Worth Mentioning - A Cool Way to Die

 We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

Cody marvels at a hero's farewell, watches a questionable sequel, and celebrates Friday the 13th (the movie franchise, not the date).

BLACK WIDOW (2021)

Nine years ago, there were lines in The Avengers that teased the potential of a movie that would either center solely on Scarlett Johansson's character Natasha Romanov / Black Widow or at least be a team-up between her and her pal Hawkeye, played by Jeremy Renner. In the midst of the film's climactic alien invasion, Natasha said the situation was "just like Budapest", to which Hawkeye disagreed. Fans were left wondering, what exactly happened in Budapest? And would we ever see it play out in a movie? There was another scene in which the villainous Loki taunted Natasha with references to her past: "Dreykov's daughter", "Sao Paulo", "the hospital fire". Would we ever know more about those things? Well, now we know about some of them. Even though Natasha died in Avengers: Endgame, she has gotten her own movie - one that is, of course, a prequel. It doesn't go back as far as most fans would have guessed, though. Many assumed a Black Widow prequel would be set during her time in Budapest before The Avengers, but instead it's set between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. Actually, it's kind of set in between the last couple scenes of Civil War.

So in this film, directed by Cate Shortland from a screenplay by Eric Pearson (Ned Benson and WandaVision head writer Jac Schaeffer get story credit), Natasha is on the run from U.S. Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt), who wants to arrest her for violating the Sokovia Accords, the paperwork that was at the center of the superhero Civil War. But before we get there, we flashback to Natasha's childhood. 1995. A time when she was living in an unexpected place: Ohio. I have to assume that's a nod to the directors of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, Cleveland's own Joe and Anthony Russo.

In '95, Natasha (played as a child by Milla Jovovich's daughter Ever Anderson) was living in Ohio with her parents Alexei (David Harbour) and Melina (Rachel Weisz), and her younger sister Yelena (Violet McGraw). We catch up to them on their last night of living as a family, as it's revealed that Alexei and Melina are Russian spies and the family set-up has been a way for them to go undercover and infiltrate a place called the North Institute. Having achieved their objective, Alexei and Melina take their kids - who aren't really their kids - on the run and escape from Ohio with S.H.I.E.L.D. close on their heels. They report to their commander Dreykov (Ray Winstone) in Cuba, and then they're split apart. From that point on, life becomes quite hellish for most of them.

There's a meme that says the moment when young Natasha cries "I want to stay in Ohio" proves that the film is set in a fictional universe because no one has ever said that. But I'm an Ohio native who loves my home state, and I've also had to reluctantly leave it behind for various reasons, so I feel the line "I want to stay in Ohio" very strongly in my heart and soul.

After the fake family was split up, Natasha wasn't the only one forced to become a "Black Widow" spy. Yelena was, too. And it's a mission an adult Yelena (played by Florence Pugh) is sent on in 2016 that sets the story of this film in motion. Her generation of Black Widows are under the chemical mind control of Dreykov, but at the end of this mission Yelena finds herself in possession of vials containing a chemical gas that can break that control. So she seeks the help of her long-lost fake sister, thinking she'll have the support of the Avengers behind her. But the Avengers aren't around anymore, so Natasha and Yelena have to find support elsewhere: from their fake parents. Natasha thought she killed Dreykov and brought down the Black Widow operation years ago. She and Hawkeye set off bombs in Budapest that they believed killed not only Dreykov but also his young daughter, had to battle the Hungarian Special Forces, then spent ten days in hiding before they could escape the city. But things didn't work out the way they thought they did, so Natasha has to have a family reunion to finish the job.

This may be Black Widow's solo film, and Johansson is great in the role as always, but her "family members" get a lot of attention, especially Yelena. There's no doubt that this movie is meant to establish Yelena as Natasha's replacement in the MCU, but that's fine with me because Pugh makes her a lot of fun to watch. She's likeable, she's amusing. Pugh does an awesome job delivering her lines.

Melina is somewhat questionable because she's still associated with Dreykov, so we're meant to have some doubts about her. But Alexei was betrayed by Dreykov and dropped into a prison, so it seems more likely that we can trust him. Like Pugh, Harbour is very entertaining in his role. We come to find out that Alexei was a costumed super soldier called the Red Guardian before his time undercover; he's basically Russia's version of Captain America, and somehow seems convinced that he had a fight with Captain America back in a time when that character was frozen.

Our heroes have to fight not only the mind-controlled Black Widows, but also Dreykov's secret weapon: a mysterious masked character called Taskmaster, who studies videos of the Avengers and mimics their fighting abilities. Taskmaster has a shield like Captain America, a bow and arrows like Hawkeye, claws like Black Panther, can swing like Spider-Man, fights like Natasha. Taskmaster is cool, but doesn't quite live up to such a character's potential - and the person beneath that mask is very different from the person Taskmaster is in the comic book source material (and previous adaptations like cartoons). So a lot of Taskmaster fans were disappointed in this, and understandably. I don't have any familiarity with Taskmaster, so the identity reveal didn't mean anything to me, I had just hoped to see the character do more cool stuff than they were given to do.

Once the film gets to Dreykov, he does prove to be quite a sleaze, but he's not what I would consider to be a great villain. The heroes in the movie are terrific. The villains, not so much.

Black Widow is a good way to spend some time, but it's not even close to being my favorite entry in the MCU. I would rank it somewhere around the middle, or leaning toward the low end of the list. There's some nice spy movie action, but while watching these action sequences with their CGI elements I couldn't help but think how they paled in comparison to the practical action sequences in other spy movies - there's a chase through the streets of Budapest where Natasha and Yelena are being pursued by Taskmaster, who is in a tank, and it just made me think of how much better chase scenes were in movies like Mission: Impossible - Fallout and GoldenEye. So I found Black Widow to be a bit lacking, but still fun.

I still want to know what happened in Sao Paulo.

DON'T BREATHE 2 (2021)

When writer/director Fede Alvarez, co-writer Rodo Sayagues, and producer Sam Raimi were promoting the 2016 release of Don't Breathe, they were already talking sequel - with Raimi going so far as to say that the idea Alvarez and Sayagues had for Don't Breathe 2 was the best sequel idea he had ever heard. So it's surprising that it took them five years to make the sequel after Don't Breathe came out and was a hit. But that's not as surprising as the approach that was taken to Don't Breathe 2, which is not the sort of sequel I think anyone was expecting it to be.

The Blind Man played by Stephen Lang was a monster in the first movie, doing terrible things in an effort to replace the child he lost in a car accident. Anyone would have guessed that a sequel would have him continuing to be a despicable villain. But he's not in the script Alvarez and Sayagues wrote for Don't Breathe 2. In this film, which marks the feature directorial debut of Sayagues, the Blind Man is found to be living peacefully with a young daughter named Phoenix (Madelyn Grace) - a girl who thinks she's his biological daughter, but he actually saved her from a house fire after her parents' meth lab went up in flames. That's why he named her Phoenix.

Don't Breathe was a dark and brutal thriller that made you sympathize with the Blind Man's victims despite the fact that they had broken into his house to rob him, because we could see that he was worse than they were. Now we know he's an awful person, so when his life is disrupted by a group of homicidal men who raid their home on a mission to abduct Phoenix - for reasons we won't truly know until late in the running time - there's no one to sympathize with except the little girl stuck in the middle of a fight between a bad guy and a bunch of other bad guys. So this is really just an action movie where we watch the Blind Man pick off a bunch of people one-by-one. I wanted everyone except Phoenix to lose.

There are some logic hurdles to overcome along the way and in the end I could take or leave Don't Breathe 2, but as it was going it kept me entertained. mainly because it felt like a dopey action movie I might have watched on cable in the early '90s. It's definitely not what I would call a great sequel

13 FANBOY (2021)

13 Fanboy is a movie aimed directly at fans of the Friday the 13th franchise, and I count myself among those fans - Friday the 13th is my favorite horror franchise and Jason Voorhees is my favorite icon. Since the official franchise hasn't had a new entry in over a decade due to various issues, most famously the legal battle over the original film's U.S. copyright, it's nice to get something other than a fan film to watch for a change. The more familiar you are with the Friday the 13th movies, the more appreciation you have for them, the more you'll get out of watching 13 Fanboy.

The film was directed by Deborah Voorhees, best known for playing Tina in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (there's even a song about her role in that movie), who also wrote the screenplay with Joel Paul Reisig. Voorhees recruited several of her fellow Friday the 13th alumni to play major roles in the movie, which is why it's so much fun for an F13 fan to watch. There are Jasons in the cast, there are survivors, and there are multiple victims. Everyone is playing a version of themselves... except for Corey Feldman. Instead of playing Corey Feldman, he plays a creepy, potentially homicidal producer named Mike Merryman. Casual fans could still be entertained by all of this, and if you're not the sort of viewer who will recognize these people on sight the movie does help you out by putting the actors' names and what role they played in which Friday the 13th movie on the screen when most of them make their first appearance, but of course it's even better if the movies they were in and the roles they played in them mean so much to you that you'll be smiling just at the sight of them.

Voorhees takes these beloved actors and puts them in grave danger, starting off with herself. In an opening scene set 13 years in the past, Deborah Voorhees is murdered by a masked stalker. Now in present day, that same killer is widening their focus to target not just Friday the 13th veterans but also genre icon Dee Wallace and Voorhees' fictional granddaughter Kelsie, who is played by Hayley Greenbauer and has become a horror movie star herself. As well as an MMA fighter. Wallace and Greenbauer are both lead heroines, which is the norm for Wallace but presents a challenge to Greenbauer: as a horror newcomer, can she carry a movie where she's surrounded by actors we've been fans of for decades? Well, she rose to the challenge and did a good job of making Kelsie an interesting, capable heroine.

While some of the F13 stars only have quick cameos, others are really given a chance to shine. Judie Aronson and C.J. Graham are convention buddies with Kelsie and Dee, so we see a good amount of them. Kane Hodder gets a surprisingly emotional scene. Ron Sloan, Junior from A New Beginning, has quite a prominent role in this alternative reality where he was married to Dee Wallace and had a family with her. Tracie Savage's appearance went places I didn't expect. And Feldman is amusing with his goofball performance. 

13 Fanboy has its issues. Sometimes I questioned the logic - like when characters think a dangerous stalker is at their ranch, why do they run off into the woods instead of trying to escape in a vehicle, or at least on a horse? There was a scene involving Kane Hodder sitting in his car while talking to his New Blood co-star Jennifer Banko on the phone that had me a bit confused for a while. There's even an error in those on-screen credits, as we're told Dee Wallace was in Halloween II when she was in Rob Zombie's first Halloween, not the second one. Some may be put off by the low budget as well, but that wasn't a problem for me. I watch movies that had a lot less money to work with than this did.

Overall, I felt that 13 Fanboy was a decent slasher that definitely earned extra goodwill from me due to the fact that it's populated with Friday the 13th stars. I don't generally like it when actors play themselves in something like this (for example, when Seed of Chucky had Jennifer Tilly and Redman as themselves, I wasn't into it), but this was a special case. It's a celebration of the Friday the 13th franchise while also being its own separate thing, and it was sort of heartwarming to see all these F13 actors again, together in one place. Heartwarming right up until the "fanboy" made a bloody mess of them.

The review of 13 Fanboy originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com