Category Archives: Action/Thriller

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Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Indie Films, Love It, Quickie Reviews (<400 Words)

The Ones Below (2016) Movie Review

May 10, 2016 Alex Brannan

Two couples move in to a quaint duplex and, coincidentally, both are expecting. Kate and Justin (Clemence Poesy and Stephen Campbell Moore) are unassuming and innocently critical. Theresa and Jon (Laura Birn and David Morrissey) are welcoming and intolerably tidy. Their lives initially appear like mirrors with only the slightest light refracted, but the light starts to bend more and more when they sit down for dinner together. And this light can only hope to continue bending away from center as the film progresses.

The first act, culminating in this dinner scene, is structured with precision. The editing may be standard shot-reverse shots, but the compositions are Continue reading The Ones Below (2016) Movie Review →

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Captain America: Civil War (2016) Movie Review

May 6, 2016 Alex Brannan

The premise of Captain America: Civil War is exactly what it sounds like: a legislation called the Sokovia Accords will put restrictions on the power of superheroes, and it threatens to tear the Avengers in two. Divided, faction leaders Cap (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) face off in a heated battle for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Narratively, the film juggles many balls, but few of them get dropped. Sure, they are Continue reading Captain America: Civil War (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Horror, Indie Films, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Green Room (2016) Movie Review

April 24, 2016 Alex Brannan

In Green Room, a group of young and conceited punk rockers travel to one last unscheduled gig after their tour bottoms out. The White Supremacist punk scene of the club proves to be more shady than it first appears. The mosh pit is slowed to a balletic chaos as they perform. The atmosphere of the audience is unforgiving. And the green room backstage is an environment of violent undoing.

The film, like the music it portrays, is unrefined, but it is a purposefully stylized unrefined. The low key lighting and grimy aesthetic is what has become “torture porn chic.”

What writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, whose 2013 microbudget indie thriller Blue Ruin received critical success, does differently than torture porn is deliver a Continue reading Green Room (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Hardcore Henry (2016) Movie Review

April 4, 2016 Alex Brannan

The first person POV film Hardcore Henry follows the eponymous character (here, the camera is a character) after an unexplained accident renders him maimed. Given cybernetic enhancements to essentially his entire body in a series of jump cuts, Henry must fight to save the wife (Haley Bennett) he doesn’t remember from the corporation that provided the parts that built him.

For the most part, it is your basic action movie plot: the untethered yet reluctant hero, the damsel in distress, the rugged in-the-know guru (or about a dozen of them), and the clearly immoral villain.

The gimmick, then, is the cinematographic choices. The real question, then, is: Is this a gimmick film? Continue reading Hardcore Henry (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Eye in the Sky (2016) Movie Review

April 1, 2016 Alex Brannan

In Eye in the Sky, a joint security task force between the UK, the U.S., and Kenya plan a combined drone and ground strike on a meeting of high-level Al-Shabaab terrorists in Nairobi. When the operation starts breaking down, the scenario boils down to a political debate over whether or not to utilize a drone strike to take down the targets.

The film attempts topical commentary inside the drama-thriller framework it is working with. What works most readily is Continue reading Eye in the Sky (2016) Movie Review →

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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) Movie Review

March 28, 2016 Alex Brannan

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice begins in medias res of The Man Steel climax, showing in this case the perspective of Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne. As he runs headfirst into the rubble of a crushed Wayne Enterprises building, he has a number of save the cat moments. This, despite the later scenes in which he brands criminals with the bat-symbol, which pretty much nullifies this initial scene.

18 months later, an alien artifact from the battle of Metropolis washes up on shore somewhere in the Indian Ocean and Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is working with the CIA to catch a suspected terrorist. As Superman (Henry Cavill) flies in to save Lois, he is Continue reading Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) Movie Review →

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10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) Movie Review

March 11, 2016 Alex Brannan

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), in the process of leaving her boyfriend, suddenly becomes party to a car wreck. She awakens in a concrete room chained to the wall. An effectively desperate Winstead struggles just to reach her phone in a tense scene that culminates in the menacing introduction of Michelle’s captor Howard (John Goodman).

This early standoff between Winstead and Goodman is fascinating, although it would have played better with Continue reading 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Love It, Quickie Reviews (<400 Words)

Deadpool (2016) Movie Review

February 12, 2016 Alex Brannan

From minute one of Deadpool, it is clear that we are dealing with a wholly unique film. If you didn’t know what you were getting into with this film, the opening credits sequence explains it for your rather efficiently.

Given a film that never Continue reading Deadpool (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

The Revenant (2015) Movie Review

January 12, 2016 Alex Brannan

The Revenant has the viscera of a Braveheart or a Gangs of New York, with the now familiar touch of director Alejandro G. Inarritu. His style shows through with an even stronger flourish than that of his previous film Birdman, as it links itself more naturally with the thematic elements that are in play in the film.

The film centers on Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), a hunter on a fur trading expedition who seeks vengeance after becoming severely wounded and left for dead in the 19th century wilderness.

The only true way to describe this film is to call it Continue reading The Revenant (2015) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, F Movies, Loath It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Loft (2015) Movie Review

January 2, 2016 Alex Brannan

The Loft begins with distracting shots: intentional blurring and tightly framed, hyper-wide angles. These grotesque wide angles return frequently throughout the length of the film.

A groveling Karl Urban tepidly growls his lines as Vincent Stevens, a man being interrogated by police after a woman is found dead Continue reading The Loft (2015) Movie Review →

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