Category: Action-Adventure
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Wouldn’t it be funny if Bob Odenkirk were an action movie hero? Like a kick-ass one who doesn’t just use machine guns, but also does a lot of hand-to-hand fighting? If you’re unfamiliar with Odenkirk, let’s just say it’s a “cast against type” situation to the extremis. Only it doesn’t matter because action movie special…
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When did Guy Ritchie get so enthusiastic about his actors’ performances? Wrath of Man is a lot of things—and a little much—but it’s a middling cross between revenge and heist picture where the cast gets a great showcase. Sometimes too much of one, with the script way too talky in the first act. Man’s based…
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The scary thing about Tango & Cash is its ability to improve. Not sure who wrote or directed the end of the second act, when Kurt Russell gets to act opposite people besides Sylvester Stallone and you remember it’s actually an achievement to make him so unlikable for so long, but it’s a lot better.…
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Kong vs. Godzilla is a rather bad film. Director Wingard is bad at every single thing the film tasks him with. Kong expert Rebecca Hall and adopted daughter Kaylee Hottle going to the Hollow Earth with pseudo-scientist burn-out Alexander Skarsgård? Terrible. Teens Millie Bobby Brown and Julian Dennison teaming up with kaiju conspiracy podcaster Brian…
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At one point or another, everyone in Broken Arrow tries very hard and gives it their all. Sometimes it works out, like when Samantha Mathis has her violence free stunt sequences or Delroy Lindo gets to deliver a lousy line well, sometimes it doesn’t work out, like Howie Long as one of the goons or……
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The absolute saddest part of Justice League: The Encore Edition is the new stuff’s not bad. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. You almost want to see the movie, which is basically Ben Affleck Batman teaming up the not even A-list for 2021 of DC Comics movies stars and roaming a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But…
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The Monuments Men is cute. It probably shouldn’t be cute, or if it should be cute, it should somehow be more cute. But it’s fairly fubar. The film’s got very little dramatic momentum since it can never find a tone and also because its scenes try to skip over the drama or do whatever it…
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Sean Connery, who’s so important to the workings of Hunt for Red October he could easily be “and special guest star” credit instead of top-billed, has his last scene on the bridge of his ship, giving a very Captain Kirk read of a quote. It’s something about sailing and it’s got to break the cultural…
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I wasn’t aware of Red Scorpion’s production history, which has original distributor Warner Bros. pulling out because it filmed in Namibia, under apartheid South African control at the time, as well as the investors and producers being pro-apartheid… you’d think Warner would’ve checked. You’d hoped Warner would’ve checked. And, now, if we can “but anyway”…
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Outside allowing Chris Pine to charmingly mug for the camera while doing an eighties men’s fashion parade, there’s not much reason for its 1984 setting. Unless they thought it would be absurd if Wonder Woman Gal Gadot pined after dead WWI love Pine for more than sixty-five years or so. No reason for the setting…
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Walter Hill really likes to make movies about racist white cops (oxymoron, sorry, racist even for a movie) partnering with unlikely people and having big action sequences involving buses, huh? The racist white cop in this case is Jim Belushi, who’s never overtly racist (just overtly transphobic in a homophobic way—it’s the eighties after all),…
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All WarGames really needs to be better is a good script rewrite, a better director (apparently there are some leftover shots from when Martin Brest tried directing it but got fired), and more John Wood. The Arthur B. Rubinstein music is a little iffy too but has its charms. And WarGames has its charms. Matthew…
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Bastille Day is an abject waste of time from the start, which opens with some very bad “video stock” only it turns out to be supposed to be “bad” video from a smartphone. Not even getting into the opening sequence, a terribly directed one, seems more appropriate for an eighties Porky’s rip-off more than a…
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Enola Holmes is a solid vehicle for the proposition of lead Millie Bobby Brown as a movie star—she infrequently narrates to great effect, in a manner far more Ferris Bueller than John Watson (more on the infrequently in a bit). But as almost anything else the movie fizzles. Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes? He’s not…
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The Old Guard is better than any of the Highlander movies (to date, I suppose) but sadly not a success. It gets relatively close to passing at least, but then the epilogue is forced, predictable (screenwriter Greg Rucka’s really obvious, he’s really episodic and he’s really obvious–Old Guard is based on Rucka and Leandro Fernandez’s…
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At no point does Miss Fisher & the Crypt of Tears introduce viewer unfamiliar with star Essie Davis’s television show, to which this film’s a sequel, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.” The movie opens with an action sequence setting up Davis as an exquisitely dressed combination of Indiana Jones and James Bond. The action—a title card…
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Solo: A Star Wars Story is juvenile, which might be what manages to save it. It’s got nothing but problems—a troubled production (director Howard took over from fired “executive producers” Christopher Miller and Phil Lord and shot seventy-percent of what’s in the film), an uninspired screenplay (by Empire and Jedi screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and his…
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Sadly, the Writers Guild of America does not publish their arbitrations for writing credits, because the one on Rogue One has got to be a doozy; I desperately want to know how they go to this script. Did it actually start as a video game or did director Edwards really have no idea how to…
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The Enforcer is cheap in all the wrong ways, both in terms of budget and narrative, which probably ought to be clear in the first scene, when the movie opens on a butt shot of Jocelyn Jones in Daisy Dukes. She’s hitchhiking but it’s all a setup for the villain reveal—Jones is in an ostensible…
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What’s so incredible about Boondock Saints is how David Della Rocco’s atrocious performance distracts from lots of other terrible things going on in the film. At least when Della Rocco is onscreen. When he’s off… well, then the omnipresent deficiencies proudly scream their presences. Della Rocco gets all of the film’s racist jokes and I…
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The Appaloosa could be worse. Director Furie apes styles he doesn’t understand how to use—his Leone-esque angles, the Acid Western—with what’s a fairly traditional Western, albeit just with a Mexican supporting cast. Well, okay, so Marlon Brando is the only gringo playing a gringo. All the other White people are supposed to be Mexican. You…
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I wonder if, much like that one immortal monkey divining Borges’s dreams and half-dreams at dawn on August 14, 1934, one could assemble a list of all the action beats in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which are mostly from Aliens and Jurassic Park 1 and 2, and arrange them to figure out the story…
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At the end of Congo, after the heroes have found the lost expedition, the lost city, and the laser-pure diamonds but also run afoul of said lost city’s super-ape protectors and happened to find this place during a volcanic eruption, some of the super-apes jump into the lava flow. It’s a somewhat lengthy sequence, which…
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Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is a Margot Robbie vehicle, which is excellent, because Robbie’s great and the filmmaking, particularly on Robbie’s scenes, is outstanding. Retitling it the Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn would be the best move; the Birds of Prey are going to be a bonus, with…
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Timeline is really bad. The opening sequence starts Donner regular Steve Kahan in a terrible bit part but at least there’s the stunt casting; the rest of the poorly edited sequence has ER doctors and anonymous law enforcement looking into the mysterious death of a man who appeared in the middle of the highway for…
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No one in The 13th Warrior seems particularly thrilled to be participating in The 13th Warrior. Some people carry it better than others—Omar Sharif’s cameo is the only “good” acting in the film, as he translates and interprets events for lead Antonio Banderas, who can’t speak the common language with the Vikings they’ve come across.…
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After a strong dinosaur suspense opening, with some futuristic submersible entering the closed Jurassic World bay to get something off the seafloor, Fallen Kingdom shockingly quickly becomes a remake of the first Jurassic Park sequel, Lost World. Like, so much you wish there were more in it so David Koepp got a credit through forced…
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Terminator: Dark Fate is the fourth irrelevant Terminator 2 sequel. It’s not the worst of them, it’s not the best of them. But the poor rights owners just can’t seem to figure out how to franchise and Arnold Schwarzenegger just can’t say no. If there’s a Terminator 7 in a couple years… Arnold will be…
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If I had to describe a feature of Jurassic World as saddest… I might find myself hard-pressed. There aren’t a lot of possibilities—worst, dumbest, cheapest, silliest, probably some others… but saddest is something different. When the film takes a pointless detour through the original visitor center from Jurassic Park, aged some twenty years and run…
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About seventy minutes into 48 Hrs., Nick Nolte apologizes to Eddie Murphy for the racial slurs he’s been calling him since Murphy showed up in the movie. Nolte’s just doing his job, he explains, “keeping him down,” which is an unintentionally honest moment about cops and Black men. Murphy nods to it, but says, “that…
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