Almost thirty years ago Director Jan de Bont (Speed) brought one of nature’s deadliest forces, tornadoes, to the big screen.  Warner Bros. Twister, starring Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets) and Bill Paxton (True Lies) told the story of a group of storm chasers and their scientific endeavors to learn more about tornadoes to create better warning systems. Liked by critics and loved by audiences, the movie became a bona fide box office success and made people look at cows in a whole new light.  This week, a highly anticipated, stand-alone sequel, Twisters comes to theaters nationwide.

While in graduate school Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar Jones; Where the Crawdads Sing) devised a substance that theoretically could suffocate a tornado stopping it before it could do any damage. However, while testing the material, it failed to collapse the tornado and the category EF5 event claimed the lives of three of her friends and stopped Kate from storm chasing.  Five years later, the only other survivor of the group, Javi (Anthony Ramos; A Star is Born) comes to visit Kate in New York City and asks her to help him chase tornadoes so he can collect data with the new equipment he has.

After initially turning Javi down, Kate joins him in the field for a week.  At the meeting location, Kate is introduced to Tyler Owens (Glen Powell; Anyone But You), a social media sensation who records him and his team storm chasing.  With a huge following, Tyler is cocky and obnoxious and, while Kate hates him at first, they eventually end up working together to modify Kate’s initial design with the hope of dissipating the funnel.

Director Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) brings together a solid cast and creates some intense scenes but he also misses on a few marks.  First, he intercuts some real weather scenes into the film with clouds moving at an accelerated pace to give a sense of realism.  However, he does more damage than good as the real-life weather is a stark contrast to the computer-generated ones.  He also doesn’t create the kind of tension de Bont did with Twister or perhaps, because we have seen it before, it doesn’t create as much tension as it did the first time around.  The CGI was pretty good but when the tornado takes out some oil tanks, the fire that ensues looks sort of fake.

The incorporation of social media this time around will appeal to younger audiences but it also makes Tyler come off looking a bit bad. While Powell’s smile is disarming it can come across as plastic at times which doesn’t make him look any less like a smug tool.  Edgar-Jones does a very good job and I can see for several reasons why she was chosen.  I don’t think Ramos was well cast and that mistake pulled me out of the film more than once.

The plot was ok for the most part.  It certainly wasn’t as cohesive as the 1996 version and it didn’t do much of anything to swerve away from the tried and true, which may be part of the problem.  Having loved Twister, I got the impression that this repeat was just more of the same and it wasn’t as exciting as the first time around.  Had Kate’s parents been Jo and Bill, it would have tied the second film to the first and would have added a whole other layer to the story and the legacy as a whole but I guess Hunt turned the producers down which is a shame.  It is obvious how the story was originally meant to be but it had to pivot without Hunt’s involvement.

For younger generations, who may not have seen Twister, Twisters is a wild ride and I can imagine how they feel seeing for the first time, just as I did when I first watched Twister.  However, for those of us who saw the 1996 movie, there is a sense of “been there, done that”.

Grade: C

We have a complex relationship with disaster movies. Just look at the discussion about a “ Twisters ” poster, which became a perfect encapsulation of our love-hate tendencies.

In the promo for the film, in theaters Thursday, actors Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos are standing in front a massive, menacing cyclone. It not only contains various objects swirling in mid-air, from houses to trucks, but also appears to be on fire. Some people wondered why the stars weren’t looking at said tornado. Others said if you’re asking questions like why the tornado is on fire, this movie isn’t for you.

Both lines of thought can be true though. Maybe their coexistence is essential. This makes no sense! Also, sign me up immediately! Disaster movies are almost required to be graded on a curve. And filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung’s entry into the canon is perfectly paradoxical.

It might not be fair, or rational, but there is something about the genre that inspires otherwise reasonable moviegoers to giddily give themselves over to a wild premise — the more ridiculous and illogical the better. There is something to be said about the joy of collective laughter where there wasn’t an intentional joke, or a spirited post-movie debate about the flawed logistics of a plan and exactly how many people have died from being sucked into a tornado. These are the movies that are hard to see clearly the first time but tend to become sneaky favorites over the years.

Such is the case with “Twister,” Jan de Bont’s film about storm chasing and remarriage. The modern collective love for it would probably surprise even the critics who reviewed it favorably in 1996. Part of that is certainly the fact that in the 28 years since it was released we lost both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Paxton. But it’s also just fun to watch with fresh eyes, to see the internet remember (or realize for the first time) that one of the storm chasers was played by Todd Field, the man who would go on to write and direct “Tár.” I re-watched it recently on plane and had a blast. I’d forgotten the insane opening but remembered Dusty’s impassioned foot chant.

There’s been a lot of cautious optimism surrounding “Twisters” that’s felt different from a lot of the reboots and “new chapters” (anything to avoid calling it a sequel) that have come and gone in recent years. Audiences are craving something big and fun, but worried that it won’t live up to their idea of what it should be. This is inherently flawed because “Twister” has earned its reputation, its quotability, across many viewings and many years. “Twisters” we’re just meeting. It’s hard to get too excited about a first date.

But Chung, a filmmaker best known for the comparatively small “Minari,” has made a solid film with escalating action sequences that look great on the big screen. There is once again a crazy opening that gives Edgar-Jones’ tornado-obsessed Kate a trauma origin story. Her hubris in thinking she could “tame” a tornado with science backfired and people died; But five years later her old friend Javi (Ramos) convinces her to come back to Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley to attempt a different kind of study.

The story is credited to Joseph Kosinski (who was once going to direct) and the screenplay to Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”) and none of them can get the original out of their heads. Yes, these are all new characters (including Powell’s YouTube star storm wrangler Tyler) and the only real connection to the first movie is that the Dorothy technology exists. But it is so referential as to be distracting: Literal lines of dialogue (“I’m not back”); An attempt to make Tyler’s crew a gang of Dustys (which underserves actors like Sasha Lane and Katy O’Brian); Making David Corenswet wear what’s essentially a recreation of Carey Elwes’ baseball cap and earpiece. Don’t they want us to think of “Twisters” on its own terms?

But Chung clearly also had a vision, attempting to ground the insanity in a real place with regionally appropriate styles and music, and deeper characterization. The supporting players were thoughtfully cast. Its leads, Powell and Edgar-Jones, are endlessly watchable with palpable chemistry, even as they’re monologuing about sodium polyacrylate.

I wish I had the ability to know how “Twisters” will play 28 years from now, in 2052. Will the 12-year-olds seeing it this weekend go back to it as a comfort watch? Will it feel like it was part of the good old days of big studio movie making? Right now, it doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s destined for that kind of longevity. And I’d love nothing more than to be wrong about that.

“Twisters,” a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “intense action and peril, injury images, some language.” Running time: 122 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

“Working in a factory is not for girls”

Independent film punk Zhang, also known as Peng Zhang, is a film director, holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, an MFA, and is also a sociological researcher and visual artist. His work “Disassociation” has received the “Zhang Xianmin Top 10 Recommendations – 3” award and special recognition at the Chongqing Youth Film Festival. He is a pioneer in the self-media film industry, as well as one of the initiators of the proletarian film movement. As the founder of the Proletariat Film Club (PFC), his experimental proletarian films on self-media platforms have gained a considerable audience. “Dissociated State” is a student film project from the School of Film at Chongqing University.

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Liang Guo is a subculture youth who is quite artistic, but she couldn’t get into university and doesn’t want to study. She only wants to hang out with her friend Hu Chuan Chun and deal with her art, which is the reason she could not get into higher education as her mother wanted. Her mother loves her but she does not understand her, which is why she pressures her to work in a factory. Guo perceives her attitude as tough love, and is in desperate need of understanding, but she cannot find her from her mother. Eventually, both friends are forced to work in a factory.

Punk Zhang directs a film that takes an intense arthouse approach towards its narrative, including elements of family drama and road trip, as much as intertitles, which are implemented to showcase her inner thoughts. The meticulous framing and the quality of compositions are definitely the highlight, with both the close ups and the long shots being impressive to watch, additionally for the placement of the actors in them.

Context-wise, the movie unfolds in two axes. The first is the relationship of Liang Guo and her mother, with the tension among them being palpable, also highlighting the difference of the two generations. Evidently, for the mother, dealing with art is just a hobby, which is why she pushes her daughter to get a job in a factory, essentially forcing her out of the house. The scene where Liang Guo hugs her and is pushed away is a highlight of the movie and also quite indicative of their relationship.

The second axis is the setting the two protagonists inhabit, where being forced to do manual work, essentially in order to be a “productive” member of society, is the rule. The way the protagonist refers to her upcoming job, “working in a factory is not for girls” also hints at the situation in similar workplaces. At the same time, and in the way their whole path towards the factory looks like a funeral procession of sorts, as the descent into hades one could say, stresses this fact even more.

The acting follows the same arthouse approach with the narrative, with very few lines here and there, and the mother being the one that does the most talking. This aspect highlights the protagonist’s mentality, who is anything but social and also functions as a metaphor for youths not having a voice in capitalist China, which is essentially the main message of the movie. The editing results in a relatively slow pace, which connects the vignette-type of sequences in fitting fashion. The use of music borders on the pretentious on occasion, and could have been handled better on occasion.

Exclusively addressed to arthouse fans, “”Dissociated State” is a well-constructed film that manages to communicate its messages eloquently, and one that is definitely on a much higher level than the usual student film.