by ·Comments Off on The Fall Guy (2024, David Leitch)

A good-time action-comedy that I could see myself watching a few more times (if not as many times as The Nice Guys) starring our most charismatic action-comedy lead Ryan Gosling as a stunt guy who got injured then set up by his boss (Aaron T-J of Bullet Train and Bad Godzilla) and has to team with his director/ex Emily Blunt (of Edge of Tomorrow, which it’s past time to rewatch) and stunt coordinator Winston Duke (Us, ditto) to clear his name and stop the real criminals by harnessing all their movie-stunt skills and trickery.

by ·Comments Off on Oppenheimer (2023, Christopher Nolan)

The Victor Garber-looking prosecutor is Jason Clarke – he ruins Oppenheimer’s career in 1954, sent by Atomic Energy Commissioner Robert Downey Jr, whose own career is then ruined by Oppenheimer-loyal scientists in a cabinet non-confirmation hearing in 1959.

Florence Pugh is here to have a steamy affair with Oppy, and Emily Blunt plays the steaming mad wife. General Matt Damon helps link to Nolan’s other film involving black holes. This inverts Interstellar by placing its avant-science imagery over the early backstory segments and saving the real-world tedium for the final hour – an extraordinarily talky movie. I’d willingly watch it again, but if I can spare three hours for Cillian Murphy movies, I might just watch Red Eye twice.

by ·Comments Off on A Quiet Place (2018, John Krasinski)

Does a good job building suspense, throwing misfortune and accident (and a nail sticking up through the wooden stairs) into the already-fraught situation of Emily Blunt trying to give birth while surrounded by alien predators who kill anything that makes noise. Some stock horror/thriller bits, including the dad who signs his love to the kids before his sacrificial scream to distract the sound-sensitive aliens from the kids’ hiding place. Great to see Wonderstruck star Millicent Simmonds killing it in another film already.

I watched the movie in an unquiet place… in the future the Marcus Theaters should maybe check which auditoriums are emitting a distracting electrical buzzing sound, and play movies with QUIET in their title on a different screen.

As far as the plotting goes… Calum Marsh said it best on letterboxd: “lol @ john krasinski’s huge expository whiteboard”.

by ·Comments Off on Sicario (2015, Denis Villeneuve)

After this and Edge of Tomorrow, Emily Blunt is an action star. Though she was no hero in this one – she’d talk big, but ultimately she’s being used by compromised higher-ups who have no interest in her stupid morals. Josh Brolin is a boss, working with Benicio Del Toro, who turns out to be consolidating cartel power, I think, and/or taking personal revenge, by going all James Bond and assassinating some Mexicans at the end. Blunt and partner Daniel Kaluuya (star of my favorite Black Mirror episode) are forced along for the ride.

Think I like this Villeneuve fella. Storytelling is bizarre (probably plays better the second time around) with some groany dialogue and troop behavior but filming is nice. People said it was tense and scary but I still think El Sicario Room 164 is scarier.

M. D’Angelo:

Kate is incredibly strong in a situation where her strength is useless. This is a deeply pessimistic film about the near-impossibility of overcoming institutional corruption — one that’s honest enough to have its protagonist struggle for a long time about whether what she’s witnessing even is corruption.

by ·Comments Off on Edge of Tomorrow (2014, Doug Liman)

AKA Live.Rinse.Repeat. I didn’t recognise a mustachioed Bill Paxton in charge of the fighting unit which disgraced PR guy Tom Cruise gets sent to. After Tom’s gruesome melty death from the acid blood of a rare alien beast, he gains its power to re-live a day over and over again, retaining memories from previous iterations. So it’s a less romantic Groundhog Day, but instead of the occasional comic death scene, it’s constant death scenes, Cruise having to get every single detail exactly right or else die, often at the hands of lesser aliens, or shot by teammate Emily Blunt (Looper), who built a super-soldier reputation because she once had the same Groundhog Day alien-blood power.

Liman made Swingers and Jumper. Based on a novel, adapted by Chris McQuarrie (Jack Reacher, The Usual Suspects) and the Butterworths (James Brown bio Get On Up).

Tom Cruise face-melt: