Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - 2023 There's probably a really good sci-fi film in here somewhere, but as with many recent MCU films they relied on Marvel "humor" too much and it felt like the entire second half of the movie was just one extended action scene. This is one of those films where the whole is less than the sum of the parts. I did like how they book ended the opening and closing scenes. The Loki Season 2 tease was nice as well. It's not bad, it's just not particularly good either.
I actually thought it was missing much of the humor that made the first two Ant-Man movies fun. Not that it was totally devoid of it. But even where they still went for the comedy card, it felt more forced than before. I do think Feige needs to reconsider the formulaic straightjackets he is putting his creatives (writer/directors) in. It might have made a bit of sense when they were working towards an End Game like climax. Now it seems like they are kept within very narrow boundaries in the service of future pay-offs that are unclear and are likely not worth it.
Fatal Intuition (2015) Dir. Yoon Joon-Hyeong Jang-woo has been responsible for raising his younger sister Eun-ji since the siblings were orphaned at a young age. Eun-ji has reached an age at which she starts to increasingly rebel against her brother's authority, which creates tension between the siblings. One night, following a row between brother and sister, Jang-woo goes out for a few hours, only to return to find his sister missing. A few days later she turns up dead, her body carrying the marks of a murder. After Jang-woo becomes convinced that the police will never find his sister's killer, he starts investigating the case himself, after he sees a strange man observing Eun-ji's memorial service from a distance. He gets an unlikely ally in a local medium by the name of Shi-eun, a young woman who has visions of the future and is shunned within her small community as a witch. Together they zero in on a pharmacist who has a good standing in their small town. But as Jang-woo and Shi-eun conduct their investigation, the killer himself becomes aware of their efforts... South-Korean thriller with some supernatural elements. Decent enough entertainment. The setting of a soon to be redeveloped town also adds to the atmosphere, giving it all a slightly melancholic tinge that reminded me of 'Terug Naar Oosterdonk' (a story similarly set in a town on borrowed time).
The Laughing Policeman (1973) The City may be in turmoil, but Detective Walter Matthau has a case beyond anything seen before - an entire bus was submachinegunned, and among the many dead is his partner, who was supposed to be on vacation. There are few clues and little direction where to go. Time for some old fashioned police work. It feels slice-of-life and locations in San Francisco were excellently used, but I don't think this is near the level of the many superb crime movies of the era. There's just too much aimlessness, too many asides, too much confusion. We never properly get into the main character's head, and part of the problem is Walter Matthau himself because he just doesn't have emotional range. The Bruce Dern character was just a terrible cop and terrible person and highly unlikable. I did like the Lou Gosset character, but honestly the movie had one too many cops and it probably should have been him left on the scriptwriter's floor to make more room for the rest. The main San Francisco memory this dug up was the inside of the buses, and I do remember what it was like in the model shown in the movie - the powerful vinyl smell and the feel of the bars and the confusing and fascinating (to 6 year old me) way the back door accordioned open and close. The chase scene took place all around the area where the Bay Bridge meets the City, and that is certainly the place I would go to lose a tail. It is bewildering. Every time I drive there I'm a panicked swerve into an alley away from taking an unwanted trip to Oakland.
Renfield (2023) Dir. Chris McKay Robert Montague Renfield has found himself stuck as Dracula's familiar for more years than he cares to remember. Essentially the vampire's gofer, getting his master anything he requires, including live humans he can feast on, Renfield has long since regretted the time that he had the bad fortune to arrive at Dracula's castle. During another quiet period in which his master is recovering from a close call with vampire hunters, Renfield finds like-minded spirits in a support group for victims of codependent, toxic relationships. His lack of courage in standing up to Dracula causes him to admire Rebecca, a cop he witnesses standing up to a large group of criminals in spite of the overwhelming odds against her. After assisting Rebecca in dealing with the thugs, he forms an unlikely bond with her, but neglecting his duties towards his master soon reveals Renfield's new activities to Dracula himself... This was actually very enjoyable. Fun and funny, with a charming Nicolas Hoult in the titular role and Nic Cage obviously having loads of fun as Dracula. Its one glaring weakness is the fact that Hoult and Awkwafina have less than zero chemistry, which is kind of a problem considering their central relationship drives much of the plot. Still enjoyable in spite of that. Also the second movie I have watched in a relatively short time - after Project Wolf Hunting - that features a character ripping someone's arms off and beating them to death with the limbs.
Rewatching the series before getting around to Chapter 4, The Continental, and Ballerina. It's a near perfect action movie. Quickly and clearly establishes the motivation, fleshes out the world at a good pace, and has some truly innovative action sequences. The outrageous scenes are just far close enough to believable to not take you out of the film. Reeves is the perfect soft spoken action hero (which I scoffed at when the first trailers came out).
This is based on a Swedish novel of the same name, which I have here on the shelf next to me. There are ten books in the series about Detective Martin Beck, and almost nothing happens in them beyond men investigating the crime. The books were considered groundbreaking for their time. I really liked them, and the novel on which this is based, but it would have to be mightily changed to make a US/Hollywood film, even in the 70s.
Sisu (2023) It is 1944 and Aatami Korpi is living the baren Lapland as the Germans make their last attempt to stay in the war. But Aatami wants nothing to do with it, living the life alone with nobody to care for, or for him to care for. He's had his war, and it cost him the life of everybody he loves. Except his dog. So he exists in and on relatively little, prospecting for gold. Until he finds it, a huge chunk, and sets off to the nearly bank - nearly 600 miles away. But the Nazis are in his way, threaten his dog, and take his gold. And we learn that his war was killing Russians. Hundreds. Now he is out to kill Germans. And they realize he can't be killed. A fun movie, that reminded me a bit of lesser Django in Chains, both in terms of style, but also in terms of feel. Sadly, it also had the Netflix execution of having a great idea with a cliched script. Still, it was an entertaining movie to watch, and if you didn't get the mention of the dog, it was also from the same team that brought us the John Wick series. Oh, I should also mention that I liked Aksel Hennie, who played the German commander.
This would make a decent 2000's movie - moodier and quieter. Something along the lines of Mystery Road or The Standoff at Sparrow Creek. They added a lot of runtime through a gratuitus red-herring shootout and a few segments on City race relations, which was done well but didn't really fit.
Fast X (2023) Dir. Louis Leterrier Dominic Toretto finally seems to have found a bit of peace. With Letty back in his life and the pair of them finally getting to raise their son together, things seem to go well not just for Dom but also for his associates, who are no longer fugitives but legitimized by their government work. Roman gets to lead an operation in Rome they are running for the agency. Whilst Roman, Han, Ramsey and Tej are off in Europe doing that, a badly wounded Cypher shows up on Dominic's doorstep. The badly injured former foe warns him that a new danger has emerged in the form of Dante Reyes, the son of a man Toretto dealt with years earlier and who has returned to get his revenge, not just on Dominic himself but on his family and friends as well. His revenge starts with disrupting Roman's operation in Rome, with disastrous effects... It's no longer even a thing to describe these films as weird. They obviously exist on some elevated, purely meta-format now, with too many recycled former villains to count and its origins as essentially a Point Break rip-off about street racers far in the rear view mirror. I think this might have been the first one in which the sheer size of the cast they have to service became apparent, to its detriment. It also kind of feels weird for this to end on a cliffhanger and for the second half of this story only to get its release in two years. I don't think this franchise is improved upon by moving away from the "one movie per chapter" format. Of the new cast members, I enjoyed Daniela Melchior (in a role I won't spoil here) and Alan Ritchson uses the same physicality that is on display on his Reacher show as a role that is essentially the new Hobbs. It's still weird that these films have emerged as one of the most bankable franchises out there. Using a broader view of the entire franchise, I think this series peaked with Fast Five, which was just the right balance between the inherent ridiculousness and the dumb fun of it all.
John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) Even more John Wick than the first one, John Wick Chapter 2 is a slightly more absurd and creative action flick with tons of fun and innovate sequences, a bit more fleshing out of the rules of the world this is all happening in, and a few big names making small appearances to bolster the cache of the film. It's still baffling to me that this is the franchise that made Keanu Reeves a megastar again.
Here's my personal interpretation of the actor Keanu Reeves: He has an unusual cadence to his voice. And it not necessarily a bad thing overall - you need something separating you from the million other actors who are fine at their craft but have nothing differentiating them from the pack. But it makes it hard for him to emote through his speech in a way we expect, and it does limit the kinds of roles he is good at. What makes him so good in Wick is a word I've used in a number of my movie reviews and it fits with Keanu in this movie - aura. Keanu has it. Even when quiescent he exhudes the qualities of his character seemingly without effort. He just has to have the littlest change in expression, the way he stands, the way he breathes. It's so little you can't pick it out. And you just know this guy is an unstoppable killing machine. You don't even realize you know - it's just so natural and obvious. Before he even moved you know. And when he moves nothing he does is a surprise. The way he filled his car with gas told you everything you needed to know.
Extraction 2 (2023) Dir. Sam Hargrave Tyler Rake (what a name) somehow survived the events of the first movie, with his partner Nik supporting him through his arduous recovery as he slowly heals from the wounds he sustained during what turned out to be his final mission. Essentially retired now, he moves to a remote cabin in Austria and tries to enjoy a quieter life until he is visited by a stranger who offers him one final job: to get a woman and her children out a very secure prison facility in Georgia (country not state). Rake wants to refuse until the man informs him that the woman in question is his former sister-in-law Ketevan. Tyler recruits Nik and her brother Yaz to assist him and whilst the initial extraction proves successful though harder than anticipated, their successful escape out of Georgia is not the end of it as Ketevan's brother-in-law wants to retrieve his brother's children and kill his sister-in-law for taking them away in the first place. A drug dealer with a private army of mercs at his disposal, it all culminates in a bloody confrontation in Vienna... A sequel to the Netflix actioner Extraction that is actually better than the original. Helped by its relentless tempo that kind of prevents you from considering anything too critically, this film never lets up, starting with the daring prison escape scene all the way to the final confrontation between Rake and the main villain. There are some decent action set pieces in there too - like the hand to hand combat in the prison yard that was shot (or at least presented as) a oner- and I really like Golshifteh Farahani as an action star, given more to do in the sequel than in the first film. Final scene suggests a third film.
Off-topic: I usually used imgur as a image hosting service for the movie posters that accompany my posts in this topic but lately they no longer show up. Is imgur no longer supported on BS?
That might be it. I had always just gone with the idea that he's great as long as his character doesn't really know or understand what's going on (Bill & Ted, Matrix 1), but unbearably bad if his character is aware and knowledgeable of his world (Matrix 2-4, second half of The Lake House).
His facial expressions (or lack of), and his eyes within that, exude that aura. Plus he look uncoordinated, yet does actions flicks.
New Tricks I am surprisingly sad to have come to the end of this English police procedural that I found on BritBox. I made it through season 10, but the show has gotten markedly worse with each replacement of the orginal four stars. But this show just worked. It's low-stakes, non-edgy drama with a very tight cast. Sandra Pullman was a formerly fast-burning officer whose career goes off the rails after a spectacular embarassment. She's basically demoted and put in charge of a new iniative that takes retired (or slightly damaged) detectives, and given the remit of investigating cold cases. Everyone knows that these four have been put out to pasture, and yet they embrace it and do a kick-ass job in the process. It's hard for me to spot on-screen chemistry, you know, as opposed to great writing or just really good acting, but the chemistry of these four is readily apparent. I miss the show already.
@Val1 so this is like Slow Horses mixed with Cold Case, but make it British? Sounds like something I might enjoy.
I had Slow Horses described to me as 24 with an inferiority complex, so yeah, may very well be. A better comparison might be Nicola Walker's Unforgotten. One thing I really liked about the show is that it the lede into credits did NOT show the crime. It's a trope that I get very tired of in mystery stories. As for British? Yeah, it's suble. Like the humor. One very small recurring gag is that the DI is working with pensioners, so when a suspect takes a runner, she's the one who gives chase. So the men have to hold her purse. If she's the one getting on her knees to inspect a crime scene, again, it's one of the men who's holding her purse. And it never gets commented on, never becomes a "thing" per se, but it's just always there.
Birds of Prey And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2022) Harley Quinn has broken up with Jared Leto (and after he sent her dead animals and worse through the mail, who can blame her). She decides to celebrate by doing something that lets everyone know they are done being a couple. Unfortunately, this has the unwanted side effect of letting everyone know they are done being a couple. Without the Clown Prince of Overacting protecting her, everyone she has ever wronged is out for revenge. That's a lot of people, includes Sionis, a sadistic man bent on running all organized crime in Gotham. He is one kid away from creating his underworld army, and Quinn can escape one of his patented gory murders if she turns the kid over to him. Harley's morality wil- what am I saying, of course she's going to turn the kid over. This was really fun for me. It was a little goofy and funny and definitely had some of the Dini and Timm Mad Love swagger. Given the natures of the cast you really had a hard time figuring out how they could possibly end up on the same side, and the way it happens was perfect logic-wise and entertainment-wise. The movie was strongly narrated, which I know isn't everyone's taste, but it allowed the movie to play with time in a way that fit Harley's personality while also letting your see two narrative train tracks switch into one. The vastly different fighting styles of all the protagonists really caught my eye. I've come to expect a certain close-quarter fight style standard (signature weapon excepted) in my CGI-enhanced super hero blockbuster movies, and this did a fantastic job matching their attacks to their personalities. Definitely didn't like the scene with the shopping cart.
The Locksmith (2023) Miller is an expert at picking locks. He's also a sucker for helping people, including someone who wanted to do a robbery on a check-cashing storefront. It goes bad and Miller goes to prison for a decade. Once he's out, he vows he's going to go straight. But the widow of his robbery partner is in big trouble, and she's asking him to commit another robbery to save her. Too bad Miller isn't an expert in picking who to help. A fairly standard modern noir, with a little change of flavor of being set in a small town. Professional reviewers seem to think it was boringly predicable, but I've seen a thousand movies (probably - I've put 565 reviews up on Letterboxd so far) and I'm still not so jaded that I didn't get caught up in their story and worry how they were going to get out. It's a classic story style, it's done well - that's plenty.
Grand Tour (seasons 1-4, 2016-2021) I found this decent to keep playing in the background while working on my projects for the last few months. I was a fan of the original Top Gear, and if there's one great criticism I could place on this GT it would be that it's too close to the old show. They didn't just keep the same overall format, but the same bits and the same jokes and even the same catch-phrases. The very few new things they added were real clunkers. It ended up being like those store-brand cereals that try to copy famous name brands - you can tell what they are trying to be, but it's not as good and maybe if they tried their own thing they would make something better. Not that post Clarkson / Hammond / May Top Gear was good either. And it could never leave my mind that the bufoonish troglodyte character Clarkson plays in the show isn't a character at all. The whole-episode adventures are by far the most entertaining, and in "season" 4 they switched to that format only. The unexpected surprises meant more spontaneous reactions from the cast and less of the pre-written gags we've seen enough already.
The Wrath of Becky (2023) Dir. Matt Angel & Suzanne Coote Two years after the events of "Becky", the now orphaned protagonist has been bouncing around from foster home to foster home. Until she hitches a ride from the kindly older Elena, who gives the troubled teen a real new home. Becky mostly suppresses her violent sociopathic tendencies, though one day she does anger a trio of rude men she served at the diner where she has a waitressing job. The men in questions are members of the Noble Men (pretty obvious stand-in for Proud Boys) and aren't very keen on being publicly humiliated by a teenager, so they follow Becky home after her shift. After their home invasion goes terribly wrong, Becky wakes up and vows to get her revenge in the only way she knows how: with bloody murder. She tracks the trio in question to a isolated home belonging to Darryl, a Noble Men leader who has very violent plans to disturb a senator's appearance in town the very next day. But he hadn't counted on the arrival of a sadistic, murderous teen to throw a spanner in the works... I guess how you will feel about this film depends on how you feel about seeing a teenaged character use extreme violence to deal with very bad people. A similar discussion arose after the release of Kick-Ass and Chloe Grace Moretz' Hit-Girl. To me this mostly works due to Lulu Wilson (great child actress who I first saw in the terrific Ouija: Origin of Evil). And Seann William Scott always seems to shine in any movie in which he goes against type. This time around he plays a U.S. Army Ranger turned fascist militia leader and manages to be really scary in a couple of scenes. I wondered if the Noble Men's plot was inspired by the foiled kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Shazam! (2019) The last of a council of ancient and powerful wizards sits alone at the Rock of Eternity, attempting to select a champion to succeed him and inherit all his abilities. The champion must be pure of heart and stout of will, and the wizard has spent decades, centuries, maybe even eons searching for one that is worthy. But time has run out and evil is on the loose. The champion must be chosen now. Next on the list is a 14 year old delinquent boy. Can't be that bad. There's a lot to recommend this. It's funny and hits the right tone. The fight scenes are great. There isn't an emphasis on collateral damage (which other super hero movies use as a cheap tactic to create gravitas) and there was a lot of clever use of Billy temporarily giving up his powers for an advantage. Zachary Levi is incredibly charismatic and well cast as the idealized version of Billy. But ultimately the movie is about kids being kids. In fact, their juvenile behavior is emphasized to create the fish-out-of-water and grown-man-acting-like-a-child humor. The main crises are those of children and the moral (which is a good one) is for children, and it just didn't connect to me.