Four years after the release of Beast, it might be logical for Icelandic genre filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur to eventually direct a film with the title Apex in it. That said, no apex predators are found in this two-hander survival thriller between a hunter and the hunted. Such a simple premise as the one found in Kormákur’s latest should exalt tangible thrills,
Read MoreI was fully expecting to hate Patrick Hughes’ War Machine while watching it. Another Netflix piece of content that essentially amalgamates known films into one another and tries to pass it off as an “original film”? What could go wrong? For the first twenty minutes or so, a compact montage that distills the backstory of Staff Sergeant 81 (Alan Ritchson) as
Read MoreIt appears that Ric Roman Waugh is this year’s Richard Linklater, having released two movies in the span of a month. While the first title of his January compendium, Greenland 2: Migration, unfortunately did not have a theatrical release outside the United States, his latest effort, Shelter, is getting a global rollout, and it might just be the most January movie
Read MoreIt may be easy to dismiss Ángel Manuel Soto’s The Wrecking Crew as a fake-looking piece of “content” that only serves to fill an ever-expanding algorithm on Prime Video. You could be right to think this way, since none of the promotional materials have fully advertised the film’s pleasures the way they should have. The movie was also essentially dumped on
Read MoreAvatar: Fire and Ash is a rare artifact from James Cameron. Throughout his career, the filmmaker behind the Terminator franchise has deliberately avoided trilogies. Even after Terminator 2 became an early ’90s phenomenon, he chose other creative endeavors, such as True Lies, and had a brief run developing Spider-Man before Sam Raimi. The question no one has ever considered is whether
Read MoreWhat happened for the explosive sequel of a middling actioner no one asked for, Sisu, to be this good? Usually, sequels experience diminishing returns, where the director repeats what worked in the first film without offering much beyond an effective formula that audiences enjoyed the first time and will likely enjoy again. However, in Sisu: Road to Revenge, Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander refuses to
Read MoreThe Running Man is a notable Stephen King adaptation from the ’80s, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. From the material alone, it was difficult to envision what an Edgar Wright take on it would look like in execution. After seeing the movie, it seems like a choice to try something different. For the majority of The Running Man, Wright throws away every signature
Read MoreThere comes a time within every couple of years of film where you get something so special, so relevant to our current moment, and so successful on virtually every front that it’s hard to believe it exists. A film where you know as soon as the credits roll, it will live on as a timeless classic, and just like with his
Read MoreHere’s John and Vin’s review of the stylish action thriller The Old Woman With The Knife. This crazy new Korean film is best described as “old lady John Wick.” The guys break down what worked and what didn’t in the film, it’s potential for sequels, and also discuss their love of action movies like Shaw Bros., Jackie Chan, Crouching Tiger, Hidden
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