Deleted Scenes: On Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Isabela Moner and Benicio Del Toro are forced to lam it in the Sicario sequel. (Sony)

Spoiler for Sicario: Day of the Soldado, which is the Denis Villeneuve/Roger Deakins/Emily Blunt/Daniel Kaluuya-free sequel to the very good 2015 drug war thriller Sicario. Late in the movie, Josh Brolin, reprising his role as a C.I.A. black-ops guy from the first movie, is ordered to kill a 16-year-old girl—an unarmed noncombatant who is the daughter of a drug kingpin but not a criminal herself. There's more to it than that, but that's all I'll say just in case you feel compelled to see the film, which I do not endorse. 

Anyway, I talked about that scene in my review of the movie, which went into production in November 2016, the same month we elected a president who said on TV during the campaign that if you want to stop terrorists, "you have to go after their families." Given that Day of the Soldado opens with a scenario wherein Muslim suicide bombers are believed to have snuck into the United States across the Mexican border (though they're later revealed to have been American citizens from New Jersey), I believe this plot element was directly inspired by the current president's campaign rhetoric.

So I said that Soldado might "make you nostalgic for the more recent time when wondering whether an American soldier (or intelligence operative) would refuse a direct order to shoot an unarmed, noncombatant child in the head was a purely hypothetical exercise." That passage was cut from the review, ostensibly because it was too political. In my view, it was a fair observation to make about a film that has a clearly articulated political bent, albeit a more nuanced and humane one than anything we've heard the current president say on the topics of immigration or crime or drugs.

Notes on Dinosaur Camp: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, reviewed and discussed on Pop Culture Happy Hour.

Chris Pratt, velociraptor whisperer. (Universal)

Here's my review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. And below you can hear Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, and Glen Weldon discuss the movie and its place in the Jurassic-iad with me in the fourth chair. I regret that it never occurred to me to refer to this film as Jurassic 5 even though "Sum of Us" is an all-timer shadowboxing jam. I also regret that none of us, not even Thompson, thought to mention the moment in Jurassic 5 when it seems like Ted Levine from The Silence of the Lambs is about to start singing "See My Vest." You'll know the one I mean.

Try the (Youngblood) Priest: Superfly, reviewed.

"Who the fuck is Morris Day?" Trevor Jackson and Jason Mitchell as Priest and Eddie in Superfly.

A lot has happened since Super Fly came out in 1972. I wrote about the new no-space remake Superfly, which careens among tones like a chromed-out Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado that's had its brake lines cut. But "Youngblood Priest" drives a sensible Lexus in this version, I am sorry to tell you.

And Now For Something Largely the Same: It's My Fifth Annual Village Voice Summer Movie Preview!

In olden times, Memorial Day weekend marked the start of what was known as the Summer Movie Season. It's an obsolete notion, now that would-be blockbuster releases are most heavily concentrated between mid-February (when Black Panther arrived this year) and the first weekend in May, and can come out basically any month of the year other than January. But as a kid who grew up planning my summers based on which hotly anticipated, frequently disappointing tentpole release came out when, I carry the torch for the idea that summertime is the season for escapist genre films that seek to overwhelm the senses.

My pal Alan Scherstuhl, the Village Voice's film editor, indulges me, assigning me each May to single out a dozen due before Labor Day that show promise. These features get shared among the whole New Times media ecosphere; sometimes even before they turn up in the Voice. No matter. Here's the list.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Deadpool 2

Star/producer/coscreenwriter Ryan (Green Lantern) Reynolds, presumably, and director David (John Wick, Atomic Blonde) Leitch

It was my happy task to join Daisy Rosario, Stephen Thompson, and Glen Weldon for a sadly Linda Holmes-free PCHH dissecting Deadpool 2, a movie that in my view succeeds utterly in being the meaningless and mercilessly self-trolling thing it sets out to be. To paraphrase the critic Homer Simpson, writing in Cahiers du Cinéma: I prefer to watch John Wick.

Your mileage may vary!

Do You Feel Lucky, Punk? How to Talk to Girls at Parties, reviewed.

Elle Fanning and Alex Sharp party like it's 1977.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties, John Cameron Mitchell's expansion of a Neil Gaiman short story, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival a year ago. I don't know why we're only seeing it now, but I'm glad we are. Here's my NPR review.

The Fast and the Curious (George): Rampage, reviewed.

Naomie Harris, Dwayne Johnson, and Jason Liles as George (Warner Bros.)

Nearly four interminable months after Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, a movie based on a movie based on a children's book and appended with a 30-year-old Guns N' Roses jam, Dwayne Johnson—the once and future Rock and 2032 Instagram Party presidential candidate—is back. In a movie, in the legal sense, based on a video game.

My NPR review of Rampage (from the director of San Andreas!) is here. I'm not sure who it was at Warner Bros. and or New Line who forgot to put the exclamation point in the title, but I trust that heads shall (the) roll.