ONE SPOON OF CHOCOLATE, the new movie written and directed by The RZA, is a little bit deranged. I say that in a neutral way. I kind of like that it’s crazy, but I don’t overall think it’s a movie that works. When I describe what it’s about to you it’s going to sound like a pulpy exploitation movie, a ’70s style revenge thriller with a modern GET OUT type edge, something that could’ve been branded as part of a GRINDHOUSE double feature if those had become an ongoing concern like V*H*S. (In fact it has a “Quentin Tarantino Presents” credit and an appearance by Red Apple Cigarettes.) But most of the time the tone is very earnest, kinda dour, sometimes feeling like a PSA. And when the hero finally gets to fight the lead villain the score (by Tyler Bates and The RZA) chooses not to hype us up like it’s the big pay off, but just give us some synth textures, like it’s sad. It’s kind of a downer. (read the rest of this shit…)
Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
One Spoon of Chocolate
Thursday, May 7th, 2026Apex
Thursday, April 30th, 2026
APEX is a solid made-for-Netflix picture – nice looking, to-the-point, occasionally surprising, and a good showcase for its star, who happens to be one of my favorites. When I revisited ÆON FLUX recently I mentioned how ever since that movie I’ve thought of Charlize Theron as one of those rare actors who’s exactly as serious about the physical performance as the emotional, and excels at both. So, you know, she wins an Oscar for throwing herself into MONSTER and then when she does ATOMIC BLONDE she goes just as hard at fight training and stunt work as she did at portraying the inner life of a serial killer. Here she says you know what? I’m gonna learn how to climb rocks. I’m gonna climb so many rocks in this movie.
Not that that’s the entire topic. Her character Sasha enjoys extreme sports. In the opening she and her husband Tommy (the motherfuckin HULK Eric Bana!) are tandem climbing the Troll Wall in Norway. You know, climbing until they get tired, hanging a tent from the side at night, it’s fucking terrifying, who does that? Sasha and Tommy, that’s who. Though Tommy is getting wary that maybe he’s past his prime. (read the rest of this shit…)
Fatal Deviation
Tuesday, April 28th, 2026
FATAL DEVIATION (1998) is “Ireland’s first martial arts film.” I had heard of it before but I didn’t realize it’s kind of infamous online. Cracked.com once did an article calling it “the worst film ever made” and “an ancient curse on the Irish people,” but that’s, frankly, an extremely stupid thing to say. Amateur shit. This review is for pros.
This is a no budget, shot-on-video, home made production faithfully following all the traditions of the western martial arts picture: a guy who left town long ago has returned to set things straight, there’s a fighting tournament, there’s a death to avenge, there’s a local crime boss, a woman to fight over, all conveyed crudely and awkwardly. In a good way. Absolutely it’s good for a laugh, but considering the amount of resources and level of experience here (virtually none), writer/director/star James Bennett has achieved the feat of making one of these movies admirably well, and with what seems like complete sincerity.
Bennett stars as Jimmy Bennett, “the young Bennet boy” who has returned to his home town of Trim, Ireland “to discover who I am, what it is I should do, and what happened to my father.” He breaks into and fixes up his dad’s old trashed barn as a place to live, work out, and train. (read the rest of this shit…)
Night Patrol (2025)
Thursday, April 23rd, 2026
NIGHT PATROL is a movie released by Shudder (first in theaters, now on their service) that has a promising premise. It’s kinda like TRAINING DAY but the corrupt cops are also vampires. In fact, I didn’t catch it until reading the credits but the main character’s name is “Ethan Hawkins.” The tagline is “Defang the police.” That’s good. I like that.
It has a cool, grainy look to it (cinematographer: Benjamin Kitchens) and an ominous, synthy score by Pepijn Caudron (CAMINO). It even has David S. Goyer’s name in the credits as a producer, so there is a distant connection to the greatest vampire movie that ever has been or will be made. So I was ready for this thing to really rip. And then it didn’t really, and I went on with my life, but here’s my review.
Hawkins (Justin Long, still not thought of as a horror guy even though he’s in JEEPERS CREEPERS, DRAG ME TO HELL, TUSK, BARBARIAN and COYOTES) is an LAPD officer who’s about to join the titular gang-like police task force. For the initiation they make him shoot a young Piru Blood named Primo (Zuri Reed, 2 episodes of The Get Down). At the time she’s with a guy named Wazi (RJ Cyler, POWER RANGERS, THE HARDER THEY FALL), who manages to escape. (read the rest of this shit…)
Normal
Tuesday, April 21st, 2026
Last week I asked Mrs. Vern if she’d want to see the new Bob Odenkirk action movie from the same writer as JOHN WICK and NOBODY. She loves both of those movies as much as I do (and Odenkirk going back to the Mr. Show days) so of course she did. Then on Saturday, as we were getting ready to go, she asked “What is this movie called, by the way?” I guess I’d sold her on it pretty much the same way I would a new Jason Statham – just the new Bob Odenkirk action movie. I hope he does another one and the poster says “ODENKIRK” at the top in giant letters.
NORMAL opens in Osaka, with a great Japanese cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” and a group of Yakuza atoning for some type of failure by cutting off a pinky and accepting a new job. The job sends them to some small American town called Normal, Minnesota.
Odenkirk does not play one of the Yakuza. He plays Ulysses Richardson, also a fuckup arriving in Normal for a shit job, though in narration he tries to sell it to us as a pretty good one. He’s the interim sheriff, because the old one died, so he’s there to stamp forms and maintain the status quo for the five weeks until the election. He’s playing dumb a little, though. He acts like there’s nothing suspicious, but we see his eyebrows raising at various red flags. We even see him looking at the sheriff’s death certificate and later quizzing the guy who signed it. I’m sure it’s nothing, though. Don’t worry about it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Æon Flux
Monday, April 13th, 2026
Taken on its own, ÆON FLUX (2005) is an interesting oddity among post-MATRIX techno-soundtrack sci-fi action movies. The look is clean and brightly lit, the premise is vague, it has some legitimately strange tech and costumes. One of its shootouts happens in a rose garden, another on a manicured lawn beneath blossoming cherry trees. A major third act action set piece involves hanging from and climbing up the gold-lame-scarf tail of a blimp called “The Relical.” To date I think it might be the only movie with a Relical in it.
It’s an MTV Films production, but’s that just because it’s based on a cartoon birthed by their envelope-pushing animation anthology Liquid Television. It doesn’t have any needle drops and doesn’t seem fully invested in being of the time, or of pop culture. If not for the generic beats in the score by Graeme Revell (MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE) it would feel pretty otherworldly. (read the rest of this shit…)
Prayer of the Rollerboys
Thursday, April 9th, 2026
PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS (1990) is not a great ‘90s b-movie in the sense of being a thrilling piece of cinematic storytelling, but it stills stands as a type I enjoy due to many valuable qualities. First, there is its pure nineties-ness: its strongly held belief that rollerblading is really cool, Corey Haim’s skater hair, tying a flannel shirt around his waist, “Head Like a Hole” on the soundtrack. It being only the very beginning the nineties, there’s also a leftover-eighties-ness: lots of outdoor TVs, ritzy apartments with weird art made out of mannequins, some attempts at Verhoevenian satire in news reports.
Most notable, I think, there’s a political side to it that’s sadly right on the money for now. Not all of it; its idea of American collapse is that the government will borrow too much money, then force all the newly homeless people into camps, and also Harvard will be moved brick-by-brick to Hiroshima. (There used to be anxiety about Japanese business taking over America. See also: GUNG HO, DIE HARD.) But the part that’s sadly trenchant right now is that the title villains are like sci-fi Proud Boys: an anti-immigrant, white power gang with a uniform (beige trenchcoats and droog suspesnders). They’re controversial, yet they have strong enough ties to the government to buy a former naval shipyard, including its freighters! Some cops are trying to bust them but (spoiler) it’s actually for corrupt purposes. Oh yeah and they rollerblade around in a flock, synchronizing the waving of their arms to look menacing.
A Working Man
Tuesday, April 7th, 2026
A WORKING MAN is a 2025 Jason Statham joint that I missed in theaters. Felt guilty about it too. Then waited until now to catch up on video, for some reason. I agree with the conventional wisdom that it’s not one of his better works, but in my opinion it is in fact watchable. So that’s what I did. I watched it.
It’s a much less absurd one than THE BEEKEEPER, even though it comes from the same director, David Ayer. Being a little less silly is not a bad thing in and of itself (I really liked Statham’s recent more serious one, SHELTER), but it is kind of weird coming from the director of wild movies like SABOTAGE and SUICIDE SQUAD. They aren’t all great, but they’re usually not bland. Here he’s credited as co-writing the screenplay with Sylvester Stallone (who also wrote HOMEFRONT), based on the novel Levon’s Trade by Chuck Dixon. (Note: Stallone sold out his legacy to become a Trump stooge and Dixon is one of the comics legends now better known for whining about the scary wokeness coming after him, but thankfully the movie isn’t really pushing right wing buttons like, say, LAST BLOOD.)
It uses one of the most elemental action setups possible. Statham’s character, apparently named Levon Cade (I’m surprised they didn’t say his name more) is a foreman for Garcia Family Construction, but he used to be a Royal Marine Commando. He doesn’t tell anybody that, but it comes out when some gangsters are shaking down one of the workers on the site so Levon comes at them with a bucket of nails and a pickaxe, beats them up and points a gun at them until they leave. The boss’s 19-year-old business major daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas, Mustang from BLACK PHONE 2) witnesses this and asks if it’s “some military shit.” (read the rest of this shit…)
They Will Kill You
Monday, March 30th, 2026
THEY WILL KILL YOU is one of those rare cases where the first time I saw the trailer was the first time I heard of it, and before it was over it had become one of my most anticipated movies. What it conveyed was that Zazie Beetz (GEOSTORM) would play a maid at a hotel that’s run by satanists, they try to sacrifice her, she runs around with a sword chopping them up in spectacular, stylized action scenes. It looked like KILL BILL meets READY OR NOT, and that shorthand does capture some of it. But happily the trailer was also holding back some of the other ingredients in the pot, and they all add up to a fun time at the motion picture house.
Beetz plays Asia Reaves, who ten years ago was on the streets with her little sister Maria (I think there’s a young version whose name I can’t find, but the grown up Maria is Myha’la, BODIES BODIES BODIES). They were running from their abusive father when Asia landed herself in prison. Now she’s out, showing up on a stormy night for a job as a maid at a historic apartment building called The Virgil. I would say this was secretly a sinister place, but they’re pretty open about it – there’s a big pentagram and devil sculptures on the exterior. The characters don’t try to be subtle any more than the movie does. (read the rest of this shit…)
Jurassic World: Rebirth
Wednesday, March 25th, 2026
JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH is one of those sequel titles referring more to the series itself than the story. I think the only rebirth is that it’s new characters and storyline, you don’t need to remember any previous entries. They really exhausted all the bringing-back-characters gimmicks in the last couple so this is an all new cast with only one unobtrusive mention of one of them studying under part 1’s Alan Grant.
Scenario-wise it’s similar to THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK and JURASSIC PARK III. There’s no theme park, just a small team sent on a mission to an area where leftover dinos created on a separate island run wild. Since it’s set after three JURASSIC WORLD movies the world is used to and bored of dinosaurs, they get into cities sometimes and it’s not a huge deal, there are genetically altered breeds and mutations created for entertainment purposes. But mostly this is set at the equator, where travel is illegal due to dangerous wild dinosaurs, and on an abandoned R&D island, so it’s not that different from any other chapter. (read the rest of this shit…)
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