My Spy: The Eternal City Review

"My Spy: The Eternal City" is about as good as a sequel to a 2020 Dave Bautista-led family action comedy about a nine year old kid wanting to become a spy could be. It's not going to set the cinematic world on fire or anything, but it's a decent way to spend a humid July Sunday evening.

Bautista returns as JJ, a CIA agent-turned-analyst who since becoming Sophie's (Chloe Coleman) guardian, prefers to spend his time behind a desk and making scones when his muffin's fail to rise in the oven. But his pal Bobbi (Kristen Schaal, back from the first one) thinks he's lost his edge since becoming a full-time parent, as does his boss David (Ken Jeong), who wants him back in the field. Oh the fictional woes of well-off movie characters, what ever is going to happen I wonder.

Of course he gets back into the action, and that's not a spoiler, but the way about it is as goofy as it is convoluted: Sophie's school choir group wins a chance to go to Italy to play at the Vatican, and if it ain't a coinkydink, David's son Collin (Taeho K) is not only her best friend, but also in the same choir group! JJ chaperones the trip, but not before a thumb drive is stolen containing locations to long-forgotten nuclear bombs hidden all across the world.

To go on could give something away, but the narrative here is as heavy as a diet soda, so whatever: Collin is kidnapped, to blackmail him into getting the plot-twist of a villain the codes to the explosives. Or did they already have the codes but need the locations? Ah, I can't remember, but it doesn't matter, the story is just an excuse for some silly slapstick, surprisingly convincing action, and all-around delightful performances.

All the major players, including some I'm not mentioning to save any feeble surprises here from being exposed, are well-cast and are clearly enjoying themselves, so we enjoy watching their hijinks. But then the plot gets in the way, because now an assassin is going to kill JJ, or the still-not-saying-who baddie has drugged JJ with some vague neurotoxin. To kill him, slowly, while no one is around. I wonder if he'll be saved or something. It's just too stuffed with trying to be an espionage flick that it interrupts the overall comedy of it all, it doesn't let things breath and ease into the wacky situations. Because the actual plot is ridiculous if it were played straight, so why bother in the first place?

By trying to be both a spy film and a comedy, it fails at doing either well, and despite being rarely funny, it is consistently amusing, and perhaps most refreshing of all, it has its heart in the right place. There's nothing especially good here, but there's also nothing bad- its charming cast and mostly-zippy dialogue grounds the picture to be about family, despite all the explosions, bullets and killings.

Twisters Review

It has been a long time since we've had a good disaster movie, and unfortunately the long-awaited stand-alone sequel to 1996's "Twister," annoyingly called "Twisters," is not one. It's as silly as one could want from a big-budget spectacle, but it's got problems so big you could fit a flying cow through it.

Of course, it's hard to go into this without thinking of the original, and it doesn't help that there is only so much plot you can shoe-horn into a movie about dangerous winds. Kate is our lead, played adequately by Daisy Edgar-Jones, who early on, with her boyfriend Jeb (Daryl McCormack) & team, we see trying out the idea of distributing sodium polyacrylate into tornadoes, which will soak up all the moisture; it's "the same thing used in pads" we're told. The film is clever enough to use a joke to explain movie-science, but doesn't bother with explaining what happens to the water-logged salt once it supposedly kills the twister. Does it drop to the ground? Get flung everywhere? Who cleans it up after? Questions, questions and more questions, and I should not be asking myself those in a disaster flick.

Anyway, the plan doesn't work and only her and pal Javi (Anthony Ramos) survive. We flash forward five years and the two haven't kept in touch, Kate working an office job and Javi forming the company "Storm Par," which uses military technology to scan tornadoes. He has all the latest technology and, gasp, investors. Problem is that they would need to get in real close to one, which is where Kate comes in. She agrees to work one week with him in Oklahoma, but uh-oh, wouldn't you know it, another team of storm-chasers is there, lead by Tyler (Glenn Powell). He wears a cowboy hat and speaks inconsistently with a southern accent, and runs a YouTube channel with his eclectic crew. They have names according to the credits but it doesn't matter. They are exclusively defined by their role; like Lily (Sasha Lane) who flies a drone, and Boone (Brandon Perea) who films his show (and yes, I had to look them up), so to me they were nothing more than "drone girl" and "camera guy," respectively. Such fleshed-out characterization.

This is a crippling problem, since for maybe the first hour we just get scene after scene of people driving towards big storms, and Tyler's team spend almost all their screen-time yelping and hollering as they do stupid tricks like setting off fireworks inside a twister. It's obnoxious and grating, so you feel like you paid to watch a free YouTube video at a theater.

Now you might be wondering, how do you set off fireworks in a tornado? Wouldn't that require driving into one? Several characters, several times, explicitly say not to be in a vehicle during one. Ah but you see, Tyler's truck is specially rigged to anchor into the ground, keeping him safe. Why other vehicles are sometimes safe and others sometimes not, however? I'm no meteorologist, or filmmaker, but it seems the film can't follow it's own logic.

So the dualing groups really don't have much to dual about, one is funded by rich people and the other subscribers, so since they're not competing for anything, there is absolutely zero tension. They cut each other off on roads leading to storms, because of the script tells them (and of course, there is only one road per twister). Eventually the narrative introduces morals to the story, with Kate prioritizing helping those post-twister and Javi wanting to collect his data instead, so soon she leaves for Glenn, because, I dunno, he's supposed to be charming. Yet the two have no chemistry, just two decent actors being paid to talk cute to each other. (It doesn't help that he looks way too old for her, much more so than their mild real-life age gap suggests.)

So what about the meat-and-potatoes of it all, the tornadoes themselves. I saw this on the biggest screen I could, but "Twisters" fails to showcase the wonder of tornadoes, the majesty of mother nature being a force of nature. Instead the action is chaotically filmed, the camera struggling to clearly show the actors and special effects, so it harshly bounces around. I suppose it was to create a sense of disorientation and unease, but what we got was just frustration. There's a lot of money on the screen, and it's a shame we never really get a good look at it.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Review

For such a belated fourthquel, "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F" commits a cinema felon by adding a subtitle instead of a simple roman numeral like its predecessors. And while I can't forgive such flagrant grammar inconsistencies, I can forgive the film itself for being a pleasantly light-weight action comedy that has just enough thrills and laughs.

Eddie Murphy returns as Axel Foley, who despite some paunch hardly looks a day over fifty, despite being over sixty. He's the same old fast-talking Detroit detective who, after stopping some crooks at a local hockey game, goes to visit his estranged daughter Jane (Taylour Paige), a criminal defense attorney in, you guessed it, Beverly Hills. She hates him for prioritizing his work over his family, and not a story beat is beaten that hasn't been beaten to death in every other medium of entertainment. But it's fine, the two have chemistry, and it goes to show that with the right script (here credited to Will Beall, Tom Gormican & Kevin Etten) is still capable of being funny.

Anyway, Jane is working on a case to defend Enriquez (Damien Diaz), who claims to be framed for the death of an undercover cop. A cop who works for Grant, played by Kevin Bacon, and I'm not sure if it's the film or the actor himself, but the second you see him you know he's dirty. Of course the film comes out and says just as much soon after, so don't press that "play" button thinking there's any subtly here at all- Bacon's the kind of actor born who has the face of a slimy bent authority figure.

He's the kind of character that can only exist in movies like this, where their word is trusted by the entire department despite the fact that he or his goons are constantly planting evidence, kidnapping, arresting, breaking-and-entering without warrants, stealing, and oh yeah, killing, in the age where everyone in Beverly Hills and their pampered pooch have a phone capable of recording.

Oh don't get me wrong, Kevin is a fantastic actor, capable of range this belated little distraction doesn't deserve, but that doesn't mean he doesn't give it his all. Because he does, but man, he can do this in his sleep.

Judge Reinhold returns as Rosewood, as does Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot and John Ashton (as Jeffery, Serge and Taggart, respectively), and their participation is an extended cameo at best and just a plain old cameo at worst, but hey, part of me is happy to see someone like Reinhold still working in Hollywood. In actuality, Axel spends much of his time with Jane and Detective Abbot (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who's frizzy hair and relaxed, almost bored expression reminded me of disgraced and incarcerated actor Danny Masterson, which if unintentional is uncanny. He's working on the Enriquez case too, and previously dated Jane, which probably sounded like it'd provided suspense, but this featherweight actioner couldn't muster any dramatic or romantic tension if Eddie broke the fourth wall and said directly to the audience "this is dramatic and romantic tension."

But who cares, because director Mark Molloy keeps the familiar plot moving fast enough that you're never bored, but he fails to craft a single creative moment; your standard shootouts and chases punctuate the picture enough times to keep you from dozing off, but it never stimulates you. It never challenges your expectations, instead banking on warmed-over nostalgia and Murphy's comedic talents.