Movie Review Shazam Fury of the Gods

Shazam Fury of the Gods (2023) 

Directed by David Sandberg

Written by Harry Gayden, Chris Morgan 

Starring Zachary Levi, Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, Adan Brody, D.J Cotrona, Meagan Good, Rachel Zegler 

Release Date March 17th, 2023 

Published March 20th, 2023 

Just as James Gunn is about to explode the D.C Universe, Shazam Fury of the Gods arrives to recall the Snyder-verse heyday as seems to be coming to an end. Yes, we still have an Aquaman sequel and a Flash movie in our future, but the path being cut in the D.C film universe still appears to have reached an end. Whether that is a good or bad thing is entirely subjective to your feelings about D.C's scattershot personification of superheroes in the movies. Sometimes the D.C Universe is dour and bleak and sometimes the D.C Universe is broad and goofy and nothing D.C has done has married these disparate tones despite the a clear sharing of characters across movies definitively linking the movies together. 

Zach Snyder's vision of D.C's future as a wasteland ruled over by a bitter, out of control Superman still clashes violently with the vibrant, colorful and childlike wonder of Wonder Woman 84 and especially Shazam which leans further into the candy color of childhood with Shazam Fury of the Gods. Where Snyder eagerly drained the world of color, going as far as to make black and white versions of his films, Shazam and its sequel, clearly exist in a coloring book universe of childlike imagination and bright, bright colors. Fury of the Gods even has unicorns, albeit, scary snorting, warrior unicorns, they're still unicorns and that flies desperately in the face of Snyder's self-serious to the point of parody vision. 

Perhaps that is why Shazam was never glimpsed in any of Batman/The Flash's visions of the future. There is no place in that universe for an angst-riddled, slacker, dreamer like Billy Batson. Shazam is the guy who would get too confident and get himself absolutely killed by an angry Superman. That actually tracks with the bleakness of the Snyder-verse, now that I am thinking of it. Evil of the future would totally demolish the young heroes of Shazam Fury of the Gods, a group who still marvels over their own powers and obsess about their superhero names. Well, now that I have talked myself into how the D.C Film Universe actually makes sense, via the likely horrific future death of Billy Batson and his family, let's talk about Shazam Fury of the Gods. 

As we join the story, a pair of women dressed as ancient warriors have entered a museum to retrieve a staff. This staff had been used by the big bad of the last Shazam movie. In that film, spoiler alert, Billy Batson busted the staff on the assumption that breaking it would destroy its world destroying magic. What Billy could not know was that the magic in the staff was all that was keeping sisters and ex-Gods, Hespera (Helen Mirren) and Kalypso (Lucy Liu), from entering the human realm. With the staff broken, the sisters come to Earth, reassemble the staff and proceed to murder a museum full of people. These deaths are never referenced again. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Roll Bounce

Roll Bounce (2005) 

Directed by Malcolm D. Lee 

Written by Norman Vance Jr. 

Starring Bow Wow, Chi McBride, Mike Epps, Meagan Good, Nick Cannon

Release Date September 23rd, 2005

Published September 23rd, 2005

In preparing my review of the new roller-disco flick Roll Bounce I came across an article in the New York Post about roller skating movies of the past and it mentioned a true forgotten classic, Skatetown U.S.A. This 70's gem starred Scott Baio, Patrick Swayze, Ron Palillo (Horshack from "Welcome Back Kotter") and former Brady Bunch star Maureen McCormick. The film is about rival roller disco gangs competing in a skating tournament set to disco rhythms. I thought I only dreamed of this movie.

Maybe someday someone will look back on Roll Bounce and be as nostalgic, or sarcastic take your pick, as I am for Skatetown U.S.A but without the perspective of time, Roll Bounce is a relatively relatively unmemorable 70's throwback that needed more of a sense of humor about its subject as opposed to trying to ring actual tension out of a movie about roller skating.

Rapper Bow Wow stars in Roll Bounce as Xavier or X to his crew of rolling skating friends including Junior (Brandon T. Jackson), Boo (Marcus T. Paulk), Naps (Rick Gonzalez) and Mixed Mike (Khleo Thomas). Together the boys spend every summer at the roller rink where they perform choreographed routines for fun. The fun stops, however, when the local rink is closed down and the boys are forced to go to the upscale rink on the other side of town where skating is a competition not a pastime.

The boys are harassed by the locals as they attempt their routines and get shown up pretty fierce in their first visit. However, you just know that when the time comes, as in the 500 hundred dollar cash prize skating competition, the guys will be more than ready.

Parallel to the skating story is the story of X's home life where he and his sister and his father (Chi McBride) are coping with the loss of their mother. Not only that but dad has also just lost his high paying gig as an airplane designer and has not told his son. The family drama is a tad bit cheesy in a movie as gregarious and loose as Roll Bounce and the father son tension only serves to weigh the film down when it should roll with the skating.

Roller skating is a goofy subject for a movie and the last thing any movie should try and do is take it seriously. Yet that is what director Malcolm D. Lee and writer Norman Vance Jr. try to do. They try to make you care about the outcome of this superfluous, overblown and rather ridiculous competition. Don't get me wrong, the action on skates is impressive but it's also quite goofy.

Juxtapose the roller disco of Roll Bounce with the disco of Saturday Night Fever and they may look similar in their weightlessness. However, where Fever earned its melodramatic side by delivering a complex and fascinating lead character, Roll Bounce never establishes X as either fascinating or complex. X is a nice, kind of goofy kid who's a great dancer on skates. The detail of X attempting to cope with his mother's death seems tacked on to give him a dramatic weight and works only to take us away from the more genial and fun story of the roller disco.

Malcolm Lee is a terrific director as he showed in the friendly comedy The Best Man and the awesomely funny 70's send up Undercover Brother. One is left to wonder where that sense of humor is in Roll Bounce. There are occasional funny moments but the film goes for very long stretches without laughs. Lee and writer Norman Vance too often get bogged down in trying to create a family drama and trying to make you care about roller skating that they forget that their real subjects are fun and nostalgia.

Both Lee and Vance could use a refresher in how to write female characters. None of the women in Roll Bounce are anything more than minor characters. Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Goode and "The Bernie Mac Show"'s Kellita Smith each play a different variation of a love interest for the main characters and they are defined by being the love interest and nothing more. None of the women take part in the skating and are left in another typically female role as a cheerleader.

When Roll Bounce is in its retro groove with its killer soundtrack of seventies classics, Bee Gees, Chic, Kool and The Gang and such, it's an enjoyable little throwback. However, when Malcolm Lee attempts to shoehorn in the family drama the movie becomes bogged down and the good time vibe comes to a complete halt.

Roll Bounce does manage to find entertaining moments that showcase these young actors' talent for having a good time. The skating is pure kitsch and when the actors are allowed to take part in that kitsch spirit the film comes alive. That spirit is captured by Nick Cannon's cameo as a seventies style ladies man and Wesley Johnson as the skating rink superstar called Sweetness who enters the rink with his own 70's style theme music and two female valets on his arms like some roller skating pimp.

The retro good time vibe is there in spirit in Roll Bounce but it is too often undermined by forced melodramatics. Still if you were a fan of great disco, roller skating, or high camp you may find something to really enjoy in this inoffensive retro retread.

Me? I'm going on Ebay to find a copy of Skatetown, USA.

Movie Review: Waist Deep

Waist Deep (2006) 

Directed by Vondie Curis Hall 

Written by ? 

Starring Tyrese, Meagan Good, Larenz Tate, The Game 

Release Date June 23rd, 2006 

Published June 24th, 2006 

The trailers and commercials for Waist Deep give the impression of a gritty, stylish, inner city gangsta pic. Then, you find out it was directed by the same guy, Vondie Curtis Hall, who directed Mariah Carey's Glitter and much of the cool of the trailer slips away. Waist Deep is not nearly as bad as Glitter but it is nearly as vapid and overwrought with an attempt at a relevant, uplifting message that is laughably out of sync.

Brainless gunplay with a melodramatic twist, Waist Deep stars pop star Tyrese Gibson as O2 a recent parollee looking to avoid his third strike and life in prison. He has one other good reason to stay out of trouble, a six year old son named Junior (H. Hunter Hall, the directors son).

Trouble ensues for father and son when they are driving to their home in South Central Los Angeles and get carjacked. Dad is tossed out of the car while Junior is kidnapped with the car. The kidnapping was orchestrated with the aid of a street hustler named Coco (Meagan Goode) who was working on behalf of a gang kingpin named Big Meat (The Game).

Taking Coco hostage, O2 finds that Big Meat is still holding a grudge from a robbery they worked years ago in which O2 walked away with all the loot. Meat was actually the reason O2 was sent to prison the second time, for six years, but apparently that was not enough payback. He wants the money O2 took or he will kill Junior.

Now a few logical questions. Why if O2's cousin, played by the usually terrific Lorenz Tate, works for Big Meat was O2 unaware Meat still had a grudge against him? Why does O2 spend a large portion of the film pretending not to know who Big Meat is if Meat was the reason he went to prison? And why would O2 stay in Los Angeles if he knew that Big Meat was the biggest, baddest gangster in the city? Did he think a guy as crazy as Meat was going to forget a guy who ripped him off? Meat cuts guys hands off with a machete, anyone who knows him should know the guy holds grudges.

These are questions that the movie never answers. Instead, director Vondie Curtis Hall and writer Darrin Scott attempt to distract us with a convoluted series of heists, one more over the top ridiculous than the next, and a rushed, though not entirely unappealing, sex scene.

Along the way Hall and Scott attempt to give Waist Deep a social conscience. In the background of the many scenes of violence are extras who are marching for peace on the streets and more police presence in their neighborhoods. Hall and Scott seem to believe it was wildly ironic and hysterical to have a gang member beaten and kidnapped as a take back the streets rally happens in the foreground. Are they making fun of clueless protesters? No, because Hall and Scott also want the protests to be sincere and the movies anti-violence message is earnest. That is what makes the choices made in presenting these scenes so curious.

What may be most shocking about Waist Deep is the fact that it's soundtrack stinks. This may be some kind of weird stereotype but, generally speaking, urban dramas like Waist Deep have really good hip hop or hardcore rap soundtracks. That is not the case here where Ghostface Killah is the soundtracks big name, but most of the music in the film comes from Kon Artis and Terrence Blanchard and acts as a greek chorus to the action on the screen. That means that the music is as overwrought and dull witted as the film itself.

Tyrese Gibson is really far to good for such weak material. Unfortunately he is making his living on garbage like Waist Deep and his last picture Annapolis, films that fail to take full advantage of his raw intensity and presence. The guy has some real star power, as he showed in his debut film Baby Boy and last years Four Brothers, but it's muted in Waist Deep by a script that is not nearly as smart as he obviously is.

Meagan Goode is one of the most beautiful women in movies today. However, like Gibson, Goode cannot seem to choose the right movies. Breakout stardom remains just out of her grasp in low rent flicks like Deliver Us From Eva and Roll Bounce and Waist Deep is a step backward for this promising talent.

In the end, the blame for the failure of Waist Deep falls on director Vondie Curtis Hall. The actor turned director, best known for his work on TV's Chicago Hope, has an eye that aims for schmaltz and uplift when it should simply begin with story logic and maybe work it's way toward some uplifting message. There is nothing wrong with trying to be socially relevant but a film cannot simply assume relevance it must be earned through good storytelling and compelling characters, Waist Deep has neither.

Cool looking trailers are almost always a letdown and Waist Deep is yet another sad example of a trailer that is far better than the film from which it is culled. Director Vondie Curtis Hall has done little to improve his skills since Glitter. His skills in direction are good enough in terms of keeping his camera trained on the action but he has a tin ear for character development and plotting, two rather important elements in filmmaking.

Movie Review Stomp the Yard

Stomp the Yard (2007) 

Directed by Sylvain White 

Written by Gregory Anderson

Starring Columbus Short, Meagan Good, Ne-Yo, Darrin Henson, Brian White, Laz Alonzo, Harry Lennix

Release Date January 12th, 2007

Published January 16th, 2007 

MTV Films has pioneered a new kind of filmmaking. It's a low budget, high teen appeal style that involves formula stories about young protagonists and killer soundtracks that drive the film's marketing. It began with the dance drama Save The Last Dance and continued through the surprise 2004 dance hit You Got Served. The new movie Stomp The Yard is not an MTV film but it follows the MTV Films business plan. Made on the cheap, with a killer hip hop soundtrack and cameos by hip hop stars, Stomp The Yard made its budget back over the opening weekend.

That is great for business but the formula filmmaking is tired and the cheapness shows in the low quality of the filmmaking. Stomp The Yard may have youth appeal but it lacks greatly in story and filmmaking appeal. 

In Stomp The Yard Columbus Short plays D.J, a wrong side of the tracks kid from the L.A streets who finds himself in college in Atlanta after the violent death of his brother Duron. At Truth University his hard ass uncle Nate works on the campus landscaping and had to pull every string imaginable to get D.J in. Once there, D.J's culture shock includes a crash course in stepping, a dance competition among historic African American fraternities.

D.J knows how to step, he and his late brother and a team of friends were battle dancers back in L.A before Duron was killed after a competition. Now in Atlanta, D.J is shy about getting into stepping but after showing off for a girl in a bar, D.J becomes a hot commodity among the top two frats on campus, who also happen to be the top two stepping frats in the country.

The girl D.J danced for is April (Meagan Goode) and she happens to be the girlfriend of a top stepper, Grant (Darrin Henson) and the daughter of the school provost. If you think both of these attributes will be laid out as romantic obstacles and then easily overcome, then you have likely seen a few of these formula films in the past. Indeed, those on the wrong side of the tracks always seem to get the girl, especially when the upper crust of society forbids it.

There are few clichés that Stomp The Yard doesn't stomp all over on the way to its rote conclusion. Director Sylvain White, like most directors of January filler material, isn't so much a director as he is a vessel for transporting this cliché ridden script to the screen with little innovation. His style choices are sloppy and he seems to have no interest in the story beyond the opportunities it offers to film elaborate dance scenes.

Throughout Stomp The Yard White opts for a shaky handheld camera work that is sloppy and distracting, especially during the dance scenes where the camerawork makes you doubt just how spectacular the dancing really is. Throughout the film there are confusing scenes where one person or a team dances and one is alleged to be better than the other but we have no idea why. Each side is precise and athletic, even charismatic, but why one is better than the other is left completely subjective to individual taste. The way these scenes are put together however, it seems like we are supposed to understand that one side has been shown up, but for the life of me I had no idea why.

There is an interesting idea buried beneath the retread plot of Stomp The Yard. A movie that focuses its energy on why stepping is so venerated and why it is such a marvelous tradition. Stomp The Yard simply wishes for us to assume stepping is an important part of the culture, it never bothers to explain why. An education in the styles and grading of stepping might make an interesting movie or a better documentary.

For an education in battle dancing, more specifically a battle between krumping and clowning, check out David LaChappelle's documentary Rize. That film is gorgeously shot with no cuts during the dance scenes to prove that indeed no tricks were used, these dancers really did those amazing things. The crew of Stomp The Yard could have learned a lot watching Rize.

As it is, it seems that the Stomp The Yard crew watched how successful the clichés of 2005's You Got Served worked as a business model and simply copied them with slightly less skill. Yes, Stomp The Yard makes You Got Served look better by comparison. That is really saying something.