Top Gun: Maverick - Cheap Thoughts

Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell is a fossil, a pilot of a bygone era that doesn’t have a place in modern society. That is how he is described early on in the film, that his character and his way of doing things is a relic of the past. This is also how Tom Cruise could be described as a movie star, in fact his entire filmography of the 21^st century is something of an outlier. Cruise is often described as the last true movie star, he’s a name that draws an audience and he also retains creative control over a lot of his productions, and with that power he commits anything and everything towards making the film. Cruise doesn’t half-arse anything, if he is making a film where he is a fighter pilot, he is going to learn everything he can about the jets, he will have his team learn everything they can about the jets, and they will film as much of it practically and realistically as possible. Forget “They don’t make movies like this anymore” they just simply don’t make movies like this, anywhere, at any time. Unless of course you’re Tom-Bloody-Cruise, the most committed man in Hollywood to the craft.

It doesn’t take long for the film to leave you jaw-dropped, with an early flight sequence of Cruise making it to Mach-10 not even 10 minutes into the film and the absolute power you feel from the jet, the beautiful scope of planet Earth as Maverick takes it in and even he can’t help but be awestruck at the view. The film takes that level of adrenaline and never loses it, and not just in the flight sequences-all of which are just stunning in their practicality, choreography and weight-but all these impossibly beautiful people dramatically posing in front of a never-ending sunset before driving away on a cool motorcycle, there is such an attitude to the film that it’s hard to argue it doesn’t earn.

More so than just aesthetic or production being against the grain of modern blockbusters is the attitude of the picture. Top Gun is one of the most stylised, personality driven action films of the 80s, it is also incredibly corny by modern standards. In a post-modern sarcasm ruling world, it’s amazing that there is not a hint of snark to be found anywhere in this film. No cringing of their younger selves, no pointing out the newer hotter models of old characters; no irony, no cynicism, no mockery to be found, just honest heartfelt storytelling. That exact attitude is what the film lives and dies by, because no one is going to argue the film has a complex story exactly, it is very simple Unnamed Bad Guys^tm have weapons that are hard to get to, Good Guys need to train to destroy them and hopefully overcome their emotional barriers on the way. Simple, smooth, slick. That’s Top Gun: Maverick baby.

-Danny

Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers - Cheap Thoughts

You know why Who Framed Roger Rabbit was successful? Because it wasn’t the cartoon references, that might certainly have gotten people into the seats, but that’s not what has kept people coming back to it for 40 years. It’s because of the effort. It’s because you notice how much time and detail went into every fraction of that movie, how the live-action actors interact with their 2-Dimensional counterparts, how the sets and props will do the same, how the film is designed to accurately function as a pastiche of 40s noir thrillers, and so on, and so on. It also does all this while telling its own story and keeping the references to simple set dressing.

You might say it’s unfair to begin this review by comparing one film to another made a long time ago, but that’s the thing, this film isn’t interested in being a real film, it just wants you to remember things. A self-referential irony plagued pop-culture nostalgia bate that offers nothing in terms of legitimate story or jokes, just plenty of pointing at the screen and saying “hey I remember that thing!”. You know what the worst part is? It’s not even the worst film amongst this genre. It’s still been beat out by Space Jam: A New Legacy as the most self-indulgent drivel that’s lucky a literal pandemic had to happen to stop it from being the worst thing to happen to cinemas. Yet somehow that makes this worse, it’s not even a film bad enough to worth getting angry about.

Everyone did the bare minimum, they showed up, did their bit, went home and thought nothing of it. Everything from the pathetically shallow performances that never convincingly have you believe these live-action actors and animated characters are ever sharing the same space, to the jokes that again all consist of “Hey remember this thing” except sometimes sprinkled in with “Hey remember this thing, we’re gonna have it be pathetic now”. Bit of advice for you filmmakers, if one of the big plot points of your film is that one character is traditionally animated and the other is computer generated, perhaps have the former be traditionally animated and not computer generated trying to look traditionally animated? But of course, doing that would require any kind of thought, or effort, or style, you know, the things needed to make a movie?

This is definitely a bare-bones lazy review, but this is a very lazy movie, it doesn’t deserve effort being put into discussing it because no effort was put into making it. It’s bad, of course it is, so let’s go home and think nothing of it.

-Danny

Everything Everywhere All At Once - Cheap Thoughts

There’s nowhere to begin with this movie. It goes everywhere and encompasses everything. Comedy? Action? Existentialism? Family? The film becomes everything and leaves nothing except…nothing. Which is in itself the question, when you have everything, when you experience everything, what is left except nothing? Describing the plot is a little hard, to describe the themes is to address everything. A grandiose piece of philosophy and godhood, what matters? Does anything matter? Does it matter if nothing matters? Did you file your taxes properly?

Within all those questions is simply a mother regretting her life, a father unable to fight for what he loves and a daughter feeling unseen and unheard. How can you matter to the universe if you don’t matter to your mother? Can you fight for what you love without fighting at all? Is every decision you made the wrong one? Artists and philosophers have asked these questions and their variants since history began. We’re a species obsessed with finding purpose in a universe of random events and our attempts to find answers simply leaves us feeling smaller and less significant with every development.

Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert somehow find a new way to ask these questions. They present us not with a filmed thesis but with a multiverse hopping action-comedy that sees average joes become martial art stars, sausage fingered humans, infinity bagels and googly eyed rocks. The adrenaline fuelled nonsensical creativity is a staple of The Daniels style as seen in their directorial debut Swiss Army Man, another film that layers deep introspective questions over farcical comedy and vulnerable people. The film is a joke, it is ridiculous down to the bone but doesn’t act like it. It’s silly to us, but not the characters, this is their lives, their norm, there is nothing to laugh at and so they will commit everything and present it with just sincerity it’s amazing how well they blend these ludicrous set-ups with such genuine human emotion (Human being optional). This allows the action to flow with such intensity and violence, it makes for some truly wonderful fight scenes. Likewise the comedy is creative and highly entertaining, after all who wouldn’t find a woman using a dog as a pair of nunchucks hilarious? Then finally throughout all that, the sci-fi jargon, the stellar action and the surreal premises, it’s simply a film about a family, a family trying to find purpose, to find meaning and to find love.

We are so small, and we are getting smaller every day and one day all of us will be gone. But a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts, or because it’s big or because it’s easy. You do not have to be the most important thing in existence to be important, you just need to be important to someone, that is what makes you matter. So what does the film suggest we do to make that happen?

Be Kind.

-Danny

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - Cheap Thoughts

It’s hard to feint excitement for a new MCU product, not because they always lack quality, but because they are on an endless conveyor belt of content you never go any time without them. The final episode of Moon Knight came out on Wednesday and this movie came out on Thursday. You can’t anticipate something that is omnipresent. What we can be excited for and haven’t seen in a very long time is a new film from the one Sam Raimi. 9 Years since his last directorial feature and it’s with the biggest corporation in the film industry, considering this man has been burnt by studio’s before, all the way back with his sophomore (and underrated) feature Crimewave, to the infamous studio meddling of Spider-Man 3, to the watered down and voiceless Oz The Great & Powerful, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the man swore off any studio film for the rest of his life…so yes let’s say interest was certainly peaked when this production was announced.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Yes that is the best title to any Marvel movie) is certainly the most vocal a director has been behind the camera. His distinct style and voice is definitely there, the use of horror, the over the top presentation, the wonky camera movements, everything you would expect, but it is still Raimi being reserved. Marvel doesn’t just hire this man because he’s a marketable name, but because he does have a genuine style they want to utilise, they also know it has to be held back and blended with the style of the MCU and frankly, on that level, this might be the best studio film Raimi has ever made. Not in terms of plot, style or creativity, but in production. There is no clash to be felt, purely compromise on both ends, as any good collaborative experience should be. Raimi gets to bring his toys to the playground but doesn’t force everyone else to play with them.

The unexpected yet best collaboration to come from this production is that of Elizabeth Olsen, the longest running cast member of this film, who has certainly grown as a performer with each instalment and yet does her best work here working with Raimi (Yes, even more than WandaVision). It’s hard to pin down why, certainly a lot of it is for the legwork done by other productions to develop her character, but there is a physicality and lack of restraint to this performance. Olsen is an unstoppable force and Raimi is steering her in all the right directions, absolutely the scene stealer of the film.

If you’ve been around the block and you know how this modern Hollywood system works, you can probably tell what’s coming next. It’s unthinkable that Sam Raimi would spend nearly a decade of not making movies, only to come back for a studio production where he had to restrain himself without something promised in the pipelines. The trend of directors promising to make a billion dollar movie for a studio so they can get a blank check on their next passion project is clockwork, which means it won’t be long before we get a true unchained Raimi flick in the next couple of years and if so then we truly have something to look forward to, and as far as compromise films go for better productions later on? Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is certainly in the upper echelon.

-Danny