Wyatt Russell, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, and Florence Pugh in Thunderbolts*
THUNDERBOLTS*
Is it possible that, over the past three years, Marvel Studios has been experimenting with a release strategy designed to get audiences excited for every other MCU movie?
I'm asking because despite the buckets of dough earned by nearly all of the production company's offerings, I've noticed an interesting pattern. In the summer of 2022, Thor: Love & Thunder scored a weak 63-percent “freshness” rating among Rotten Tomatoes reviewers (Marvel's then-second-lowest rating after Eternals), as well as a B+ audience grade from research firm CinemaScore (placing the film, at the time, in the bottom 10 percent of Marvel's screen output). That threequel was followed, four months later, by the more readily adored Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, CinemaScore grade of A … plus five Oscar nods and a win). And that, in turn, was followed by: Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania (RT – 46 percent; CScore – B); Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (RT – 82 percent; CScore – A); The Marvels (RT – 62 percent; CScore – B); Deadpool & Wolverine (RT – 78 percent; CScore – A); and this past February's Captain America: Brave New World (RT – 48 percent; CScore – B- … the latter a new audience low for the MCU). Now we have Thunderbolts* … and wouldn't you know it? Director Jake Schreier's comic-book adventure is basking in its 88-percent “freshness” and A- grade from fans. Is this critical/public seesawing of opinion, a bummer followed by a winner and so forth, intentional? A way to make everyone crow “Marvel's back!!!” after every comparative disappointment?
Apologies for the deeply actuarial nature of the preceding paragraph, but I'm delaying legitimate discussion of Schreier's film largely because I don't have much to say about the movie – or rather, I don't have much to say that I haven't said before. Thunderbolts* is fine. As with the majority of MCU outings over the past decade, it boasts a lot of what I hate about this endless superhero franchise alongside much that I admire, and if pressed, I'd say it's probably the most fun I've had with the MCU since 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home. I also wish that praise meant more, because the good time I had came only in fits and spurts, and despite sitting through the entirety of its running length including the inevitable post-credits teaser, I'm no more stoked for the next Marvel than I was for this one, which was hardly at all. The best I can hope for these days is to leave not feeling insulted, and I got what I hoped for. So you know … . Hooray, I guess.
At least Thunderbolts*, its title's self-imposed asterisk indicating that this won't be our heroes' collective moniker for long, does something smart right off the bat by opening with the solitary figure and voice-over of Florence Pugh – even if her immediate, deliberate fall off a skyscraper suggests that the movie has nowhere to go but down. Pugh, of course, is back as Russian assassin Yelena Belova, sister (if not by blood) to Scarlett Johansson's deceased Black Widow, and as Yelena informs us, she's going through an existential crisis. Apparently, offing nameless goons for money just isn't cutting it for her anymore, and upon announcing her planned retirement to secret employer and facing-impeachment CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontane (fellow series returnee Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Yelena agrees to One Last Mission. She's tasked to assassinate an incoming threat at one of Valentina's underground laboratories, only to realize that three other costumed visitors – super-soldier John Walker (Wyatt Russell), human phantasm Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and power mimic Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) – have been recruited for identical purposes. Also on the premises is a barefoot guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman), who's as confused about his presence as Yelena, the others, and we are.
Needless to say, the lab intruders – well, the ones that survive … – are required, amid much griping, to team up. If you've seen the omnipresent Thunderbolts* trailers, you know they also eventually join forces with David Harbour's Red Guardian Alexei Shostkov, who's Yelena's boisterous adoptive father, and Sebastian Stan's Winter Solider Bucky Barnes, who's now a first-term congressman needing these C-team warriors for reasons of his own. In addition, and before too long, there's a super-powered threat named Sentry to contend with – one who, naturally, “is stronger than all the Avengers put together” – and he morphs into one called Void, and I'm pretty sure both of them want to either rule or destroy the world. But I'd have to check my nonexistent notes.
So which would you prefer first: the good news or the bad? Let's start with the bad, just so I can get a pair of my biggest Marvel pet peeves out of the way early. There are two extended clichés that I keep praying will be ditched forever and never are: the first being the interminable battle royale between fractious antagonists who ultimately become allies; the second being our heroes' decision, after their super powers prove ineffective, to simply start punching their enemies for minutes on end. Both of these hoary genre inevitabilities eat up too much of Thunderbolts*' running length, and I think there's a new, less brutal MCU cliché I can now add to my list: the inspirational monologue in which one character sounds off about duty and responsibility while the score tugs at our heartstrings, followed by their listener reacting with some version of “That was a nice speech.” This routine transpires between Alexei and Yelena here, just as it did between Bucky and Sam in Brave New World, and I detest it. It's such a cheap, have-your-cake-and-eat-it way for screenwriters to wallow in sentiment while simultaneously undercutting their sentimental leanings so they and their film don't seem uncool.
Among other annoyances that were sometimes mere cases of the blahs, Schreier's pacing and timing tend to slacken whenever the focus shifts beyond Yelena and company, and like practically every MCU release, the film is visually unremarkable – the better, I suppose, to link one franchise entry to another for anyone brave/sadistic enough for an 80-ish-hours-long marathon. Despite his attempt at world-conquering, Void's master plan to trap humanity within their darkest fears – a visualization that wasn't nearly as eerie as the Infinity War vanishings – felt anticlimactic, and signaled a rare, weird first for the superhero canon: an all-powerful nemesis who might've been stopped with a hug. And although most of the cast members are welcome, I'm still on the fence about Wyatt Russell as John Walker. Part of my issue may simply be with the character; while I never saw the Disney+ limited series The Falcon & the Winter Soldier that marked the soldier's debut, he certainly must've been more intriguing there than he is as Thunderbolts*' resident sarcastic grump (among stiff competition). Yet it may simply be that I don't yet buy Russell as a bad-ass in anything. His screen charm has always seemed to come more from mom Goldie Hawn than dad Kurt Russell, and whenever this gifted nepo baby barks out orders or threats, they seem to be coming from the mouth of a growling but helplessly adorable Golden Retriever.
Still, Russell does score a few chuckles, and the most refreshing thing about this 36th (!) MCU entry is that, barring the requisite danger and demolition, it's expressly a comedy, which plays to screenwriters Eric Pearson's and Joanna Calo's strengths as much as to the actors'. (Schreier's movie is even a comedy in the strongest scene of peril – one that finds four of our begrudging associates forced to link arms and work as a team to scale the interior of a mile-high tower.) It has certainly taken a while, but Louis-Dreyfus – Marvel's casting always being the studio's one true ace-in-the-hole – finally brings her expected snap to the role of Valentina, the political schemer at last allowed to be the full-out villain implied by that streak of Cruella de Vil white in her hair. As she (reportedly) was on Veep, Louis-Dreyfus is nasty and funny here, and delivers some enjoyable bits of sardonic meanness opposite Geraldine Viswanathan's harried assistant Mel. Pullman, another proud nepo baby (his dad is character-actor wonder and Independence Day prez Bill Pullman), brings delicate shades of oddball eccentricity to his readings, and Kurylenko largely overcomes her role's dullness through her cutting way with a punchline.
Although Stan isn't around as much as you'd anticipate, and Bucky has always been one of the actor's blander assignments, he's suitably photogenic and nails his few laugh lines. Meanwhile, as he did in Black Widow, Harbour goes for glorious excess in spectacularly winning fashion. He's at his very best when tag-teaming the comedy alongside Pugh – but really, barring the occasional Don't Worry Darling, when isn't a performer at their best opposite Pugh? Finding enormous shades of melancholy and regret in her pitch-perfect Russian dialect, yet never skimping on the role's exorbitant supply of deadpan humor, Florence Pugh is the standout reason to see Thunderbolts*. More often than not, she's the standout reason to see anything. No asterisk necessary.
ANOTHER SIMPLE FAVOR
Unsurprisingly, Thunderbolts* was the country's top box-office draw this past weekend, and if you trust the streaming service's claims, the top movie draw on (Amazon) Prime was director Paul Feig's comedy-thriller continuation Another Simple Favor. Why wouldn't it be? The rare mid-range hit that deserved a sequel and, many years later, actually got one, 2018's A Simple Favor remains a 21st-century high point for its genre, so buoyant and ticklish and unexpected that it almost felt like a mistake – something that Feig and his collaborators managed to smuggle into theaters without its studio's knowledge. Yet everyone I know who saw this juicy showcase for the charms and comic chops of Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively adored it, and happily, there's much to love in its seven-years-later incarnation, as well … even though I've rarely seen a movie free-fall from sublime to ridiculous quite so dramatically.
If the time away requires a refresher, Kendrick again plays the perky, successful mommy-tips vlogger Stephanie Smothers, who, following the first film's labyrinthine events, is now also a published author and amateur sleuth. Lively is again Emily Nelson, a.k.a. Hope McLanden – the acidic, impossibly chic bestie whom Stephanie had arrested and imprisoned for murdering Hope's sister and father. (Somehow, committing these crimes made the woman more likable.) As Another Simple Favor begins, it's seven years later and Stephanie is on a book tour, unsuccessfully trying to drum up interest in her true-crime fiction based on the case she helped crack. She's barely a sentence into her reading, however, when who should parade through the door but Hope herself, newly freed from prison (under questionable circumstances) and determined to make nice with her former pal and stooge. Stephanie ain't buying it; she's been down this road before. But Hope insists that her peace offering is genuine: She wants Stephanie to be maid of honor at her forthcoming wedding in Capri. Reluctantly, knowing she can at least vlog through the trip and make viewers aware of her murder, Stephanie agrees. That's when, like last time, things get weird, perhaps even more so than in 2018 – and in that one, we learned of an incestuous relationship involving one of the main characters, like, 20 minutes into the movie.
For close to half of its two-hour run time, at least so far as comic sequels go, Another Simple Favor is dangerously close to perfect. Because Stephanie's original arc had her losing her babe-in-the-woods naïveté well before the end credits, Kendrick is now allowed to match Lively beat for beat in caustic repartee, shooting daggers with the same ease that she deflects them. You can sense how much bitchy fun the actors are having with this dynamic they barely got to explore before, and the smiling-through-loathing put-downs and comebacks that screenwriters Jessica Sharzer and Lasta Kalogridis provide for Kendrick and Lively are pure gold – biting, raunchy, hysterical. It was a kick seeing so many of the first film's familiar faces reunite for this followup: Andrew Rannells, Kelly McCormack, and Aparna Nancherla as Stephanie's Greek chorus of disapproving moms; Henry Golding as Hope's former spouse Sean, whose experience has left him a hilariously miserable drunkard; the solid, spiky Bashir Salahuddin as Stephanie's ally Detective Summerville; even Joshua Satine and Ian Ho, who were mere toddlers in their original roles as Stephanie's and Hope's respective sons. (These youths have subsequently grown to become inspired, comically assertive tweens.)
Alas, Jean Smart, who played Hope's mentally shaky mom in 2018, doesn't appear, but the pert and eccentric Elizabeth Perkins happily shows up to take her place. (The casting switch is accomplished, amusingly, with two-sentence succintness: “Hello, Mom … you look different.” “I had work done.”) And Feig, who handles large ensembles of comic talents with perhaps more skill than any other current director – even the extras are riotous in Feig movies – keeps piling on the pleasures: Allison Janney as Hope's jovial Aunt Linda; Michele Morrone as Hope's Italian fiancé Dante; Elena Sofia Ricci as her vicious future mother-in-law Portia; Taylor Ortega as a wildly uncouth FBI agent (a nice nod to Feig's 2015 Spy); Alex Newell as Stephanie's self-interested publicity manager; solo-named comedian Holmes as a strict summer-camp tyrant; Sophia Angelozzi as an improperly helpful Italian housekeeper. I adored all of these fine and funny folks, and adding the sharp editing, gorgeous Capri landscapes, traditionally fierce array of Blake Lively costumes, and giddy potential for multiple mysteries (corpses pile up with greater frequency than in 2018), Another Simple Favor appeared to have it all.
It eventually has way too much, which wouldn't necessarily have been a detriment had so many of the twists not been so obviously telegraphed. But while I'm a notorious dimwit as these sorts of entertainments, even I could see at least three “Gotcha!” surprises coming a good 20 minutes before they ultimately landed, and the mechanics required to keep the plotting on track – such as Stephanie's stint under “house arrest” – were routinely so preposterous that they caused me to lose faith in the movie. By the film's final scenes, the unconvincing, convoluted narrative was deserving of more laughs than the jokes themselves, and while I was initially thrilled for this sequel, I was far less taken with the means by which it promised a future one. Ah well. Half a killer time is still pretty darned great, and when I think back on Another Simple Favor – or, as is equally likely, legitimately return to it some day – I'll always have memories of our leads heading off to Capri on Dante's jet-black private jet, and the deserving shade thrown at Kate Winset's Rose in Titanic, and the cackle-eliciting bit with the rolling service cart(s), and Hope's summer hat that's roughly the size of a hot-air balloon … . Just because a vacation ends poorly doesn't mean you regretted the trip.
THE SURFER
Is the prospect of Nicolas Cage going slow-burn (and sunburn) crazy for 100 minutes reason enough to make a movie? More to the point, is it reason enough to see a movie? I would've asked one of my fellow patrons at my weekend screening of director Lorcan Finnegan's The Surfer, but I was the only one there … so maybe the answer is “no.”
In this mildly hallucinogenic psychological thriller, Cage plays the unnamed title character – an Australian-born, California-raised business tyro now back on his native continent to purchase the beachside home of his youth. All this poor guy wants to do is buy a house and ride the waves with his teen son (Finn Little), yet the moment the pair hit the sand, they're greeted by a brutish local who imparts to Cage, in the first of many instances, the mantra “Don't live here, don't surf here.” This bully in a Santa hat is hardly the last to let Cage know he's not welcome, the list going on to include the Australian's beach-gang leader (Julian McMahon), their cronies, local law enforcement, and even seemingly benign members of the community. Cage, though, is undeterred, and spends the next several days simply trying to get to the water, gradually losing everything he cares about – his car, his phone, his wedding ring, his shoes, his family, his job, his sanity – in the pursuit. It's usually fun to watch Nicolas Cage unspool and hit rock bottom, as he clearly does here when he's drinking dirty parking-lot rainwater and considering feasting on a dead rat. But what, exactly, is going on? And why is it so torturously hard to care?
Some films don't boast stories so much as prevailing moods, and Finnegan's and screenwriter Thomas Martin's throwback to the New Wave of 1970s Australian cinema, in which Peter Weir and other talents reigned supreme, is nothing if not a mood piece. The problem is, it's not much of anything else, either. Cinematographer Radzek Ladczuk's day-glo colors are arresting, your uncertainly about where events are leading is sustaining for a while, and Cage, heaven knows, is watchable – and with the camera so fixed on his increasingly sunburned face, sometimes the only thing to watch. Even when not speaking, as when the surfer stares at the beach with an open-mouthed, nearly orgasmic rapture that made me think he was gonna burst into song, Cage keeps you alert, and it should go without saying that his portrayal is instantly meme-able. (Expect “Eat the rat! EAT THE RAT!!!” to enter Cage's pantheon of singular line readings any minute now.) Yet the longer The Surfer goes on, the deeper you realize it's not actually going anywhere, and when the “Is this real or fantasy?” question is finally cleared up, it makes infinitely less sense, and leads to greater disappointment, than pure abandonment of the narrative would have. You don't hang 10 at this movie; you just hang, and there are less exhausting ways to do that.
RUST
To the film's credit, there are moments in writer/director Joel Souza's Western drama Rust – entire scenes, even – in which you can almost forget that this is the movie Alec Baldwin was making when, in a horrific and sadly preventable 2021 tragedy, he accidentally shot and killed the movie's cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded Souza with the gun's one live bullet. But let's stress the “almost” in that sentence, because your behind-the-scenes knowledge never really goes away, not least because the entire plot is set in motion by a character who fires a gun at a wolf and accidentally shoots and kills an innocent human being by mistake.
Truthfully, it might've been better for all involved had Rust (currently in limited release and available for rental and purchase) simply been shelved permanently, the way I and plenty of others anticipated. Yet Souza has given interviews stating it was Hutchins' family that wanted the film completed and shown as a testament to Halyna's work – they'll also be receiving a substantial share of whatever profits are made – so here we are. And I'm glad to report that the cinematography is frequently beautiful, especially in the outdoor landscape sequences set in Wyoming and other prairie states. Yet even this praise comes with a significant caveat that, like the movie itself, can't help but elicit discomfort. Because the project was understandably halted in October of 2021 and filming resumed 18 months later, two of Rust's most significant characters – 12-year-old protagonist Lucas Hollister and grieving sheriff Wood Helm – had to be re-cast when their original portrayers proved unavailable. Taken together, these figures who rarely share scenes are in roughly 80 percent of the film, and cinematographer Bianca Cline was hired to take over the camerawork in the wake of Hutchins' death. Considering that information, with current Rust co-stars Patrick Scott McDermott and Josh Hopkins nowhere around during initial production, how much of what we're seeing now can legitimately be credited to Hutchins? Twenty percent? Conceivably less?
I guess what I'm saying is that while I understand the desire, perhaps the need, to acknowledge Hutchins' talents and contributions to the film, we're not truly being allowed to see much of them. And between the film's (the actual film's) narrative-goosing incident, the plethora of outlaws and lawmen shooting at one another, and Baldwin's grim, period-inappropriate, weirdly less-angry-than-cranky portrayal of a haunted gunslinger, Rust is nearly impossible to view without real-world horror seeping into your mind. Props where they're due, though: to the moving melancholy of Hopkins, who seems to be channeling Chris Cooper in Lonesome Dove, and the forceful, affecting honesty of McDermott; to the stalwart turns by Travis Fimmel (quite scary as a psychotic preacher's son), Frances Fisher, Xander Berkeley, and others; to the novelistic approach to storytelling that's infinitely more assured and engaging than the practice was in (part one of) Kevin Costner's Horizon opus last summer. Plus, of course, the lived-in renderings and stunning vistas that are compelling no matter who photographed them. All told, and despite Baldwin's incongruousness and a 140-minute run time at least a half-hour longer than necessary, it's a pretty decent Western. I wish I'd never seen it.
