‘Last Dance,’ and many more to come

Posted on April 25, 2023 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

8/10 Magic Mike’s Last Dance occupies a weird spot in history. It caps an unexpected trilogy of male stripper movies stretching back to 2012, but is both born out of and works to support the ways the brand is expanding in 2023. It does the business of, essentially, selling tickets for other media, but director Steven Soderbergh is back, and the humanity that’s made the series unique is on full display.

In Magic Mike’s Last Dance, “Magic” Mike Lane (Channing Tatum, who also produces), too old to strip, has taken to pop-up bartending gigs after his furniture store went under in the COVID-19 crisis. Max Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault), love-starved in the middle of an upper-class divorce, gets wind that he used to be a stripper and offers him $6,000 for one last dance, and when Lane makes her feel things she’s never felt before, she offers him $60,000 to put on a show at her husband’s historic Rattigan Theatre in London.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance cannot be separated from “Magic Mike Live,” the show that started in Las Vegas in 2017 and grew into a global tour, expanding Magic Mike the movie into “Magic Mike” the global brand. This brand includes the reality competition show “Finding Magic Mike” in which “Magic Mike” is expanded from a specific person’s name into a title.

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The gay apocalypse knocking at the door

Posted on April 25, 2023 by reelentropy
They have to make a Sophie’s Choice, or it’ll be a Cabin in the Woods and the Apocalypse will be Now! Images courtesy Universal Pictures.

8/10 Knock at the Cabin is a feature-length exploration of the “Bury Your Gays” trope. It’s not totally insightful or necessary, but it speaks directly to the viewers’ subconscious and it’s quite well-acted and shot.

During a family vacation at a remote cabin, Eric and Andrew (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) and their 7-year-old adopted daughter, Wen (Kristen Cui), are assaulted and tied down by four strangers. The leader, schoolteacher Leonard Brocht (Dave Bautista), tells the family they must select one of their own to sacrifice, performing the murder themselves, or the apocalypse will happen. Brocht and his cohorts work to keep the couple bound and convince them they aren’t lying, but the couple thinks it’s some kind of twisted homophobic torture, especially since one of their attackers, Redmond (Rupert Grint), already assaulted Andrew in a Boston bar while they were on a date some years ago.

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In the house with ‘Skinamarink,’ the next genre-shaking internet horror classic

Posted on March 29, 2023 by reelentropy
Image courtesy Shudder.

8/10 Skinamarink, 2023’s new internet horror classic, is intentionally uncomfortable, incisively symbolic and coldly denies any literal interpretation. It’s definitely not for everyone, but I got a lot out of it.

Writer/director/editor Kyle Edward Ball’s childhood home in Edmonton, Alberta, 1995- Kevin and Kaylee (Lucas Paul and Dali Rose Tetreault), 4 and 6, wake up to discover their parents are gone and all the doors and windows have disappeared. Trapped without even a way to mark time, the children collect their toys and camp out in the living room, but must contend with the commands of the shadow monster who lives upstairs.

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‘John Wick 4’ roars, soars to new heights of violence, coolness

Posted on March 25, 2023 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Lionsgate.

9/10 John Wick: Chapter 4 is a sprawling triumph of decadent, excessive cinema, a flaming, neon capstone for the humble action franchise that could with nothing but a charismatic star, a lot of top-end stuntmen, about 900 gallons of fake blood, blue-collar work ethic and above black-tie style.

New York City- John Wick (Keanu Reeves, who also produces executively), a legendary assassin pulled out of retirement by random acts of violence and blood oaths he thought he’d gotten out of, has committed underworld crimes that have made his life forfeit several times over. The High Table, which governs this league of assassins, has appointed the cowardly Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) to root him out by any means necessary, including going after the Continental hotel managers who might be hiding him. To save them, Wick must go on an odyssey from Paris to Berlin to Osaka, Japan to earn the standing to challenge de Gramont to a duel for amnesty, but he has to fight apparently the entire city of Paris to get there.

The torrid stampede of action-violence rages on. Wick’s roaring rampage of revenge has become a fight for freedom, and the ocean of killers in his way only gets deeper and better-equipped. What seems like one long, long fighting chase scene stretching across multiple films only becomes more extreme in John Wick: Chapter 4.

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I demand a new ‘John Wick’ movie every year until I die.

Posted on March 22, 2023 by reelentropy
Images courtesy Lionsgate.

In a November 2015 essay a month before Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Disney’s first Star Wars-branded movie-product, released, an essay in Wired popularized the idea that Disney intended to make a new Star Wars movie every year until you die.

Obviously, that’s not what happened. After five solid years of sexist and racist backlash, self-inflicted director controversies and sharply diminishing box office returns, I think it’s fair to say no one really wants a new Star Wars movie every year until they die, and since the company was already transitioning to a streaming-first business model while all of this was going on, I think it’s fair to say they don’t really want to make them anymore either.

That’s fine. Disney spent $4 billion on Lucasfilm, and if they think streaming is the best way to recoup that investment, I can live with that. But if we’re still in a film environment where $300 million bare-minimum blockbusters can be a regular thing, I do have a request. A demand, actually.

I demand a new John Wick movie every year until I die.

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