“Deadpool” sets its acerbic, deconstructive, fourth-wall-breaking tone right off the bat. The camera pulls out slowly on some contorted guy frozen in mid-tumble in the passenger seat of an SUV, a burn imprint on his head from the car’s cigarette lighter; there’s a random “People” magazine cover floating nearby featuring the “Sexiest Man Alive” (Ryan Reynolds, who plays the facially disfigured hero of the title); another baddie’s getting a wedgie from the merry red-suited hero; and a random wallet shows a flashcard from “Green Lantern,” (2011) Reynolds’ poorly received other superhero project – and during all this we get the canny credits that approximate “Starring some British actor as the villain,” “with a computer generated creature,” “Directed by a Hollywood Hack” and “Produced by Asshats.”
Somber and serious like “X-Men” this is not, and that’s where “Deadpool” draws its energy, with high quirk and black comedy as endless graphic dismemberings and gorings fill the screen. It’s what another Marvel offering, “Guardians of the Galaxy,” did so effortlessly throughout, but this is to such a gonzo degree that it has Deadpool in mid-sword fight talking casually to the audience to elaborate on his social views and past, even while taking a bullet or two for his trouble. But don’t worry; he regenerates like Wolverine, though not quite as fast. The wicked wit, so good and so rich early on, also happens to be the Achilles heel of “Deadpool,” as such a nosebleed level of hyperbole and genre-skewering becomes impossible to sustain.
In small slices we get Deadpool’s backstory: He’s a former Special Forces guy named Wade who becomes an enforcer for hire, doing your dirty deeds for the right price. He falls for a saucy goth pixie (the very lovely Morena Baccarin) who works at the local ruffian waterhole. One thing leads to another and through unhappy happenstance Wade becomes injected with a mutant serum – thus the Jabba the Hutt pizza face and ability to regenerate. Some of this, sans Wade and his gal’s very kinky sex life – replete with a strap-on scene to make you wince – runs fairly flat, though Reynolds, blessed with a snarky crack comic wit branded back in his “Van Wilder” days, holds the pedantic backstory aloft. The introduction of mutants from Dr. Xavier’s X-Men school, a titanium hulk called Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic) and a punked-out adolescent by the monicker Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) elevates things. They’re looking to politely corral Deadpool into the ranks of the X-Men, but their do-good mantra doesn’t sit well with his mission to exact revenge against those who mutantized him.
Ultimately, and unfortunately despite all good intentions, “Deadpool” saddles up and rides the rote genre arc. The situational gags never let up, though; Deadpool’s skewing of Negasonic as an angry Sinead O’Connor, the “127 Hours” crack as he lops off a shackled hand and the ensuing masturbation jokes about the infant-sized regenerating appendage, plus his rooming with a blind black woman who likes to assemble Ikea furniture and harbors a hankering for blow, are riotously worthy and wicked, not to mention that the stunt choreography, set designs and FX integration are masterful and seamless. Like its hero, however, “Deadpool” the movie is something of a mutant hybrid: part high production, part sophomoric slapstick, part witty revisionist reengineering, but also totally boilerplate. It’s a tangy olio that lacks substance and consistency, and despite that, its in-your-face moxie comes at you in all the right ways, gripping you by the gunny sack with a big glorious joker smile and never letting go.
The title refers to one who returns from the dead or a long absence. Some definitions have it as a ghost or specter, and all are apt in Iñárritu’s ordeal of great suffering. Right from the start, blood gets spilled as a party of American fur trappers in the early 1800s is beset by Arikara warriors. Viewers, like the furriers, don’t see the Native American detachment coming until the visceral twang of a well-guided arrow sails across the screen and pierces the throat of an unwary skinner. Being at the mercy of a largely unseen assailant registers eerily like the band of mercenaries in “Predator” being picked off one by one by a near-invisible alien force.
“Joy” marks more of the same – not a bad thing, as it features the ever determined yet effervescent Jennifer Lawrence, back under Russell’s instruct for the third time. But even given Lawrence’s vast talents, is the invention of the Miracle Mop as worthy a fact-based feature as “The Fighter” and “American Hustle”? It’s all about scale. “The Fighter” was rooted in the hardscrabble world of boxing, opioid addiction and the tawdry cauldron of the struggling working class, while “Hustle” reveled in the cheesy polyester fashion and over-the-top personas of the late ’70s. Here, Lawrence is on her own to pull the yoke as the titular inventor of the now-famous mop, but oddly enough (copyright issues?) the name “Miracle Mop” never gets mentioned, though the real-life Joy Mangano does serve as an executive producer. One can only assume her endorsement.
Back in 2010, Charles Ferguson’s documentary “Inside Job” made a point of big money’s deep connections to the White House, regulatory agencies and academia. Who ran Capital Hill didn’t matter; red and blue allegiances were irrelevant as long as the talk on the table was about more green. McKay’s “Short” homes in on the gamblers who profited from that giant economic sucking sound, those who were alert to the rigging of the system and rampant neglect and, in the end, opted to hedge it. You could call them visionaries or vultures and both would be true; the film, however, paints them as more accidental heroes, opportunists and scientists who saw the sky falling and, when no one took them too seriously, put their money where their mouth was.
Like the first theatrically released chapter back in 1977, we begin on a dusty, barren planet – this one called Jakku, and more junkyard than outpost. Time-wise we’re about 30 years out from “Return of the Jedi,” and a Resistance fighter (Oscar Isaac, showing some comic flair) and his beeping beach ball of a droid (the adorable BB-8, who’s been getting all the prerelease press) possess a secret hologram map to deliver to Resistance HQ. The info will allegedly guide the holder to Skywalker so the object of the title can be achieved and the Evil Empire – now known as the First Order – can be weakened and its tyrannical chains cast off. But before any of that happens Jakku is assailed by Imperial Stormtroopers, and BB-8 and the map fall in with a scrappy scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley, showing the resolve of Katniss Everdeen) who’s pretty good at hand-to-hand and has a mysterious childhood that spills back to her in ghostly shards. 
That’s not to say “Macbeth” is all a mess. It offers a rapturous staging of the battle of Ellon, righteous in its fury, and boasts two of the best and most interesting actors working in film today, Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. But Fassbender, so alive with spit and rage in “12 Years a Slave,” feels muted here, lacking the enunciating articulation that Kenneth Branagh rebranded as the standard when as a young man he ingeniously resurrected “Henry V” in 1989. There’s a dull detachment that one could attribute to the amount of blood spilled at Ellon. The three scribes (a scribe for every witch) who adapt Shakespeare’s timeless tale of tragedy, avarice and madness (Todd Louiso, Jacob Koskoff and Michael Lesslie) imbue Macbeth with a son, who is gone before he even speaks during the opening carnage.
For What it's Worth 