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The Gray Man

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Gray Goose

In 2003, an unnamed young man (Ryan Gosling), facing a lengthy prison sentence for murder, is approached by the mysterious Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton), who offers to end the man’s sentence then and there if he comes to work for the CIA.  Now, known only as Sierra Six, the man is tasked with the CIA’s most covert operations.  On an assassination mission in Bangkok, Six realizes that his target is a fellow agent (Callan Mulvey), who in his dying moments hands Six a jump drive containing incriminating evidence against the CIA’s smarmy new head, Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page).  Six goes rogue to save himself, and Carmichael enlists psychopathic operative Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) to put him down.  Outmanned and outgunned, Six’s only allies are the now-retired Fitzroy and his agency colleague Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas).

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Prey

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Tribal Warfare

The Predator series has always been willing to play with its formula, tweaking its setup with each new installment to varying degrees of success.  The gimmick this time around is setting the movie in 1719, depicting the alien’s “first hunt on Earth” – this tidbit comes from the trailer, and feels somewhat lazy since it’s never mentioned in the movie.

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Bullet Train

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Trained Killers

I’m a sucker for movies set on modes of transportation.  There’s something about the contained space combined with the inherent sense of momentum that makes for easy, comfortable viewing.  Bullet Train understands the appeal as well, using its propulsive setting to stage a story in the curious subgenre of movies about wacky assassins.

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Top Gun: Maverick

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High as You Can Go

The original Top Gun is not a great movie, but it is an iconic one.  Despite its several risible elements, it’s outlasted conventionally better films in American pop culture by sheer virtue of being so damn memorable.  It’s a factory of classic movie moments, from the orange-soaked, “Danger Zone”-scored opening to the impromptu bar serenade to, yes, the beach volleyball scene.  That these highlights never add up to a fully-formed movie is beside the point; the fact that Top Gun has managed to spawn a sequel thirty-six years later is proof of its unique staying power.

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Jurassic World Dominion

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“Now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs in your dinosaur movie, right?”

As the (alleged) finale of its franchise, Jurassic World Dominion clearly wants to be a bigger, better movie than its two predecessors.  It expands its scope by letting the dinosaurs run rampant across the globe, and what’s at stake is that reliable old chestnut, the survival of mankind.  But these attempts at escalation backfire, cheapening the dinosaurs as well as the plot.  By making the dinosaurs a part of everyday life, the movie robs them of their mystique; and by threatening us with an ending far too bleak for such a corporate piece of filmmaking, it renders the stakes non-existent. 

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Tenet

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Out of Time

In these dire times for movies, one has to be thankful for the mere existence of Tenet, a big-budget, big-screen experience in the age of direct-to-streaming.  Though released well over a month ago, it remains in multiplexes simply due to the lack of any theatrical output to replace it.

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Double Team (1997)

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Bad as I Wanna Be

If nothing else, one can admire the fact that Double Team represents an era of film when studios weren’t afraid to take big risks.  Today, the idea of spending 30 million dollars on an R-rated movie starring a past-his-prime action star and a famous athlete would never get past the pitching stage, let alone greenlit.  And though Double Team’s gamble didn’t pay off, neither in quality nor box-office receipts; I, for one, am happy that this turkey exists.

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The Last Samurai (2003)

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last samurai

Eastern Thomases

It’s easy to dismiss The Last Samurai at first glance as just another entry in the evergreen “soldier betrays his masters and goes native” subgenre.  The formula has proven to be a robust one, but the movies it’s yielded have varied widely in quality – from the acclaimed Dances With Wolves to the beautiful but paper-thin Avatar.  The Last Samurai proves to be one of the category’s best entries, setting itself apart through surefooted execution and a deeply human story. Continue reading →

No Escape (1994)

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no escape

Lord of the Sighs

No Escape begins with a text crawl which informs us that in the then-distant future of 2022, all prisons are controlled by corporations.  It’s a promising enough – though hardly original – basis for a movie, but it turns out to have little bearing on No Escape’s actual narrative, which turns out to be more Mad Max-light than the futuristic prison break movie it initially promises. Continue reading →

Extraction

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extraction

The Bodhi-guard

The first thing one notices about Extraction is the bizarre name of Chris Hemsworth’s character.  Tyler Rake is clearly meant to be a punchy action-hero moniker, but there’s something off about it; it’s both too silly and not silly enough.  The script attempts to get ahead of the criticism by making a knowing joke about it, but it remains a distractingly misguided touch.  In short, the name doesn’t work, but at least the movie (mostly) does. Continue reading →