Tag Archives: Karen Gillan

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 (2023) – Final Installment in Marvel’s Guardian’s Trilogy Mixes Light and Dark with Favorable Results

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The GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movies have been the most offbeat and fun of the Marvel movies, and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3, the third installment in this series, is no exception.

Even with a serious plot— a race against time to save Rocket’s life— the movie contains enough shenanigans and quirky conversations to keep this most recent installment a lighthearted affair.

The biggest reason for this consistency is that all three films were written and directed by James Gunn, who has quite the interesting resume, as he has achieved success with comedies, superhero films, and horror movies. He even worked for Marvel’s rival DC, and created a movie I liked every bit as much as the first GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movie, THE SUICIDE SQUAD (2021), which was my favorite superhero movie that year. He is a master at writing witty, snappy, and flat-out funny dialogue.

I had a blast watching GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3, even with its serious plot. When Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) is injured with a life-threatening wound, the Guardians, our friendly neighborhood protectors of the universe, discover that they cannot treat him, that his body has been encrypted with a suicide device if he is tampered with, which leads the Guardians to a search for Rocket’s origins so they can learn how to diffuse the device and save his life.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn Rocket’s origin story, and it’s not a pretty picture. He was created in a lab by a cold-hearted scientist known as The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), who would have felt right at home on the set of STRANGER THINGS experimenting on the likes of Eleven, only his experiments are far worse. Rocket spends his youth with his closest friends, animals who have also been experimented on, and they dream of the day when they will be free from their cages, but freeing them is not part of The High Evolutionary’s plan. All these years later, The High Evolutionary is still at it, creating worlds and destroying them when he’s not happy with the result. He is also obsessed with capturing Rocket again, as Rocket was his most successful experiment, and so he welcomes the news that the Guardians are on their way to him to learn the secret of saving their friend.

And that’s the main plot of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3, which really is secondary to watching the Guardians interact on screen.

It’s been a tough time for Star Lord aka Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) as he’s still lamenting the loss of Gamora (Zoe Saldana), who’s not dead, but since returning to life after the Thanos purge, has lost all her memories and does not remember being in love with him. Chris Pratt has always been fun in the Peter Quill role, and he’s just as fun here in Vol. 3.

In fact, you can say the same for the rest of the characters as well. Dave Bautista as Drax gives probably my favorite performance in the movie. Drax gets the best lines and for my money is the funniest character in the series. Pom Klementieff is enjoyable as Mantis, and she and Drax share many fun scenes together.

Karen Gillan gets more screen time as Nebula, and we get to know her character more in this installment. Vin Diesel voices Groot, and he gets his share of moments. And Bradley Cooper gets more serious scenes this time around in the very dark story of Rocket’s origins.

Chukwudi Iwuji is okay as The High Evolutionary. He’s more sinister early on. By film’s end, he becomes a more traditional mad scientist, and the character ends up being less menacing than we was at the beginning of the movie.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 provides a good mix of laughs and drama. I laughed a lot, as did the very large movie audience I saw it with— which is a very good thing, by the way. It seems more and more movies these days I’m watching in near empty theaters.—. And it does this even as its plot covers themes like ruthless experiments on animals, mindless destruction of entire planets, the rescue of children, and in the film’s final reel a rescue of a myriad of animals which resembles something out of Noah’s Ark.

The one thing I wasn’t crazy about in this movie is we don’t really get to see the Guardians together all that much. They’re all involved in their separate mini adventures as they attempt to rescue Rocket. And when finally, they are reunited at film’s end, we’re met with the news that some of the Guardians are going their separate ways. As Rocket complains, “We’re breaking up?” Indeed, they are, as the film previews what the next variation of Guardians will look like, while others are going off on solo and smaller group projects. I’m all about evolving, but I also enjoy revisiting successful stories, and the present group of Guardians, certainly had not worn out their welcome yet.

Also, in typical Marvel movie fashion, there are scenes after the end credits, including one at the very end, so if you want to see it, you’ll have to wait till all the credits have rolled.

My favorite GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movie remains the first one from 2014, but I enjoyed this third installment more than the second film in the series, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 (2017).

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 is nothing new, but that’s not a bad thing. The characters here are all fun and quirky, and their interactions make for an enjoyable two and a half hours at the movies. It’s all well-written and directed by James Gunn, and it looks amazing as well, filled with bright stunning and colorful visuals throughout.

And oh yeah. It features a worthy soundtrack of tunes which would make Peter Quill proud.

I give GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 three stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

THE BUBBLE (2022) – New Netflix Comedy Amusing but Uneven

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What happens when a group of actors filming the sixth installment of a popular action movie series are forced to quarantine together at the outset of a pandemic?

Mayhem. Pure mayhem.

And hopefully some hilarity.

That’s the high concept in THE BUBBLE (2022), a new Netflix movie comedy by writer/director Judd Apatow, the man who gave us THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN (2005) and TRAINWRECK (2015).

And while there is indeed plenty of mayhem throughout, there’s not all that much hilarity, as the crazy shenanigans don’t always translate into laughs. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, and so THE BUBBLE, while not a laugh fest, isn’t a total misfire either.

The screenplay by Apatow and Pam Brady struggles because it too often overplays its hand and goes over the top when it doesn’t need to. Many of the situations, while grounded in the reality of a pandemic, which is fresh in our minds since it is still ongoing, don’t stay real for long and many of the situations deteriorate into unfunny goofiness. That being said, the script throws a ton of gags and jokes at the audience. Most don’t work, but the bits that do are often very funny. So, you have mixed bag of a comedy that is more amusing than it is laugh-inducing.

It also has a fun cast who do their best with roles that aren’t exactly fleshed out, but the talent here makes the most of the material.

Karen Gillan plays Carol Cobb, the actress in the series who left the previous installment to make a different movie, and so when she returns to the set of this latest flick she faces the ire of some of her castmates who are upset that she abandoned them. If there’s a main character here, it’s Cobb, as she gets ample screentime. The ongoing gag of her reasons for quitting the previous movie goes on too long, but the flashback sequence where we see the movie she did make is good for a laugh, which is how THE BUBBLE plays out. You have to get through lots of unfunny bits before you enjoy a payoff.

Gillan is fine here, although I enjoyed her much more in the lead role of last year’s GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE (2021). Probably my favorite bit here for Gillan is having Cobb, a character in her 20s, having to argue that she’s not old to the young TikTok star in the cast.

Leslie Mann and David Duchovny play formerly married actors who get back together during the quarantining. Their fiery on-again-off-again relationship is good for a few laughs, but more often than not misfires. Duchovny’s better bits are when his character, who sees himself as the protector of the series, constantly fights with the director over re-writing the script. Mann is a wonderfully comic actor, memorable in such films as THE OTHER WOMAN (2014), for example, but the material here doesn’t give her a lot to do.

Pedro Pascal, the Mandalorian himself, gets one of the best lines of the movie, late in the game when the actors are all at their wits end, and Pascal’s actor Dieter Bravo says, “There are no answers. But there are drugs.” Which sets up one of the funniest scenes in the movie, one of the few where I actually laughed out loud, where they all get high, which is kind of a low brow way to get a laugh, but the sequence is rather creative and definitely funny.

Pascal currently plays the lead character on Disney’s STAR WARS TV show THE MANDALORIAN (2019-2022), where he’s terrific. He was equally as good as DEA Agent Javier Pena on the Netflix TV show NARCOS (2015-17), which goes a long way to helping us forget his less than stellar performance as the main villain in the dreadful Wonder Woman sequel WONDER WOMAN 1984 (2020).

Guz Khan plays Howie, a sex-starved high-strung actor who gets some laughs in his brief screen time. Keegan-Michael Key plays Sean, an actor who is constantly positive, trying to get his fellow actors on board with his quasi-religious beliefs of positive thinking, until he reveals himself to be a fraud. The gag where he only learns to fly a helicopter to go up and not forward is about as unfunny as it sounds.

Peter Serafinowicz is very good as the onsite producer who is tasked with keeping everything together. His cool, calm collected persona makes him the perfect straight man to all the insanity. Fred Armisen makes his mark as the inexperienced director who shot his previous movie while working at Home Depot.

Iris Apatow, the daughter of Leslie Mann and Judd Apatow, is on point as the young TikTok star Krystal Kris.

And Kate McKinnon delivers a scene-stealing albeit brief performance as Paula the Studio Head, the icy cold venomous studio boss who is so cutthroat she hires a security detail that actually shoots any of the actors who try to leave the bubble.

The cast his huge. There are a ton of characters I haven’t mentioned, which is part of the problem with THE BUBBLE. There are so many characters here, each enjoying a small moment or two, but no one really carries this one. There are also many cameos, including Daisy Ridley, John Cena, and James McAvoy, but none really have much of an impact.

One of the funnier parts of THE BUBBLE is when we get to see the actors actually filming their movie, CLIFF BEASTS 6. Their series, CLIFF BEASTS, is about our heroes taking on these mammoth flying monsters. The dialogue is spot on here. It’s awful and sounds a lot like dialogue we’ve heard over the years in the types of action flicks this movie is spoofing.

I had some fun watching THE BUBBLE, but not as much as I had hoped for. The film runs just over two hours, which is a long time for a movie that doesn’t fire on all cylinders. It’s the type of movie where you have to sit through four or five unfunny gags before you get to one that works. A 90-minute version would have been more welcome.

While I found THE BUBBLE amusing, there were just too many misfires in this one for it to be a successful comedy.

I had high hopes, but you might say, it burst my bubble.

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GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE (2021) – Stylish, Imaginative Netflix Movie One of the Best Action Flicks of the Year

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If you like stylized violence, fight scenes with dazzling choreography, and a plot that features kick-ass women giving it back to an army of bad guys, chances are you will really enjoy GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE (2021), a new action movie starring Karen Gillan and Lena Headey, now available on Netflix.

I know I certainly did.

When she was just eight years-old, Sam (Karen Gillan) was abandoned by her hitman mother Scarlet (Lena Headey), and wanting to be just like her mother, she grows up to be an assassin as well, working for “the Firm,” her contact being the man her mother trusted to watch over her, Nathan (Paul Giamatti). When a man unwisely steals from the Firm, Sam is hired to kill him and retrieve the money. She finds him and puts a bullet in him, but as he is dying, he reveals that the reason he stole the money is his eight year old daughter Emily (Chloe Coleman) is being held for ransom by a group of thugs.

Against her better judgment, Sam brings the man to a doctor to try to save him, while bringing the money to the thugs to rescue his daughter. She rescues Emily, but in the ensuing gun battle, the money is lost in an explosion. When she reveals this to Nathan, he relays to her that he can no longer protect her. He tells her that on her previous assignment she inadvertently killed the son of Jim McAlester (Ralph Ineson), a powerful mobster, and McAlester now wants her dead. Because the Firm is unhappy with Sam for not returning her money, they will not protect her.

So, Sam finds herself fighting for her own life and protecting Emily’s. She seeks out the help of her mother’s former assassin friends, Madeleine (Carla Gugino), Florence (Michelle Yeoh), and Anna May (Angela Bassett), who work in the library as “librarians.” They agree to help Sam, and since Scarlet is being played by Lena Headey, you just know that at some point she is going to return to help her daughter, which she does, setting the stage for an all out shoot-em-up hand-to-hand combat finale that is as explosive as you can get.

There are a lot of reasons I really enjoyed GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE, but chief amongst them is its style. The action scenes here are expertly choreographed by director Navot Papushado, and not only that, but they are insanely creative and humorous. I was laughing out loud for a lot of these intense action sequences.

Take for example, the four thugs who kidnapped Emily. They are all wearing monster masks: Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy. So, it’s a hoot seeing these guys make a mad dash to escape in their getaway car wearing these masks, just as it is in the ensuing shoot out with Sam. Watching Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy toting guns and acting like goons in a Quentin Tarantino movie had me laughing out loud. And when Dracula and Sam fight to the death, she grabs a shank and drives it through his chest, and before you can say “Christopher Lee,” blood gushes from his chest and mouth. It’s that type of movie.

Or consider this scene where three hitmen get a second chance to kill Sam when after she beats the living crap out of them, they go to the same doctor who treats her, and he tells them she’s on her way back there. But before this, they had been generously partaking in the doctor’s laughing gas, so now you have three assassins who are preparing to seek vengeance and finish the job, while laughing uncontrollably. The doctor jabs Sam with a drug that makes her arms go limp. So what she does is have Emily tape a knife to one hand and a gun to the other, and she goes out into the hall to battle the three laughing assassins sitting in a swivel chair which she uses to spin around wildly so that her arms can fly horizontally, enabling her to use the knife and the gun. It’s a crazy scene, and it all works so well.

Or the car chase afterwards where Sam still can’t use her arms so Emily has to drive.

The action scenes do not disappoint. The film is R rated, and so there is copious bloodshed and violence, all of it stylized and choreographed. None of it all that believable, but in this case that’s not a detriment.

GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE compares favorably to a movie I reviewed last week, JOLT (2021) which starred Kate Beckinsale. They both share similar themes and styles. GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE has the better action scenes and the better script, and simply enjoys a higher level of creativity and oomph that JOLT had.

Karen Gillan is excellent as Sam and easily carries this movie in the lead role. While ultimately the fun over-the-top action sequences aren’t believable, Gillan certainly is as Sam. I easily believed she was a kick-ass assassin. Maybe it’s because she’s had some practice, as she plays Nebula in the Marvel GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and AVENGERS movies.

Lena Headey is also very good as Sam’s mom Scarlet, but she makes less of an impact since she’s not in the movie as much. Headey of course these days is most known for playing Cersei Lannister on GAME OF THRONES (2011-2019).

I also really enjoyed Chloe Coleman as Emily, as she and Gillan share a nice camaraderie together.

It was also fun watching Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, and Angela Bassett as the three “librarians.” All I can say is, I want to visit their library!

Ralph Ineson makes for a dastardly heavy as Jim McAlester. He’s not on screen all that much, but when he is, he says and does all the things that a villain should say and do. Michael Smiley also makes his mark as Dr. Ricky, the weasel of a medical man who turns on Sam and tries to get her killed.

Speaking of that sequence, Ivan Kaye as the leader of the three “laughing” assassins enjoys some precious moments in the insanely wild battle to the death with Sam.

And Paul Giamatti does what he always does as Nathan, which is, turn in a solid performance. Nathan is an interesting character. Sworn to protect Sam, he kinda drops the ball because he doesn’t really have the balls to stand up to the firm, yet behind the scenes he still attempts to help Sam, and as a result, there’s still an odd bit of affection between Sam and Nathan.

The screenplay by director Navot Papushado and Ehud Lavski is a good one. The dialogue is sharp throughout, and the story is imaginative and playful.

I’m sure there are those who will take offense at a plot where the good guys are all women, and the villains are all men, but they should get over it. GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE works well for exactly that reason! And as someone who has been watching movies for decades, I applaud more movies that feature more women characters, especially lead characters. It’s about friggin time!

GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE is one of the best action movies of the year. The action sequences in this movie are among the most stylized and imaginative I’ve seen in a while, and they belong in the same conversation with sequences from films like ATOMIC BLONDE (2017) and EXTRACTION (2020).

So head on out to your local diner, grab a booth, order a milkshake for two, and enjoy! Just leave your guns at the door. They’re not allowed. Unless of course you order a gunpowder milkshake.

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