Reaction Shots

Photo credit:  Ben Gabbe/Getty Images and Them.us Recently, I’ve begun reprising “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” series with an eye to examining how much of the show’s DNA has been passed on down through succeeding generations in both film and TV. Also, I wanted to see if my sense of the characters has changed much and last, but certainly not least, what effect the past year or so of allegations against Joss Whedon recast how I view the series/read the text. It’s this last that’s going to occupy us here, but the other two approaches are part of the mix, as well. I first watched “Buffy” beginning with the third season and caught up through reruns. I stuck with it fairly devotedly/regularly through season five and didn’t really see all of six and seven until I got a boxed set of DVDs. I did catch the odd season six/seven episode when they aired and wild horses weren’t going to stop me from watching the series finale. I came to actually prefer “Angel” at a certain point but felt things we...

Both of these flicks are similar: charismatic heroes and supporting characters, more or less conflicted bad guys, fantastical settings, beautiful CGI, and a self-aware (to varying degrees) silliness quotient. So why did one capture my attention and hold it and I had to get up, take a break from the other and decide if I’d finish the movie? “Aquaman” is out in limited re-release and I was kind of sorry I missed it on the first go-round three years ago. It looked like really engaging, dumb fun. It is that until it’s not. Then it becomes a slog. A gorgeous slog, but a slog nonetheless. The story is comic book dopey; Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is the scion of the Queen of Atlantis who fled to the surface to avoid an arranged marriage (a CGI-enhanced Nicole Kidman? Honestly, I can’t tell anymore…) and a lighthouse keeper ( Temuera Morrison ). Eventually, Atlantis catches up to her and she realizes she has to return. Little Arthur is trained over the years by his Atlantean family’s vizier...

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 mark...

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...