Wayne-Tex

El Mariachi is the kind of film that makes legends on both sides of the camera -- the film launched a career at just the right time, and the character is one that's deserving of more stories told.

Having said that, this film suffers in the way most delayed sequels do, and that's the freshness of the original can get stale by the time characters like El (or Indy, or Rambo for that matter) return to the screen. Almost as if their time has come and gone. Which can sometimes be the story if the timing is right.

My nostalgia for seeing these characters return does, however, overtake that best-before concern, and the addition of new characters like Depp's certainly helps stretch the stew, so to speak.

I wish this movie had come out sooner; hot on the heels of Desperado would have made this feel more of its time.

The trope of casting adults as highschoolers is taken to a hilarious extreme in Puppet Killer, and the graphic violence does NOT pull punches. Its fun, and absurd. And yet in that slurry of absurdity and violence, it still feels odd that a regular-aged baby and then regular-aged child grows into a 50-year old higschooler. I almost wanted to see star Paunovic in a diaper in order to make the earliest introduction of his character track with the madness to come. But overall, it's a great time, and I'm delighted to have seen it.

Taika Waititi has a filmography filled with magic tricks of tone -- whether he's reinventing a shakespearean superhero with improv or layering comedy into the life of an abandoned child, he's got a touch that nobody else has. He brings that expertise to JoJo Rabbit to make the most uplifting, optimistic, hilarious Nazi movie that's ever made me cry. There truly is no way to describe this film that does service to Waititi's ability to walk a tonal edge that makes JoJo Rabbit into a truly singular film; there is no other film quite like it.