Hotel Artemis, the science fiction crime film set on the backdrop of the rioting streets of 2028 Los Angeles, could be described as clunky. Bloated. Over-loaded. An exploitation action film in the clothing of a classier sheep. A lot of slick talk with little substance.
It is all of these things. And quite blatantly. But Drew Pearce’s film is also a helluva lot of entertainment value stuffed into a 93-minute feature.
Leigh Whannell is a known horror screenwriter, having penned the Insidious films and the first three entries in the Saw franchise. His first directorial effort was Insidious: Chapter Three. (No offense to Leigh, but it is arguably the black sheep chapter of the series).
With Upgrade he has, dare I say, upgraded his ability for genre filmmaking. What remains in this gritty, futuristic action flick is Whannell’s penchant for high energy gore and viscera. What is added is Continue reading Upgrade (2018) Movie Review→
Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, is a Canadian mercenary turned cancer victim who is presented with a cure via a branch of the Weapon X program. Turned into a mutant, Deadpool receives Wolverine’s healing factor, full-body deformity, and increasing mental instability. He often exercises psychopathic tendencies and suffers breaks from reality that manifest themselves as fourth-wall breaking banter. At his most stable, he is a member of X-Force or X-Men. At his most unhinged, he slaughters every superhero in the Marvel universe.
I have very little to say about Breaking In. My main takeaway is that it is the definition of average. A conventional home invasion movie that takes itself more seriously than a home invasion movie of this sort ought, there is little to chew on here.
The story is thin enough that the runtime can be graciously under 90 minutes, but it is also thin enough to make 90 minutes feel too long. Shaun Russell (Gabrielle Union) takes her two children to a hideaway estate in upstate Wisconsin. It is the high-security home of her deceased father, who had some vague ties to criminal Continue reading Breaking In (2018) Movie Review→
Dean Devlin is a producer known for work on big budget, blockbuster action movies: Independence Day, Godzilla (1998), etc. Last year, he made his big screen directorial debut with the heavily panned Geostorm, which itself was a big action film aiming to be a blockbuster.
With Bad Samaritan, Devlin returns to feature directing. Only, this time the subject matter is a lower-budget dramatic thriller. Sean Falco (Robert Sheehan) is a wannabe photographer who works a valet business with his buddy Derek (Carlito Olivero). To make ends meet, however, the two of them run scams using Continue reading Bad Samaritan (2018) Movie Review→
Note: As you can see with the title of this article, this discussion of Avengers: Infinity War contains massive spoilers about the ending of the film. So don’t read this if you haven’t seen the film and want to see it spoiler-free.
Hollywood, ever since it has had the capability to make them, loves their epics. Ben-hur. Lawrence of Arabia. Spartacus. And now Avengers: Infinity War, an epic that has been running for 10 years. And that isn’t a figurative statement.
Sure, you can walk into your multiplex, purchase a ticket to Marvel’s latest having seen none of their previous films, and understand at the most basic plot level what is happening in the film. But this is really a film made for those who have committed to the franchise from the beginning. It is a culmination of 10 years, 18 films, and 38 hours of screentime.
And I’ve been using runtime as an excuse for not watching Ben-hur, Lawrence of Arabia, and Spartacus…
Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here doesn’t concern itself with much plot. It doesn’t concern itself with much of anything in regards to narrative, as a matter of fact.
What it does concern itself with is Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), a hired hitman who is tasked with recovering the kidnapped daughter (Ekaterina Samsonov) of a New York Senator (Alex Manette). Mainly, it is concerned with Joe’s means of coping with his present job and his rocky past.
We first see Joe through a mask of plastic. The material slowly crinkles inward and then
Rampage is a 1980s arcade game in which three giant, mutated animals—a gorilla, a lizard, and a wolf—stomp through city skylines. The monsters tear down buildings, destroy military vehicles, and eat people. All for points. The game was popular enough to be ported over to multiple video game consoles.
The video game has no story and few characters (the monsters are given names, at least). Yet, somehow, Hollywood has managed to give the intellectual property both of these things. At least, enough of these things to produce a marketable movie.
A band of robbers hide away in a hamlet in the Mediterranean desert after stowing 250 kilos worth of gold bars in the trunk of their car and picking up a family of hitchhikers on their way back from the heist. Two police officers show up, and the whole thing devolves into a shootout.
It is an exceedingly simple premise to a film, one that reeks of a cliched action-crime genre re-hash. But Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Let the Corpses Tan is anything but simple, and Continue reading Let the Corpses Tan (2018) Movie Review→
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