Tag: John Boyega

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Film Features Film/TV

They Cloned Tyrone

Foxx, Parris, and Boyega deliver near-perfect performances in this film.

They Cloned Tyrone seems like one of those movies like I Was a Teenage Werewolf or Snakes on a Plane where they came up with the title and worked backwards. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, have you seen Sharknado? They made six of them!

Whatever method director Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier used to come up with the concept, they should keep doing it. To me, They Cloned Tyrone is a very pure form of science fiction. Even after towering masterpieces like Frankenstein, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and The War of the Worlds, sci-fi struggled to gain acceptance in the literary mainstream. The genre was mostly relegated to cheap pulp magazines with pictures of little green men menacing scantily clad women on the cover. But many of the stories inside those lurid covers, from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation to Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” were serious works of art.

They Cloned Tyrone leans hard into disrepute with an appropriately sleazy Blaxploitation setup: Fontaine (John Boyega) is running a two-bit drug trafficking operation that is threatened by his better-capitalized rival Isaac (J. Alphonse Nicholson). One typical day on the job, he violently evicts one of Isaac’s guys from his territory and shakes down pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) and his ho Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) for some money he’s owed. But after the shakedown winds down, Isaac’s enforcers catch up with Fontaine. Slick Charles and Yo-Yo see him gunned down in the parking lot. They’re shocked when Fontaine shows up the next day, none the worse for wear, demanding the money they already paid him.

Fontaine, it seems, is a clone. But who cloned him, and why? (We meet Tyrone much later in the story. Spoiler: He’s a clone, too.) Yo-Yo obsessively collects Nancy Drew books, and she’s itching to play girl detective in real life. The three not-quite friends start to see weirdness everywhere; little things they overlooked or took for granted start to take on a sinister aura. What is fake and what is real starts to get hazy. So does the question of who is fake and who is real. And just because you’re a clone, does that mean you’re not you? Since Fontaine is a clone — albeit one with a mixture of fake and real memories — whose side is he really on? Does he even know?

Imagine if Philip K. Dick wrote Hustle & Flow, and you’ll get a sense of what They Cloned Tyrone is like. Taylor is heavily influenced by Craig Brewer’s Memphis hip-hop opus. Parris plays Yo-Yo with the same sass-mouth accent Paula Jai Parker used as Lexus. Yo-Yo even says she’s just trying to get enough money to get back to Memphis. Very relatable.

Throwing DJay and Shug into They Live in the hood makes for some wildly entertaining scenes. But Taylor and Rettenmaier have a lot more on their minds than trash talk and jump scares. They stretch their premise into allegory like Jordan Peele, whose epochal Us is another clear influence.

Three near-perfect performances from Boyega, Foxx, and Parris keep all the plates spinning. When confronted by big weirdness, they freak out appropriately, then get down to the business of saving their hood. Boyega plays multiple scenes with himself but never looks like he’s bluescreening it in. Foxx’s “Playboy World Pimp Champion 1995” is funny but never demeaning. (Get well soon, Jamie Foxx! The world needs you!) Parris is constantly revealing new layers of Yo-Yo, who is largely responsible for keeping the plot moving forward. In the final act, when the screenplay starts to struggle to stick the landing, all the hard work the actors have done keeps the increasingly strange proceedings grounded in reality. They Cloned Tyrone smuggles gold inside a trash bag as only good sci-fi can.

They Cloned Tyrone is streaming on Netflix.

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Film Features Film/TV

Now Playing: Tom Cruise and Clone Tyrone

Tom Cruise hangs on in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning pt. 1.

After many pandemic-related delays and a storm of publicity, Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie are back with Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Pt. 1. This time, the Impossible Mission Force is sent to take down The Entity, an advanced AI that has gained sentience and is threatening humanity. How does that lead to Tom Cruise jumping a motorcycle off a frickin’ mountain? We’re about to find out.

John Boyega stars with Jamie Foxx in They Cloned Tyrone, a sci-fi action comedy which pays homage to/sends up 70s Blackspolitation films. Teyonah Parris, David Alan Grier, and Kiefer Sutherland also star. Expect multiple Tyrones. 

Hey, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is still in theaters, and it’s still good! Harrison Ford’s victory lap as the beloved archeologist/adventurer delivers the Spielbergian action beats you crave — even if James Mangold is at the helm this time. 

While the big studios pour six-digit budgets into tent poles expecting to hit home runs, Blumhouse moneyballs the game with consistent base hits like Insidious: The Red Door, which made its $15 million budget back in two days. 

On Wednesday, July 19, at Crosstown Theater, Indie Memphis will present a selection of short films from the Odú Film Festival in Brazil, which is a production of the Black Freedom Fellowship. These shorts include “Ara” (“Time”) a ghost story from director Laryssa Machada imagining a dialogue with her grandfather, whom she posthumously discovered was gay.

“Ara”

Then on Thursday, July 20, Crosstown Arts Film Series presents John Waters’ Female Trouble, the film which introduced viewers to the immortal drag legend Divine.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

John Boyega, Joonas Suotamo, Daisy Ridley, Anthony Daniels, and Oscar Isaac in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

So many thoughts. Where to begin? 

How about a sports metaphor: There’s playing to win, then there’s playing not to lose. There’s a subtle, but significant, difference between the two approaches. Playing to win means being fit, smart, and prepared, adopting an aggressive attitude, and taking chances. You can be fit, smart, and prepared when playing not to lose, but you don’t take chances. You play not to lose when you feel like you have something to lose. You’ve been successful, you think you’re in a good position, and you want to cruise to the end of the season. But playing not to lose is a good way to guarantee a loss. You abandon successful strategies because they suddenly feel too risky. You start to doubt yourself. You lose the plot.

In Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, director J. J. Abrams is playing not to lose.

Adam Driver as Kylo Ren

I’m an old-school Star Wars fan who had his life changed in a movie theater in 1977. I’ve been a fan of the franchise through good movies and bad. I had fun watching The Rise of Skywalker on opening night. But afterwards, during the traditional fan debates in the lobby, there were questions. As my wife said, “I have notes.”

First of all, I have held my tongue on this issue for fear of sounding too nerdy, but here it is: J.J. Abrams, hyperspace does not work that way.

Now you, being a rational human being who lives on planet Earth, might say “Wow, that’s what’s wrong with nitpicking Internet fandom these days!” But I would disagree. It’s a kind of like broken window theory: It’s a small sign of neglect that points to bigger problems.

But J.J’s gonna J.J., and in The Rise of Skywalker, his strengths and weaknesses get the kind of full expression that only $250 million can buy. His strengths are that he always leans into character. There are good performances here, led by Anthony Daniels as C-3PO. Daniels (who, incidentally, is one of the top-grossing actors in all of film history because he is the only actor to have appeared in all 9 films of the Skywalker family saga) has always been ace comic relief, especially given the fact that he’s played nine films in the most uncomfortable and inexpressive costume imaginable. His final film gives him moments of pathos, and Daniels delivers so beautifully it looks effortless, and is thus easily overlooked. Such is the lot of the robotic character actor.

Oscar Isaac, who is a fantastic actor, plays the best single scene of the film with Keri Russell Poe Dameron’s newly introduced ex-girlfriend, the spice smuggler Zorri Bliss. Daisy Ridley is comfortable in Rey’s skin, and her scenes largely play to her physicality. The young girl dressed as Rey at the Malco Powerhouse screening on opening night testifies to how deeply she has connected with the audience. Her frenemy relationship with Kylo Ren/Ben Solo (Adam Driver, excellent as always) provides the film’s emotional spine. When Isaac and Ridley go on a mission with John Boyega’s Finn in the Millennium Falcon, the film hums along for a while, powered by their chemistry. But just when the sequence should be reaching its climax, Abrams fails to stick the landing, and it fizzles.

Abrams’ weakness is that he’s only as good as the writer he’s paired with. The Force Awakens was the best film of his career, and he co-wrote it with the legendary Lawrence Kasdan. The Rise of Skywalker must tie up 42 years worth of loose plot ends. The final installment of the sequel trilogy was also handicapped by the untimely death of Carrie Fisher, whose General Leia was to have had a much wider role in the film. So maybe sticking the landing was always impossible. It would be tall order for anyone, but Chris Terrio, the guy who wrote Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, is not up to the task. It’s not like the prequels, which often had the air of immaculately crafted renderings of scripts that should have gone through a couple of more drafts. The Rise of Skywalker feels like a checklist movie, with superfluous scenes shoehorned in to fulfill perceived audience wishes. Unrelenting fan service is playing not to lose.

So I’m a true fan, with love forged on the elementary school playgrounds of 1978. Do I feel properly serviced? Like I said, I had a great time in the theater with my fellow geeks, I teared up at the appropriate times, and the mood was generally positive afterwards. Ultimately, The Rise of Skywalker is most comparable to Return of the Jedi. There are some great high points, but it lacks unity. There’s a parallel here to what happened with the last season of Game of Thrones. There was a decision to go with spectacle rather than doing the hard and risky work in the writers’ room. There’s no shortage of spectacle, but compared to what the franchise is capable of, it feels like a squandered opportunity.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

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Film Features Film/TV

Pacific Rim: Uprising

Right now, the app getting the biggest workout on my Apple TV is Filmstruck. The cinephile-focused streaming service’s deep catalogue includes practically the entire Criterion Collection, and recently added films from the Turner Classic Movie vaults. Alongside the Bergman, the Agnès Varda deep cuts, and the works of experimental documentarian Bill Morrison are selections from Toho, the Japanese studio who first introduced the world to kaiju. Toho’s greatest artist was Ishiro Honda, creator of Godzilla. Honda’s tokusatsu work spanned more than 20 years, from 1953’s Gojira through Rodan, The Mysterians, Mothra, King Kong vs. Godzilla, and Destroy All Monsters, before he retired in 1975 with Terror of Mechagodzilla.

Honda’s films were full of homegrown special effects shots. His speciality was putting a guy named Haruo Nakajima in a lizard suit and filming him tearing down cardboard cities. In the black and white Gojira, which is at its heart a deadly serious fantasy of the firebombing of Tokyo, it’s chillingly effective. Later, when color was added, and there were a couple of guys in suits wrestling each other on scale model Monster Island, it descended into self-parody.

John Boyega (above) stars in Pacific Rim: Uprising as the war between humankind and giant monsters continues.

In 2013, Guillermo del Toro dedicated Pacific Rim to Honda. The film, set in a shiny future where much of the world’s GDP is devoted to building giant robots call jaegers to fight giant, monstrous invaders from another dimension, is right out of the Honda playbook. It was a modest success in the United States, and a huge hit in Asia. For the sequel, freshly minted Best Director del Toro turned over the reigns of his new franchise to veteran TV director Steven S. DeKnight, and brought on a mostly new cast, made necessary by the last film’s high body count for giant robot pilots. The biggest missing piece is Idris Elba as Stacker Pentacost, who was last seen detonating an atomic bomb on the floor of the ocean to seal up the interdimensional rift allowing the kaiju to travel to Earth. Ten years after his world-saving sacrifice, his son Jake (John Boyega) struggles in the shadow of his memory. Where Stacker was a soldier, Jake is a playboy, making a good but illegal living selling stolen jaeger technology. But when a misadventure with fellow jaeger hacker Amara (Cailee Spaeny) goes bad, the two are caught and pressed into service by the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps, led by Jake’s adoptive sister Mako (Rinko Kikuchi). There, they struggle under the command of Jake’s frenemy Nate (Scott Eastwood), until an attack by a mysterious giant robot named Obsidian Fury signals the beginning of another round of world-threatening attacks by, variously, giant cyborgs, drones, kaiju, and grotesque meta-mega-kaiju.

At this point, I figure you’re either the kind of person who is liable to be entertained by giant robots fighting giant monsters, or you’re not. If you’re the former, or if you’re giant-robot-curious, this is the movie for you. If you’re the latter, you should give this one a pass, because Pacific Rim: Uprising is pretty much just giant robots doing stuff.

As I sat in the theater nodding while John Boyega led his giant robots into battle on (where else) the slopes of Mt. Fuji, I wondered: Why does Pacific Rim work when our other major Giant Robots Doing Stuff franchise, Transformers, fails so utterly and so predictably? I think it’s because the folks behind Pacific Rim don’t hate their audience, their jobs, and themselves. Boyega, for example, has bonhomie to spare and knows exactly how serious to take the material. In order to make the dizzying action scenes work, he has to sell the fact that driving a giant battle robot is extremely dangerous, while also subtly winking to audience that, yeah, this is a movie about giant battle robots. He’s trying, while his Transformers counterpart Mark Wahlberg just looks like he’s been rousted out of bed and forced to play each scene before he’s had his coffee.

Maybe that also explains the continuing appeal of Honda’s kaiju movies. Even with something as bloated and silly as 1969’s All Monsters Attack, you get the sense that this is a product of a bunch of artists having fun. Pacific Rim: Uprising is big and dumb, but at least it’s having fun.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Rejoice! It’s good!

Star Wars fans have spent more than a decade in the wilderness. Sure, there were some great moments in the prequels, but over all, but there’s no denying that the twenty-first century has not been kind to George Lucas’ vision. But our time in the wilderness is over, and we have returned to the promised galaxy.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is not a perfect film. Parts of the second act are muddled. The galaxy now seems a little less vast, and the political details are undercooked. There are times when the cast are shuffled around unnaturally to feed the needs of the plot. J. J. Abrams simply does not understand how hyperspace works.

John Boyega as Finn

But you know what? The prequels gave us complex galactic politics as Lucas tried to transform Flash Gordon into Issac Asimov’s Foundation. Truth to be told, that’s what the fans who had obsessed over every detail in the Orig Trig thought we wanted, but we were wrong. I will forgive Abrams for playing fast and loose with the details of a fictional FTL drive cobbled from A Wrinkle In Time, because the tear-stained faces of the faithful streaming out of the 7 PM Paradiso screening last night attested to what he got right.

From Abrams history in TV and film, particularly in his butchering of the Star Trek universe, it’s clear that he’s better at character than plot. That made producer Kathleen Kennedy’s choice of Abrams to helm the reintroduction of Han and Leia a wise one, and her decision to have The Empire Strikes Back writer Lawrence Kasdan riding herd on him one worthy of Yoda. Gone is the unspeakable mishmash of dialog from the prequels. Kasdan’s screenplay is weighed down with an unwieldy cast, but pair of leads emerge in the persons of Harrison Ford and Daisy Ridley.

Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca and Harrison Ford as Han Solo

At this point, the only thing that could draw Ford out of a comfortable retirement of recreational aviation and bopping Calista Flockhart is the prospect of taking the controls of the Millennium Falcon one last time. Ford phoned it in for years in one big budget paycheck movie after another, which makes the sight of a fully armed and operational Han Solo something to behold. In the 30 years since the Battle of Endor, Solo has seen personal tragedy. He’s not the happy go lucky rogue any more, even if he’s returned to the pirate lifestyle, but neither is he a broken man. Chewbacca is still at his side, but he’s more than just a furry sidekick this time around. Kasdan and Abrams have made him a full fledged hero in his own right. Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia is now General Organa, charged with defending the weak and fragmented Republic against the First Order, a fascist movement built from the fragments of the Empire. Leia’s not in the center of the action any more, but when Fisher and Ford share a screen for the first time in 32 years, this reviewer’s tears flowed freely.

Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa

Taking Leia’s place is Daisy Ridley as Rey, an orphaned scavenger on the planet Jakku living off the scraps of the final battle that broke both the New Republic and the Empire’s militaries twenty years earlier. Ridley proved to be the project’s best casting choice, as she easily holds the screen with both legends and talented newcomers. She has the air of a bona fide movie star in the making. Her chemistry with John Boyega, who plays fugitive Stormtrooper Finn as a Cowardly Lion, bodes well for the future films.

Daisy Ridley as Rey

Rey’s opposite is Kylo Ren, played to the hilt by Adam Driver, who attracted attention on HBO as Lena Dunham’s boyfriend on Girls. Driver’s background in post-mumblcore naturalism serves him extremely well, as he paints Kylo Ren not as a cold force of evil nature like Darth Vader, but as a petulant, wannabe punk, prone to fits of rage and delusions of grandeur. To the audience, it’s clear that he’s just a pawn in a larger game being played by the Emperor’s successor, Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), but he hasn’t figured it out yet.

Adam Driver as Kylo Ren

I won’t be responsible for spoiling the ending for you, except to say that the emotional climax is devastating.
There are many callbacks to moments in the Orig Trig, but it would be wrong to say that The Force Awakens is a mere rehash of A New Hope. Sure, there’s a formula to these things, but Kasdan and Abrams are doing more than just walking us through the Stations of the Force. It makes perfect sense, for example, for the First Order to pursue the Tarkin Doctrine and construct its own superweapon. In the case of the good guys, no less an authority than Foreign Policy magazine weighed in this morning with this: “In hindsight, it’s clear that, for the Rebel Alliance the Imperial defeat at the Battle of Endor was a classic example of a catastrophic victory: a sudden collapse of a seemingly unbeatable foe that produced opportunities it was unprepared to exploit.”

Like a Chuck Jones Looney Tunes cartoon, The Force Awakens speaks on multiple levels. The kids will respond—strongly—to the swashbuckling and derring do, and the vibrant new stars in the making. For older fans like myself, there is a poignance in seeing how things turned out for our old heroes who won the Star Wars but botched the peace, leaving the next generation to clean up their mess. So it always goes.