SIXTY MINUTES (60 Minuten) is a really impressive new addition to the Netflix library of international action, this one hailing from Germany. It feels very modern in the execution of its hard-hitting martial arts action, but it’s classical in its simplicity. A straight forward set up, an easy to understand goal, an emotional underpinning.
Here’s how it works. Octavio Bergmann (Emilio Sakraya, Warrior Nun), nickname Octa, is an MMA fighter successful enough to have his own gym in Berlin. He has a fight scheduled for today but it keeps getting delayed, and his team are trying to keep him warmed up, but he’s preoccupied because it’s his daughter Leonie (Morik Heydo)’s seventh birthday and he wants to make sure not to miss her party.
It must be said that this man is a bit of a fuck up. No one seems to think he’s been there enough for his daughter, who he had when he was 19 and didn’t stay with the mother, Mina (Livia Matthes, “Model,” CHARLIE’S ANGELS). On phone calls both his daughter and his ex don’t seem to believe he’ll really show up. And it’s implied that it was out of his control, but somehow he agreed to a fight on her birthday. The English title could’ve been DEADBEATDOWN. (read the rest of this shit…)
Man, what am I doing leaving all these Johnnie To movies unseen? Whenever I watch one I seem to fall in love. Case in point, THROW DOWN (2004). As far as I knew it wasn’t even one of his more popular ones when Criterion released it in 2021, at least not in the U.S. It was just a forgotten Tai Seng DVD from the aughts. But now it is the recipient of the prestigious The Best Thing I’ve Seen Lately award.
Most of To’s movies I’ve seen have been crime movies. They have good action but they’re more notable for their visual beauty and operatic emotion. They usually feel more poetic than badass, though they can be both. THROW DOWN technically has some crime in it, but that’s not the main topic, and to my surprise this is largely a comedy. Not the broad type of humor I associate with Hong Kong cinema, but a very dry, offbeat sort of humor of different characters matter-of-factly following their idiosyncratic pursuits into strange situations and never making a big deal out of it. Never mugging, never underlining. 
If they were in America, Rudolf (Christian Friedel, THE WHITE RIBBON) and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, who just got a best actress nomination for 
Chen Kaige is an acclaimed Chinese filmmaker I have no familiarity with. Too classy for me, I guess. Now I finally watched one, but not one of his famous ones from the ‘80s or ‘90s, it’s his 14th film, a straight up kung fu movie from 2015 called MONK COMES DOWN THE MOUNTAIN. And the reason is because it’s based on a book by Xu Haofeng, who wrote Wong Kar Wai’s 
I didn’t know what a NYAD was, but it’s the last name of a real life person, Diana Nyad, a marathon swimmer who broke a bunch of distance records in the ‘70s and in 1978 tried to swim from Havana to Key West. She made it about 76 miles in 42 hours but had to quit.
After 
Awards Season Catchup Double Feature: ANATOMY OF A FALL and AMERICAN FICTION
Well, Scott Adkins has another franchise. ONE MORE SHOT is the new sequel to 
My favorite Michael Mann Mode (MMM) is crime movie mode. Or guy chasing another guy mode. Moody guy looking out a window talking to another guy across the city mode. The mode you can feel coming in the air tonight, oh lord.
I saw this movie THE ROYAL HOTEL that came out on video last week, and I really liked it, so I watched the previous one by director Kitty Green, and that was even better. Let me tell you about them in this Kitty Green/Julia Garner Stressful Job Double Feature, presented in order of release.
