Captain America: Civil War — It’s a shame that right as Infinity War hits (and, quite frankly, dominates) theaters and other great Marvel movies (like Thor: Ragnarok) hit this platform, the single greatest film in the entire Marvel canon is stripped from Netflix’s ranks. It is the most perfectly realized, exciting and dramatic film of the entire monolithic mega-franchise, and yet has to go right when revisiting it would have the most meaning for the avid Marvel fan.
In what is essentially Avengers 2.5, we get a narrative, deconstructive takedown of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. Directors Russo and Russo take the super-team to task for all of the unseen collateral damage that they either caused or failed to prevent over their near-decade-long tenure as superheroes. This realization sharply divides the team into two camps: those favoring outside control (Iron Man & Co) and those favoring continued autonomy (Cap & Co). And from this deceptively simple premise comes the most gut-renching story in the entire genre and one that shook the entire MCU to its very core (and, in fact, remains unresolved to this day).
J. Edgar — Make no mistake, this is not director Clint Eastwood’s strongest work. Coming out at the tail end of his golden period, this is a strong, under-rated, but ultimately only good movie. This is no Mystic River nor Million Dollar Baby nor Letters from Iwo Jima nor Gran Torino (man, the man really did have a remarkable stretch of great films in the 2000s), but it is certainly about as good as most Oscar cloying biopics, and certainly worth a look before it disappears from Netflix next month.
The movie follows the life of notorious FBI director J. Edgar Hoover over his commanding tenure at that organization. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio at the height of his pre-Oscar career, it explores everything from his work life to his closeted sexuality and his complicated (to say the least) relationship with his moth. It’s an incredibly well-made film that any fans of American history should take the time to check out.
Men in Black — By all rights, I should hate Men in Black. I’m not really all that much of a comedy guy, the series as a whole is pretty bad and I’ve always hated the Harry Potter conceit of having an awesome, fantastical world existing in the shadows of the boring, mundane, everyday “real” world that we live in presently. Although funny, 90’s Will Smith always felt like more of a TV star than a movie star. Although resplendent in his own right, 90’s Tommy Lee Jones took a few awkward turns that saw him directly competing with his more comedically-incline costars on big comic book adaptations (see also: Batman Forever). Helmed by the unremarkable Barry Sonnenfeld (who also directed Wild Wild West and Nine Lives) and based on source material I never found myself interested in, I really had no reason to like this movie.
And yet, despite all that, this movie proved to be one of that decade’s real comedic highlights. Smith and Jones have remarkable chemistry together, with Smith’s larger-than-life antics playing off of Jones’ dour strait-man-ship. The script was a pretty smart take on its now tired-feeling conceit and with a lot of fun and flourish to be found in its run time. Also revered character actor Vincent D’Onofrio plays an alien cockroach that eats people, which is always a good time in my book.
Super — With the success of Deadpool 2 over this last weekend, it’s obvious that there’s a market of movie-goers absolutely clamoring for violent, comedic, hard R-rated superhero movies in an age where the superhero genre is overwhelmingly dominated by Marvel Studios, Disney and the four-color, family-friendly, light action-comedy aesthetic of the MCU. And, really, I can’t blame them. Variety is, after all, the spice of life and too much of a good thing — especially when it’s the exact same flavor of good thing — tends to get old after a while. But with Fox seemingly the only outfit in the superhero game willing to spend money on R-rated superhero fare, and with the only entrants into this strain of genre movies being Deadpool, its direct sequel and Logan, there isn’t much for this subset of super fans to watch at home.
Only, that’s not the case: not if you’re willing to dig a little deeper than the mainstream and branch off into the relatively wild of cinema. Case in point is this insane James Gunn action-comedy — yes, THE James Gunn of Guardians of the Galaxy fame — about a deranged vigilante (played by The Office‘s Rainn Wilson) who becomes a wrench-wielding crimefighter named the Crimson Bolt when his wife leaves him for another man (incidentally played by Kevin Bacon, in another brilliant late-career turn as a villain in line with some of the best work of his larger career). He teams up with a “kid” sidekick that goes by the codename Bolty (played by X-Men‘s Ellen Page) and punishes the ne’er-do-wells of his neighborhood for everything from cutting in line and (maybe) keying cars. It’s a riotous watch and the perfect chaser for seeing Deadpool 2 in the theater.
Training Day — Despite the more commercial turn his career took in the years following this film’s release, Antoine Fuqua remains one of the most singularly impactful and potentially phenomenal directorial talents working today. He brings a real presence into all of his films which, even when they’re lightweight studio fare, never-the-less demand your rapt attention.
Sadly, Fuqua has yet to live up to his potential as a filmmaker, largely, I suspect, because of his preference for better-paying studio gigs that fail to offer him the same degree of creative freedom as more self-guided projects would have. The Equalizer showed his strong grasp of action (almost action-horror) sequences that strongly resemble the work Danny Boyle did in 28 Days Later. Southpaw shows a harder-edged version of boxing that we have already seen elsewhere (such as Rocky or, later, Creed), where every punch has real, sizable weight behind it. The Magnificent Seven showed his grasp of large casts and sprawling narratives up there with the best of Gunn’s or the Russo’s filmography, even though the material itself was hardly their equal. If you want to see what the man is capable of when all of these disparate, sometimes-revisited elements are brought together, than check out this Oscar-nominated tour-de-force before it leaves Netflix in June.
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