After a week out because of last week’s music festival, I made light work of some films over the weekend. I am mad at myself for missing out on two indie films at my local theater, but the times just weren’t going my way over an almost equally busy weekend. Here’s what got squeezed in.
Deadpool & Wolverine – I cannot believe how long it’s been since the last Deadpool film came out. I know a lot of the wait had to do with Disney now owning the IP, but still. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely. This film was possibly more meta than either of its predecessors, and I love Reynolds’ snarky delivery of every one of those lines. There also an abundance of fourth wall breaking, which I know isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it just works so well here. Given that they now have a Disney budget, that means they can get away with an obscene amount of A-list cameos, and I was pleased with every single one of them. What I wasn’t wild about? That now Deadpool has officially been woven into the Marvel of it all, but as long as we can keep future installments a hard R, I’ll keep watching. Jackman as Wolverine comes in and holds his own, though I can’t compare this performance to Logan…that’s really like apples to oranges. Fans of the other two films will definitely have fun here – I know I did!
Twisters – Truly a stand-alone sequel, as it was advertised. In this modern take on the 80s classic, we are treated very early on to some natural disaster horrors that sadly many face at the hands of tornados all year, every year. So, why exactly would someone not obsessed with weather, or dying, choose to live in Oklahoma? Beats the hell out of me, but despite all the trauma Kate has endured, she can’t say no when her old friend and other sole survivor asks to help him get scans of tornados to potentially help people get out of their paths in the future. What she doesn’t anticipate is the loose canon, and “tornado wrangler,” Tyler Owens, to first get in her way, but eventually meet her halfway intellectually. There was a lot more backstory here than I was anticipating, and though the storm sequences were tense, something about this film just didn’t land for me. I don’t mind that I watched it, but it missed the mark somewhere along the way.
The Inheritance – Ah, another perfectly vague plot set in reality that then turns supernatural. My favorite (kidding). Four siblings are asked home on the eve of their uber rich father’s 75th birthday, only to be told their getting locked in to help protect him from getting killed for a debt that’s come due. Drew’s future wife, Hannah, insists on staying, but she’s maybe in over her head once the siblings start mysteriously dying one by one. It’s not until a little later that I realize the deaths are supernatural in nature, which is kind of a letdown, but they don’t go fully there until the last thirty minutes or so. Overall, it was an interesting concept, but I just want another Ready or Not and I thought this was going to fit the bill!
Cure – After Longlegs haunted my dreams, film Twitter brought to my attention a similarly eerie Japanese film from 1997 that piqued my interest. Did I really want to risk having trouble falling asleep again? No, but the intrigue for something just as high quality beat out my fear in the long run. What a film! In Japan, women are being brutally murdered by seemingly random people. They all carve an “X” into the chest of their victims, are found nearby, remember committing the crime, but have no real motive as to why they suddenly needed to do this. There’s a mysterious man with severe short-term amnesia who appears to be the common thread, as does possibly hypnosis, but the clinical coldness, silent frames shot a still distance are all what work together to make this film so creepy. Highly recommend.