Tag: Samara Weaving

Guns Akimbo Revisited: Why Jason Lei Howden’s Video Game Mayhem Still Hits Hard

Goremageddon sent me back to Guns Akimbo, where Jason Lei Howden’s taste for the ludicrous finds its best outlet in Daniel Radcliffe’s desperate scramble through a video game nightmare.

Guns Akimbo Movie PosterAfter reviewing DeathGasm II: Goremageddon, I had to backtrack to remind myself why I find Jason Lei Howden’s approach to visual storytelling so colourful. He crafts tales that feel like a Hail Mary, throwing himself into the ludicrous and bizarre. With three features and a handful of shorts under his belt, he’s already shown a taste for mayhem. That helped make Deathgasm such a wondrous cult hit. Guns Akimbo goes further, bringing first-person shooters to life while keeping its story straightforward. Miles Lee Harris (Daniel Radcliffe) has little hope of escaping unless he plays along and faces Nix (Samara Weaving), the game’s deadliest assassin!

Of the three movies he’s made so far, Akimbo is his best. The story keeps moving instead of jumping between too many set pieces. Here, spectators enjoy something like The Running Man playing out in their own city. Like The Purge, the carnage seems to give its participants free rein to let out their frustrations while everyone else can watch from a safe distance. The film cuts between the action and people enjoying the slaughter through their screens, making their enthusiasm a running gag.

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Bill & Ted Face the Music and Their Franchise Future

There’s some story to like in Bill and Ted Face the Music, but ultimately, it’s about the next generation and what they can do to help their dads.

Bill & Ted Face the Music Movie PosterAvailable on VOD
SPOILER ALERT

Bill and Ted still have an insurmountable task to accomplish in Face the Music. They still have to make that song to bring harmony to the universe. The pseudoscience and sociology behind being able to achieve that is hard to grasp as not even the Oa who created the Green Lantern Corps can promise universal peace. As cinema’s most lovable doofuses would say, being happy means being excellent to each other.

The story by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon is not too perplexing. Time travel stories often struggle with its own internal logic, and this film is no different.

The film is brilliant at realizing this mantra because the future shelves of Bill and Ted simply forget their own credo and need reminders. They are cruel to their past shelves. It’s sort of funny, but I can’t help but wonder when each future iteration decided to be nasty. Part of it has to do with how they failed as musicians. Sadly, the film doesn’t spend any time about them as family men. Their wives are concerned for their wellbeing and suggested couples therapy to “separate” them. Just why their kids adore their fathers is mind-boggling.

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