Out on the Flip Side

Conditions: Coldish.  Not cool, mother nature.


Film Review: Deadpool

Ok, it is clever.  A hyper-cynical, sarcastic, anti-anti hero who spends the movie mouthing off and breaking the fourth wall, on paper, sounds like a nightmare.  But in practice it actually works fairly well.  Ryan Reynolds uses his considerable charm and exploits the R rating to it's maximum to bring across a surprisingly fun and heartfelt film.  As Wade Wilson, he makes his living as a hired gun.  He meets a stripper and they fall in love.  It's cute.  Then he's diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He takes a chance for a cure from an odd man and ends up disfigured, but now with healing powers.  Unable to go back to his girlfriend he becomes Deadpool, dedicated to  hunting down the guy who screwed him over.

And that's pretty much it.  Bullets are expended, henchmen are slaughtered, many puns are thrown.  There's a funny blind woman who's a roommate with extra sass.  The make up of the film is an extended flashback sequence built around a freeway slaughter.  It's then proceeds on to the big final action sequence.

I think that the strengths of this film lie in the cynical nature and the fact that it's an origin film.  So I guess the big question is how is the sequel going to work now that the whole origin has been worked out.  What kind of story can this hyper-cynical character actually operate in?  While Ryan's Deadpool seems happy to mess around in the shallow end, dealing with low budgets issues and throwing one liners to the audience, what happens when you raise the stakes?  Interesting to find out.  Four busted wrists out of five.



Film Review: Gods of Egypt

Gosh people are cynical these days aren't they?  Have a movie about some crazy old woman who lives and dies in a van in England, and they line up around the block.  Have a film where a so-called superhero beats up people while hating himself and they love it.  But have a fantastical film about the Gods of Egypt, an actual mythological throwback full of brash performances and amazing ideas and everyone's all like 'oh dear, ancient egyptians had dark skin, so I don't like this."  "Oh dear, the egyptian gods were myths not actual people who walked amongst the mortals." "Oh dear, people can't be brought back from the dead."  For Pete's sake, Geoffrey Rush is in this thing as Ra, who lives on a spaceship above Earth and spends each day shooting a monster that's trying to devour it!  What is wrong with everyone?!!

Gods of Egypt tells the classic tale of Set killing his brother Osiris and taking the crown from Osiris's son, Horus.  Horus, with the help of a mortal, then goes on a quest to take it back.  It's loud, it's a bit crazy, it's colourful, it's bold and brash.  I had a lot of fun with it.  But I can't help but notice how sparse the audience is, nor how much everyone online seems to hate it.

This is not a film for the cynical.  This is a film for those of us who dare to dream.  To wildly imagine and enjoy the wild imaginings of others, to embrace the sheer craziness of Gerard Butler madly murdering all the other gods so he can take their super body parts for himself.  Where people can transform into giant flying monsters, where towers reach into the stars above, and Geoffrey Rush lives up there, somewhere, towing the sun after him and shooting at some giant world-devouring monster.  This is the world I want to live in, this is the kind of event cinema I want to see.  When my time on this planet as at an end, I'm not interested in flakey memories of planting trees or watching sunrises, no.  I want to remember this gloriously batchshit-insane monstrosity, and smile one last time.  Three and a half eyeballs out of five.



- Peace out