XXX: The Return Of Xander Cage (2017) brings back Vin Diesel in the title role (I guess you can call him 'X' for short)as the extreme sportsman and sometime world-saver who wears a big fur-lined coat and thwarts global villainy. (As far we can tell, there's little difference between this character and his "Fast and Furious" guy, other than X-Guy favoring skateboards and skis for hisheavily CGI'd stunts.....
Incredibly, we ended up watching this because Beloved Daughter, of all people chose it.....it's far, far from her cup of tea, but it featured on of her Big Faves, young actress Nina Dobrev. Dobrev turns up as a chattering, comedy-relief tech support nerd-girl......naturally transformed into a sexless wonk by a pair of horn-rimmed glasses......the two other women in the cast sport elaborate tattoos and trade snarky wisecracks while helping Vin stop evildoers from crashing orbiting satellites into soccer stadiums and such.....
All the usual stuff in place.....which makes movies like this a lethal plague on cinema.....
No gravity, no laws of physics.....Characters hurl themselves out of high places with no physical consequences......Diesel himself gets bounced off the hoods of speeding cars with not even a black and blue mark to show for it......vehicles of all sorts propel themselves in much the same way that toddlers play with Fisher-Price toy trucks.....
"Now You See It, Oh No You Don't' editing......so-called action sequences chopped to shreds so you barely can tell who's punching who, who's shooting who, who crashed into who.....but come to think of it.....who the hell cares?
Nothing at stake....since everybody in this is a cardboard cut-out, incapable of any real injury, the 489 computer animators work overtime to engage you with increasingly idiotic visual stunts, none of which could exist in the real world. Personally, if we want to watch stuff like this, we'd opt for a good old Road Runner cartoon.....at least those are supposed to make you laugh....
But this evening of madness wasn't over yet......Beloved Daughter next switched over to Netflix's new 're-imagining' of the classic children's tale, "Anne Of Green Gables", now seething with dark, brooding angst and retitled "Anne With An E"....
Anne With An E (2017) if nothing else, serves as a spectacular showcase for actress Amybeth McNulty, playing the plucky turn-of-the-century Nova Scotia orphan....McNulty commands this show with a heart-rending vengeance.....she tears into the role as if playing Blanche Dubois on uppers. .
It's one of the most insanely watchable, over-the-top, hit-the-rafters performances we've ever seen a child actor attempt......a impossible mixture of preening Shirley Temple goodness, Pippi Longstocking self-satisfaction and the hysterical madness of Patty McCormack's "Bad Seed" rolled up into one individual. McNulty literally never shuts up, carrying on nonstop melodramatic monologues for the bulk of the opening episode's 90 minute stretch, a bravura Shakespearian-like turn that would stagger Dames Judi Dench and Helen Mirren.
If that isn't enough for you, the show litters McNulty's already boiling-point performance with ghastly flashbacks to her abuse at the hands of families where she was placed by her orphanage.....this kid makes Oliver Twist look like Richie Rich.
Whether this much darker conception of the material is any good, you'll have to decide. The BQ honestly can't compare it to the old "Anne Of Green Gable" TV series first distributed by Disney on VHS......in all our years toiling in the Video business vineyards, we never got around to watching it. We'll say this.....if you sample this Netflix re-do, with its PTSD tormented young heroine, you won't find it cloying or boring......it might well emotionally move you.....but cuddly and comforting it's anything but......
Quite a double feature.....for the CG-Eyesore "XXX: The Return of Whatshisname", we'll scrape 1 star off the pavement (*).....for the severely re-vamped "Anne With An E", (and for Amybeth McNulty's like-nothing-you've-ever-seen performance....3 stars (***).....no contest, this kid could probably wipe the floor with Vin Diesel......
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