Free Guy can be shamelessly commercial, even hanging a mild bit of character development on a hit Mariah Carey song. Yet despite some noticeable script flaws, Free Guy manages to be a fun and light-hearted story of self-discovery with hints of The Truman Show, Ready Player One, and more baked in. With Ryan Reynolds‘ affable leading performance, the charms of the film pull you in, even though this is ultimately a middling effort at best.

Reynolds plays Guy, an NPC video-game character in a popular Fortnite-like game called Free City. He lives out the same routine everyday with a blinding happiness until he begins to question his routine and try to do something different. The plot essentially centers around the explanation of why a video-game character begins to become sentient, and it all boils down to what is essentially some mild corporate espionage. We cut back and forth between the video-game world and the real world, where two programmers (Joe Keery and Jodie Comer) fight off the machinations of money-hungry Antoine (Taika Waititi), who stole their code.

As one might guess from that description, much of the plot has a been-there done-that feeling to it. Free Guy deals in the  tropes of some of the previously-mentioned films. Director Shawn Levy has made a career out of mid-tier comedies that are just competent enough to be entertaining, if never great. I will give Free Guy credit for being firmly planted in the modern day, with its use of YouTuber commentary and ideas about careers in game design. It avoids the false missteps that this type of film might have had 10 years ago.

Yet much of Free Guy still feels safe and by the numbers. It hints at a few interesting ideas that evoke Her, but it backs away from ever becoming as deep or impactful as that. Free Guy is here to be a fun, blockbuster-like film, and on those terms, it largely succeeds.

Reynolds just oozes charisma. Waititi’s small, villainous role is a tad goofy, but Waititi is naturally funny enough to make it work. There are also some fun cameo roles from a variety of actors that I won’t spoil.

The ending of the film seems almost to parody modern blockbusters, though Free Guy can’t help but be one at the same time. The corporate synergy of Disney owning everything is used to its fullest extent, with some major properties getting a nod in the finale including a well-timed moment that left me laughing quite loudly.

The unfortunate part of Free Guy is that there is so little to it. Its theme of finding purpose and its half-hearted romance subplot feel staid and predictable. The fact that this review is struggling to find more to say says all.

Tell us your thoughts on Free Guy below and rank more on Flickchart today!

The post Review: Free Guy first appeared on Flickchart: The Blog.

Second time’s the charm. While the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) has been a bit of a helter-skelter cinematic universe, the new model has embraced stand-alone stories and allowed directors to showcase their strengths. After the disaster of 2016’s Suicide Squad, DC stole James Gunn from Marvel to do his own take on the team of villains. Now Gunn has created one of the most zealously violent and hilarious superhero films of all time.

The Suicide Squad may be the crowning film of this film universe, if it can even be really considered one at this point. Initially attempting to rival Marvel by creating a continuity of shared films, DC’s rushed attempts resulted in mixed results including Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. While there are zealous fans of Zack Snyder’s vision of a shared continuity, the critical and commercial results have led to DC taking more of a standalone approach and leaving Snyder by the wayside. These superhero films may loosely share a continuity, but connecting them has not mattered for the last three years of films, with each one including only minimal references to other characters.

This approach benefits Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. Taking the elements it likes from the notorious 2016 bomb (mainly casting), a new story is created and old elements are left behind. Assuming the audience knows what to expect by now and has no need for overdrawn origin stories, Gunn opens the film at a clip and with a near-montage that quickly introduces the premise of this team of characters — supervillains given dangerous missions for the US government in exchange for amnesty — before jumping into the fun. The intro provides a brilliant twist on the entire premise and the notion of origin stories, and I dare not say more. This deserves to be seen as freshly as possible.

Manic energy is sustained through the entirety of the film. While his use of music may seem like a rip-off of his own Guardians of the Galaxy, Gunn’s soundtrack choices here are a tad different and help drive the rhythm of the film more so than individual scenes do. Gunn also plays around with flashbacks and creative on-screen title cards comprised of foreground and background features to make a movie whose pacing is always unexpected, yet gels really well.

The energy does disadvantage the film somewhat when it comes to character building. The script attempts to give arcs to each of the characters, but this often results in contrived scenes where these murderous supervillains start monologuing about their troubled past to each other for no real reason. The film feints at a theme of underdogs finding family (a familiar concept for Gunn) but doesn’t develop it in any meaningful or new way. The lack of pretense and narrative brevity are perhaps strengths, overall, but they do make the film feel too light at times.

A fantastic cast makes it easy to look past these issues. Margot Robbie returns as what is the now most consistent character across the DCEU, Harley Quinn. Robbie is a delight in the role, even as she changes designs and motivation ever so slightly across her films. Idris Elba also elevates what would otherwise be a rather dull and one-note character with a dry humor and understated comic delivery. John Cena has a wonderful rapport with Elba as Peacemaker, a character so dedicated to peace that they use the ultimate violence to get it. That’s a character premise that seems perfectly suited to Gunn’s predilections.

The film is very crass and over-the-top violent, but this is not lowbrow humor. The script is constantly creative in how it approaches scenes and character encounters. A CGI shark-man voiced by Sylvester Stallone rips people in half and eats them. Situational humor is set up where the Suicide Squad massacres a whole bunch of people with a hilariously unexpected result. The mixture of intentionally excessive broad humor, darker jokes, and onscreen visuals and flair make The Suicide Squad relentlessly fun.

This is certainly not a perfect film. If you want a version of this with better character arcs, Gunn’s Guardians is right there, with more coming. But letting him tackle a similar story with the freedom of an R-rating and characters and continuity that are bit looser results in one of the funniest and most rambunctious movies in this genre. This is what the Deadpool movies want to be. This is a film where the insanity and silliness of a giant starfish monster fighting a talking man-shark is embraced. Gunn has killed it here, and I almost want him to commit Marvel-career suicide with the third Guardians film if it means we get more of these.

Tell us your thoughts on The Suicide Squad below and rank all of the DCEU on Flickchart today!

The post Review: The Suicide Squad first appeared on Flickchart: The Blog.

Welcome back to the Flickchart Texas BBQ Road Trip, where we are visiting the best BBQ spots and films in Texas! Last time we were in Austin, and now we head up to north Texas for the first time. Join us as we drive up the highway, stopping just south of Dallas in another small Texas town.

Stop #16: Cedar Hill, Harris Bar-B-Que

Cedar Hill was founded back in 1846 by a group of settlers from southern American states, making it one of the biggest settlements in the area. While no major historical events or occurrences have happened in the small town, it had a notable tornado in 1856 that claimed several lives and a bank robbery in 1932 by one of the sidekicks of Bonnie and Clyde, Raymond Hamilton. The town was the county seat of Dallas County until the tornado came, after which the seat moved to Dallas proper. Many of the buildings from the town’s founding remain standing, which accounts for the large number of registered historical places in the area.

Today, Cedar Hill is like many of the small town BBQ spots we’ve covered so far. It’s enjoying Texas’s overall economic boom and has rapidly expanded since the 1990s. Increased economic opportunity has drawn people in, as has the beautiful nature surrounding the town. Cedar Hill is dotted with parks and hiking opportunities, including Cedar Hill State Park which is full of wildlife, and the beautiful Joe Pool Lake, a popular spot for water recreation.

All of this helped attract Harris Bar-B-Que, which moved here in 2019 from nearby Waxahachie. Kelvin Harris had been operating his black offset smoker all around Cedar Hill and Dallas for the better part of a decade, selling his product every day out of parking lots and gas stations in a questionably-legal manner. He eventually settled down and opened a brick-and-mortar joint in nearby Waxahachie, and there his reputation took off. Using a reverse flow smoker, he cooks hot and heavy right over the wood, which is usually a mixture of hickory, oak, and whatever else he scrounges up — sometimes pecan wood.

Another specialty of his is mixing pineapple juice into his BBQ sauce, which gives it a distinct flavor. When I visited I chowed down on some brisket and sausage doused in sauce. The brisket was nice and moist, but lacked a distinct bark or smoke ring. While not every brisket is obliged to follow the Central Texas model, its flavor somewhat faded in comparison to some of those briskets and amidst the abundance of sauce. The sausage was better, with a nice springy snap and flavor. I also enjoyed sides of green beans and potato salad. This place definitely wasn’t bad, but it doesn’t quite reach the upper echelons of the list.

I award the brisket 3.5 slices out of 5, and the sausage 4 links out of 5. I award Harris Bar-B-Que 3.5 smokers out of 5.

The Film: Tender Mercies

Two films were considered seriously for this spot, both of which take place in Waxahachie, the first home of Harris Bar-B-Que. Cedar Hill isn’t far, so both are still appropriate. While Places in the Heart was almost the winner, Tender Mercies was ultimately the best selection. The film never explicitly mentions Waxahachie, but the distances discussed while traveling to Austin and Dallas match, and it was shot almost entirely in Waxahachie.

Robert Duvall plays a broken country musician struggling with alcoholism who begins to turn his life around after starting a relationship with a young widow (Tess Harper). The film is full of country music, a suitable choice for a rural Texas setting, and Duvall sings all of his character’s songs and even wrote a few. The strength of the lead performance earned praise from Texas country music star Waylon Jennings, some of whose songs appear in the film.

Emotions are big in Tender Mercies and threaten to veer into melodrama at times. But director Bruce Beresford manages to reign in the excesses and deliver a touching picture about grace, forgiveness, and recovery. The struggles of Duvall’s character feel real, and the film takes plenty of time to explore the pains he is going through. While the story features the domestic struggles of many a soap opera, the stark realism attached to it keeps it from feeling phony.

Beresford wrote the script, inspired by the similarities between Texas and his native Australian bush country. Australia has its own country music scene, due partly to this sense of kinship. The photography of the relatively barren Waxahachie circa early 1980s creates some beautiful empty landscapes that add to the isolation of Duvall’s character. Likewise, Tess Harper earned the co-starring part for embodying those qualities. Beresford spotted her on-stage in Texas during the casting process and brought her in to help capture the film’s rural quality.

With the fantastic performances, wonderful landscapes, and strong story, Tender Mercies authentically captures small-town Texas. The country music is good and genuine, and the sense of catharsis at the end feels like a good country song. In a way, Tender Mercies is like a Texas country song made into film: a good story with big, genuine emotions that deliver a piece of human truth.

Does anyone eat barbecue in the film?

Nope. There’s relatively little eating of any sort in this film.

The Rankings

Texas Film Chart

1. No Country for Old Men
2. Rushmore
3. Boyhood
4. The Right Stuff
5. Lone Star
6. Chef
7. Tender Mercies
8. Dazed and Confused
9. The Sugarland Express
10. Frank
11. Whip It
12. This is Where We Live
13. The Alamo
14. Outlaw Blues
15. Selena
16. Nadine

Texas BBQ Chart

1. Franklin Barbecue
2. Pinkerton’s Barbecue
3. Terry Black’s Barbecue
4. Stiles Switch BBQ
5. Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ
6. 2M Smokehouse
7. Vera’s Backyard Bar-B-Que
8. Hays Co. Bar-B-Que
9. Smolik’s Smokehouse
10. Gatlin’s BBQ
11. Micklethwait Craft Meats
12. Payne’s Bar-B-Q Shak
13. The Pit Room
14. Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que
15. The Smoking Oak
16. Harris Bar-B-Que

Join us again next time for more delicious smoked meats and fantastic Lone Star cinema!

The post Flickchart Road Trip: Tender Mercies first appeared on Flickchart: The Blog.

M. Night Shyamalan’s harshest critics might argue he has not made a good film since The Sixth Sense. Certainly, one’s mileage may vary when it comes to the Philadelphia director’s work. Movies such as Signs or The Village have proven divisive. Lady in the Water and The Happening are generally regarded as terrible.

Still, Shyamalan’s reputation seemed on a somewhat upward trajectory following Split and The Visit. But his latest, Old, proves to be the summation of his entire body of work since Haley Joel Osment saw dead people: decent ideas hampered by subpar writing and execution. Despite flashy cinematography (at times overly flashy), Old is an overall frustrating exercise.

Old follows a family taking an island vacation looking to get away from their problems. There are hints of both medical issues and familial strife before the family is invited to a more exclusive, private beach. There they are joined by a few other families, and quickly all is not as it seems.

Shyamalan knows that people expect twists from his films. For once, he does not seem to hide the fact that something is amiss. The idea that something strange going on is introduced early and followed through on, if not necessarily satisfactorily.

Despite leaning into his reputation, Shyamalan’s script is a jumbled mess of concepts and ideas. The central gimmick of the film — people aging rapidly — makes for some creepy moments here and there, and Shyamalan shows that he can direct a good horror sequence or two. Yet in Old it feels like Shyamalan is poorly aping the styles of Ari Aster and Jordan Peele. His attempts at Peele’s social commentary feel aimless. Likewise, his exploration of the horror of human situations, which Aster does so well, is half-baked here. You can feel Old trying to keep up with the cream of the modern horror-movie crop with its showy camerawork and even the casting of Alex Wolff. Yet he can’t write a film anywhere near as good as those.

As the film progresses, Old attempts to capture a sense of growing paranoia and tension, as well as meld in all of these aforementioned ideas. An off-kilter film to begin with, it stops feeling controlled and purposeful and loses its way. By the time the story reaches its conclusion and the big reveals are made, you twist your head in confusion wondering what the point of all it was.

So many concepts are laid out that you struggle to understand what exactly Shyamalan was aiming for. There are hints of anti big-pharma, hints of a meta-commentary on filmmaking (M. Night plays the biggest role he’s played in one of his own films thus far), and hints of the human experience. Lots of stilted dialogue involves people’s careers and the related ethics of them. It all adds up to something less than clear, though.

It is fun seeing Shyamalan really try to come up with creative shots. There are multiple rapid circular shots and pans. He also plays with foreground and background focus and directs us to particular points in the frame as characters move around. Unfortunately, it feels a bit film-student-like as Shyamalan does not seem to use his shots with much purpose. Perhaps this was meant to convey the meta-commentary-on-filmmaking angle, but again, everything is too muddy to be sure.

There are decent actors in this film. Rufus Sewell is good as ever as a stuck-up British prick. Vicky Krieps also does good work in her role, bringing to life one of the truly emotional scenes in the film. None of the cast can really be faulted for the issues in the movie, as they deliver the rather clunky dialogue as best as they can.

Old is a frustrating affair on the whole. Once more Shyamalan proves that his scripts need more read-overs, since whatever interesting ideas get raised tend to go nowhere satisfactory. It is a pretty film for sure, but I walk away wishing someone else had written and directed these ideas. Hopefully Shyamalan will recover from this misstep and get back on the road to peak form.

Sound off with your thoughts on Old below and rank all of M. Night Shyamalan’s films on Flickchart today!

The post Review: Old first appeared on Flickchart: The Blog.