A Binge too Far #47: The Twister duo (1996 - 2024)

Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in Twister (1996)

Happy New Year! For me New Year’s Eve is always about changes and setting new goals. Well, for starters, I thought I’d change the way my posts work in Cinema Head Cheese. You’ll still be getting one post per month by yours truly but for 2025 you’ll have only one Static Age installment (that will essentially make the television column annual and will be published in December, in order to wrap things up on the small screen front), and for all other months (January to November) you’ll have A Binge too Far installments (most of them covering a duo of films, or even a trilogy). In other words, every eleven A Binge too Far posts, will be followed by one Static Age post. I decided upon this new arrangement in order for Static Age to grow even bigger and include more content each time (I’m thinking more than 3,000 words and more than twenty series or forty subjects overall tackled per post), while of course A Binge too Far will remain pretty much the same, featuring a special each time that’ll included a couple reviews of a duo of films or a trilogy. Got it?

 

Twister (1996) poster

Twister (1996)

 

A couple on the verge of divorce (a tornado expert meteorologist played by Helen Hunt and television weather forecaster played by Bill Paxton) has to overcome its differences and tensions in order to work against a combination of tornados by employing a recently-invented device.

 

Backed by Warner Bros, Universal Pictures, and Amblin Entertainment, with a lavish $92 million budget, this studio project ensured that director Jan de Bont [Speed (1994)] would have everything at his disposal in order to create a bombastic blockbuster; which is exactly what he did, as a perfect combination of surprisingly believable CGI and practical havoc is blended perfectly and results into a fascinating picture, much more enjoyable than its subject matter would have you expect. It made $495.7 million at the box-office and it became the second highest grossing film of 1996.

 

Twisters (2024) poster

Twisters (2024)

 

Traumatized by the death of her colleagues many years ago, meteorologist Kate Carter (the gorgeous Daisy Edgar-Jones) moves to New York in order to approach science in more conventional manner, but when the chance arises she returns to Oklahoma to chase tornados, where she meets local twister wrangler superstar Tyler (Glen Powell), only to create a completion between their two teams.

 

Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, this belated standalone sequel to the mid-1990s blockbuster is a sensation in itself, featuring bombastic tornado scenes – mostly rendered with surprisingly believable CGI – and a country rocking soundtrack, as well as a great cast. It is very enjoyable and an overall better film than the original. It was budgeted at $155 million and it grossed $369.7 million.

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Movie Review: 2 Guns (2013, Universal Pictures)

...in the past few years, a most unique and unconventional phenomenon, akin to recent genre films, has taken...and continues to take place: the acquisition and production of feature films, based upon much more obscure graphic comic book properties, which are considerably lesser-known by the general public, and which go against the grain, as far as typical conventions and standards, normally expected by the devoted masses, in films like these. Coming in below the radar, just beneath the surface, and sometimes, breezing in and out of attention, like a whiff...overshadowed by comic book-themed juggernauts, featuring overly familiar bat-men, spider-men, men of steel and mutants...are the oddities...the curiosities...the misfits, which under the deftly welded hands of writers, producers and directors, have wrought...give or take, the occasional schlocky clunker or two...some rather interesting, embraceable and quite entertaining results. In some cases, wildly imaginative and eclectically conceived...never mind, the now-popular, unconventional staples of "Men in Black" and "Kick-Ass"...we're talking more the blood-spattering, barbarous exploits of "Solomon Kane"...the well-armed, hyperkinetic retirees of "RED"...the supernaturally-driven, humanity-devoted sleuthing of "Dylan Dog" and "R.I.P.D."...these comic book genre 'oddballs' are out to prove that they can garnish a life, and a foothold on the genre, as equally capable as those of the high-flying, dark-cowled, web-spinning, razor-clawed variety. And so, getting much more down to earth...kicking up the dust, with all barrels a-blazin', and verbal quips a-spewin'...with the riotously rollicking force of a Michael Bay/Bruckheimer actioner (...which, in a good number of ways, it resembles), we have the 'new kid on the block' as far as tapping into that obscure graphic comic book well; flying off the drawn & paneled pages, and onto the screen...with dynamically explosive results, no less...it's "2 Guns"...