Mackenzie Davis) arrives like an angel in bohemian clothing and immediately helps brighten Marlo’s downer moods. Theron makes physical and mental exhaustion totally enthralling, and the moments where Marlo can’t take it anymore and lets the world have it are barnburners. Theron is a miraculous actress, and she gets a nice counterpart in Davis, who represents a sort of free spirit Marlo can’t seem to muster. Davis does everything and more with her screen time. I’m doubting 2018 will give us many screen duos as captivating as this one.