It’s been obvious to me that Twisters (Universal, 7.19) is Glen Powell jizz whizz — a cheap, shallow CG action wank. And now a between-the-lines reading of Owen Gleiberman’s Twisters review confirms this.

Excerpt: “There are moments of spectacle that hook you, but [the original] Twister, in its time, was bedazzling because we had never seen anything like it on the big screen before.

“Staring up at the tornadoes in Twisters, I felt like I’d already seen something exactly like them — and that when it comes to footage of actual tornadoes, I’d already seen something more incredible. Twisters, fun as parts of it are, is a movie where [iPhone-captured] reality ultimately takes a lot of the wind out of its gales.”

Posted on 5.8.24: Sometime within the next two or three years Glenn Powell, youngish but no spring chicken, is going to have to star in a movie that isn’t mechanized, prefabricated, power-pumped, big-studio bullshit.

You can’t just spew jizz-whizz all the time. Every now and then it’s really necessary to put some nutrition into the cereal bowl.

“Twister Avoidance Syndrome“, posted four years ago (.6.22.20)

Yesterday evening an HE commenter named “Jimmy Porter” brought up Jan De Bont‘s Twister, and said I reminded him of “Bill ‘The Extreme” Harding, the Tornado whisperer played by Bill Paxton. I never took that film seriously (who did?) and I never felt that Harding was much of a character. Twister is “fun” in pieces. It’s basically a series of FX sequences strung together by a romantic triangle story (Paxton, new flame Jami Gertz, old-but-enduring flame Helen Hunt).

HE to Porter: “Thanks for the Bill Paxton analogy. (I guess.) The instinct guy, feels the tornado energy in his bones, etc. I can’t even recall Cary Elwes’ antagonist character in Twister. I saw it once 24 years ago at a Westwood all-media screening.

Critically pummeled but the second highest-grossing film of ‘96 with $495 million worldwide, Twister was a career peak for headstrong director Jan De Bont, who would gradually flame out with Speed 2: Cruise Control, The Haunting and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

I naturally recall Paxton and Helen Hunt and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. And Lois Smith’s grandma character who fed them all steak and gravy and mashed potatoes in one downtime scene.”

I’ve been ducking Twister for 24 years, and now — oddly — I’m suddenly thinking of watching it again.