If you thought Deadpool & Wolverine would exercise one iota of patience before wheeling out its show pony – the return of Hugh Jackman to his X-Men origins – then you thought wrong. Shaun Levy’s threequel is but seconds into action when Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool brandishes the shovel with which he will dig up old man Logan’s grave. It’s a deliciously tasteless opening to an often tastelessly delicious film. Funny, brash and casually bloody, Except, hold up, the body within has wasted away. Just the skeleton remains. The bare bones of former glory. It feels apt and, for once, unironic. For all the gags here levelled at Marvel’s expense, this Merc hasn’t any of the answers for long-term rejuvenation.
If the pervading memory of Jan de Bont’s 1996 block-fluster Twister is an image of bovine aeronautics, it’s hard to picture how its instantly less iconic 2024 sequel, from Minari director Lee Isaac Chung, will be remembered. Perhaps only in retrospectives examining Glen Powell’s sharp rise to megastardom. Two decades of graft lie behind the chiselled Texan’s supposed overnight success. Having made his debut in 2003’s third Spy Kids flick, Powell has successfully bit-parted his way through all from The Dark Knight Rises to Expendables 3. The winds changed with Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone But You but now they’re very much stormin’ high.
The world changed forever in July 1969. Or, perhaps, it didn’t. If you go in for that sort of thing. An extraordinary number of people still do it would seem, with conspiracy no less ripe in 2024 – six human moon landings later – than fifty-five years ago. Possibly more in the age of rampantly untempered social media. It’s from such cynicism that Fly Me to the Moon fuels its launch into limited ambition. The film started out as a streaming project and will prove circular in that regard. Certainly, there little extra to the terrestrial here.
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