Getting A Ticket To Ride On The Bullet Train... And Pete Davidson In A Horror Movie???

While August and all of the summer blockbusters are mostly behind us, I wanted to take one long overdue look at some of the early August movies to grace theaters everywhere, especially my default one, Marcus Theaters.  So  this episode, it is time for you to catch a ride on the Bullet Train and hope you don't leave a trail of too many Bodies, Bodies, Bodies along the way.  On one hand, you have a certified bop that should be considered one of the best summer movies of the season with none other than Brad Pitt, and a ton of other quality actors.  On the other part of this double feature, you have Pete Davidson in a horror movie with a bunch of teens and or young adults that looked like it could be similar to Scream, and it was made by A24 the horror company who definitely does some good, but also made, Men, which you know, is too weird for even me.  So let's dive into these once more before we take a pause from going to theaters and look towards the newer final frontier of entertainment media with a few streaming service stories!

What was your favorite summer blockbuster?  Let me know on social at either @NickNackMovies or @NickNack_IC on Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, Letterboxd, and every other social media platform that exists!

Transcript

Nick Nack Goes to the Movies Pod S3E15

-Intro/Jingle

-Howdy hey you, welcome to another episode of Nick Nack Goes to the Movies, the podcast that combines all of the latest and hopefully greatest cinematic marvels along with some of the most obscure and random horror movies out there.  This week we will be going for a few titles with alliteration and nothing else in common outside of both coming out in early August.  

-Bodies, Boddies, Bodies and Bullet Train.  Early on, neither of these had much fanfare.  Bullet Train got a huge wave of marketing and pretty much became the movie to watch in theaters this month, while Bodies X3 got a short treatment and a short release, but it had Pete Davidson in a horror movie, we were all curious about that one.

-So, let’s see how as this month comes to a close, how these movies fared to kick it off before the inevitable box office halt prior to holiday movie season.

-Actors

-So, of the two movies, I saw Bullet Train first, and I was more excited overall, I did not know it was gonna be better, but I had more optimism that is was gonna be good enough at least.  Even though I was using the metric of, the more well know actors the better.  And let me tell you, this movie is packed with talent, it has Brad Pitt as the lead, enough said right then and there.  But it get’s better from there with some Marvel Cinematic alums in the fun paring of Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry, Age of Ultron and Eternals respectively, among other things.  Big ATJ fan after Kick-Ass, but I am appreciating older him acting in stuff.

-We have talked about Here-E-you-Key Sah-nah-dah before from his great role in the underated Mortal Kombat modern adaptation movie to Army of the Dead, Westworld the TV series, and so many more things to name.  He has a strong presence as the bad business guy, like Mads Mikkelsen at times, and can still do so pretty quality action/fight choreography.

-After that let’s talk about Michael Shannon, I had no clue he was in this so that was a fun surprise.  But He is one of those actors who everyone has seen yet a ton of people just don’t know his name.  He was one of the many great parts of the hit HBO show, Boardwalk Empire, of coure Man of Steel, Knives Out, and more.  

-And lastly, the cameos were a blast to see, including Ryan Reynolds, Sandra Bullock, Karen Fukahara, Zazie Beetz, Masi Oka, and Channing Tatum.  Most of these have been in some form of super hero project recently enough excluding Bullock and Tatum, famously for a Gambit movie that never materialized sadly.  You might or could say the market is oversaturated and that is a bad thing, but I still love these.  Some heard and eventually seen, some just a brief one-off hit, but every time there was a new one it just added to the fun chaos this movie was.  Would they be as funny a second time around when you know they are coming, I don’t know, maybe not, but I think preemptively, I could watch and still enjoy this movie time and time again, so let me say why.

-Bullet Train

-So, the start of this movie might feel a bit jarring with the more serious tone and not Brad Pitt to start, but honestly, that tracks for the movie and tone in general.  Even with him seemingly as the main character, most of the time he is just bopping around the train as things happen to him while characters are introduced and removed on a frequent basis, sometimes tonally going from super dark to hilarious with little to no warning.  This is a summer action movie that finds a good balance with violent actions fight scenes and hilarious, strange and quirky humor, and the dark humor blends into this perfect summer cocktail of a movie, like the drink of the summer, which is not what you would think of for a dirty Shirley.  Instead, expand your horizons with a key lime hurricane, trust me, you won’t regret it.

-Another movie where the setup should make it feel pretty straight forward, there is no doubt who is the main character in this, and at the end of the day, it is his journey to get this briefcase on the train, and get off, end of story.  But if that was the case, it would not be the most engaging movie without throwing a wrench in Pitt’s plan.

-Like a few other movies I am a big fan of, this for sure gave me Smokin Aces and all of those Guy Ritchie gritty British crime movies.  There is a clearer main character in this one over some of those, but you still have this fun ensemble of characters going after something.  In Snatch it is a diamond, in smokin aces, it is the heart of Jeremy Piven, in this one it is a little less clear.  But there is the general relation of a money briefcase and/or revenge at least.

-While some people are in and out quick in this movie, outside of Pitt, Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Tayor Johnson both really steal the show for me.  Some of the other assassins are fun enough, but none really ever do as much for me as them.  Their partnership and brotherhood and odd fascination with using Thomas the Tank engine as a barometer for real world character observation is something I never knew I needed in a movie about a bunch of assassins.

-There is some fun of people almost always being after Brad Pitt and him not being able to truly realize why, being blamed for poisoning a wedding or just continuing to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but somehow Pitt continues to make it through every obstacle, being shot at, stabbed, bit by a snake, or just continually hunted by every assassin, seen and unseen.

-While I never really like the daughter of the big bad and schoolgirl assassin played by Joey King, that is probably why she is such a good villain you like to hate.  She continues to get away with thing after thing, blackmailing people and killing characters, or getting them killed.  The GOT Joffery principle.  Her almost getting found out with the Thomas Train stickers and instead her playing the innocent victim and getting Aaron Taylor Johnson killed off is brutal.  The scenes with him, Pitt, and Tyree Henry have to be some of the best.  The other big storyline is the crimelord fight between eventual reveal of the movies big bad as Michael Shannon, who at times is pretty unrecognizable in this movie and Hiroyuki Sanada, who once again, brings great gravitas and presence to this movie in his dialogue and his fight choreography.  

-And speaking of that, all of the fight scenes are action balance that humor and emotional stakes really well.  I think of those all as the big takeaways scenes I still think about, and the reason I think this movie requires a few more watch throughs.  It is just so engaging, and I think every time you see one of the brothers assumedly die, to the other one actually dying, and the other one waking up again to see his brother actually dies, the emotional hits just keep on coming, brutal, but so good.

-I could talk about every twist and turn here, but they have so many to go and really the point I want to get across, spoilers or not, is you really should experience them in the movie.  But there is something cool with the notion of how all of these diverging stories lead to the reveal that all of these assassins were brought together because they all committed some sort of affront to this crime boss, now Sandra’s part on the train is more of a surprise as he wants to avenge his family against Shannon’s character.  Fun drama and action all around, and the only reason Pitt is along for the ride is he is a substitute for this mission that was initially targeting a different assassin, played with a short Reynolds cameo, that the whole theater was roaring at.

-And while that was great, nothing was a sweater end than seeing King’s character finally get her purple wedding level comeuppance but being killed off seemingly at first by a random tangerine truck, the codename for Taylor Johnson.  And the post credit reveal, which really did something here, not all of these in years post the Marvel usage of them, have meant as much.  But seeing Tyree Henry, codename Lemon, be the driver of that truck to avenge his brother, beautiful.  And for those like me who did not get it at first, seeing Pitt’s handlers voice reveal to be Sandra Bullock, another fun cameo to end a really fun movie that for me, might have been the lesser known movie of the summer as one of the best!

-Actors

-Look, I initially wanted to see Bodies X3 because of a scary movie that might be a slasher with Pete Davidson in it.  It has a faint vibe of being Scream-adjacent, and honestly, I figure Pete Davidson was gonna die early on or he was gonna be the killer.  Like we knew Jack Quaid was the killer in the latest and one of the greatest Scream movies early on when he was just cast as the most name-recognized actor of the new cast.  In this small cast, Pete Davidson has to be the most known.  But he is pretty new to the movie industry outside of SNL still, time will tell if his film career will grow past shorter roles like this movie and The Suicide Squad and such.

-Outside of this I have seen a few people in roles, but they were either older ones like the grown up Hunger Games Rue actress Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova who had her breakout role in the surprisingly nice story and sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and Lee Pace, who I feel bad that the things I know him from are the not good Hobbit trilogy, wow they went so wrong with those movie adaptations after a really good book exists and a few movies as the very boring villain of a very good film, Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy.  Maybe one day I will see him in another one of those AMC shows I just never got to yet, Halt & Catch Fire.

-Bodies, Bodies, Bodies

-This movie starts off innocently enough, which I guess most horror movies do, even if this isn’t really a horror movie to that same degree.  Young love and all that.  The age-old story arc of these movies always seeming to be the happiest in the first few minutes or so, and a friend reunion, things can’t go wrong right?  Well if they did not, the movie would be super boring.

-So most people know each other at this small mansion party, and pretty quickly you get your fun cast of characters, the former lover, the guy with a history, the mystery older man, and a few others along for the ride with this 7 person crew, only 8 actors are in the whole movie after all.

-This is such an interesting movie to talk about because the plot at times is exactly what you think it is.  You see the little problem signs forming already if you know the genre a bit.  You know that someone leaving their car flip down mirror on will drain the car battery with the light.  I spotted that shit from a mile away!!!

-This may not be the wildest movie with some of this stuff, that is kind of where the charm comes from.  The setup is so simple of kids in a house and things go wrong, but it is where it goes that makes this movie stand out.  I wish it got more publicity, the marketing was not there for this, but also the best way to enjoy this movie has to be with little info going into it.  It might be worse now seeing it a second time around knowing what happens, but that first time was a fun treat.

-The gist is a bunch of pent up drama between a group of friends and how they just really don’t like each other as much as they pretend to.  And it all kicks off with…murder!

-Not at first, so there is a slow burn of drama of people not liking small things about each other or plus ones and such.  The red herrings dropped here are so good in this modern influencer version of a book I love and have talked about on here before, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.  The checkoff’s gun thing is in effect here, this time with some big ass kuh-cure-ee blade that the odd man out older guy of the group uses to impressively open champagne, which is more important than you would think for so many reasons to the progression of this movie.  

-After this a game similar enough to Mafia, in this one, the title of the movie, Bodies X3, which honestly, this looked like fun.

-If you take away all the horror movies I have ever seen telling me this is a bad idea, playing a game like Bodies, Bodies, Bodies with a bunch of friends in a big dark mansion sounds like a ton of fun, especially with spooky season coming around, especially if you don’t forget the bevs!  And if I got got, at least I went out doing something fun.  I watch a lot of scary movies, TBD if I would have a better time being in a haunted house attraction, I was acting in one once, a story for another time!

-But unlike my ideal version of this night, in-fighting begins and people start to separate and isolate not only on whose side is whose, but also to go off alone, the one thing you never want to do in a horror movie, thanks for laying it out there the Scream franchise!

-But it is not too long before Pete Davidson is running around with his throat slashed bleeding everywhere.  You either knew he was the killer or the first to die, there was no other option.  Now my horror teen killer brain thought he was faking it, so many times I thought he would pop back up again or someone would have forgotten he wasn’t lying on the floor outside anymore or they just did not check his pulse, these kids could have absolutely gotten it wrong.  But in short, he was dead dead.

-So the rest of the movie was who killed him, and who was the killer.  And I guess would there be more people killed?

-Now before I go further in that, the big question I wonder at times is who is the main character.  Is this more a fish out of water tale with one of the two stars from the Borat sequel, or is it adult Rue?  I feel like the movie sets up Stenberg as the lead and kind of want you to accept that, but there are always threads of Bakalova being the more interesting lead, especially as our window into this world and friend group, the drama she too is unaware of, as we are as the audience.

-But either way, it is clear who the movie kind of wants you to root for initially, young love and all that.  And from that point on, the suspects kind of all make sense.  The older guy from a dating app, gosh too real is the pain of dating apps.  It sneaks into everything I do.  But if you are single in Wisconsin, hi.  But yeah, the older guy no one knows is the next logical subject for suspicion.  And when confronted with violence and hostility, he partly takes it as a joke before trying to defend himself and yes, he gets killed next, seemingly the danger is over.  Their friend is avenged and the one outsider who must have done it is gone.

-Now things kind of go off the rails tenfold when someone else ends up dead and at this point, it could be anyone.  I mean the claws continue to come out and everyone has little or bigger things they hate about each other and the fakeness and suspicion starts to come out.  Sure, the remaining women all think the other new girl who is brought along as a plus one must be the killer, but she is the sanest of the group.  She doesn’t have all the pent-up drama the others do.  And through crazy reveals of personal stuff and a mockery of influencer culture and more, like so many people keep dying off, falling off stuff, getting shot, you name it.  And like And Then There Were None, eventually there are two who do not trust each other at all.  Partly because the assumption is someone must be the killer, and there is mistrust about sleeping around with someone else in the group, a mystery we never learn.  

-Now unlike and then there were none, somehow, as much as I expected Pete Davison to be alive the whole time and this being some sick joke, this was not the case.  But the plot twist of using his dead face to unlock his phone and find a Tik Tok, I assume a draft because how could it have been posted by anyone if he killed himself.  But this video proof shows that there was no killer and everyone died in vain.  A dark and somber, albeit hilarious end to a fun enough small scale different enough horror adjacent movie that takes inspiration from a lot of things but also does its own thing enough.  So yeah, fun enough, and much better from A24 over #Men the movie.

-Letterboxd Reviews

- Bodies, Bodies, Bodies – 3.5 Stars

- Bullet Train – 4 Stars

-wrap/call to action

-Well that is all the time we got for this week’s episode on a few of the August Box office movies that really did something for me.  Or at least enticed me to physically go to the theaters.  Now I have some streaming service ones to get to, I promise they are coming with Prey and the Netflix vampire movie Day shift.  There may actually be a few September theater releases coming, so time will tell if Nick Nack does indeed go to the movies prior to the end of the latest iteration of the Halloween franchise.  Only time will tell, but until then, cheers, and as always, until next time cinephiles.