Film Reviews- Deadpool & Wolverine, Twisters

 

Deadpool & Wolverine  is a brutal buddy movie. It takes that age old story of two people who would never work together forced to do so for the greater good. Its just that it takes a lot of fighting- and I mean a lot- before they do! The opening sequence sets out the stall with no holds barred  - physically or narratively- hard edged yet containing some nuggets that make this more than just one massive series of punch ups. Deadpool was always the outlier of the superhero stable who was able to go to more extremes than other genre movies and I was wondering whether this would change now he’s been fully admitted to Marvel’s mainstream. The answer is hardly at all.

 

Free Guy review

In these uncertain times we are trying to re-discover our purpose or perhaps find new ones and though it was made in 2019, Free Guy suits 2021 perfectly. While the concept is not new and has featured in various iterations across a number of films the take is fresh, vibrant and frequently very funny. Rarely for modern films it seems to exactly fit its running time with not an ounce of flab, not one moment when your attention wanders. When it was finished it was one of those movies where I wished I had written it because it must have been so much fun to create and is a blast to watch.

Warning- spoilers beyond this point…

 

Deadpool 2 review

What makes Deadpool 2 work really well is that it still has the contours of a typical superhero film yet undercuts these constantly with dark humour and knowing asides. There was a risk that the first film’s tricks might not work again or at least seem over familiar but somehow this sequel manages a load of new tricks and if not quite as laugh out loud funny as its predecessor certainly hits the target time after time.

Spoilers ahead...

Deadpool

The comic book superhero film that pokes fun at comic book superhero films!

One day Deadpool may bite Marvel where it hurts because in their latest zippy comic adaptation they pretty much manage to take the rise out of all the things they do in their other comic adaptations! It makes the preceding trailers- on this occasion for forthcoming X Men and Superman vs Batman films seem a little dry and sombre. No chance of that happening with Deadpool which opens in the same irreverent fashion in which it intends to go on. Over a freeze frame of a calamitous spinning car hanging perilously in the air, the titles eschew naming the cast and instead describe each character type the film possesses. At various junctures throughout the movie, the fourth wall is broken not simply by Deadpool speaking directly to camera but also by his commenting on the fact he’s doing so or on some other aspect of the movie. The violence is bloody, the language R rated in the States.  About three quarters of the way through you imagine you’ll tire of this or else the film will lurch into something more serious but you don’t and it doesn’t. The fact that it is made by the same studio who also make the serious films it is ribbing and the fact that Deadpool has been a mighty success could, as I said at the start, give Marvel one giant headache.