The latest supernatural teen drama just can’t distinguish itself beyond its leads.

About 10 minutes into Wednesday I was already aware that it was not going to have any real connection to the Addams Family beyond sharing names. The Addams Family, who were most successful as a satire of the stereotypical nuclear family, are a property that I really like when it is done right. Admittedly, not all of their films, shows, or even comics have managed to pull this off, but it’s still a property that can really shine when it works. When watching Wednesday immediately drop this aspect, I got some heavy Riverdale vibes and was nearly ready to call it quits. However, after saying that I was told directly or indirectly by several people that, watched independently of the Addams Family franchise, Wednesday was good on its own merits. As this has been true of a number of films and shows in the past (hell, the Shining’s not a great adaptation, but it’s an amazing film), I figured I would try to judge Wednesday on what it is, rather than what I was hoping if would be.

Having now watched all of Wednesday, I can say that it is indeed better if you just consider it completely removed from the Addams Family properties. Yes, the names are there, but it doesn’t try to capture any of the spirit beyond “creepy family.” However, it still suffers from all the same hallmarks of shoddy writing that populate most “let’s make a teen drama out of this existing IP” shows. The characters tend to fit into simple archetypes while also arguing that they’re complicated. Saying that they’re not able to be put into a box doesn’t actually make a character complex, it just means their entire personality is “doesn’t like labels.” The plot also features Tim Burton reusing plot points from his own movies, which, while something I expect from the director at this point, irked me thoroughly. My biggest complaint, though, was sadly the performances.

Jenna Ortega, though not quite to the extent of young Christina Ricci, pulls off Wednesday’s monotone and intentional indifference well. She tries to be stone-faced as much as possible when dealing with the people she thinks of as her potential victims, which is to say everyone. Ortega manages to make someone speaking with as little emotion as possible into a fairly compelling performance, particularly by sprinkling in face and voice work to make sure that the audience can tell when things actually are bothering Wednesday. The problem is that her performance might have set the tone for the show. Throughout the series, a lot of the cast play extremely subdued or monotone characters and can’t pull it off, nor should they be trying to. Wednesday is an interesting character because she constantly wears a mask of indifference or vitriol. Other characters who don’t have that kind of intentional unemotionality shouldn’t be delivering lines like they’re just trying not to make a scene. The biggest offenders were Luis Guzman’s Gomez, who constantly said romantic and dramatic things without any emotion behind it, Joy Sunday’s Bianca, whose top-girl attitude never came through her delivery, and, sadly, Fred Armisen’s Fester, who constantly feels like a zany character that was given the note “do less.” I think in trying to nail Wednesday’s tone, Ortega’s performance pulled some of the energy from many of the other performers trying to match the scene, even if it didn’t make sense for the character. This is something the director should have avoided. The notable exception is Emma Myers as Enid, Wednesday’s werewolf roommate, who manages to be one of both the best written and best performed characters in the show despite openly trying to be a stereotype on the outside. The fact that two of the leads are so good at playing opposing energies does help the show a lot, but not enough to make up for the plot issues and the rest of the performances.

Ultimately, I’m not sure this is a bad show, but it has the elements of too many other properties in it without doing anything noteworthy with them. It’s definitely better than Riverdale’s first season, but not quite the show it should be.

I hadn’t seen this movie before it came to streaming and I may have to rent a theater to watch this on the big screen. 

When this movie came out, all I heard was that it was amazing. I had literally nothing spoiled for me about this movie and, honestly, I want to preserve that for everyone reading this, so I will do my best not to ruin anything.

The best part of this film is that it actually respects your intelligence as a viewer and doesn’t completely spoon-feed you everything. While we get a few (honestly, maybe only one) expository explanations for events, much of the film is conveyed through either quick flashbacks, set elements, or just allowing the viewer a minute to figure out why some things would be the way they are. I don’t often see horror films that use your imagination against you as well as the first act of this film, because it makes you know something isn’t right, but you are not quite certain what it is and your mind runs through the possibilities as various horror cliches are on the table. The setting, being a run-down area of Detroit, solves a lot of the problems as to why the characters can’t just call the police for help, something that becomes darkly comical. Actually, much of the film is somewhat comical in the way that it paces certain actions or draws out absurd moments. It’s not that the film is a comedy, but it definitely has the flavor at a few points blended in with the horror.

The performances in this film are fantastic, with great work from Justin Long and Bill Skarsgard as two very different male leads. However, Georgina Campbell carries much of the movie and carries it flawlessly. The events of this film would traumatize anyone and Campbell conveys all of that without the film having to resort to cliched speeches or lines about it. Instead, you can tell with every scene how much has happened to her, even when we don’t see it all. Since writing this originally, I have gotten into an argument with someone over whether or not Campbell’s character is a stupid protagonist. I, like people who have empathy, think that her character just has a big heart that leads her to risk her own safety for people on principle, something that her background supports. However, if you’re the kind of person who would immediately punt the child out of the spaceship from “The Cold Equations,” then you might think she’s just being foolish.

Overall, this was just a great horror film and I cannot recommend it enough. Whether you end up liking the character or not, the structure of the film and the way that it plays out will probably keep you thoroughly entertained.

I didn’t think that this would be the movie to bring me back, and it really isn’t, but f*ck it, I have thoughts on this movie. Those thoughts mostly being “HOW IS THIS NOT AMAZING?”

If you’re not familiar with the character of Black Adam from DC comics, he was originally the evil version of Captain Marvel. The one that’s now called SHAZAM, not the one in the Avengers. Over time, some good writers realized that a character who is basically Superman but also is willing to punch through a bad guy’s head can be an interesting character and a way to explore the moral gray areas that characters like Superman usually can’t. Unfortunately, most of those writers were not involved in this movie. They were replaced by cliches and cocaine, which is itself a cliche.

The premise is that a few millennia ago in the generic but unoffensive because it’s fictional Middle-Eastern nation of Kahndaq, an evil king (Marwan Kenzari) took over and created a crown of pure evil for reasons. A bunch of wizards needed a champion to stop him, because wizards can’t do shit on their own (ask anyone playing DnD), and so they chose Teth-Adam (Dwayne “I Don’t Need a Muscle Suit” Johnson) and he proceeded to kick the king’s ass and then get imprisoned by the wizards. In the modern day, Kahndaq is now held by a military occupier called Intergang who force the people to mine “Eternium,” a mineral that apparently is pure magic and only found in Kahndaq. Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi), her brother Karim (Mohammed Amer), and her son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) are resistance fighters who find the location of the crown and also Black Adam’s resting place. They end up releasing him and he proceeds to kick the crap out of Intergang until he is attacked by the “Justice” Society of America, consisting of Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo). Some stuff happens and ultimately they all band together to save the day. If that’s a spoiler, you haven’t seen movies. 

Okay, this movie does a few things right. It has some funny scenes to break up the tension. It shows a few scenes of what would actually happen if an army attacked Superman and he didn’t have his “no killing” policy (hint: doesn’t go well for the guys with guns). Mostly, though, it has the Rock nailing it. I have many, many complaints about this film, but none of them are about his performance. He is a man who has a massive amount of anger matched only by his ridiculous amount of power. He can do whatever he wants, but he doesn’t really have bad intentions. He just doesn’t believe that you should spare someone who is trying to murder you, which makes a lot of sense for someone from 2600 BC. 

The problem is that the movie can’t ever really address some of the bigger themes that they actually touch on and those themes are what would actually be worth addressing. Instead, the movie has to force a bunch of conflicts by making various characters do arbitrarily stupid things or out-of-character decisions. It’s enraging. For example, the Justice Society of America, who we have never seen or heard of before now, works for Amanda Waller, the person who runs the Suicide Squad and basically decide they have to imprison Teth-Adam the minute he appears because he is too powerful to allow to run free and because he committed the horrible crime of… seeking vengeance on the king that enslaved his country and slaughtered his people. Seriously. In response, the people of Kahndaq openly root for Adam because he’s killing the people that have been enslaving and murdering them for, apparently, 27 years. The Justice Society notably did nothing about that, but showed up the minute someone tried to stop it. The implication, which might have been interesting but is never followed up on, is that America might be backing Intergang in order to get access to Eternium. Not that America would ever back a harmful regime in the Middle East in order to gain access to natural resources. The Justice Society doesn’t really have any answer to why they’re working for Waller nor why they keep attacking Black Adam in the middle of a populated city, but most of their actions contrast with the principles they supposedly stand for and their entire notion of being “good” is that they don’t kill people. This would be something that would be really interesting to explore, but, again, the movie just kind of moves on so that we can get to Act 3 with the super-punching and the sky-beam. Oooh, so original and fun.

Seriously, though, DC, you had all the ingredients to make something amazing in this film, mostly just having The Rock in it, and you screwed it up royally. Even worse, this movie will make a billion dollars and you will learn nothing and neither will we.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time, Collection of TV Episodes, Collection of Movie Reviews, or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews.

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Ryan Reynolds plays a really nice guy in a crapsack world.

This movie isn’t the first one about a video game character developing sentience, with previous entries ranging from Disney’s Tron (sort-of) to at least one incarnation of Mega Man to the Christopher Lambert vehicle Nirvana. In fact, the craptastic movie Serenity from last year had that plot. However, this movie manages to both update and reinvigorate the concept in ways that make it feel fresh and interesting. A big part of that is that Ryan Reynolds manages to play a sincerely good character with good motivations while still being an unbelievably skilled badass. It’s fun to watch him be a hero and to fight for the underdog. Moreover, the film addresses an interesting point about human nature and why we choose certain things as recreation, particularly violently killing and tormenting other humanoids.

Guy (Reynolds) lives in Free City, a sandbox video game which mostly allows players to commit random acts of mayhem in a city populated by NPCs like Guy. His best friend is Buddy (Lil Rel Howery), a security guard at the bank Guy works at, which gets robbed regularly, though the pair never seem to mind. Things change when Guy spots a player named Molotov (Jodie Comer), who leads Guy to steal a pair of the sunglasses that separate NPCs from Players. He tries to connect with Molotov, who is actually a woman named Millie that believes that Free City was based on stolen code, created by her and her friend Keys (Joe Keery), by its supposed creator Antwan (Taika Waititi). As Antwan plans on releasing a new version of Free City soon, Millie and Guy have to help each other save the digital world (not the one from Digimon).

Part of what makes this movie work is that there are two plots running simultaneously, both Millie’s quest to prove that Antwan stole her code and Guy’s quest for Millie, and they do a great job moving between them. It makes Guy’s awesome action sequences and moments of self-reflection more impactful when balanced with Millie’s more complex and mundane plans to try to thwart Antwan. It’s great that even though Guy is ostensibly the protagonist and Antwan the villain, they never are operating in the same world. The interplay between the real and virtual worlds keeps either from getting boring. 

As far as action and humor goes, this movie manages to do both very well. It has some scenes that are, possibly intentionally, reminiscent of Deadpool. It’s weird that, in some ways, this movie manages to do in a few minutes what Ready Player One tried to do for almost two hours. There is a great scene in this movie where Guy gets to be the pop culture blending protagonist that I really wanted to see in Ready Player One, but since Guy does it organically and without commenting too heavily on it, it’s more fun. It’s also interesting that the movie’s plot involves people recognizing that Guy sticking up for the NPCs is something that speaks to our own inner selves. Why do people prefer killing fictional characters rather than being a hero and keeping them safe? Is that a sign that humanity is more prone to violence or just that those are the options that are most fed to us? Well, the movie actually gives an interesting answer at the end, although whether it’s true or not is up to the viewer. Either way, I like that there’s something to chew on for the viewer.

Overall, I really recommend this movie, particularly if you’re a fan of Ryan Reynolds. It has some good jokes, some good action, and some stuff to ponder.

It’s the exact right kind of dumb and fun.

On some level, this movie seemed like the perfect film for Dwayne Johnson, because much of this movie feels similar to the adventure horror-comedy film The Mummy and Johnson’s first film was The Mummy Returns. Admittedly, he probably wants us to forget that because of the horrible CGI Scorpion King in that movie, but it still feels good to see The Rock take on the role of the adventurer for this film. He’s funny, he’s quirky, he’s quippy, he’s charming, and, as a bonus, he looks like he could benchpress the boat on which most of the film takes place. He’s everything you want in a protagonist in this kind of story. 

Johnson plays Frank Wolff, a skipper who does tourist trips along the Amazon River which are replete with terrible puns and bad jokes. He owes money to local harbormaster Nilo (Paul Giamatti), which leads him to offer his services to Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt), a botanist searching for a flower that cures all disease. Lily, along with her brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), are being pursued by the German Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), who seeks to use the cure-all to help Germany win World War I. Unfortunately for Frank and Lily, it turns out that the flower is also connected to the conquest of Don Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez), who is not quite as dead as you’d expect for someone born in the 1500s. This will be the real rumble in the jungle.

As much as I love Johnson and his willingness to deliver absolutely terrible jokes with a straight face, I also have to give a lot of credit in this film to Emily Blunt. Unlike most “strong” female protagonists in these kinds of films that end up devolving into damsels in distress, Blunt’s portrayal of Lily starts as being extremely competent and mostly maintains that throughout the film. She often has to rely on Frank for some things, because of his expertise at piloting the boat and surviving in the jungle, but even when the film seems like she’s going to end up being the helpless victim, it actually gives her a consistent level of skills that enable her to get out of trouble on her own. Blunt’s chemistry with Johnson is also great, although their relationship develops at a bit of an inconsistent pace. Actually, pacing is pretty much the biggest negative in the film on the whole.

Other positives in the film include Whitehall’s fun portrayal of MacGregor, one of the first openly gay main characters in a Disney film, and Veronica Falcon’s portrayal of Trader Sam, the character that probably aged the worst from the original ride. The updating of Sam’s character was done organically enough that hopefully it won’t anger people who believe that nostalgia has to consist of being fed the same thing repeatedly. The creature designs in the film, while not the best CGI I’ve seen, are very creative, particularly the undead conquistadors. Jesse Plemons, as he usually does, plays a creepy villainous character that seems completely unhinged most of the time. 

Overall, if you like fun adventure movies, this will be right up your alley.

Seriously, this show is like My Little Pony meets Cronenberg.

When you think of a show about a character that jumps from one world into a completely different fantasy setting, you probably always assume that character is going to be human. This show cleverly goes in the exact opposite direction, with the main character being a horse who journeys through a fantastic world trying to find her human rider. Along the way, she meets a cast of colorful characters and has amazing adventures, only most of the characters and adventures, while presented as cartoonish and fun, are deeply unsettling when you think about them. I have to give a lot of credit to whoever pitched this initially, they either lied tremendously or managed to convince Netflix to give a lot of money to a crazy idea. 

Horse (Kimiko Glenn) is a warhorse who is separated from her Rider (Jessie Mueller) during a war with an army of minotaurs. Horse ends up being transported by a mystical artifact to a cartoonish place called Centaurworld where almost everything is half-animal and half-human. She meets a group of centaurs who agree to help her: Alpaca centaur Wammawink (Megan Hilty), zebra centaur Zulius (Parvesh Cheena), finch centaur Ched (Chris Diamantopoulos), gerenuk centaur Glendale (Megan Nicole Dong), and giraffe centaur Durpleton (Josh Radnor). Together, the group must travel through Centaurworld to find all of the pieces of Horse’s artifact and hopefully reunite her with Rider. 

In the first episode of the show, we see the gritty reality that Horse comes from where everything is animated with a lot more shading and a darker palette than the rest of the series, which only makes the colorful cartoonish animation of Centaurworld more pronounced. Horse, notably, starts out with her original animation, which makes her stand out more among the characters. As the series progresses, however, Horse starts to slowly change to resemble Centaurworld’s animation and, much to her horror, takes on some of Centaurworld’s ridiculous magical nature. Centaurworld, like the worlds of My Little Pony or Rainbow Brite, is filled with singing and logic-breaking magical characters, something that contrasts with Horse’s sword-and-sorcery world, so a lot of her arc is adjusting to this new normal. However, while Centaurworld is colorful, a lot of the character traits are genuinely unpleasant. For example, the centaurs shoot tiny copies of themselves out, which tend to just start screaming and running around in terror at being surrounded by giants. At some points, it appears they just kill themselves, something that their normal-sized counterparts seem to just ignore. Tons of other elements of the characters are similarly messed-up. So, while you may enjoy the show for the fun song numbers or crazy designs, you might also enjoy the twisted sense of humor that comes from these elements.

Overall, solid show, just… be warned.