by ·Comments Off on 28 Years Later (2025, Danny Boyle)

Dad and son leave their tidal island home for a coming-of-age venture into zomb territory, and when their short trip gets derailed and extended they end up meeting skull collector Ralph Fiennes, a doomed Swede, and evil acrobat messiah Jack O’Connell. Second-most interesting part of this movie is learning that the rest of the world is normal modern, with internet and uber eats, and only England is zombie-quarantined – the most interesting is that Boyle is image-making here, not just telling a family/zomb story, and this has got more trick shots/edits in the first four minutes than the entirety of last week’s zombie junk The Sadness. Ends weirdly because they’re setting up a sub-trilogy, so the kid and his dad (Aaron T-J of one of the bad Godzilla movies) and other weirdos will return, but the kid’s mom (Bikeriders wife Jodie Comer), an elite zombie defender with terminal brain cancer, will not.

by ·Comments Off on Running Out of Time 2 (2001, Johnnie To)

Returning from part one are determined detective Lau Ching-wan (suddenly listed as Sean Lau online) and incompetent commissioner Hui Siu-Hung. Not returning is criminal mastermind Andy Lau, who wasn’t faking his fatal illness. In his place we get impossibly suave and brilliant magician-thief Noodle Cheng (the 2001 Zu Warriors), who keeps assaulting the police and playing mind games (is this where the Now You See Me movies came from?). You don’t think of Johnnie To cops & robbers movies as having CG-crud animal companions, but Noodle’s got a bald eagle, and Lau’s men track him down with help from some eagle-tracking ornithologists. Kelly Lin (Sparrow) is a boring important businessperson whose company is being blackmailed by art thief Noodle, and Lam Suet a gambling-addict cop who the thief is personally tormenting. The point of the thief’s scheme was to robin-hood the money from the company to charity, or some such thing. It’s all beautifully shot by the usual crew, Stephen Chow’s regular composer working extra hard on the score. A collapsing-bicycle race joins To’s pantheon of perfect nighttime street scenes along with Throw Down‘s dollar-chase and tree-balloon, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart‘s headlight-silhouette, Sparrow‘s finale, and half of PTU.

by ·Comments Off on Final Destination 6: Bloodlines (2025, Lipovsky & Stein)

Good twists on the formula, becoming both prequel and sequel while still leaving the series open to infinite new premonitions. Kaitlyn has been having someone else’s deathdream, that of her hot young gramma Brec “Iris” Stargirl. She tracks down Iris, who saved so many people that death took forty years to rube-goldberg each of the restaurant survivors and is now coming for their families who never should’ve been born, Back to the Future style.

But Death is catching up fast: Uncle Howie gets lawnmowered at the picnic, which is as full of death-bait as a gymnast’s balance beam. Tattoo Parlor Erik survives a fan-chain attack and shop fire, then a garbage truck compacts his sister, then he’s killed by an MRI machine while absurdly trying to flatline Peanut Allergy Bobby in order to escape Death. That’s right, they’ve learned the Death Rules from Tony Todd (who finally gets his own lore besides just being the Harbinger Coroner), though it never seems to help. The three survivors retreat to grandma’s fortress, but it explodes and everyone dies. The most suspenseful bit was when someone almost says the words “clear river.”

The directors are following-up their live-action Kim Possible movie, and one of them made a 2010s Leprechaun sequel, jeez. Sequels that are named Bloodline(s): Final Destination 6, Hellraiser 4, Wrong Turn 5, Tremors 5, a Rosario Dawson Wonder Woman, and Pet Sematary 4 (which features “Bad Moon Rising” just like this movie does).

by ·Comments Off on Through the Olive Trees (1994, Abbas Kiarostami)

Part one was a straightforward drama, part two was a reenactment of events that took place after filming that drama, and part three is a reenactment of the filming of part two, whew.

It spins off into a side drama, as the actors cast as And Life Goes On‘s newlyweds know each other – Hossein wants to marry Tahereh, her family says no, and she won’t say anything at all. After filming he follows her and… something happens in extreme-wide-shot which I simply couldn’t make out on the VHS when I first watched this, but seemed clearer now, before Godfrey Cheshire further complicated it.

Or possibly all three Koker movies were made to explore AK’s deep interest in homework, and we’d more accurately call it the Homework Quadrilogy.

Watched all the box set extras. The included Cinema de Notre Temps episode is fantastic, a precursor to 10 on Ten. Crew follows him around as he drives familiar routes and looks for people he knows and interacts with random pedestrians. He finds the Friend’s Home kids yet again, catches up with the star of The Traveler, and teases them all about their acting… talks about truth and fiction, philosophically and in the specifics of his films.

by ·Comments Off on Mission: Impossible 8: The Final Reckoning (2025, Christopher McQuarrie)

This is what I imagine the Fast & Furious movies are like: filling the gaps between action scenes with sappy talk and meaningful glances between friends and family. When everyone shuts up about how meaningful are their relationships and how many times we’ve saved/endangered the world, the highlight is two nearly wordless action scenes in vehicles. In the submarine I think Cruise says one thing (“torpedo tube”), and the plane fight gets better when Esai stops supervillain-monologuing.

by ·Comments Off on The Last Ten Minutes vol. 30: Superman edition

Source Code (2011, Duncan Jones)

Off to a bad start, since justwatch says peacock has got the magician-heist Now You See Me movies, but I’m not seeing it on the damn roku… it brings up this instead, the Moon director’s train-bomber Quantum Leap time-loop thingie, so let’s just see. Donnie Darko is in a quiet moment, calling an army buddy’s dad, while Vera Farmiga discovers the real Donnie in a medical tube, I guess dreaming all this? His smiling girlfriend Michelle Monaghan doesn’t know he’s a chewed-up torso whose brain is running a simulation, but nervous lab supervisor Jeffrey Wright does, and is mad at Vera for pulling his plug, though Donnie’s dream continues – it’s all like if Deja Vu sucked. When the credits come up, the streamer thinks I should watch some incredibly unpopular (100 views) generic garbage, oh boy.

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Victor Crowley (2017, Adam Green)

I think this is Hatchet 4. Four unpleasant actors are trapped in a crashed airplane while Vic attacks it with a circular saw from the outside until they flee into the swamp, hide, then fight back. One guy plays the same character he played in part three, but not the same one he played in part two or one, hmmm. “Oh no, he died.”

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The Dark Knight Rises (2012, Christopher Nolan)

Prime still has ads, so I guess we’re stuck with HBO – let’s give this one 15 minutes since it’s a long movie by a best-picture winner. Marion Cotillard is evil, Anne Hathaway is good, Gary Oldman is kidnapped: we’re all caught up. Futuretanks and cybercycles and batdrones battle weightlessly on the city streets, the music louder than the explosions. It seems Oppenheimer wasn’t his first nuclear ride, as Batman nukes himself to save the city – OR DOES HE?

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Man of Steel (2013, Zack Snyder)

Oh it’s very loud, as Supe (“Soup”) rescues Amy Adams from a black hole to a ruined city where evil Michael Shannon is angry and destroys the city even more, but he cannot hurt Soup because they’re both cartoons. Is he to be reached? He’s not to be reached! I like that it’s making little jokes amongst the big fights, reminds me of Supermen of yore and their friends Richard Pryor and Kevin Spacey. Shannon can survive hurling through exploding satellites in space, he can peel back the mountains, peel back the sky, stomp gravity into the floor, but he can’t take a classic Steven Seagal neck-snap move. Soup invents his Clark alter-ego in the movie’s final moments, exciting.

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Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016, Zack Snyder)

Same(?) ruined city but now Soup is dead and Amy Adams is sad. This is the problem with overlong movies: the last ten minutes are all coda, so I’ll never know what killed him. Also not sure what CG monster muck Jesse Eisenberg was dealing with when the army picked him up. The Daily Planet’s front page is pretty loose with punctuation. “Amazing Grace” at the funeral is giving me The Rehearsal flashbacks. At least there’s hardly any dialogue because everyone in the movie is so unspeakably sad, until Batfleck shows up to ask Wonder Woman to form The Avengers. I miss Bale’s batvoice, but Eisenberg is fun. A guy who started his directing career with a Living Dead remake can’t help but end on a jumping coffin.

by ·Comments Off on Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989, Kazuki Omori)

A very silly movie, rarely ever good, with big sweeping symphonic music that sometimes gets close to ripping off Star Wars. Jeers to Criterion for getting people to take a 1980s Godzilla movie seriously enough that I was tricked into wasting an evening on it.

Army weapon temporarily turns Godz into a Trapper Keeper graphic:

Competing English-speaking forces kill each other to capture Godzilla DNA, then a plant lab gets blown up, then a psychic girl speaks to plants. Botanist creates a plant monster and the next time hitmen come to steal secrets they get Little-Shopped. Plant monster and Godzilla fight.

What? Your IVYSAUR evolved into BIOLLANTE

Some of the human players: Yoshiko Tanaka (right) starred in Imamura’s Black Rain the same year, the plant scientist had starred in Samurai Spy in the 60s, the psychic girl became a Godzilla regular.

Godzilla will return, and return, and return

by ·Comments Off on Ghost in the Shell 2 (2004, Mamoru Oshii)

Very CG movie, but that feels appropriate for the content. Some idiot corporation has produced a bulletproof kung-fu sexbot, and the cybercops have to stop the killing while negotiating different levels of reality, like a boring eXistenZ.

by ·Comments Off on Scorched Earth (2024, Thomas Arslan)

Our man Trojan is back, still doing clean, efficient jobs, and still getting screwed over afterwards when the client decides to kill his team instead of paying.

Smooth-haired hitman Viktor kills Computer Chris first, then old buddy Luca, while museum lawyer Rebecca is working both sides trying to recover the stolen painting.

Computer Chris is apparently old enough to have been in Petzold’s The State I Am In, Luca had parts in Head-On and the latest Guy Ritchie joint, new girl Marie Leuenberger does a lotta TV and hopefully has a bright future.