Reaction Shots

I’d have to be a cold-hearted bastard not to like “Free Guy”, a movie so well-intentioned and so very competently executed that there has to be some kind of psychological threshold metric that if you don’t hit it, you’re are quite simply a sociopath. While “The Suicide Squad” is more my Big Summer Fun Movie jam, I will gleefully admit that I have an appreciable love of movies that are charming, funny, and end happily. To that end, I can honestly say I really enjoyed “Free Guy” and am pleasantly surprised that it turned out better than I expected. Boasting show runners and cast members from “Stranger Things”, Jodie Comer from “Killing Eve” and Ryan Reynolds out charming himself and Taika Watiiti walking off with every scene he’s in, it’s hard to resist the movie’s charms.  A mixture of  a less-congested and jumbled “Ready Player One” (with which it shares  screenwriter Zak Penn) and “The Truman Show” but with less angst and existential questioning, “Free Guy” hits its marks, delivers it

It’s summer, the concession stand is open and the confectionary is high in empty calories. It would be churlish to not do my part and spend time with the Loud and Stupid. It doesn’t have to be that way. There’s loud and smart and today’s offerings is kind of one of each.   One knows it’s stupid and therefore is smart. The other does, too, but maybe thinks it’s cleverer than it really is. Both are well-done, so there’s that. Neither really requires much of a deep dive but that’s why summer flicks are so great. You can turn off the lights and ditch the thinking cap. Sublimely Ridiculous: “The Suicide Squad” Look, James Gunn’s a stone genius from the House of Troma. Most folks probably only know him from both Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but oh, would they be surprised (maybe even happily) to catch “Super” or “Slither”, both of which should be on everyone’s watchlists of all things awesome.  When word broke that Marvel fired Gunn (yes, I wrote that), and he was going to DC/Warne

“Respect” isn’t the worst musician biopic around, but most of the time, I’m not sure if there is a good one. The longer the movie went on - and it did go on - the more I was wracking my brain to think of a genuinely good, well-told life story of a musician. Any musician. I started going as far back as “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and mulled “Amadeus” and “Immortal Beloved”. For sure, all classics, and “What’s Love Got to Do with It” has to be up there. Yeah, there are some great movies that also happen to be biographies of musicians (some more liberty-taking than others, but we’ll look at that later).  I think the reason it’s hard to find many examples is because this sub-genre is a thorny one for a variety of reasons. If it’s about a popular musical figure in the past 10 to thirty years, there’s a good chance that their estate is going to want a measure of say in the product. Then, too, if they are or were a member of a popular ensemble, there are broader IP considerations at play. Even i

Typically, a Tim’s Pic would be one where my pal Tim Kozlowski mounts a campaign to ensure that I really watch a given flick; said campaign would be subtle, repeated references to a title on a regular basis throughout an email thread. That’s not the case with the film at hand, though. I’m not sure what clicked most; the overall conceit of a sixties’ B-movie with something more on its mind than most or that Dudley Manlove was in the cast. Moreover, it had a ridiculous amount of talent in the crew: the practical make-up and effects were handled by Jack Pierce (his last film), whose credits include “Frankenstein” and “The Bride of Frankenstein” and the cinematographer was no less than two time Academy Award winner Hal Mohr (1943’s “The Phantom of the Opera” and “The Four Poster”). I might also add that the director, Wesley E. Barry, had a career that stretched back to 1915 as an actor, but/and racked up plenty of producer and A.D. as well as full director credits. “The Creation of the H

Dziga Vertov is not enough well known outside film historian circles and if you only see one of his films let it be this one. “The Man with a Movie Camera” was disparaged and dismissed on its release ninety-three years ago. Eisenstein found it pointless (which still surprises me, but he could be crusty); Vertov’s fellow Soviets found it an example of bourgeoise pretension (despite it being in Vertov eyes an ode to the Russian Soviet people and the workers who were the backbone of the state). However, time not only heals all wounds (I don’t make up the cliches, I just use them), but does provide correctives to knee-jerk reactions. In the ensuing years, the film’s reputation has gained as a piece of “pure cinema”, very much what Vertov was trying to get at. It succeeds admirably and while it eschews interstitial dialog and a linear narrative, there is a structure at hand, and a narrative progression. It is not a thematically dense film, but it is gorgeous (and fun!) to watch. And it i