Deadpool and Wolverine

Since 2016, the Deadpool franchise has been the distempered mongrel of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Despite on- and off-screen remarks to the contrary, the series doesn't give a damn whether it's part of the family or not. Deadpool is having a ball doing its own thing and making a mint with every outing.

 

The third installment of Ryan Reynold's vanity vehicle -- Deadpool and Wolverine -- is directed by Shawn Levy and puts the two title characters, played by Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, a host of other heroes and villains into a Cuisinart along with the series' famous fourth-wall asides and real-world industry digs to create a blisteringly funny, bloody and profane tale that mixes Marvel mythology and Reynold's infamous rapid-fire snark and vulgarity.

 

In this story by a half dozen writers including Reynolds, the indestructible mutant mercenary Deadpool is recruited by a mid-level keeper of dimensional timelines named Mr. Paradox (Matthew MacFadyen), who tells him the order of the multiverse has been disrupted and dimensions are fated for annihilation because the X-man Wolverine died in one universe (see 2017's Logan). The reasons for this are much too convoluted (or nonsensical) to recount here, and they don't matter anyway.

 

Deadpool gets the notion to find a living Wolverine in one dimension and transport him to the one in danger of destruction because he has a "need to do good." Along the way, the two encounter several lesser lights in the Marvel constellation (cameos by Jennifer Garner, Wesley Snipes, Channing Tatum) and mount an attack on the bald super being Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), who rules a vast wasteland called the Void (the sexual and scatological references run deep and wide).

 

I would wager fans of this series (or any of the other 30 or so MCU features) don't show up for the science but for the eye-popping action sequences. I think Deadpool's near total absence of sentimentality is a bonus for those who may be weary of Captain America's earnestness and Spider-Man's juvenile diffidence.

 

Deadpool and Wolverine batter and brutalize and leave the audiences crying for more.

Twisters

 

 

Lee Isaac Chung's Twisters is much more pointed in its ethical and ecological implications than its nearly 30-year-old predecessor, the singular Twister, which starred Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt.

 

Chung's nailbiter of a cautionary tale stars Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People, Where the Crawdads Sing) and Glen Powell (Hit Man, Anyone But You) as tornado chasers whose paths converge in Oklahoma, where an unprecedented series of storms have wiped out small towns and will likely do even more damage.

 

When we meet her, Edgar-Jones' Kate is a doctoral student in meteorology who loses close friends and fellow researchers during a chase. Five years later, she's left fieldwork for a job in New York, tracking powerful storms, far away from the action. 

 

A former classmate and researcher, Javi (Anthony Ramos), talks Kate into coming to Oklahoma, which is her home state, to help him test a new method of measuring tornadoes. His work is funded by wealthy sponsors who have their own agendas.

 

Still scarred from her near-death experience, Kate takes a while to get her sea legs again, but once she sees Powell's pretty boy Tyler, a YouTube "tornado wrangler," turn her serious work into a circus she is back in the game, hoping to test a theory that tornadoes can be "tamed" with the right combination of chemicals and a proper delivery system.

 

As I told my screening companion today, any film coming out of Steven Spielberg's production studios will be visually stunning, and Twisters is no exception. The implausibility of several of the set pieces do not detract from the utter jaw-dropping effect of seeing demon winds tear through a town, shredding streets and houses like paper.

 

The movie's story of personal disillusionment and redemption is secondary to its warning that such storms will become more and more frequent and deadly if real action isn't taken. I don't know if the science proposed by Twisters is real, but the message is certainly well-taken and vitally important.

 

What We Leave

 

Maxxxine

 

Horrormeister Ti West doesn't make serious "message movies" but that doesn't mean his films are shallow, slasher fare, despite pushing the gore envelope in so many entertaining ways.

West's artful trio of hack-em-ups -- X and Pearl from 2022 and the just-released Maxxxine -- are movies about the movie industry, which, by the way, does more than its share of evisceration and bloodletting, figuratively speaking.

British starlet Mia Goth has been West's cohort in mayhem for X, Pearl and now Maxxxine, injecting her unconventional beauty and whacked-out screen presence into each. (Her maniacal cold stare at the end of Pearl must be one of the freakiest moments in closing-credits history.)

In Maxxxine, Goth plays the title character, a porn actress trying to break into legitimate pictures in the mid-80s. (The soundtrack is ear-candy for oldsters and might reawaken interest in synth-pop and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.) Maxine wants to be a big star, an aspiration she received from her preacher father (Simon Prast) as a child and will do whatever she must to make that happen. Therein lies the "pearl" in this oyster. 

With an assist from her agent / lawyer (Giancarlo Esposito), Maxine gets signed onto a horror flick by its director (Elizabeth Debicki), who is banking on Maxine's uncanny ability to channel the character's determination (and Maxine's adult film industry profile) to give the picture added vitality.

All of this is happening during a string of slasher murders in Hollywood that is unraveling the city's nerves but leaves Maxine unmoved. When sex worker friends of Maxine are also killed, presumably by the slasher, detectives Williams and Torres (Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale, respectively) try to get an assist from Maxine, with no luck. She doesn't talk to the police -- and we discover for good reason.

All of this is further complicated by a pesky private detective, played by Kevin Bacon, who has been hired by an unnamed party to find Maxine. (Yeah, West has corralled a lot of wattage for this outing.) The mission does not go well. 

West stages a last reel showdown that ties off many of the picture's narrative threads and mysteries but might leave audiences not wholly satisfied and maybe a bit anxious.

Moviegoers either get Ti West's filmmaking sensibilities or they don't. In that way, he's like other horror auteurs -- Roger Corman, David Cronenberg, George Romero, for example -- who have distinctive stylistic touches that use madness and viscera to help audiences connect with their humanity.