There are some high profile series dropping this week, with work involving Neil Gaiman, and another led by Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone. Let’s jump straight in. This feature got last week off, so this week’s will cover the last two.
New series by women come from Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. New films come from South Africa and the U.S.
NEW SERIES
Dead Boy Detectives (Netflix) co-showrunner Beth Schwartz
Set in the same universe as Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, “Dead Boy Detectives” follow two boys who chose not to enter the afterlife. They’d rather stay behind and investigate the cases of other ghosts who linger.
Beth Schwartz showruns with Steve Yockey. Schwartz also wrote and produced on “Arrow” and “Sweet Tooth”.
All 8 episodes of “Dead Boy Detectives” are out on Netflix.
Under the Bridge (Hulu) half-directed by women
A 14-year-old girl named Reena never returns home from a friend’s party. Those attending are accused of her murder. Lily Gladstone, Archie Panjabi, and Riley Keough star.
Catherine Hardwicke (“Thirteen”, “Lords of Dogtown”), Nimisha Mukerji (“The Way Home”), and Geeta Vasant Patel (“Ahsoka”, “The Great”) are among the episode directors. “Under the Bridge” is created by “Not Okay” writer Quinn Shephard.
The first three episodes of “Under the Bridge” are out on Hulu, with a new one every Wednesday for a total of 8.
Kaiju No. 8 (Crunchyroll) co-directed by Kamiya Tomomi
Kafka is employed to clean up after Japan’s battles against giant monsters. He’s flunked the exam to join the Defense Force many times, but after a small kaiju enters his body, Kafka develops the ability to turn into one. He decides to apply one more time while keeping this a secret.
Kamiya Tomomi directs with Miya Shigeyuki.
The first two episodes of “Kaiju No. 8” are out on Crunchyroll, with a new one arriving every Saturday.
Deliver Me (Netflix) directed by Anna Zackrisson
The shooting of a boy by his best friend is dissected in this Swedish mystery.
Anna Zackrisson directs. She’s also helmed series “The Restaurant” and “Snoanglar”. She got her start as a set dresser before moving into assistant direction – including first assistant director on “Let the Right One In”.
All 5 episodes of “Deliver Me” are out on Netflix.
NEW MOVIES
Miller’s Girl (Netflix) directed by Jade Halley Bartlett
A creative writing assignment leads to a teacher developing an inappropriate relationship with a student. Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman star.
This is the first film from director Jade Halley Bartlett.
“Miller’s Girl” is on Netflix.
Real Estate Sisters (Netflix) directed by Reabetswe Moeti
Two sisters aim to take their real estate agency from selling ramshackle apartments into the high-end neighborhood. They finally get the go-ahead on a mansion, with only one problem – the dead body they find inside of a fridge.
The South African film is directed and co-written by Reabetswe Moeti.
“Real Estate Sisters” is out on Netflix tomorrow, Friday April 26.
CW: discussion of suicide, domestic and workplace abuse Spoiler Warning for a “Honkai Star Rail” sidequest
This morning I read about a stabbing massacre at an Australian mall. This evening I read about the Iranian drone strike on Israel, an escalation that shouldn’t happen in reaction to an escalation that shouldn’t have happened in reaction to an escalation that shouldn’t have happened ad nauseam, to which someone is likely to escalate. And to escape, I watched a show about the end of the world. “Fallout” is giddy. It’s cathartic. It’s simple to watch every fear transpire, and imagine that humanity will still have the capacity to laugh. Maybe that’s the American catharsis, laughter as a buffer against breaking. I find myself drawn to so much comedy these days. “Fallout” is a place to imagine we’ve already broken and yet still laugh.
The show’s great, funny, colorfully macabre, cynically absurd, a demented displacement of 60s kitsch into a wasteland so void that the kitsch is all that defines the survivors. Lucy’s grown up in a vault where the privileged paid to hide after the bomb dropped. Maximus is a hopeful aspirant in a religious order of mechanized soldiers. The Ghoul is woken up every few decades when there’s a bounty large enough to warrant it. All three search the wasteland for a fugitive scientist.
I’ll tell you about how I felt while watching it, but bear with me; I’ve never reviewed an existential crisis before.
Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass
photo by Kaelan Burkett, Art Forum
I once saw a contemporary art installation by Trenton Doyle Hancock called Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass. It featured towering mounds you could walk into and under, each built from decades of jettisoned trash. Toys and widgets and disused knick-knacks, furniture of bygone eras, out-of-date rugs and wallpaper, scrap all cleaned and well-maintained, organized on shelves inside, and the mounds echoed slightly. The colored walkway that led one to the next was interspersed with: a cut-out living room paused in mid-evening, rows and rows of boardgames, a picket fence front yard behind which self-standing Halloween costumes were caught frozen on their way to trick-or treat.
It felt like some alien archaeologist had stumbled on a dead planet, collected our discarded refuse, and organized it into a children’s museum, defining the footprint we once made by the landfill we produced. It felt like a slow loss of hope – instead of staring at the stars and feeling the peace and wonder of being infinitesimal, to stare at endless dolls and plastic balls and one-use discards and feel like each human life added up to our contribution to a chunk of landfill.
Between those two things, there is a tension. As a Millennial, we were taught to think we could change the world. The world tried to nip this in the bud early and often, in ways that repeatedly proved why we were taught that way. And yet the times when we do create a change, our impostor syndrome is so deeply ingrained that our first reaction is to take the credit that community efforts deserve and grant it instead to a celebrity or politician. We were taught to wonder, even as we stare at the world and feel that wonder slipping away bit by bit. We still know the right thing to do is to try to change things, even as we fear we’re tilting at windmills and become more isolated. Just getting to the starting point on every effort feels more deeply bogged in mud every year. We’ve spent eight years bolstering against waves of fascism and nearly triple that knowing that our futures were traded away for oil profits, private military contractors, and the militarization of police.
‘Envision a Rose Forthcoming’, “Honkai Star Rail”
There’s a quest in “Honkai Star Rail” I recently played. It’s called ‘Envision a Rose Forthcoming’. On a journey through the stars, you stop at a tourist destination called Penacony. It was once a prison, now repurposed as a hotel, where you come to participate in a dreamscape. You meet a shopgirl named Cocona, who works in the dream, underpaid, disillusioned, abused, ambition carved away. To learn about her past, you dive into her dreams within the dreamscape. There are two moments of choice within this quest:
The first is a false dialogue option where Cocona confronts her parents. You can choose her independence, to continue studying music, to take a risk…but it’s not a real option. The dialogue repeats. Cocona’s parents have a name to maintain, a history of abuse to keep her in line. They demand that she owes them. You can choose her independence again, but the option disappears. The dialogue repeats. The only choice left is to stay under thumb. Anything else was an illusion. She has other options for escape, but as they disappear and she slips behind at work, her boss and coworkers become abusive.
The second choice comes when she stands on the ledge of a building. You can grab Cocona or let her go. You’re in her dreamscape, itself inside of a constructed dreamscape, confused about what will happen either way. Words erupt physically out of the air around her, suggesting the choice is a metaphor you’ve misunderstood, questioning if the kinder thing is to just let go. I lost count of how many times it asks, of how many dialogue choices you have to make, of how many layers deep and re-phrasings try to confuse, convince, or outright trick you. Is letting go a metaphor about her feeling freedom that she’ll carry from the dream to reality, or is it just releasing the one thin tether of care that still connects her to life? Do we use that earlier false choice as a guide when we’re six layers deep, and guess that holding on is a false choice we should just give up on? Every mechanic in the game tries to convince you to let go. It captures how tenuous that moment is, however fair or unfair, to be that one thread a person has back to continuing. It captures how tenuous those choices are, how doing the right thing five times but not the sixth can be the hair’s breadth between someone living or dying.
The quest has two endings derived from how your actions in Cocona’s dream influence what she chooses to do in the real world. The sadder one is what you’d expect, and it happens even if you chose to hold on five times but failed the sixth. I’m glad I’m stubborn and get angry at games in these moments, choosing to do what I would do…or what I hope I would do. And yet, how often can any of us do the right thing six times in a row, or ten, or dozens, when the effort wears us down and our impostor syndrome’s already told us the choices we make have no consequence?
‘Envision a Rose Forthcoming’ is the most impactful moment I’ve played in a game. Something from it galvanized in me like a stone. It’s some strange melancholy housed in the middle of a game that balances Pratchett-esque humor and digging through trash cans against towering political trade-offs and somber reflections on those sacrificed to achieve them. From that bit of storytelling: the acknowledgment that if we do the right thing all but once or even all the time, or even perfectly and make no misstep, it still might not be enough, that if we change the world dozens of times and fail only the once, it still might be one step short.
I can’t write a review of “Fallout” properly because what it makes me feel is existential crisis. In its unreal, jokey vision of the post-apocalypse, there is also the crystallization of a sense of doom so ingrained and generational and ever-present that we treat it in the most realistic way we know – we practice laughing at it, not out of ignorance, but out of recognition, as if preparing for its inevitability, honing our coping mechanisms, leveling up what makes us endure the breaking. I can only write the shape of the things around it, the other pieces of art that shift in me as “Fallout” nestles down between them.
Misery Loves the Company – “Lethal Company”
“Lethal Company” was an out-of-nowhere hit last year, an indie multiplayer game about players hopping from moon to moon. They collect scrap for a company, to feed a voracious monster they must visit every three runs. The quota keeps on going up until it’s nearly impossible to hit in just three landings, and you’re charged by the company for every little piece of equipment, to travel to each moon, and for whenever a player goes missing. Fail a quota and the game is over. You restart the cycle from the beginning, and the only reward (thus far) is to achieve higher quotas and feel more stress about them.
There aren’t big spikes of unfairness; the game is just a massive plateau of it. The procedural generation means hundreds of thousands of level layouts are possible, including many unworkable ones. It may spawn a hallways full of landmines and monsters that cuts off access to an entire section of the facility you’re scavenging, essentially torpedoing that landing. The facilities are labyrinths, most scrap is deep inside them, and multiple monsters are far faster than you are.
It’s a game that intentionally uglies itself and is built around players being at an enormous disadvantage. So why did it become the most popular paid game at the end of 2023? “Lethal Company” speaks to the call of the void. There’s a strong possibility that people alive today will see a hard shift in how this planet lives – whether through economic crisis, the spark of nationalist fervor, or simply climate change proceeding apace if we can’t fully beat the first two. There’s a sense in us that what we do…may not ultimately matter much.
“Lethal Company” offers the call of the void as a toy. That may seem like a horrible idea at first. Why should we play with such a horrific concept that lurks at the backs of our minds? Yet play is coping. Play is practice. Play is anticipation. It’s a form of acknowledgment in us of something that’s very much there, that culturally and globally is there, yet that we don’t allow ourselves to recognize in many other mediums, let alone our daily life.
It’s refreshing to play something overwhelming that we can laugh at together when life is often overwhelming in ways that make us feel isolated. Being overwhelmed in “Lethal Company” is a feature, but as frightening as it can be, its special magic makes being overwhelmed frightening one minute and the chaos it causes utterly hilarious the next. Once, I turned around to find a snare flea crawling after me. It’s a relatively minor monster that attaches to your head and makes you drop your loot. It’s only dangerous when you’re alone, since you need someone else to get it off. I was alone, though. I was near a precipice, familiar with the layout of the space, and could see the flea was far enough away that it couldn’t jump quite yet. I had a second to think. Maybe I could give myself another second. I stepped back, and plummeted, loot and body disappeared forever. I was completely safe in that situation, even calm, and yet made the only decision that could have spelled doom. When my team left the planet, after we were fined for lost players, I waited for my teammate to tell his story about his equally dumb death and then told mine. Everyone shared the part of it they saw, on the map or watching me play after their own deaths. It didn’t matter whether we made quota or not. At some point, at some number, whether this one or another, the company would deem we’d failed and spit us out into space. It mattered that we had stories, experiences to share and identify with. If all of us were spinning uselessly down the drain, then at least we were doing it together.
That is cynical, but “Lethal Company” is a place to gather and satirize the way we’re asked to live. So too, similar games like “Content Warning”. As in life, we fail in ways that are ridiculous and nonsensical, where we do the right thing and fail, or make one wrong decision and fail. Even when we succeed, the quota keeps going up. There’s no such thing as a win state, there’s just a higher quota. The way to resist it, to set it aside for one brief minute, is to come away with stories, with experiences, with something to share, with tales of utter failure or shining moments of success, to have met an unfairness and loss we all understand, momentarily bond over our common experiences of them, and laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing can get. The developer promises endgame content in a future update. Perhaps it will make our toils amount to a way out of our fate. In the meantime, we work to keep that chance alive. We are overwhelmed because we’re human. The last part is what’s important.
Maybe I connect these things because artists and storytellers keep making wonderlands that tell us recognizing an existential crisis is not the same as personally having one. Sometimes that divide is lost. We act like the crisis in another or in the world is something we can choose to personally have or not. But the crisis isn’t ours to embody, it’s ours to respond to. If play is practice, and artists keep telling us this is what we need to practice, we really ought to be listening.
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A tiny meteorite crashes through the window of a snowbound New York apartment complex. It’s an egg, and it hatches a smart, little spider. Charlotte is a 12-year-old girl who creeps through the apartments’ vents and idolizes her stepfather’s career in graphic novel illustration. She takes to the spider immediately, raising it and keeping it hidden from the other residents. “Sting” is an old-fashioned horror premise. It’s not long before that alien spider is causing havoc and threatening pets and even humans.
“Sting” is both an easy and a difficult movie to like. I loved that at its core, “Sting” is a Spielbergian drama of Charlotte’s overworked, fracturing family. She feels ignored even when she isn’t and this is directly out of fear that her stepdad will leave just like her father did. She resents her baby brother, who her mother and stepdad had together. She worries that he’s her replacement.
Meanwhile, her father and mother are barely keeping up with their jobs, trying to balance time with their kids against ever-changing work demands. The everyday drama of a stepfather trying to connect to his stepdaughter as both parents hang on and try to protect their infant son…it gives the creature feature stakes a lot more weight.
That element isn’t new to the genre, and it’s not going to compete with a traditional family drama that only focuses on that aspect, but it’s treated with a lot of patience and interest here. That leads me to be forgiving of how inconsistent and even shallow a lot of the actual creature horror is.
The biggest weakness in “Sting” is that it can’t settle on which subgenre of horror it wants to be. At times it’s intentionally B-grade. Every performance outside the core family veers toward camp but stops just short of embracing it entirely. But “Sting” also wants to be an atmospheric slow build that grounds us in the reality of this family.
It shows off splatter horror moments for shock value, which is fine if that’s what it wants to be, but then cuts away from other gory scenes that would actually clue us into the logic of how this creature hunts and eats. Splatter horror can have a purpose when it acts as a window into something strange. When it’s just there to make you jump, then it better work most every time or you’ll find yourself questioning why it’s there.
This indecision also undercuts the most important aspect of the film – the portrayal of Charlotte. For much of the film, she’s framed and lit like an evil child would be in a supernatural horror movie. You know the kind: where a secret devil spawn toddler pushes their nanny down the stairs or lights someone on fire with their mind. Charlotte doesn’t do any of that because it isn’t that kind of film, but for some reason she’s filmed like that, as if she has some awareness of her spider’s evildoings. She never does – the writing directly tells us that she’s surprised at certain discoveries – but it often films her like she does. It’s a tremendously mixed message in terms of depicting a character.
Charlotte is a complete jerk, which is normal for some kids at that age. And we’d feel for her being a jerk and the reasons why if she wasn’t constantly filmed staring out of shadows as if she were secretly evil. The film completely forgets it ever did this by the time it needs her to become the protagonist of the creature feature that’s been going on the whole time. It’s enough to make me wonder if there was a late script change about her character’s path and level of understanding/relationship to the spider.
This is by no means the fault of Alyla Browne. She gives a good performance as Charlotte. Visual presentation of characters is the primary way directors shape our judgments of them, so our empathy for Charlotte’s circumstances and why she acts out is completely undercut by the film’s visual approach to her as evil…until the film remembers, wait we might want the audience to actually root for her. It’s such a strange and ill-advised choice.
The relationship of realistic family drama to an apartment building full of near-camp characters is done awkwardly, but this again is something we’ve seen in enough horror films to bear up under. Yet the addition of a comic relief character who actively sabotages multiple otherwise tense scenes is unforgivable.
But hey, we don’t watch creature features for their consistency. Part of the appeal can be cheap thrills. And sure, some break through to become something much more – “Jaws”, “The Thing”, “Alien” – but it’s certainly not what we expect of all of them.
On that level, “Sting” is a fun, low commitment creature feature that earns a lot of points for including many practical special effects. I like the story of the overburdened family at its core even if it’s undercut by some filmmaking choices. It’s hard to go wrong with a giant spider stalking an apartment building’s worth of characters trapped by a snowstorm. I’m glad I saw it because if you put a creature feature in front of me, I will find reasons to like it. Even the most flawed are perfect for a slow Saturday afternoon when your brain just needs to go to seed for a while, and “Sting” isn’t the most flawed. It just had the elements to have been much better.
“Sting” wants to be so many other horror movies to the point where it doesn’t really know when it’ll be effective to implement which influence. It tonally misfires constantly in ways where you think a scene would’ve been far more effective if the filmmakers simply trusted it. Instead, it feels like they panic that the scene isn’t active enough and add whatever other element is hanging around, even if it makes no sense to do so.
“Sting” is in theaters now. Please be aware of COVID risks in your area.
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It’s a big week for new series, with seven showrun or directed by women. These cover post-apocalypse, near-future, slice-of-life, thriller, and a pair of mysteries. I’m always fascinated by what comes to us from other countries, and how streaming services choose to pursue certain markets. For instance, Hulu continues chasing Netflix’s lead in the burgeoning K-drama audience, as Netflix continues making deep inroads into producing and licensing Japanese live-action work.
There used to be a lot of competition for European shows between Max and Netflix, but since Discovery effectively took over Warner Bros. and HBO Max – and decided they didn’t want to pay European residuals – that area has been left for Netflix to farm. You’ll notice all three titles from continental Europe this week are on Netflix – that’s pretty usual these days. (The one from the U.K. is, too, but everyone tends to bring in British work.)
This week, new shows by women come from France, Japan, Korea, the U.K., and the U.S. New movies by women come from Spain and Sweden.
Based on a beloved video game franchise filled with off-kilter humor, a woman who’s lived her life in an underground vault must trek a post-apocalyptic world filled with radiation and mutants.
Geneva Robertson-Dworet showruns with Graham Wagner. She also co-wrote the screenplays for “Captain Marvel” and the 2018 “Tomb Raider”.
All 8 episodes of “Fallout” are out on Amazon Prime immediately.
Blood Free (Hulu) showrunner Lee Soo Yeon
Genetically engineered meat has replaced the consumption of animal meat, but the corporation that’s brought about this revolution is approaching turmoil. Rumors swirl about CEO Yoon Ja Yoo, and her bodyguard Chae Woon must engage a future world of industrial espionage.
Showrunner Lee Soo Yeon also wrote on “Stranger” and “Life”.
The two-episode premiere of “Blood Free” is out on Hulu. A new episodes arrives every Wednesday.
Anthracite (Netflix) co-showrun by Fanny Robert
A reporter goes missing in the Alps, leading his daughter – a sleuth in her own right – to a remote and unsettling mountain town. The French series was filmed in Switzerland.
Fanny Robert showruns with Maxime Berthemy. Robert also wrote on “Profilage” and produced on “Passport to the World”.
All 5 episodes are out on Netflix.
Tonari no Yokai-san (Crunchyroll) directed by Yamauchi Ami
A mountain town sees humans and supernatural beings living a cozy life side by side.
This is Yamauchi Ami’s second series as director after 2022’s “Ryman’s Club”.
“Tonari no Yokai-san” is on Crunchyroll. The premiere is out, with a new episode every Saturday.
Baby Reindeer (Netflix) directed by Weronika Tofilska, Josephine Bornebusch
A stand-up comic is stalked from gig to gig and in his private life, forcing him to confront both his stalker and long-buried trauma. The series is based on Richard Gadd’s one-man play, and he writes the series.
Weronika Tofilska and Josephine Bornebursch direct. Tofilska co-wrote the exceptional “Love Lies Bleeding” and has directed on “The Irregulars”, “Hanna”, and “His Dark Materials”. Bornebusch wrote on “Love Me” and “Orca”.
All 8 episodes of “Baby Reindeer” are on Netflix immediately.
Mission: Yozakura Family (Hulu) directed by Minato Mirai
Taiyo loses his family in a car crash. He’s comforted by his longtime friend Mutsumi. They eventually marry, but he must become a spy – just like every other member of the family.
Minato Mirai has also directed on “Bofuri” and “The Misfit of Demon King Academy”.
“Mission: Yozakura Family” has its premiere on Hulu, with a new episode every Sunday.
Destiny (Netflix) showrunner Yoshida Noriko
(No embeddable trailer out, but you can see one on Netflix here.)
Kanade becomes a prosecutor, spurred on by the death of her prosecutor father. Years after she splintered from her friends in law school, she takes up the case that split them up…and it may reveal new information about her father’s death.
Yoshida Noriko showruns and writes.
The premiere of “Destiny” is on Netflix, with new episodes every Tuesday.
NEW MOVIES
Love, Divided (Netflix) directed by Patricia Font
A young pianist named Valentina conflicts with – and falls for – David, a noisy inventor. I believe this is the feature film acting debut for Spanish singer-songwriter Aitana.
The Spanish comedy is helmed by Patricia Font and written by Marta Sanchez.
“Love, Divided” arrives on Netflix tomorrow, Friday April 12.
Stolen (Netflix) directed by Ellke Marja Eira
A Saami woman tracks down a killer in a world where her culture is being choked out. The Swedish film is told in Saami and Swedish.
Elle Marja Eira directs.
“Stolen” is out on Netflix tomorrow, Friday April 12.
You know when you walk out of a Marvel movie and your friends who are way more knowledgeable about superhero comics delve into all the references you didn’t recognize? “Did you see WinRar the Tattletale in the background?” “They’re obviously setting up a Vape Knight movie.” “Yeah, but will it be Hays Code Vape Knight or the gritty one from after Jerry Bruckheimer ousted Potempkin Arbuckle at short-lived imprint Def Leppard Publishing and Self-Storage?” “Was that Stan Lee as Beepulon the Rampaging Kildeer?” “Was that Spike Lee as Johnny Five?”
It’s like, “Dude, I don’t know, you promised me we’d go to Tasty Burger afterward.” “Nah, I meant Arby’s.” “This deal’s getting worse all the time.”
And it might stick with you until one day you see “Godzilla Times Kong” and you’re like, “Obviously that’s a reference to the Elasmosaurus in ‘King Kong’ sequel ‘Son of Kong.’ And the only place they can go in the next film is ‘Invasion of the Astro-Monster’, it’s only logical.” And then you realize that after two hours of watching Godzilla and Kong, the real monster along the way was you.
My point is, the way people felt when Samuel L. Jackson showed up or Captain America lifted a construction tool is the way I feel when Planet X gets name-dropped or Godzilla gets a Super Saiyan makeover.
This is all a roundabout way of describing that “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is a big ball of absolute nonsense that is very easy to turn your brain off and enjoy. But if you love kaiju films your brain’s going to go haywire at the avalanche of incredibly niche genre references. If you grew up watching every giant monster movie there was, “Godzilla to the Power of Kong” is like pulling a warm, reassuring blanket up to your chin as you stay up too late the night before Christmas, or whatever holiday of your choice meant you bagged a bunch of neat kit.
It’s just happiness, and even if you aren’t a walking monologue of kaiju appreciation, it’s still that big ball of nonsense with a bopping synthwave score and Rebecca Hall reciting exposition with all her heart like she’s running down the list of potential side effects for flying Boeing.
By the way, the ‘x’ in “Godzilla x Kong” is silent. It’s “Godzilla Kong”. The ‘x’ is just visual, like in “Spy x Family”, although I still think “Spy Times Family” describes the show even better. The ‘x’ is meaningless, like the ‘3’ in “Alien Cubed” or the director in “Alien: Covenant”. Just pronounce the ‘x’ like you would in ‘Xavier’ but not ‘Xavier’ or ‘Xavier’.
There’s a plot and I could describe it to you, but believe me it’s not going to make a lick of difference. Godzilla and Kong spend half the movie running around doing prep work for the big weekend fight, and then the organizer’s like, “Hey, we gots two new kids in from Hobokens, how you twos feel about tag team?” Except the prep work is mostly destroying cities and the tag team match is…mostly destroying cities. The plot is asking how many cities got destroyed in the entirety of the Monarch franchise and adding +1 to that number.
You might love it, you might think this is the most ridiculous movie you’ve seen in years, or you might be like me and think it’s the most ridiculous movie you’ve seen in years and love it. It’s a Michael Bay movie for people who hate Michael Bay movies, so: a crowd pleaser.
If you’re someone who thinks action movies have become too reliant on visual effects, and have replaced tight plotting with oblique storytelling, you won’t like “Godzilla lim [f(Kong) – (m*kong + synthwave)]”. If you’re here for some of the daddest jokes that have ever been visually punned, literally the inciting incident is they keep detecting a seismic/electric/radio wave from the past or…wait for it…a retrowave.
2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong” crafted jokes out of broadly recognizable cinematic moments ranging from “Shrek” to “Jaws”. Don’t worry, “Godzilla x Kong” does the same with films like “Inception” and “They Live”, but also ropes in things like the body slam from “Godzilla vs. Megaguirus” for an elegant Godzilla cliff diving scene. Don’t know “Megaguirus”? That’s fine, Godzilla’s cliff diving in slow-motion, it’s still funny.
Mind, this is a wildly different interpretation of the mythos than you had in “Godzilla Minus One”. If you saw that film and you want more “Godzilla”, the kaiju has been through at least 38 films. In some he was a parable of humanity’s violence unto ourselves, as in the 1954 original, “Minus One”, or “Shin Godzilla”. In others, he’s been a fun-loving hero with some sweet dance moves, as in “Invasion of Astro-Monster” or “vs. Megalon”.
The Westernized Monarch franchise’s approach has evolved from Godzilla being a terrifying cosmic horror into a terrifying cosmic horror who doesn’t know he’s in a comedy. His job remains the same: scream at everything, chew on the scenery, punch his co-stars. Truly Christian Bale’s finest performance.
Will you like the film? When you were growing up, did you use Winamp’s Visualizer cause you liked listening to your favorite music but with the addition of pretty colors? Do you want to see Godzilla find his favorite puppy bed? How many giant monster fights?
If you answered “yes” to any of these, “Godzilla x Kong Joyfully Invite You to Their Wedding” is your jam.
“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is in theaters.
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A traveling merchant named Kraft unknowingly picks up a god on his way through a remote village. She hides in his cart, revealing herself that night as Holo the wolf god. She’s looked after the village’s harvest for decades, if not centuries. As crop science advances and a monotheistic kingdom further encroaches on this land, the town has become less dependent on her. She wants to go back home, to her birthplace in the North. The merchant agrees, if she earns her keep helping him in his trade.
I know this is a remake of a classic and beloved anime series, but I’ve never seen the original and don’t know much about it. I can’t compare them, so I’ll speak only on this one.
The sense of place “Spice and Wolf” establishes is remarkable. Cresting a hill near the village and witnessing their harvest festival games paints a region that’s existed this way for a long time. The merchant notes the differences as the festival has shifted from a religious one to folkloric tradition. There’s a lot of world-building subtly hidden in the corners of the storytelling.
The outdoor animation is painterly, giving us a sense of a world that keeps stretching far beyond what our eyes can see. The interiors are detailed and immediately root us in places that feel real. Light communicates midday warmth and nighttime cold. When a window’s thrown open, you can feel the cold seep into the room.
I am in awe of one shot of the sky from beneath the canopy, giving way to muddy ruts that reveal what we’ve been looking at is a reflection. It precedes dialogue where both Kraft and Holo tentatively and uncomfortably broach a topic of trauma that they’ve each seen from opposite angles. He’s lost friends to wolves. She’s lost friends to humans.
The back-and-forth between the pair is very well-written. There’s a knack for the unspoken being understood – for inference that both the characters and audience can make. Holo is mischievous but honest. Kraft’s initial sternness gives way to care. They’re both quickly protective and nurturing of the other. Two episodes in, and the show’s mostly about the two of them talking and getting to know each other. That’s not a knock; it’s relentlessly interesting. I’m sure more will happen, but I’m not even sure if I need it to. Conversation in the quieter spaces of a fantasy world is something we don’t often get to see. “Spice and Wolf” seems more about the fabric of this world and these characters.
There are scenes in both of the first two episodes where the wolf god is naked. Her hair is positioned just so to avoid showing certain things, and she gets some clothes by the end of the premiere. It feels like the kind of fantasy nude of “why would this mythological creature use clothes” that “The Witcher” traffics in, so I can live with it. Its implementation has a degree of storytelling purpose. The first scene is more about how terrifying she is to Kraft, and the second is a conversation where she feels comfortable enough around him to remove the disguise she uses to pass among humans. Kraft remains respectful, thankfully.
At the same time, you can tell why the scenes are really there. They’re used as less of a hook than when you normally come across this stuff in fantasy series, live-action or animated, and it’s nowhere close to HBO Max levels of “please watch our show”. It has a reason for being there, but everything around it is so precise and purposeful that its being lingered upon does feel slightly pronounced in storytelling that’s otherwise so seamless.
Overall, the effect of the series is like being told a fable. Some of the landscapes appear as if they come fully realized straight out of the imagination. The feel of it can spark of “The Last Unicorn”. That’s partly due to the premise of encountering a lone mythical god, but the similarity I really feel is its sense of mythical journey and the care taken in witnessing detail and learning the intricacies of another soul along the way. These are two fascinating, extraordinarily written characters in a world so well built that you can genuinely feel like you’ve been someplace else for 20-odd minutes by the time the credits for each episode roll.
“Spice and Wolf” is on Crunchyroll.
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What an absolute damn shock. “Monkey Man” wears the trappings of a vengeance movie to expand into a revolutionary-minded piece of social anger. That hardly makes it unique among vengeance or martial arts films, but few are so timely or do it so well.
Dev Patel plays Kid, a fighter who throws his bouts in an underground club. He’s paid to lose and he saves the money to put a revenge plan into action. It includes getting hired at a hotel and working his way up until he has access to a general and a religious leader who destroyed his village. The build-up of this initial tension is exquisitely handled, with a constantly moving camera and sense of editing that grows tighter to the point of constriction.
So it’s weird that a third of the way through the film, it’s already chasing the climax. I caught myself thinking at this point that “Monkey Man” is a solid, B-grade revenge film, but I was hoping for more. The filmmaking’s great, but Patel looks like he’s outclassed and doesn’t fully know what he’s doing in the fight choreo, and the story elements felt overly familiar. But the film had tricked me. Kid’s supposed to be lost, outclassed, making easy mistakes, failing to pay off on that brilliant tension. The story’s use of one revenge film formula reflects the flaws and predictability in his plan.
In the course of Kid’s journey, as he finds a sustainable reason to fight and learns better control, the fight scenes become more stable. Where once he struggled to avoid becoming visually lost inside them, now they follow his rhythm. It’s an astonishing cinematic transformation that shifts from one era’s presentation of fight choreo (2000s shaky-cam) to something more expansive that draws upon influences ranging from the 1973 “Enter the Dragon” to today’s “John Wick”.
I also didn’t expect what Kid would end up fighting for: trans rights. An undercurrent of legitimate class anger flows beneath “Monkey Man” from the beginning, but partway through he’s taken in and helped by a community of trans, intersex, and third-gender groups. This is the Hijra community, a South Asian group of millions spanning multiple countries that traces its history back 2,000 years. I didn’t expect this wonderful turn at all.
I’ve seen a lot of consideration for “Monkey Man” as an Indian “John Wick”. I suppose it’s unavoidable, but it’s a reductive comparison. That’s not because there’s any problem with the Wick franchise – I enjoy it. There are bits that are influenced by Wick, but “Monkey Man” draws from so much else as well. It’s interested in being a wholly different, socially angry, revolutionary-minded action movie. Wick is an action ballet, but it doesn’t have the storytelling, mythological backing, symbolism, or social anger that boils over in “Monkey Man”. I don’t think the two are particularly close in terms of story or sensibility.
The closer comparison is to Bruce Lee films like “Enter the Dragon” and “Fists of Fury”, Thai films like “Ong Bak” and “The Protector”, and Indonesian martial arts cinema such as “The Raid 2: Berandal” and “Headshot”. I’m not comparing Patel to Lee, Tony Jaa, or Iko Uwais as martial arts performers – they’re on a whole other level. The sensibility of vengeance, righteousness, and forthright visual metaphor is similar to Lee’s movies. Thai martial arts cinema often focuses on mythology and fragmented backstory to create fight scenes that symbolically elevate into a type of heightened mythical theater. Indonesian martial arts movies focus on the thrill of design, utilizing the topography of a room or hallway (and then wrecking it) to accentuate so many small details that then feed back into conveying character nuance.
There are so many influences brought to the surface in “Monkey Man” that they fuse into a cinematic conversation. Added to its Hindi foundation and you have these things echoed into a type of Samsara cycle of storytelling, of which we’re only witnessing a part. Even the structure and story of “Monkey Man” is such that you’ve basically got one vengeance movie structure nested inside of another, the latter dismantling the former through a mid-movie psychedelic sequence that metaphorically nests personal flashback into mythology cycle.
Every element of “Monkey Man” is something we’ve seen in a film before, but usually across multiple movies, not connected altogether into one. There’s a surviving tendency out there to praise the experimental or dramatic directorial debut as ambitious while sidelining ‘genre’ films. “Monkey Man” is incredibly ambitious in both its visuals and how it fuses together so many other sources of martial arts film influence. This film is ambitious as hell, and pulls off about 90% of what it wants to do.
There are small trade-offs – the shift between different influences in fight scenes is often handled beautifully, but once or twice there’s a momentary tonal hiccup as that shift occurs. Patel is ultimately good at the choreo, and his background includes extensive martial arts training, but he’s not a career martial artist. It’s the one place where I would say a comparison to Reeves in “John Wick” is appropriate.
That said, martial arts films don’t always nail the casting from an acting standpoint. Patel gives an awards-worthy performance here. He utterly throws himself into the role, and moments of frustration, helplessness, anger, and anguish. It’s getting past time we start thinking of Patel as one of the best actors out there.
There are a few side characters who would traditionally get larger roles in a film like this but whose involvement is truncated. Whether you view them as having served their purpose or they become loose ends may be up to taste. I appreciated that one character doesn’t get turned into the typical hero’s “reward” as I expected, but an earlier comic relief sidekick may feel tossed to the side (though I’ve seen enough action movies to agree it’s better to do this too early than too late).
The strengths far outweigh the flaws, though. The use of lighting and color grading in “Monkey Man” is phenomenal. Combine this with a score that’s by turns playful and overwhelming, and a soundtrack that utilizes unsettling remixes of familiar songs, and the atmosphere that underlies “Monkey Man” is thick. It lends profound weight to a visually sumptuous use of spiritual and cultural symbolism to drive home the things “Monkey Man” fights for: which is mainly trans rights and (b)eating the rich.
“Monkey Man” is a good martial arts movie in terms of its martial arts. It’s a great martial arts movie in terms of its storytelling, visuals, and acting. It’s a superb martial arts movie in terms of its message and understanding and fusion of various eras and cultures of the genre.
“Monkey Man” is in theaters. Please be aware of COVID risk in your area.
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We’re going to dive straight in because there’s a wealth of new titles this week. New series by women come from Brazil, China, and Japan. New movies by women are from the U.K. and the U.S. (though some filmed in Greece and Italy), as well as a French-Italian co-production.
NEW SERIES
Everyone Loves Me (Netflix) Lee Ching Jung, Xu Ting, Zhao Cong
Streaming services fail to advertise new markets very well until they’ve got a hit from that country on their hands. The marketing of Korean series in the U.S. had a ground shift after “Squid Game”, for instance. I mention this because we’re starting to get more Chinese shows and it can be difficult to pin down what they’re about. The trailer and description of “Everyone Loves Me” appear to disagree in many ways, but they do agree that this is a romantic comedy at least.
The written description conveys: Two recently graduated classmates start working for the same gaming company. Soft-spoken Qian Ling confesses her feelings to Gu Xun, but he turns her down. He’s in love with a brash gamer he only knows by her handle…who also happens to be the shy Qian Ling.
The character roles seem completely different from the trailer to the description. Perhaps the written one is inaccurate, or there’s a way they fuse together.
Similarly, it’s hard to pin down information about some Chinese shows. This actually premiered on Netflix last month, but wasn’t featured in some official resources until this month. One of the two directors (Lee Ching Jung) and both writers (Xu Ting and Zhao Cong) are women, so I’m confident including this here. Getting more precise information will become easier as we get more access in the U.S. to Chinese series over time.
“Everyone Loves Me” is on Netflix. 8 of 24 episodes are already out, with new ones arriving every Friday.
Divided Youth (Max) showrunner Thais Falcao
Ditto everything I just wrote about streaming services failing to market international series well in the U.S. Closed captions are a mess here, but the series itself will have subtitles.
In this Brazilian series, a woman investigates the death of her trans best friend, witnessing both sides of a social divide.
Thais Falcao showruns. She’s written on several Brazilian series, and started as a producer in unscripted (i.e. reality) series.
“Divided Youth” is out on Max.
A Condition Called Love (Crunchyroll) directed by Makino Tomoe
Hotaru makes a small gesture to Hananoi after he’s dumped. She lends him her umbrella. This leads him to ask her out, but she has no concept of romantic love and he doesn’t understand how to regulate his.
Director Makino Tomoe also helmed the well received “Kotaro Lives Alone”.
“A Condition Called Love” saw its premiere on Crunchyroll, with a new episode dropping every Thursday.
NEW MOVIES
How to Have Sex (MUBI) directed by Molly Manning Walker
Three British teenagers go drinking, clubbing, and hooking up during a holiday, but it doesn’t all go as planned.
This is writer-director Molly Manning Walker’s debut. The film was nominated for two BAFTAs this year, including Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut. The year before, she was nominated as a cinematographer at the British Independent Film Awards (for “Scrapper”). She started as a live program coordinator before entering a camera trainee program. She’s served as cinematographer on music videos ranging from Radiohead to Loyle Carner and These New Puritans.
“How to Have Sex” premieres on MUBI tomorrow, Friday April 5.
The First Omen (in theaters) directed by Arkasha Stevenson
In a prequel to “The Omen”, an American woman enters a life of Church service in Rome. There, she encounters a vast conspiracy that threatens to visit evil upon the world. Nell Tiger Free, Sonia Braga, Bill Nighy, and Charles Dance star.
Director and co-writer Arkasha Stevenson has directed on “Legion” and “Channel Zero”.
“The First Omen” sees a wide release in theaters tomorrow, Friday April 5.
Wicked Little Letters (in theaters) directed by Thea Sharrock
People in a British town are receiving insulting letters. With no real evidence, a conservative local (Olivia Colman) accuses an Irish immigrant (Jessie Buckley). Both the police and the town’s men are satisfied with this, but women in the town take it upon themselves to actually investigate.
Thea Sharrock directs. Her film “The Beautiful Game”, about a worldwide soccer tournament for homeless men, released on Netflix last week. She’s also helmed “Me Before You” and “The One and Only Ivan”.
“Wicked Little Letters” is out in theaters.
She Came to Me (Hulu) directed by Rebecca Miller
Peter Dinklage plays a composer with writer’s block. He’s reinvigorated after a one-night stand, but things get complicated when his muse becomes a part of his everyday life. “She Came to Me” also stars Marisa Tomei and Anne Hathaway.
Writer-director Rebecca Miller also helmed “Maggie’s Plan”, “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee”, and “The Ballad of Jack and Rose”.
“She Came to Me” is out on Hulu in its streaming debut.
Wish (Disney+) co-directed by Fawn Veerasunthorn
A girl named Asha wishes on a star, so the star decides to join her, making wishes come true in a land where the king hoards that unique power.
Fawn Veerasunthorn helms with Chris Buck. It’s her directing debut, but she’s also been involved in “Raya and the Last Dragon”, “Zootopia”, and “Ralph Breaks the Internet”.
“Wish” is out on Disney+ in its streaming debut.
Chicken for Linda (in theaters) co-directed by Chiara Malta
Paulette is a mother who feels guilty after punishing her daughter Linda. She sets out on an adventure to make chicken with peppers, despite not knowing how to cook it.
The French-Italian animation is co-directed by Chiara Malta (with Sebastien Laudenbach). The pair also wrote the film.
“Chicken for Linda” sees a limited release in theaters tomorrow, Friday April 5.
Parachute (in theaters) directed by Brittany Snow
Riley has recently come out of rehab for a body image addiction. She tries replacing it with a new addiction while navigating a new romantic interest. The cast includes Courtney Eaton, Dave Bautista, Kid Cudi, and Joel McHale.
This is the first feature from director and co-writer Brittany Snow, who’s primarily worked as an actress – including musical turns in “Hairspray” and the “Pitch Perfect” films.
“Parachute” sees a limited release in theaters tomorrow, Friday April 5.
I go into so many historical fantasies over-brimming with joy…only to spend most of my time watching that optimism wash away bit by bit as I complain, “Hey, I was using that”. If I’m still watching several episodes in with a big, dumb smile on my face, something’s gone very right. “Renegade Nell” fulfills the promise that dozens of historical fantasy series before it have failed to keep.
At its heart is Louisa Harland’s Nell, a woman who ran away from home and disguised herself as a man to fight for the British in Spain. After the loss of her husband in battle, she’s returned home to her tavern owner father and two younger sisters. It’s not long before things fall apart and she’s framed for a murder she didn’t commit. Oh, and quick note: when she’s threatened, she’s possessed by a pixie and fights like a demon.
“Renegade Nell” is a silly series that knows it can make you laugh, but what I love is that its silliness is filmed so seriously. It’s shot with all the detail and reverence that a historical drama of the period would use, with tracking shots through crowds, patient reaction shots that let the actors treat these characters as real, and a quietly magnificent use of shallow focus to help us draw closer to them.
The set and the costume design veer from battered workaday life in a muddy tavern to brilliantly ridiculous visions of excess that steer just this side of a pastel wonderland. There’s a sense of play that threads through every element, from writing to performance to that design and cinematography, and ties it all together. When we’re so wrapped up in that sense of play, we’re driven to treat the consequences as real and important.
The phenomenal first episode ‘Don’t Call Me Nelly’ does some heavy lifting in terms of establishing the driving plot, the foundations of a larger arc, introducing multiple characters, and letting us taste the outlandish flavor of the action. Through it all, Harland has plenty of room to land an incredibly roguish performance that ranges from sauntering confidence to brash hotheadedness. If any of this sounds appealing, just watch the thing – it is an absolute hook.
The jokes are swift and incredibly well-written. While you could frame “Renegade Nell” as an 18th-century “Buffy”, the banter is thankfully very removed from the Whedonesque sensibilities that have dominated women-led supernatural pugilism over the last 25 years. The comedy’s more compartmentalized to each character, with bursts of wordplay between competitive egos, and Nell herself shouldering the bulk of the physical comedy. There’s even a selective use of takes where an actor appears to break character but they keep it in anyway because it ends up fitting the character so well. As roguish roles go, Nell is up there with your Han Solo, Odysseus, Lupin the Third, Robin Hood, and Jack Sparrow (momentarily leaving aside the profound ick that now surrounds the latter’s performer).
The fight choreography just works. It relies on some larger movements and wire-assisted stunts as Nell sends men spinning or flying away. I’m not always a fan of these physics-defying overstatements in choreo, but the over-the-top sensibility matches Harland’s swaggering performance so well that it feels of a piece. Anything less extravagant wouldn’t be enough to complement her.
Nell is the kind of role that is rarely written for women. When it is, it’s often fetishized within the writing (a la Amalia True in “The Nevers”) or shoved into weird purity boxes because it’s too scared of expanding past a narrow definition of feminine heroism (such as Nimue in “Cursed”). Nell is neither of those things and – showrun by Sally Wainwright – the series visits the ways in which women were constricted and disempowered in the 18th century, many of which still ring true today. Robin Hood may’ve seen the socioeconomic picture, but Nell sees how that ties into other systems of oppression, and then asks the very important question of how much they can all be punched.
The middle episodes of the show run into occasional pacing issues as it swaps between Nell’s, sidekicks’, and alternating antagonists’ plots, but its sense of place and design, presentation of all these characters, and interest in comical detail are all so strong that it’s only a minor issue when a scene here or there lingers an extra minute.
There are some complaints from the usual corners because the ratio of Black and South Asian people might not be historically accurate in this show about a fictional highwaywoman taking on mythically powered nobility with superstrength loaned to her by a pixie. I can’t quite pinpoint when, but there were some clues along the way that the show is a fantasy. It’s also about as accurate as countless British dramas over the decades that showed no Black or South Asian people in Britain.
Also, that casting strikes me as peak British. You’ll be shocked to learn there were centuries where the country relied on men to play women on stage despite 50% of the talent pool to which they had access actually being women. The U.K. loves portraying a diverse range of people with whoevs, they’re just finally recognizing and drawing on how diverse their talent pool is. Almost as if different eras have different casting conventions and using 100% of your talent pool gives you better results than using 40% of it.
Back to the main topic, “Renegade Nell” is a great watch. I love countless things about it. It’s a perfect fit if you want a historical-oriented, roguish “Buffy”, wanted “Cursed” to be more lively and self-aware, wanted “The Nevers” to focus on its story instead of creeping on its leads, if you want a series-level “Pirates of the Caribbean” without its deppth of baggage, or if you were interested in the live-action “One Piece” but wanted something much more grounded. I adore this show, and it’s refreshing to see this approach to historical fantasy done with such a thorough, consistent, and high degree of craft.
“Renegade Nell” is on Disney+.
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Why does the big Liam Neeson simply not eat the small one?
This poster frustrates me. When I first saw it in a smaller version, the reflection of light on the shotgun barrels made it look like strings running down the neck of an upright bass. I thought, finally, Liam Neeson is playing something different – maybe a jazz musician. But why’s the top of his instrument bent so far back? Ooh, is he an experimental musician who invents instruments?
After staring at it for an uncomfortable amount of time, I realized he was holding an uncocked shotgun. Well, that’s disappointing, it’s just Neeson doing Neeson things again. The official description reads:
“In a remote Irish village, a damaged father is forced to fight for redemption after a lifetime of sins, but what price is he willing to pay? In the land of saints and sinners, some sins can’t be buried.”
It’s like mad libs but you only get to use the word “sin”. Imma move on before I start having Lutheran school flashbacks.
Now, the film engages issues of Irish resistance and it’s got Kerry Condon and Ciaran Hinds, so I’m not going to press on that. I haven’t seen the film and thus have no opinion on the movie itself. I’m not making any judgments on it. I’m only judging the poster. Just the poster and Liam Neeson. And his core fanbase. The poster, Liam Neeson, and his core fanbase.
Look, I’m not immune to vengeance films. I’ve been swooning over “Love Lies Bleeding” for the past two weeks. Vengeance is a mainstream genre I love in K-dramas, and I’ve lost count of “Monte Cristo” adaptations I’ve seen. I even love that Charles Bronson flick where he takes vengeance on the mob for shooting his watermelons.
All-time classic. And I’m only, like one-quarter kidding. Elmore Leonard wrote the shit out of that weird-ass movie. But also there’s a massacre scene of watermelons and it’s titled “Mr. Majestyk”, which makes it sound like it should be the Timothee Chalamet-Hugh Jackman sequel to “Wonka”, the movie that asks, “If I can’t sell my drug trade movie, what if I rewrote it for kids?”
Look, we’re getting too far afield from what really matters: this poster sucks. He’s holding a shotgun in one hand like he’s going birding with Dick Cheney, and a flower in the other as if Dick said, “Yeah, see, that’s what you load the shotgun with, yellow flowers, see?”
And I get it, the gun + flower motif is a strong one that suggests Liam Neeson wants peace, but also to shoot dudes with a shotgun. That’s most florists I’ve met.
But wait, there’s more! If you didn’t notice big Liam Neeson is holding a shotgun, it’s got you covered. There’s a smaller inset into his jacket of: little Liam Neeson holding another shotgun! Neesonception. There’s fog in the background, a guy lying on his back, Neeson’s ready to flower him up and he’s not going to stick around as if he cares, there’s the back third of a car waiting for him to drive away. They’d show the whole car, but it’s awkwardly cut off by the strings of his upright bass.
The fuck is this poster? There’s also the corner of an abbey or chapel for kicks, but in miniature, as if a producer came along, asked for 5% less negative space and insisted, “We licensed this image from Getty, make it look phallic but we don’t want to pay for the high res version so not too big”.
“Haunted by sin. Hunted by sinners.” Sinned by hunters. Cosigned by haunters. First month last month by taunters.
You know what, who’s directing? Longtime Clint Eastwood producer Robert Lorenz. He produced films like “Gran Torino” about a racist dude who we shouldn’t judge as he dehumanizes others because he’s played by Clint Eastwood and it’s still four years before that RNC monologue where he pretends Obama is a chair. And “American Sniper”, a largely fictionalized adaptation of a Navy SEAL sniper’s memoir that the Navy warned its author was embellished but decided not to challenge because, hey good PR about Iraq is hard to come by.
Lorenz shifted away from these films as a director with his movie “The Marksman”, about a marine sniper who we shouldn’t judge as he dehumanizes others because it’s five years after Neeson’s comments about once hunting Black men with intent to kill and he’s racist against Latinos in that, which is totally differ – it’s not – it’s like if you…hey remember “Taken” we all love “Taken”, right? Man, that part where she was took and he was all like, “I’ve got a special set of racism woo”.
This poster’s really making me explore a lot of things I haven’t let go because why would you let people hunting other races go, that’d be weird. We should really talk about this at length wait Neeson’s making “Ice Road 2: Road to the Sky”, where he’s on a tour bus in Nepal traveling to spread a family member’s ashes and mercenaries attack and he has to save the country of Nepal cause who else there could do it? Holupaminit, I already played “Far Cry 4”. He should do the cave man one instead.*
*I wish it were otherwise, but none of this is an April Fool’s Joke.
But “Sins with Sinners and Sins on Top” could be good. Other people who aren’t fucks are in it. Let’s be adventurous and check the user review IMDB features. It says the film is a “nice, positive surprise”. Promising, right? It mentions as highlights “the most beautiful wild red female hair waving in the wind”. Huh, hope she finds it again. It praises Kerry Condon’s “beautiful and expressive face” and how…petite she is and that she manages to be a badass woman without becoming a “chicken rambo” – OK this was a mistake, but I guess Neeson’s got his fanbase nailed down tight.
Um. Hey yeah. Look, a poster is there to market your movie to me and what this one says is, I’m gonna just go see “Love Lies Bleeding” again. Or hey, Rebecca Hall’s leading Western kaiju movies and their poster makes Godzilla and Kong look like they’re trying out for Baywatch.
Bebop and Rocksteady: Origins
And I’d love to see that sandworm scene in “Dune 2” on the big screen again, does half-price Tuesday count for IMAX? Wonder if they’ve got those 4D rumble chairs. Make me feel like I’ve been swallowed by a sandworm. Peaceful like. Probably no Liam Neeson movies in there.
Gabriel Diego Valdez 