The Fall Guy: Rip-snortin' mayhem

The Fall Guy (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for action violence, drug content and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.17.24

This is way too much fun.

 

Director David Leitch and scripter Drew Pearce dumped their stars into a frothy, tongue-in-cheek action epic that never takes itself seriously ... while simultaneously delivering a heartfelt indictment of Hollywood’s shameful refusal to properly acknowledge the brave, hard-working stuntmen and women — and their support teams — who’ve operated in the shadows since the dawn of cinema.

 

With everything to lose, Cole (Ryan Gosling) makes a last-ditch effort to solve the weird
mystery that plagues his ex's film shoot.

A few have been appropriately recognized, over time: the utterly amazing Yakima Canutt, gender-breaking pioneers Helen Gibson and Evelyn Finley, stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, and acrobatic stars such as Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan.

Most, though, remain anonymous ... thanks in great part to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ ongoing refusal to honor them with an Oscar category.

 

(They’re about to add one for casting directors ... but still not for stunt workers? Shameful.)

 

But I digress.

 

Pearce’s balls-to-the-wall plot, very loosely based on the 1981-86 Lee Majors TV series of the same name, opens as well-respected stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) successfully completes a drop-shot as a stand-in for insufferably self-centered movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The latter, egged on by producer/manager Gail Meyer (the hilariously overblown Hannah Waddingham, late of TV’s Ted Lasso), demands a retake; too much of Colt’s face is visible in the shot, spoiling the illusion that Ryder does his own stunts.

 

(This arrogant PR nonsense, notorious among far too many of Hollywood’s insecure “action heroes,” is woefully tolerated even to this day.)

 

The retake ... goes badly.

 

In a sickening sequence that draws horrified gasps even though Leitch keeps it off-camera — and is a disturbing echo of the real-world accident that crippled Daniel Radcliffe’s longtime stunt double, Davis Holmes (sensitively addressed in a poignant 2023 documentary — Colt breaks his back.

 

Flash-forward a year and change. Colt has withdrawn from life and the career he loved so much ... and from the woman, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), who also meant so much to him. He now works a dead-end job as a parking attendant; she has parlayed her behind-the-scenes film set responsibilities into a first-time directing assignment on an overblown sci-fi epic dubbed “Metalstorm.” It stars Ryder, of course, with Gail as executive producer.

 

But there’s trouble on the set. Unknown to Jody, Ryder has mysteriously vanished; worse yet, so has his stunt double, Kevin (Ben Gerrard). Gail, knowing that she can stall for a few days by suggesting that Jody focus on second-unit action scenes, reaches out and begs Cole to step in.

 

“Jody wants you,” Gail insists. “She needs you.”

 

Although plagued by doubt and guilt over bow he abandoned Jody, Colt cannot resist this plea; could it mean that she has forgiven him?

The Three Musketeers: Milady — Thoroughly enjoyable

The Three Musketeers: Milady (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, and akin to PG-13 for violence

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

No surprise: The second chapter of French filmmaker Martin Bourboulon’s swashbuckling epic is every bit as entertaining as its predecessor.

 

You'd think he would learn! Milady (Eva Green) once again has D'Artagnan (François Civil)
at her mercy ... although what she intends to do with him, remains an open question.

As director Richard Lester did, back in the 1970s, Bourboulon closed the first half on a (mostly) triumphant note, with the French queen’s reputation preserved, thanks to the heroic efforts of D’Artagnan (François Civil) and his fellow Musketeers; they foiled a nefarious plot by the scheming Cardinal Richelieu (Èric Ruf) and his henchwoman, the malevolent Milady (Eva Green).

Our heroes also thwarted an attempt to assassinate King Louis XIII (Louis Garrel). 

 

But Bourboulon and his co-scripters — Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière — couldn’t resist adding a nasty cliffhanger. D’Artagnan, warned that his beloved Constance (Lyna Khoudri) was in danger, was just in time to see her snatched and whisked away in a black coach ... after which he was whacked on the head and left to an uncertain fate.

 

This second chapter picks up immediately thereafter, as D’Artagnan regains consciousness in a wood crate shared with a corpse (yuck!). He overcomes his captors and captures the Comte de Chalais (Patrick Mille), a secondary villain whose role expands in this film. D’Artagnan believes that the Comte has Constance in a prison cell, and instead is surprised to find Milady chained within.

 

In a nod to the old proverb — “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” — the subsequent skirmish finds D’Artagnan and Milady fighting as unlikely allies: an uneasy alliance that Bourboulon continues to exploit as the story progresses.

 

Both actors have fun with this prickly dynamic. Although still impetuous and reckless, Civil’s D’Artagnan no longer is as foolish or callow; he doesn’t trust Milady ... but she’s so damn seductive, that his guard frequently drops. Green, in turn, positively delights in her character’s shameless malice; she’s every inch a black widow spider waiting eagerly to ensnare and devour hapless prey.

 

Green’s eyes sparkle with cold, cunning evil: the pluperfect villain we love to hate.

 

(The writers attempt to justify Milady’s behavior by adding references to abusive treatment by men earlier in her life, but that’s an eyebrow-lift. Go with the obvious: She’s bad because she enjoys it.)

 

Immediate Family: A thoroughly entertaining look at music legends

Immediate Family (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.10.24

Everybody reading these words has heard these four guys perform.

 

You simply didn’t know it at the time.

 

Members of The Immediate Family — from left, Daniel "Danny Kootch" Kortchmar, Leland
Sklar, Waddy Wachtel, guitarist Steve Postel (new to the group) and Russ Kunkel —
stroll city streets like they own them. And, indeed, they do.

The quartet collectively known these days as The Immediate Family — guitarists Daniel “Danny Kootch” Kortchmar and Waddy Wachtel, bassist Leland Sklar, and drummer Russ Kunkel — entered the music scene in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when pop hits crooned by camera-ready headliners (but written by others) gave way to folk/rock singer/songwriters who composed and performed their own material.

Kootch, Wachtel, Sklar and Kunkel quickly became in-demand session musicians: the backing “shading artists” who brought memorable highlights to chart-topping tunes by this new crop of talent.

 

But as filmmaker Denny Tedesco makes clear in this thoroughly absorbing documentary — and you can’t watch it without constantly smiling — these guys weren’t overnight sensations. They’d all been honing their musical chops since early childhood.

 

Their histories unfold via a series of individual on-camera interviews, vintage clips, brief bits of cute animation, and playful banter between all four of them, seated together and inspiring each others’ memories.

 

Kootch, a native New Yorker, met then-unknown James Taylor when both were teenagers spending summers at Martha’s Vineyard. They subsequently formed a band dubbed The Flying Machine, which survived long enough to produce one album’s worth of songs (finally released, rather hypocritically, only after Taylor hit big with the album Sweet Baby James, on which Kootch also played backing guitar).

 

Taylor’s hit song, “Fire and Rain,” references this band with the phrase “sweet dreams and flying machines, in pieces on the ground.”

 

Kootch eventually gravitated to Los Angeles, where he became part of a trio dubbed The City, alongside Carole King. Following Sweet Baby James, Kootch backed King on her 1971 breakthrough album, Tapestry.