MZS on F9

Matt Zoller Seitz was put on this earth to write about film, but most of all about big-budget would-be brain-dead Hollywood blockbusters. The combination of highbrow (his eye, his prose) and lowbrow (in this case, the ninth entry in the Fast & Furious franchise) is always gangbusters. E.g.:

Diesel holds the thing together through sheer mopey majesty. His rumbling baritone and sad eyes have become intensely moving. He's a depressive he-man, a sad sack doom-racer, and Lin photographs him as if he's a posthumous statue of himself. It's startling to realize just how long Diesel has been playing Dom and how much the character has changed. Dom is Diesel's Rocky Balboa, his Indiana Jones. In the first movie, he was an antihero, a badass who was good when circumstances required it (like his other great recurring character, Riddick). At some point, though, maybe after the last film that he did with the late, lamented Paul Walker, Diesel started to seem both bigger and much older and more tragic, weighed down by Dom's responsibilities to his family and perhaps by Diesel's investment in a franchise that he has a financial stake in.

“Sheer dopey majesty” is imperishable, as is Lin photographing Diesel “as if he’s a posthumous statue of himself.” Read the rest here. See also Matt’s reviews of Godzilla vs. Kong, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and Chaos Walking, among many others.