Cale Morsen – Reel Film Chronicles

The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift

Year: 2006 | Dir: Justin Lin | Runtime: 104m It’s easy to conceive of a universe where The Fast and The Furious franchise simply dissipated into the ether like a puff of exhaust from the tailpipe of a 1970 Dodge Charger. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift had all the hallmarks of a direct-to-video release and a total lack of any confidence in its success on the part of Universal. With none of the stars from the first two films returning, Tokyo Drift appeared to be an attempt by a major Hollywood studio to capitalize on whatever shred of popularity they could sink their greedy little claws into. On paper, it seemed to be a Fast and The Furious movie in name only: it featured all new characters in an all-new setting with a narrative completely divorced from the movies that had proceeded it. All signs pointed to Universal trying to squeeze the last few drops of profitability from a (at the time semi-) recognizable brand name before discarding its desiccated rinds into the gutter like so much scrap metal. Tokyo Drift might very well have sealed the…

2 Fast 2 Furious

What 2 Fast 2 Furious lacks in story, plot, and character, it nearly makes up for with swagger. 2 Fast 2 Furious marks the low point in The Fast and the Furious saga, which isn’t to say that it’s not without its certain charm. It’s a fun ride, even if it doesn’t nearly reach the heights of the first movie, and it doesn’t quite fit with the later evolution of the series when it truly came into its own as an ongoing story of mercenary spies / borderline superheroes on globe-trotting adventures to save the world and protect their “family.” 2 Fast 2 Furious does, however, add several important elements to The Fast and the Furious lore, including Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges as Tej, who would become series regulars, and Eva Mendes as Agent Monica Fuentes, who would also show up for a cameo in a later entry. There’s just a hint of some of the technological ridiculousness that would be fully embraced by later movies in the franchise with the “electric darts” the police use to disable the electronics of speeding vehicles. (Or maybe this is real tech, and I’m…

The Fast and the Furious

2001 | dir: Rob Cohen | 106 m Though The Fast and the Furious has left an indelible mark on the cinematic landscape as the progenitor of one of the most successful and well-known action blockbuster franchises in the world, when it was released in 2001, it was simply a fun movie about street racing, a criminal underworld, undercover cops, and the shameless promotion of undying brand loyalty to Corona. I use “simply” here not in the pejorative sense but in the nostalgic. Now that the franchise that The Fast and the Furious spawned – seven sequels, a spin off, an animated show, and an eighth sequel being released this year – has become so ubiquitous in pop culture, it has become increasingly difficult to separate The Fast and the Furious the movie from The Fast and the Furious the cultural phenomenon. It’s nearly impossible to watch the movie now without seeing it through the filter of the incredible success of its sequels and the iconic status the entire series currently enjoys among audiences who watch these movies with the right eyes. It’s also so far removed narratively from what its sequels have evolved into, and the connective tissue between this and…

Message from the King

I had never heard of Message from the King until it popped up randomly in my Netflix feed, and despite the track record of random movies recommended by the streaming service, I still haven’t learned my lesson. I have to say that one of the main reasons I decided to watch this movie late one Friday night not too long ago was specifically because it starred Chadwick Boseman, who sadly lost his battle with cancer last year at the age of forty-three. I don’t mean to imply that I watched the movie solely as a way of honouring Mr. Boseman’s legacy, though that certainly came into play. It was mostly because he was a master of his craft and a truly captivating screen presence. And also partially because the plot description of a single man on a personal vendetta seeking righteous retribution and beating up and straight up killing a bunch of bad guys who obviously deserve it is like the comfort food of cinema. Watching an action hero walk into a room and lay the smackdown on a bunch of mooks…

Synchronic

Synchronic is no different. Which is to say, it’s very different. But still the same. It’s time travel, so admittedly, there’s going to be some head scratching. The best advice I can give when engaging with any story involving time travel is to quote the late, great Hunter S. Thompson: “Buy the ticket, take the ride…” Synchronic is the fourth feature film from Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, and one of the few movies I was truly looking forward to in 2021 (and in 2020, but the less said about that particular historical period, probably the better). Not just because I’m a sucker for a good time travel film (or even a bad one), but because Moorhead and Benson have established themselves in the indie film circuit as men of a visionary nature and a distinctive voice. I was hooked immediately after watching their debut, Resolution, last year and was similarly impressed/enamoured with their follow-up to their follow-up movie, The Endless, and their just plain follow-up, Spring. Though Resolution and The Endless have roots reaching deep into the fertile soils of both science fiction and horror (I couldn’t help shake the feeling after watching Resolution and The Endless and Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar in the…

The Irishman

There are a few modern directors whose movies I make a point to add to my collection at my earliest possible convenience, and Martin Scorsese is one of those few. The Irishman is Scorsese’s latest movie, a contemplative exploration of legacy and as we grow older and begin to weigh the choices we made along the way with the consequences of those choices, a final reckoning we all must face. It also serves as a melancholic reflection on Scorsese’s own filmography and in many ways feels like the thematic culmination of ideas he’s been exploring since the very beginning of his career. The Irishman seems like the end of an unofficial trilogy of Scorsese movies that include Mean Streets and Goodfellas. All of these movies explore the lives of criminals (specifically gangsters) and the inevitable consequences that those sort of lives eventually yield, but because each of them was made at distinct points in Scorsese’s life and career, we’re given a unique collection of perspectives from the same man on the same themes. The Irishman was rather notably produced by Netflix and released on their streaming platform in…

Tenet

Despite the standard cliche, I don’t remember ever literally being on the edge of my seat during a movie, but there are some movies that make me sit up a little straighter and pay very close attention. Tenet was one of those movies. I wasn’t really all that surprised that I enjoyed Tenet; Christopher Nolan is one of my favourite directors working today (or really, ever), and I’ve been a fan of all of his movies to date. Nolan is one of the few modern directors who is able to effectively blend the auteur and blockbuster approach to craft films that are truly epic in scale but at their core are stories about people and that both pose and explore questions about the human condition in an intelligent way. In that way, Nolan is heir apparent to the original generation of auteur film makers who essentially invented the blockbuster like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. And like Spielberg and Lucas, Christopher Nolan is primarily concerned with telling original stories about larger than life events anchored with fully fleshed out human characters (and a…

Hannibal

Though Hannibal is an abysmal failure of a film, I’m incredibly grateful that it exists if only as proof positive that Ridley Scott is fallible and therefore mortal. Much like Ready Player One, it humanizes one of my favourite directors and demonstrates that we don’t have to be defined by our failures. Which is good in Mr. Scott’s case, because it is, as the kids say these days, a whopper. (Unlike Vincent Vega who probably wouldn’t be inclined to use the same terminology, knowing his disdain for Burger King.) Hannibal is a direct sequel to the iconic The Silence of the Lambs, and while I didn’t expect it to reach the same heights as its predecessor, I also didn’t anticipate the depths to which it would plunge. Like all of the Hannibal Lector movies, this one was based on a book by Thomas Harris. I have yet to read any of the books in the Hannibal Lector series, but immediately after watching Hannibal, I felt compelled to look up an outline of the novel online, breaking one of my unwritten rules about indulging in spoilers for texts…

The Silence of the Lambs

There’s a good reason why The Silence of the Lambs is widely regarded as one of the best horror/thrillers of all time, and that’s because it is. It’s one of those rare movies that was able to capture that lighting in a bottle, that rare confluence of puzzle pieces that meshed together perfectly to create a singular vision that left an indelible mark on film history. Everything from the writing to the casting to the editing to the set and costume design is so on point it could be used by a vicious serial killer as a murder weapon. The Silence of the Lambs has become one of the most iconic and most-parodied films of all time to the point where even people who have never seen the movie will understand the reference “Hello, Clarice” or instantly recognize Hannibal Lector’s famous face restraints. Director Jonathan Demme demonstrates a mastery of the source material that doesn’t lean so far into its conceits to be self-indulgent but at the same time doesn’t shy away from the more fantastical and macabre elements of the story. The Silence of…

Red Dragon

If you were to tell me that there was a universe where not only did Brett Ratner and Ridley Scott direct entries in the same film franchise, but that Brett Ratner’s film was the better one, I would never have suspected for one minute that the universe you were talking about was the one I was currently living in. There are those who might think I’m being uncharitable to Mr. Ratner, to which I would reply by directing people to the filmographies of both Brett Ratner and Ridley Scott. There’s simply no comparison, with the curious exception of their respective entries into The Silence of the Lambs series. Red Dragon was the third entry in the series and the first of two prequels after Hannibal effectively killed off any possibility of moving forward with its characters in any way that made a lick of sense. The cinematic powers that be made the correct choice of going back to a simpler time when Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) was a psychopath locked in a cage who could serve as an asset to help profile and catch other serial killers and…