EXTRACTION 2. It could be said 2020 came on a little strong. Many of us met the uncertainty, paranoia and concern with a voracious consumption of media, both new and familiar. Of course, novel entertainments were in rather short supply in those early, apocalyptic months. This turned out to be quite the boon to Netflix — having reportedly readied an entire year’s schedule before the outbreak — to which pretty much everybody turned for distraction, if not relief. Circumstances produced inflated (still obscure) numbers for much of the streamer’s output, and scarcity likewise artificially inflated the value of some of it. Extraction benefitted, but now I wonder if it didn’t suffer commensurately.
My recent absence from this column was accompanied by an uncharacteristic stretch of cinematic abstinence — a side effect of traveling. Regardless, I consumed precious little visual media; I didn’t venture into a theater or watch a movie for a month. (The Editor’s choice not to publish a review of Fast X could be seen as a chillingly pointed omission or act of deference; we will surely never know.) Turns out the highways and byways of the American West offer a whole bunch of stuff to see and do, so going without didn’t exactly feel like an imposition. I realized, though, as I returned to something like normalcy and stoked up the old wood-fired Roku, the change of habit produced a cumulative hunger that, while unnoticeable in the busyness of the short term, had become pointed, almost urgent; I was jonesing a little.
Because the last three years are still a vague, unrecognizable territory of temporal weirdness, I had nearly forgotten the spring of 2020 had produced a similar, fixated craving. It was a time of scouring the BluRay collection and then the streaming services for … almost anything, really. There was tremendous comfort in the familiar, but also brief, bright joy in the discovery of something new or overlooked or marked for later.
Extraction got churned up in that great gristmill by many of us, myself certainly included. Ready as I was for a big, stunt-oriented action movie — in fairness, I’m always ready — I deeply appreciated it, perhaps overlooking some of its limitations but also some of its strengths in my hurry to consume it; and then something else and something else.
Coming off the road this past weekend, I attacked Extraction 2 with the same fervor and, maybe, lack of rigor. One could say such blank readiness is the fairest position from which to approach art or culture. Uninformed excitement, absent the posturing of study, the ennui of experience or the cynicism born of real life, allows us to receive said work of art or culture as a pure experience, a gift for which we can simply be grateful. The thought exercise becomes complicated when we incorporate the sloughing-off of cynicism and world weariness in favor of simpler pleasures, the nature of escapism, but I don’t have a philosopher handy to help parse that.
Navel-gazing (mostly) aside, I was readier and more excited to see and enjoy Extraction 2 than I had expected; it took about half an hour of watching it to realize my little summer vacation circumstance had produced a positively charged movie vacuum into which I was introducing the first potentially exciting, intoxicating commodity I could find. And, as with Extraction, the high was pretty clean, if lamentably brief.
Director Sam Hargrave returns, as does star Chris Hemsworth and the Brothers Russo, again wearing a number of hats. To their credit, they carry off a competent, old-school action picture with some spectacular stunt sequences. But the success of the first installment (and the Russos’ apparently free access to the Netflix checkbook) results in a finished product that is overworked and uneven. The use of motion capture and cutting-edge editing technology results in a prolonged sequence that takes us seamlessly into and out of a Georgian prison, and onto a moving train assailed by commandos and gunships. Breathless and impeccably precise, it highlights the successes and failures of these movies in equal measure. It’s an undeniably cool trick, but once we’ve noticed it, it becomes difficult to ignore that it is, in fact, a trick. And in our looking around for something of more substance we’re forced to confront the repetitiveness of the narrative and the ever-flattening trajectory of the movie’s emotional arcs. R. 116M. NETFLIX.
THE BLACKENING. I would never presume to educate anybody about Black cinema history. I don’t have the depth of knowledge and, if I did, wouldn’t be the right person to disseminate it. (See Elvis Mitchell’s Netflix documentary Is That Black Enough for You?)
I say that as preamble to this: The Blackening is a dumb/clever horror comedy I very much enjoyed. It is also unashamed of what it is and, in that, seems to me to be part of a larger conversation.
The mid-late 20th century had just started to give rise to a flourishing, multi-faceted industry within an industry that was Black cinema when it, like so many other movements, was co-opted, commoditized and segmented (segregated) nearly to the point of dissolution. The Blackening reconnects to a subset of self-aware but also unapologetically entertaining, culturally specific cinema that we can only hope may experience a resurgence.
The twist is telegraphed in the first act and the kills aren’t exactly spectacular, but it works better as a racial comedy and a horror movie than many, while also servicing the tropes (for better and worse) of both. R. 96M. BROADWAY.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
NOW PLAYING
THE BOOGEYMAN. A monster in the closet that isn’t a member of the GOP for once. PG13. 98M. BROADWAY.
ELEMENTAL. Animated adventure about a city of fire, water, earth and air elements. Voiced by Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie and Catherine O’Hara. PG. 93M. BROADWAY (3D), MILL CREEK (3D), MINOR.
THE FLASH. A whole multiverse and we’re stuck in the one where Ezra Miller still has a job. PG13. 144M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK, MINOR.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3. Marvel’s misfit space squad returns. With Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and Dave Bautista. PG13. 149M. BROADWAY (3D), MILL CREEK.
THE LITTLE MERMAID. Live-action Disney remake of the fairy tale with Halle Bailey in fins and Melissa McCarthy in tentacles. PG. 135M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK.
NO HARD FEELINGS. Jennifer Lawrence plays a young woman hired to draw a couple’s introverted son (Andrew Barth Feldman). Shenanigans ensue. R. 103M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK.
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE. Animated sequel to the Miles Morales adventure. PG. 140M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK, MINOR.
TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS. The robot cars team up with robot animals. Starring Michelle Yeoh, Pete Davidson and, hell, everybody, I guess. PG13. 127M BROADWAY (3D), MILL CREEK.
Fortuna Theatre is temporarily closed due to earthquake damage. For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in McKinleyville, Inc.?.