I agree, we watched it over the weekend and laughed plenty, while also very well aware of the messages.
My only real criticism was that it was about 20-30 minutes too long. I would say that the main weakness is mostly in the editing. But certainly glad we spent the time to watch.
Last Looks. Charlie Hunnam is still waving his terrible American accent around at anyone who will listen, and unfortunately it’s me, this time. A reclusive private eye is drawn in to a case against his will, involving the usual multi-pronged plot, an actor with a dead wife, and an old girlfriend involved in crime. Good turn by Mel Gibson with an outrageous English accent, playing a sort of Oliver Reed type, otherwise some iffy casting, including Rupert Friend, alongside the likes of Clancy Brown and Paul Ben-Victor, who aren’t in it enough. Morena Baccarin and Lucy Fry should have swapped roles. Serviceable film, standard plotting.
The Unholy. As an agnostic, I am no friend to organised religion. I consider it a con, to put it mildly. However, films like this are doubly stupid for going “Oh what if Your God did some miracles. What if Your God healed people of their incurable diseases. Ah but then what if Your God was evil.”
This doesn’t make any fucking sense, on any level, and it doesn’t act as a critique of religion, or belief. It’s just a cheap gotcha. Yeah, that’s right, turns out the deity you worshipped was evil all along despite the fact it healed people or otherwise performed miracles, but it only did those things to con you into believing because it’s evil, see? This is an idiot’s idea of religion, as if you were worshipping Cthulhu because he occasionally wiped your arse for you, or similar, and then you were aghast to find out that somehow not only had he not wiped your arse for you, but also he is in fact an interstellar evil. Actors like Jeffrey Dean Morgan are completely wasted in shit like this. If you want to criticise religion, you have to show people believing in it, and doing things they think their religion asks them to do, and justifies them doing, not an unspecified force performing miracles, only for that unspecified force to turn out to be evil in the third act, you fucking morons.
The Beta Test: Jim Cummings Cannot Miss. An agent closing in on marrying his fiance receives an offer of anonymous sex with someone, who will also not know who he is. There’s a limit to Cummings’ range, but within it he is a superb actor, and while Wolf of Snow Hollow is still his best film, this is such a close second. Watching him attempt to socially ice pick through each scene and interaction and usually fail, his struggles with himself, the teeth-gritted determination of a man under too much self-imposed stress who is increasingly aware of what he’s doing, the film is an excellent study of one man coming apart, complete with extremely sharp, cringe-inducing humour, and the finest of lines between it being in his head and it being real. Easily the best film I’ve seen this year.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife. My attention wandered. A lot. I feel like it was adequate. But nothing about it was good.
Adequate is a good descriptor. Paul Rudd had a couple pretty funny moments, but he’s usually good for some laughs. The nostalgia and the spoilers were fun. The main girl was good. But nothing about it stood out in any special way. In fact, I can’t even remember any of the character names, so it clearly wasn’t memorable.
Scream, the ‘requel’. Scenes of killers stabbing people, and groups of teens sitting around theorising about who the killer is. Self-referential, dog-eating-own-vomit crap. This was all done three films ago. None of the action has improved over the course of a quarter of a century, the plot is not any better or even more complex, the acting is meh. The series has finally succeeded in becoming what it was created to satirise.
Atomic Blonde.
The fuck did I just watch?
The plot is downright incomprehensible, told in a series of flashbacks (I think?) and suppositions. Completely confusing and I cared not a whit for any of the characters, except Charlize Theron, cause she gets naked and wears thigh high boots with short skirts and at heart, I am but a simple man.
The cinematography is… garish? But works for the setting, I suppose - late 1980’s Berlin Cold War calls for neon and flashing lights and whatnot. The soundtrack is probably the best feature, heavy on the 80’s new wave synth.
Overall, I guess it wasn’t the worst two hours of film, but I don’t know that I need to watch it again.
You watched two hours of a perfectly acceptable action film that houses an amazing 10-minute action sequence that I have re-watched many times. And watched again just now.
what the hell was that???
Should have been called Atomic Redhead by the end of that fight scene.
In the category of action films, I rate Atomic Blonde in the top 5 of the last 30 years. The one-take fight scene that kennfusion properly calls out is one of the very best ever filmed. On the dvd (I know, “what are those?”), there is a fascinating Making-of look at that scene that actually somehow makes it even more impressive.
The “plot” is convoluted to be sure, but it was also based on a somewhat terrible comic book, so I can forgive it because it rises way above the level of the source material. On repeated viewings, the “plot” sort of makes sense, until the very last bit with Goodman, which is dumb. But it begets more action, so whatever.
Agreed about the strength of the soundtrack (Re-flex, Flock of Seagulls, etc) and Theron. The only other character that I was really interested in was the watch repairman, who was perfectly cast. If they did a movie focused on him as the main character, I’d totally watch that.
Really nothing you wrote about the movie was critical as far as action movies go. Watch it a few more times, and you’ll understand its greatness : )
Also, they are making a sequel!
Extreme Prejudice. No, this film is not about me, shut up. It is instead a late Walter Hill film, somewhat out of time as it contains enough machismo for the entire 60s, packed into a late 80s film full of men being stoic in front of other men, often while gleaming with sweat. I’m not kidding. Powers Boothe back when he had hair, Nick Nolte without excessive face seams, Michael Ironside looking exactly the same as he always does regardless of the year, and a bunch of other immediately recognisable faces you will be able to name after a minute’s frustrated thought. Special mention goes to Maria Conchita Alonso for being the only female character in the entire film, and yes, of course, there’s a shower scene where you see her naked for no good reason. A largely sub-par Wild-Bunch -style effort, with some decent individual action scenes, but little else. Even Powers Boothe’s seething scenery chewing can’t save scenes between him and Nolte that should be at least vaguely tense, but aren’t.
The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil. I was fully on board with this, Kim Mu-yeol plays the cop with a lot of attitude, but the film sort of lost me when the killer, who targets his victims by rear-ending their car and then stabbing them in the ensuing conversation, happens upon Ma Dong-seok, the Gangster, and has a go.
It was good for a couple laughs, but I don’t have the words to describe how breathtakingly stupid Free Guy was. That is all.
I just watched Jurassic Park with my son for the first time. I still love the movie and I still think the T-Rex escape is an awesome cinema moment.
Watched Greyhound on Apple TV+ last night. Still pooped. Once the tension gets ramped up early, you don’t get a break until the last few minutes.
Neat shout out to the USS Kidd, which is moored in Baton Rouge, LA, and where much of the filming took place. Definitely worth a visit if you’re a fan of Fletcher class destroyers.
We watched Fast and the Furious 9 last night, now that it is on HBO Max here in the US. I have seen every F&F movie, and it is my favorite ‘bad’ action franchise.
My review: It was definitely a Fast and the Furious movie.
I look forward to FFX! (Jason Statham returns!)
