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Deadpool & Wolverine

2025-01-272025-01-24 by Steve

Publicity shot of Deadpool leaning on Wolverine

The quipping and meta-referencing have started even before the Marvel Studios ident is fully on the screen. Deadpool & Wolverine carries on in this vein, hitting Peak Ryan Reynolds at about the halfway mark, before realising it’s also meant to be a superhero movie, stops waving its hands around airily and finally balls them into fists. It also gets a bit dull at that point too, or less fun. Up till then this is a very funny film, making jokes about cocaine use, pegging, the shocking treatment that Fox meted out to Wolverine, how Disney saved the day, how Deadpool is “Marvel Jesus” and on and on and on it goes. Don’t even … Read more

Free Guy

2022-11-022021-10-12 by Steve

An update on the Truman Show idea, Free Guy follows a Non Player Character in a game – the ones who get shot at or driven into in shoot-em-ups and driver games – who starts to get an inkling of what he is. Ryan Reynolds plays the guy called Guy – he’s got a buddy called Buddy (played by Lil Rel Howery, en route to stardom) – in this immensely smart and fairly funny CG-heavy actioner full of great talent in front of and behind the camera. Not as funny as Deadpool, though it’s not aiming for quickfire quippery, there’s a thoughtful and meditative aspect to Free Guy and its ruminations on artificial intelligence … Read more

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard

2022-11-032021-08-16 by Steve

Ryan Reynolds, Salma Hayek and Samuel L Jackson

There’s an extended version and a moviehouse version of The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard. I watched the longer one, which seemed padded by about 15 minutes, which is exactly the amount of time that the extended version has been extended by. So if you’re after a more concentrated hit of action comedy – or don’t have long left to live… If you really don’t have long left to live, and feel the need for knockabout fun, you don’t need to waste time by watching the first film in order to enjoy this second one. That was a poacher-versus-gamekeeper tale – a hitman (Samuel L Jackson in “motherfucker” mode), an over-cautious bodyguard (Ryan Reynolds in … Read more

Smokin’ Aces

2023-10-302013-06-03 by Steve

For anyone who gets confused between Ben Affleck and Ryan Reynolds, Joe (Narc) Carnahan’s latest feast of bang-bang macho will be very bewildering indeed, since they’re both in it. But then bewilderment seems to be what Smokin’ Aces is about. The hip-feast is built around Jeremy Piven, playing Buddy “Aces” Israel, a Las Vegas showman and stool pigeon whose decision to turn state’s evidence has signed his death warrant. Enter just about everybody else – either part of his close-knit retinue, part of the FBI team trying to protect him, one of the mob out to get him, or one of the other guys who also, confusingly, seem out to get him. Girls too, … Read more

Ryan Reynolds and the Death of the Real Man

2022-11-292009-06-25 by Steve

All aboard Ryan Reynolds, prime example of Hollywood’s new breed of depilated, exfoliated, irrigated masculine star. Whatever happened to real men? From out of the low, strong sun, three figures ride towards the camera, tall in the saddle, squinting into the wind. As they hit medium shot, John Wayne turns to the compadre on his left and parts the lips on his line-free face to reveal two rows of snowy white teeth. Meanwhile the man he is about to address, Clint Eastwood, has thrown aside his poncho to reveal a shirt unbuttoned to the waist, his tan, hairless chest cresting sensually towards what might or might not be a nipple ring. And on … Read more