Ballerina (2025)
BALLERINA (2025) is “from the world of JOHN WICK.” That’s the tagline, not the title – like “Die Harder.” I have seen some spinoff skepticism swirling around this one, but don’t come to me for that shit. When the makers of JOHN WICK invite me into the world of JOHN WICK I don’t even have to grab my go-bag. I just run full speed toward them.
I have also seen grumbling about it being directed by Len Wiseman (UNDERWORLD) and about having had reshoots (seemingly quite extensive) overseen and/or directed by Chad Stahelski. But I think the former has pretty good action chops and the latter has honest-to-God action vision, so it is not surprising to me that BALLERINA has arrived as a total banger. Is it as good as the JOHN WICKs? No. Is it better than most movies that are not JOHN WICKs? Yes.
Here is my viewing journey with BALLERINA: first 15 or 20 minutes – It’s okay that this is kinda clunky compared to a JOHN WICK because it kinda rules anyway. Everything after that – on second thought this almost is as good as a JOHN WICK and in fact it absolutely rules. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Quiet Ones (2025)
THE QUIET ONES (2025) is a very dry Danish true crime movie about a heist that happened in 2008. The main character Kasper (Gustav Giese, RIDERS OF JUSTICE) is a boxer, but seems to also have a past in armed robbery. He’s trying to make a comeback in the ring but one day Slimani (Reda Kateba, LOST RIVER), whose group we saw really blow it in an opening armored car robbery, asks to meet with him. He heard from Kasper’s brother-in-law that he was “smart.”
Their target is a cash processing facility. Basically just like a warehouse fenced off in an industrial area. The impetus (which comes from the real crime that inspired the movie) is that the company who runs the place posted a promotional video on their websight showing off what they do. The thieves watch the video together and laugh in disbelief that somebody was stupid enough to post all this information. We don’t see it, but apparently it reveals to them the layout of the building and which currencies are stored where – easy break-in instructions. Kasper agrees to plan the robbery, but not go in, even though it means a smaller cut. (read the rest of this shit…)
Howl’s Moving Castle
June 10, 2005
HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE is the ninth film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. He’s only done three more in the twenty years since, so I guess it counts as late Miyazaki. When I saw it back then I went to a subtitled screening, so this time I tried it with English dialogue, and that worked well too.
It’s a story about Sophie (Emily Mortimer, THE 51st STATE), a young woman who makes hats in a shop founded by her late father. When her sister Lettie (Jena Malone, FOR LOVE OF THE GAME), a baker, encourages her to find something she loves rather than staying shackled to the family business she swears she’s content doing this.
Then one night after close this terribly rude rich lady (Lauren Bacall, THE BIG SLEEP) comes into the shop and starts saying the hats are tacky. To quote THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE, “we’re a business with posted hours,” so get the fuck out. But this lady is actually the Witch of the Waste, who has come not to look for headwear, but to curse Sophie by turning her 90 years old. Then she’s out of there in a palanquin carried by her henchmen, oily black blob people with nice coats and masquerade masks. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D
June 10, 2005
Right before this series we looked at the Spring 2005 release of Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s experiment in comic book literalism SIN CITY. Just over two months later Rodriguez was back with another movie, this time for the kiddies.
In a way THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY AND LAVAGIRL IN 3-D continues the SIN CITY mission by using the at-the-time pretty new approach of heavy green screen to adapt a story on a lower budget than if he had to build full sets and things. But while the other one directly translates the exact words and pictures of a popular comic book series, this one is based on, according to the credits, “the stories and dreams of” his eight-year-old son Racer Max. It’s credited as “A RODRIGUEZ FAMILY MOVIE.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Karate Kid: Legends
In the 15 years (!) since the KARATE KID remake I’ve occasionally found myself telling people, “No, seriously, it’s pretty good!” Which is not really what I said in my review at the time, now that I’m re-reading it. So who knows, but I don’t think I’ll be saying that about the new movie KARATE KID: LEGENDS. I won’t try to convince anyone it’s a particularly good movie. But I kinda liked it. Let me say this: it’s definitely way better than THE NEXT KARATE KID, which actually I have to admit I kind of enjoy too.
The cleverest thing about LEGENDS is what we already knew from the trailers: it finds a way to say that the 1984 original and its 2010 remake are not mutually exclusive. In this one the remake’s shifu Han (Jackie Chan, DRAGON BLADE) recruits o.g. karate kid Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio, HITCHCOCK) to help him teach a student, and this in turn is a way to make sense out of the weird title discrepancy that they wanted to make a movie called THE KARATE KID but they cast Jackie Chan so it was about kung fu. Now screenwriter Rob Lieber (PETER RABBIT) invents a relationship between the Han and Miyagi families, and therefore between their kung fu and karate styles. So when one of Mr. Han’s students wants to enter a karate tournament, the shifu wants him to learn specifically Miyagi-do karate from its last known teacher. (read the rest of this shit…)
Return of the Bastard Swordsman
RETURN OF THE BASTARD SWORDSMAN (1984) is indeed about the Bastard Swordsman returning. It’s not like BATMAN RETURNS where the title character hasn’t actually gone anywhere and is only returning to the screen – at the very end of BASTARD SWORDSMAN our guy Yun Fei Yang (Norman Chui, LEGEND OF THE LIQUID SWORD) had overcome his fate as a bullied servant of Wudang by mastering Silkworm Skill and defeating the prick who framed him for the murder of the chief and took over the clan. So he becomes their de facto leader but instead of letting them give him a parade or something he immediately walks away with his crush Lun Wan Er (Leanne Liu, WHITE HAIR DEVIL LADY).
Honestly the returning is kind of a bummer, I liked the idea of him traveling around having adventures. Instead this continues the story of Wudang and their feud with Invincible Clan. If you remember, the maniacal Invincible Clan leader Dugu Wu Di (Alex Man, CHINA WHITE) had left for two years of seclusion to further advance his use of the clan’s secret technique Fatal Skill after defeating Wudang in three consecutive duels over 20 years. In this one he comes home and it’s like he woke up out of a coma, he has to hear all this shit that went on in the last act of part 1 with Yun Fei Yang coming out of a cocoon and shit. So Dugu goes to Wudang to demand a duel with our bastard and they don’t want to admit that their chief ghosted them so they act like he just went out for smokes or something, which gets them a week’s reprieve to try to find him. But oh by the way if anyone leaves Wudang during that time they will be killed on sight. That Dugu always has some hardcore stipulations to his offers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Lords of Dogtown
June 3, 2005
Finally getting around to watching LORDS OF DOGTOWN was a good enough reason to do this series. I remember at the time it got a pretty tepid reception. People were still high on Stacy Peralta’s documentary about the same subject, DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS (2001), and didn’t need to see it re-enacted. I get it – when I saw the trailer for Benny Safdie’s THE SMASHING MACHINE I couldn’t understand the point of (from the looks of it) just trying to re-enact footage from the documentary by John Hyams. Why not use the power of cinema to create a perspective of these events that does not already exist on film?
But that’s the thing, that’s what director Catherine Hardwicke and screenwriter Peralta do here with the story of Peralta’s circa 1975 Santa Monica surfer buddies becoming an early influential skateboard team and changing the world. The story centers around cheerful Stacy (John Robinson, ELEPHANT), angry Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch, THE DANGEROUS LIVES OF ALTAR BOYS), incredibly talented Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk, RAISING VICTOR VARGAS), and their rich kid friend Sid (Michael Angarano, BABY HUEY’S GREAT EASTER ADVENTURE), who can’t skate as well because of inner ear issues, but he’s still their homie. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
June 1, 2005
I wasn’t sure if I should watch THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS for this series, wasn’t sure if I’d get anything out of it, and certainly I don’t know how to go into as much detail about a movie like this as I do the ones about some sort of punching or slashing. But, you know, it’s a drama aimed at young women, based on a popular young adult novel, not the sort of thing I pay attention to, and yet it was enough of a phenomenon that we’ve all heard of it. It got a sequel, its cast went on to bigger things, it is notable. Now, I won’t go into detail about questions like did I find myself producing tears at certain parts, or did I not do that… I mean, who’s to say, really? There are many different perspectives, and what relevance does that have anyway. We don’t need to get into that. Let’s stick to the movie. Come on guys stop clowning around.
If you’re like me and didn’t really know exactly what this was, here’s the deal. Four girls in Bethesda, Maryland have been best friends since birth (because their mothers met in an aerobics class for pregnant women). As teenagers Lena (Alexis Bledel, SIN CITY), Bridget (Blake Lively in her first major role), Carmen (America Ferrera, REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES) and Tibby (Amber Tamblyn, THE RING) are about to spend their first ever summer apart, due to various vacation plans. On their last shopping trip together before parting ways they find a pair of used jeans that have the magical quality of fitting perfectly on each of them despite their very different body sizes. Then they break into the abandoned studio where their moms had that class (just go with it) and do a little ritual where they come up with rules for how to share and respect the pants. (read the rest of this shit…)
Bastard Swordsman
BASTARD SWORDSMAN is a 1983 Shaw Brothers production that tells the story of Yun Fei Yang (Norman Chui, HEROES OF THE EAST, ZU WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN), a miserably treated servant of the Wudang kung fu school. He cleans floors and delivers soup and stuff but also in the opening scene the motherfuckers make him run around holding wooden targets for knife practice. When he complains that they’re throwing the knives at him instead of the targets he gets chewed out and called a bastard.
“You can beat me, but don’t call me bastard,” he says, so they immediately beat him and call him a bastard. Sister Lun Wan Er (Leanne Liu, HOLY FLAME OF THE MARTIAL WORLD), daughter of the chief and only female student at Wudang, not only intervenes but brings him to the Hall of Justice to report what they’re doing to him to the uncles. She means well but all it does is get him dressed down some more and told “You’re being unreasonable.”
When Sister says the uncles are being unfair one o them says, “Nonsense. If we were unfair would the chief assign us to be guardians of the law?” In other words authority is always correct by reason of being authority. And authority has decided that the bullies get to keep bullying but Yun Fei Yang has to carry fifty water pails a day. (read the rest of this shit…)
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING does not necessarily seem like “well guys, that’s the last one” at the end, but as a whole it definitely does play like they’re trying to wrap things up. Though the seven previous films in the series have been mostly disconnected, this one follows the series’ only cliffhanger, and has multiple instances of people discussing the past adventures of Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, THE MUMMY), complete with clips. It has two big story threads that tie directly to Brian DePalma’s part I, plus a connection to J.J. Abrams’ part III. Both the NOC list and the Rabbit’s Foot come up – mcmuffin reminiscences from a movie series that has lasted more than four times as long as the TV series it was based on. And that ran for seven seasons!
I think it lives up to the series’ 29-year-long tradition of great entertainment, but it is also by far the sloppiest chapter. That’s not to say it’s lazy – quite the opposite. I think it just got too wild and out of control to ever sculpt it into an elegant shape. They might still be chiseling away at it as we speak.
I’m not one to complain about long runtimes and unnecessary scenes, especially when the format demands zipping around through a string of incidents, but the first 45 minutes or so of this thing alternately feel like they didn’t have time to finish the edit or like we’re watching consecutive episodes of the world’s most expensive Quibi series. It opens with Ethan watching a VHS tape that’s his “your mission should you choose to accept it” message, though this time from President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett, F/X), and it’s a very long “as you know” type explanation of what happened in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE, what has happened in the months since, and a reminder that he has the “cruciform key” everyone wants, that he can use to open a thing in the sunken Russian submarine the Sevastapol for access to the source code of the rogue artificial intelligence known as “The Entity” that he wants to destroy and everyone else wants to control. Though it’s obviously ridiculous for her to be telling him this stuff he already knows, and it’s awkward in its length, the forced exposition kicking off a mission is part of the fun of this series. (read the rest of this shit…)
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