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Fast X

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  • Title: Fast X
  • IMDb: link

Having nowhere new to go with the series, the Fast & Furious franchise looks backwards by photoshopping Jason Momoa into the events of Fast Five (the best movie of the hit, and mostly miss, franchise) and quickly elevating him to one of its most dangerous villains. At least more enjoyable than the last entry, Fast X is mostly harmless with some extravagant special effects sequences including our heroes chasing a giant bomb crashing through the streets of Rome. Its also mindbogglingly twenty minutes too long while making no effort to wrap up events before the credits roll. How can a movie this long never end?

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Trainwreck

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  • Title: Trainwreck
  • IMDb: link

TrainwreckAmy Schumer, who also wrote the script, stars as a relationship-averse mess of a woman whose world view is changed after interviewing a doctor (Bill Hader) for a local magazine. Trainwreck is a pretty straightforward romcom focusing on Amy’s struggles with love and her dysfunctional relationships with her father (Colin Quinn), sister (Brie Larson), and former boyfriend (John Cena). Like many scripts written by stand-up comedians, Trainwreck is a bit uneven. At times the film is quite funny even if all of its jokes don’t quite hit home.

Directed by Judd Apatow, the film boasts an odd collection of unlikely supporting characters. Along with Cena we also get LeBron James (playing himself) as Hader’s client and friend, Amar’e Stoudemire, Tilda Swinton as Amy’s demanding boss, and Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei as the stars of a movie within the movie about a dogwalker and his client in a running gag that never pays off.

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Digging for Fire

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  • Title: Digging for Fire
  • IMDb: link

Digging for FireMiddle-age apathy is the major theme of Digging for Fire as a husband (Jake Johnson, who co-wrote the screenplay along with director Joe Swanberg) and wife’s (Rosemarie DeWitt) separate weekend plans while on vacation let each work through the listlessness of their shared existence and eventually find their way back to each other. It’s a story that’s been done several times, sometime much better (like Massy Tadjedin‘s 2010 film Last Night) and more often far worse (any number of middle age brain-dead romcoms).

More archetypes than fully fleshed-out characters, neither Tim nor Lee are all that interesting. Tim is your typical mid-life crisis male wanting to spend time with old friends and recapture lost youth. Lee is worried about the future, her marriage, and loosing her sense of self under the weight of marriage and parenthood. Johnson and DeWitt give the characters a bit of a spark but it’s Tim’s unusual obsession with finding a bone and old revolver buried in the back yard of the home where the family is staying that proves to give the movie something unique to explore, if not something terribly original to say.

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22 Jump Street

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  • Title: 22 Jump Street
  • IMDb: link

22 Jump StreetThe first film’s rebooting of the 80s television show with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as a pair of screw-up cops sent in undercover as high school students turned out to be a surprisingly self-aware dumb-fun action-comedy. Those who enjoyed 21 Jump Street and were left wanting more of the same should enjoy the sequel (which even the script by Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel, and Rodney Rothman admits, on multiple occasions, is basically the exact same story all over again).

Poking fun not only at the pair of cops attempting to pass themselves off as college freshman but also sequels in general this time around, 22 Jump Street sends officers Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) to college to track down a new designer drug WHYPHY. Offering the same friendship and fallout dynamic between partners as 21 Jump Street, the sequel also gives gives Schmidt a new love interest (Amber Stevens) while working Ice Cube into a slightly larger role this time around. It’s not a great film, and you’re certainly going to have to put your brain on hold, but it does provide plenty of dumb fun.

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