Tag: action

Over on 'flix, somehow the English were allowed to leave their island and film in sunny Barcelona! Alas, they don't use a lot of local talent. Two of the actors are Spanish-English, one is actually Spanish, the rest are all very British and in many cases so pasty they can't have been there more than a few days, the show's in English for the most part.

The first few episodes are dull but building a bit, Erin (Evin Ahmad) is a substitute schoolteacher who came here with a child, married a nice Spanish nurse Jordi (Sean Teale), wacky divorced cop neighbor Emilio (Pep Ambròs); the latter two are the only ones who can have a convincing conversation en Español. Bitchy rich neighbor Penelope (Charlotte Vega) is the scene-stealer, everything she does is so arch and hilarious. There's a ongoing tragedy of her life that's playing in the background scenes, and she should really be the star of her soap opera. Her final scene (she's fine; minor spoiler but nothing could ever harm or defeat Penelope) is just awesome. Like WTF show are we watching? Who's this Erin chick?

Back to the buildup, there's a holdup Erin foils with excessive skills and what passes for an accidental kill. Then a chick knife fight, which isn't amazing but it's something. Why does Margot know & hate Erin? Pretty soon one murder leads to a favor and Erin's… not a schoolteacher.

There's a strong vibe of A History of Violence, la femme Nikita (or the dozen shitty remake/ripoffs), and by the end a lot of John Woo homage/ripoff/why do mooks always hide behind explosive barrels? Flashbacks give us some context, and the spooky horns person seen in child Harper's dreams & pictures.

Erin's skills and toughness start at "buff soccer mom" and rapidly escalate to Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2: Judgement Day + The Killer. Most people around her keep trying to fuck her over and take the kid, and do not have plot immunity. There is one incredibly cool, classy kung fu fight in a dress. Keep watching for that. It is the entire point of the film to make this fight happen. The final big warzone is more John Woo. Hug, "take care of OUR daughter", BOOM.

The few parts set in England are dark, grim, dirty, and horrible, warehouses and alleys, treachery and distrust and neglect, like just the worst underground dystopian shithole (film what you know). Barcelona is infinitely prettier. It's a very incidental setting initially, with a honkie-populated suburb and English-speaking school, but they do get better at using it creatively and showing local flavor later. The car chase through tight streets and a lot of empty boxes & water jugs flying around is great fun. Escapes from buildings always involve parkour over pretty rooftops. This is a "come visit Spain!" puff piece, but they should spend time on history of Catalonia if they want to get more Spanish tourism investment funds.

At no point did the writing, dialogue, or cinematography match the intent. This is pretty much exactly the kind of awesome schlock the great Godfrey Ho made, but now they (writer is Jack Lothian?, revolving room of directors) are using impoverished British "talent" in reasonably-priced exotic locales, for overseas streaming sales.

Budget would ruin this. Skill would ruin this. There's at least two plot holes never resolved (both money related). The pacing was slow to start, then ZOOM. No time for bleeding! Can they make more of these? Same girl or anything else of similar design. One hundred schoolteacher ninja movies, I'm there for it.

★★★★½

Nope (2022): Jordan Peele's latest is fine. It's a better Twilight Zone ep than his Twilight Zone eps, but never gets as "Nope" as Get Out or Us. The "alien abduction is something else" story is adequate, OJ's (Daniel Kaluuya) borderline-ASD behavior and animal training focus are useful protagonist skills, as is Emerald's (Keke Palmer) perky extrovert energy, the actual thing revealed has a great design. Angel's (Brandon Perea) backstory is zero, he's there to be slightly useful and trail behind Keke (who wouldn't?), and make us nostalgic for Fry's Electronics RIP. "Antlers" Holst (Michael Wincott) is Werner Herzog but even more reckless. Sadly, the entire Jupe/Gordy plot is repetitive, slow, copied from Bojack Horseman (not really, but kinda?) and doesn't illuminate anything you can't learn from OJ. This could be a nice breezy 90-minute movie with flabby B-plot cut out, but instead it drags on over 2 hours. ★★★½☆ You know what would've improved this? Sightings/abductions start all around the world in the credits. This shouldn't be a one-off, but the beginning.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): Almost precisely a remake/ripoff of Jet Li's The One but with Michelle Yeoh, a laundromat, a kinder ending. Michelle doesn't do much/any of her own fighting or stunts, which is much of the pleasure of a kung fu flick. There's some really good special effects, a lot of fun jokes. I like it for what it is, but I don't love or need it. Michelle used to be one of the best kung fu fighters/actresses ever, go watch Police Story 3: Super Cop, Supercop 2, Wing Chun, or Holy Weapon to see her at her peak (CTHD was a little past that). Ke Huy Quan (Short Round, Data from the Goonies!) is great to have back, he should've been the New Indiana Jones in Crystal Skull. ★★★½☆ but the ½ is only out of nostalgia.

The One (2001): Jet Li has to play himself and a super-villain version of himself, with different martial arts styles, generally done by him and his stunt double switching places mid-fight! Romantic plot with Carla Gugino is OK. It was savaged by dumb-ass American reviewers who'd never seen a high-speed wire kung fu movie, they shat themselves because actual skilled fighting is scary, racists didn't like Jet Li as the lead, and uneducated mooks didn't understand "multiverses", but 20 years later everyone loves excruciatingly slow tai chi with multiverses and CGI cartoons drawn on top. Fucking amazing film, reject conformity, watch good kung fu. ★★★★½

On Hobomax. Based, allegedly, on notes by Bruce Lee in the '70s, it's a kung fu series in 1876 SF Chinatown. Produced by Jason Lin of 2Fast2Furious2Legit2Quit, and Bruce Lee's daughter.

Right from the start, there's a nice mix of actual kung fu halfway between Bruce Lee's actual beat-em-ups and physical comedy like Jackie Chan's fights (not just shitty jump-cut editing), politics within the tongs, brothel girls, nativist mobs of assholes, and the severely underfunded, corrupt, thug-like SFPD (so nothing changes in 150 years) starting a Chinatown squad (including a Georgian Confederate traitor, leading to some bad blood).

It's a little weird casting, Ah Sahm (half-Japanese/English Andrew Koji) doesn't at all pass for Chinese, especially when standing next to Young Jun (Hong Konger Jason Tobin) or Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng), but he's a fine fighter, a competent actor.

The dialogue is modernized, even more than in Deadwood, there's more profanity and just flippant speech that doesn't fit a Chinese man who supposedly trained with a sifu. They use the linguistic trick of speaking a few words in Cantonese (apparently all phonetic memorization except the whore) and then switching to modern English… and then back to stilted English or Cantonese if there's whites around. They have weird alternatives to "white" and "han" or whatever ethnic group they're pointing at, calling them "ducks" and "onions", much like The Wire replaced the N-word with "bitch" most of the time. "Itchy" means looking for a fight.

I'm not especially interested in the segments about the SFPD, and even less about the nativists, but that may change as the show goes on.

At times they also slip in modern music cues and other anachronisms, but it's largely trying to be a period piece.

Every fight isn't amazing, but they're all good. I've seen none that are as pathetic as any superhero trash.

Watch this show.

★★★★½

I had a rough night trying to find a thriller I hadn't seen. Started watching Clooney's The American, 3 minutes in it loses me by him killing an unarmed girl for no reason. Skipped to the end to get it out of my queue and there's another dead girl, so presumably he just does that a lot. If you kill a dog or an unarmed girl in a flick, I have zero sympathy.

Started watching the Barry series, which immediately pivots from low-rent killer premise to actors playing at learning to act for Hollywood, because actors are the most interesting people… no. They're fucking walking meatsticks, and best case they hit their marks and say their lines, and shut the fuck up otherwise.

So I gave up and watched something I've seen multiple times, but I know is not crap: The Long Kiss Goodnight, by Shane Black.

Now, the one real problem with this film. What I find implausible isn't the soap opera amnesia/MPD, it's that a homeless woman with no paperwork or cash comes out of the ocean and she's immediately able to get a teaching job, a house, raise a kid, have a square life.

Geena Davis & Sam Jackson are cute, of course, and Geena does a plausible turn as an assassin with mom-butt, but Craig Bierko as the antagonist really steals the show. He hasn't been in anything good since The Thirteenth Floor (1999), I mean literally nothing but soap opera, reality TV, and Scary Movie 4 garbage, just a dumpster fire of a career, but here he's just adorable, smirking and lounging around while still being obviously psychotic, he's got crazy eyes and perfect delivery.

Spoiler:

Oh. I'd forgotten this film, from 1996, basically lays out the plan for the CIA faking 9/11 to get their budget increased. Kill 4,000 people. "Oh, blame it on the Muslims, naturally." Yeah, I dunno IRL if they did it, maybe just gave the Saudis a little push?, but the CIA had motive, means, opportunity, and they're all soulless spooks, so this checks out.

There's a lot of points where the plot makes no sense, you'd just kill someone this annoying and get on with your mission. All the deathtraps, and leaving someone to be tortured (it is the CIA, and they love to torture), and kid hostage scenes, are just Shane Black shane-blacking it up. Standard tricks: 1) Teddy bear has a secret, 2) Running & shooting at a helicopter, 3) Exploded safely out of a house (not in a bathtub this time), 4) Tied up and water-tortured, 5) Kid is a hostage.

Unique tricks: 1) Escape from the freezer, I like the callback to the doll and the vigil candles, as I'm a sucker for inventory puzzles from text adventures. 2) The ice skating kills. 3) Way back at the beginning, One-Eye Jack freaking out at the TV.

Unfortunately some of it relies on the kid (Yvonne Zima, worst surname ever, who now plays soap opera & B-movie victims and hookers), and she has a formless, dumpy look and personality, and maybe they sedated her to get her to hold still, so it's utterly implausible that she grows a spine in one scene. Shouting "you can't be dead" at someone doesn't actually bring them back to life, that only works for Tinker Bell.

You'd think the Canadians would have somebody guarding a major border crossing, especially if there's an overturned tanker and a bunch of US pigs on the other side, even if it's just to offer donuts and say "So I see ya got an overturned tanker, eh?" But no Canadians could be arsed to show up.

I don't buy the Charly personality going back in the box as "Samantha" again. She might compromise to raise the dumpy kid, but there's no way she's back on the PTA and marrying the boring white dude.

Didn't quite earn the ½ for rising above cliché, but it's a perfectly fine shoot-em-up.

★★★★☆

A 'flix adaptation of a Greg Rucka comic; I haven't read this one, but his series Lazarus and Queen & Country are also headed to adaptations. I'm more interested in Lazarus, post-apocalypse feudal lords with engineered female super-soldiers. Greg's got a similar "type" to mine, and buff women is it.

I'm not going to spoil this much, but I need to talk about the first scene.

The Old Guard starts dumb.

These guys are immortal soldiers, like four little Deadpool experiments but not funny, must have dealt with thousands of clients, and they can't figure out that transparently treacherous CIA guy is playing them? Even after walking into an obvious trap, the goons who kill them in the first minutes don't keep an eye on the corpses, search them? Even with non-immortal victims, combat praxis is to remove weapons, flip them over to make sure they're really dead. "No, it's fine guys let's huddle over here with our backs to the corpses." SIGH.

Show doesn't understand that suppressors are not fantasy "silencers", you can't shoot someone "thwip thwip" and it's not heard, suppressors just make guns less incredibly loud. The actual melees are pretty standard but well-choreographed vampire/superhero fights. There's nothing here you haven't seen in Blade 1-3, Deadpool 1-2, every damned Marvel flick, the Punisher series, the Nolan Batman movies, Red, Polar, etc etc, but it's competent enough. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to bullet counts, but they do run out of ammo, and regularly stop and scavenge guns from enemies, which I see too rarely in these things.

Any time a scene is a little bit dark, it goes full cyan/orange filter, forget about being able to see colors. Then the camera moves anywhere lit, and it has mostly unfiltered color. It's super jarring, but I guess I should be happy it wasn't cyan/orange all the time.

There's a wafer-thin backstory exposition for the ancient Scythian "Andy" (Charlize Theron; she's still very cute); Crusader Nicky (Luca Marinelli) and Arabian Joe (Marwan Kenzari) who are in love, there's a good scene with them and some stupid snickering soldiers, but I don't believe love lasts years let alone centuries; Napoleonic soldier Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts); joined by newbie US Marine Nile (Kiki Layne, barely capable of hitting marks and saying lines, her fighting is poor).

No explanation for their ability is given, "that way lies madness" says one of them, and the magic/psychic dreams are unexplained even though Andy mocks religion and magic. I must say I'm always glad when atheists get heroic representation in movies. It's just a scene, but thanks, Greg.

The little bad guy, ex-CIA spook Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is pathetic, and has implausible moments of morality; nobody with morals becomes a spook. It's just kind of insulting. His Zodiac-conspiracy/Andy-stalker whiteboards are full of stuff, but he behaves like an accountant, not a motivated crazy person or soulless spook. Terrible writing, acting, or both?

The big bad guy, Merrick (Harry Melling, aka Dudley Dursley; but he's twice as ugly skinny as he was fat), is a jackass: Scene-chewing, Shakespeare-quoting, openly admitting he just wants money for saving lives, openly sadistic. There's a partial violation of Chekov's Law, he poses with Andy's axe, but then doesn't use it; holding it keeps it from being forgotten before the next scene, but it's still a tease not delivered on.

The plot is linear, most of the twists are obvious. When they're not, it's always revealed in low-stakes environments, and then you just wait out the development of the twist. There are zero surprises if you're paying even minimal attention.

Actual plot ends with 15 minutes of denouement and team-building, like a superhero "Pose as a Team Cuz Shit Just Got Real" scene. Words cannot express how tedious and commercial the ending is. I feel a couple thousand years old like I've seen every possible story when I see a scene this badly written.

Then it has a "post-credits" scene, but of course Netflix makes it hard to watch credits, so they moved it up before even the star credits, let alone the technical credits and classical music. Sit thru your goddamned credits, people. That's when I write these posts, I've just got some notes until then.

★★★☆☆

You know what I liked in this genre? The Losers (2010). Andy Diggle & Jock's comic was well-adapted, the fights were higher-stakes and weirder, the characters had massively more personality & development, and were much more aware of being double- and triple-crossed. Zoe Saldana is a fucking magical special effect all by herself. It didn't do great in the box office, I dunno why.