"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE is the first of two Guy Ritchie films released in 2023. They came out so close together because this one was delayed more than a year for reasons reportedly including the pandemic, the bad luck of featuring Ukrainian gangsters right when Ukraine was invaded, and restructuring of distributor STX. I swear I heard it was going straight to video at one point, but then it suddenly hit theaters pretty much out of the blue, with predictably poor response.

It’s another Ritchie-Statham collab (their fifth), but not a gangster movie. Instead it’s a light-hearted spy caper, not an all-out comedy, but very jokey. It’s got the usual spy stuff: planting trackers, facial recognition software, meeting with buyers, pulling people into vans. And their mission takes them into the world of the super-duper rich, on yachts, in mansions, private jets, charity parties, bodyguards, art collections, jewelry auctions. A team of crafty good guys have to earn the trust of billionaire arms dealer Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant, CLOUD ATLAS) before he sells a dangerous device called The Handle. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 18th, 2023 | 26 Comments »

I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore

(disclaimer: Netflix continues to suck and needs to stop holding the American movie industry hostage by clinging to a clearly unsustainable exploitation-based business model. Also they have some good movies on there.)

I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE (2017) is a darkly comedic crime tale in a subgenre I would maybe describe as suburban pulp. A very ordinary, relatable protagonist falls victim to a very ordinary crime (burglary) and, compounded with the other indignities of her life (like some motherfucker always letting his dog shit on her lawn, even with a sign specifically saying not to do that), it pushes her past her usual timid boundaries into seeking some sense of justice. That gives her a peek into an underworld of corruption and depravity on the fringes of her town (filmed in and/or around Portland, Oregon). Nothing big time – just some rich assholes and some meth head weirdos, but certainly outside of her previous experience.

Melanie Lynskey (THE FRIGHTENERS) plays Ruth – single, depressed, put upon nursing assistant. The grimness of her existence is well summed up by the title as well as the first few minutes of the movie. It’s a series of illustrations of the overwhelming shittiness of modern living, most of them relatable, but also a pretty outrageous one where an elderly patient is watching cable news and growls just about the most obscenely racist thing you can imagine, then immediately dies. Later, her grieving son asks if there were any last words. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 14th, 2023 | 6 Comments »

Shin Ultraman

“Ultraman’s the closest thing the modern world has to a god. No wonder people cling to him.”


SHIN ULTRAMAN (2022) is #2 of 3 in Hideaki Anno’s Shin series, which are not narratively connected, but are his takes on iconic Japanese sci-fi characters. The first one was the excellent SHIN GODZILLA and the third was the recent SHIN KAMEN RIDER. I was really excited to see this in its theatrical showing but it was two nights only and it turned out night two was dubbed. But now it’s on blu-ray (ironically with kinda messed up subtitles on my copy, but apparently they’ve fixed that).

Though this one is written by Anno, it’s directed by his SHIN GODZILLA co-director Shinji Higuchi. While Anno had done live action movies before (such as CUTIE HONEY), he’s primarily known as the anime visionary behind Neon Genesis Evangelion. Higuchi is maybe a more natural choice for something like this – he did storyboards for some anime, but he came up in the world of kaiju movies, starting as an assistant modeler on THE RETURN OF GODZILLA, and then as effects director of the excellent GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE, GAMERA 2: ATTACK OF LEGION and GAMERA 3: REVENGE OF IRIS, where he was a real pioneer in the field of combining traditional rubber suit monsters and animatronics with early digital FX. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 13th, 2023 | 3 Comments »

Heart of Stone

disclaimer: Netflix sucks, needs to admit that their business model is a scam and figure out how to pay the artists who make their shit.

HEART OF STONE is Netflix’s attempt at an action franchise for Gal Gadot (TRIPLE 9). It’s certainly not as well executed as EXTRACTION or EXTRACTION II, and I think THE GRAY MAN is trying to do a few more interesting things visually and otherwise, but I enjoyed this one for its straight-faced use of hokey action/spy movie tropes with a fun tone and high production value (though not compared to the somewhat similar and obviously way better MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies). I really think this is the best way to explain it: it’s called HEART OF STONE and it stars Gal Gadot as “Rachel Stone.” If that makes you say “fuck yeah” like it did for me, you may enjoy it. If it makes you roll your eyes, then you know what to do (watch it anyway and then complain about it).

It opens mid-MI6 mission, a team stakeout at an elite ski resort/casino in the Alps, with agents Parker (Jamie Dornan, ROBIN HOOD) and Yang (Jing Lusi, Gangs of London) trying to catch a notorious arms dealer. Stone is in the van, doing computer nerd stuff – she’s the Simon Pegg. But she loses her connection, realizes she could hack the head of security’s phone from the blackjack table, and disobeys Parker’s order to “stay in the van – you’re not a field agent!” (read the rest of this shit…)

September 12th, 2023 | 6 Comments »

Plain Clothes

Not to brag but we all know the secret to my great success in this most respected artform of filmatic criticism is my appeal to the youths. You almost definitely can’t tell, it’s basically imperceptible to the human eye, but the individual pictured to the left here is not a cool young teen. He is in fact an adult man of age. But he wears a headband and passes for a youth. That’s pretty much what my reviews are like. Grown up, but ageless, vital, wearing a headband with a picture of a skull on it. Cool.

My timeless words and topics reach out even to generations that have largely abandoned the watching of movies, let alone the reading about them, in favor of other forms of expression such as short video clips of some jackass looking into their phone jabbering about some inane topic or other. I just get them and they get me so it’s not necessary, but just in case I’m gonna pander to that important demographic by offering this fun “back to school” themed review. If I know Gen-whichever-letter-we’re-on-now as well as I think I do those little dorks are gonna flip for my thoughts on Martha Coolidge’s PLAIN CLOTHES, an obscure 1988 bomb about a cop going undercover as a high school student to prove his brother didn’t murder his teacher.

Arliss Howard, in his mid-thirties and fresh off of FULL METAL JACKET, plays 24-year-old Seattle Police Department detective Nick Dunbar.  He’s introduced undercover as an ice cream man while his partner Ed Malmburg (Seymour Cassel, HONEYMOON IN VEGAS), whose out-of-fashion mustache and suits signify a generation gap, is on lookout. Nick hates being around so many kids, but when he goes to complain about it to his captain (Reginald VelJohnson right before DIE HARD), who’s sipping from a “Trust Me I’m a Father” mug, is deeply offended and yells that it’s “goddamned unamerican” to not like kids. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 11th, 2023 | 9 Comments »

The Dry

THE DRY is an Australian mystery thriller from 2020. It stars Eric Bana (CHOPPER) as Melbourne federal agent Aaron Falk, who gets wrapped up in some off-the-books mystery solving in his home town while on personal leave.

It’s arguably a neo-noir, but not in the sense of shadowy cinematography. It takes place mostly in the daytime, in rural Kiewarra, during a torturous drought. It hasn’t rained in almost a year, so this farming town is full of desperate people. Falk hasn’t been home in years, and only returns due to a brief, stern note in the mail telling him to be at the funeral of his childhood friend Luke (Martin Dingle-Wall, GUN SHY).

From the beginning it’s a bleak and uncomfortable tone. He saw in the newspaper that Luke died in a murder-suicide. Killed his wife, his kid, then himself (abandoning a baby). The funeral is for the whole family but some people are pretty upset about including the guy who killed them. And here’s Falk coming in from out of town just to honor Luke – he never met the wife or kid. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 7th, 2023 | 13 Comments »

The Wrath of Becky

Back in 2020 there was a pretty cool indie action type thing called BECKY. Lulu Wilson (The Haunting of Hill House) played a sullen thirteen year old trying to emotionally survive a cabin retreat with her widower father and his new fiance when suddenly she has to physically survive a home invasion by a neo-nazi gang. They killed her family (except for her dog Diego) so she hides the mysterious, possibly-mystical key they’re looking for and turns into kid McClane, violently hunting them using household and treehousehold items and wearing a cutesy knitted chipmunk hat.

I had some issues with BECKY but I enjoyed it enough to be excited by the prospect of a sequel with the pulpy title THE WRATH OF BECKY. It got a limited theatrical and VOD release back in May and has since come out on DVD (but not blu-ray I guess?). (read the rest of this shit…)

September 6th, 2023 | 4 Comments »

The Equalizer 3

THE EQUALIZER 3 is another fine entry in Academy Award winner Denzel Washington’s only ongoing franchise. It has a very different setting than part 1 or part 2 and he’s up to slightly different things, so it’s not exactly a rehash, it’s pretty different in a way. In another way it’s exactly the same as the other two, or any number of movies starring Liam Neeson. Very solemn and serious, but also over-the-top and absurd. Kinda melancholic, but also kinda awesome. And that’s what we want. If you don’t want any part in a “we” like that then that’s fine, you know what to do.

Washington (VIRTUOSITY) stars as Roberto McCall, née Robert, former Marine and DIA officer turned pro bono bad guy slayer. In the first one he took on the Russian mafia and corrupt police while working at Brand X Home Depot, in the second one he took on mercenaries, kidnappers and gangs while working as a Lyft driver, and in this one he takes on the Camorra (afiliated with Syrian terrorists) while chilling out like a retiree in gorgeous Altamonte, Italy. He gets there by accident, though. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 5th, 2023 | 37 Comments »

Strange Brew / ‘1983: Summer of Nub’ wrap-up

August 26, 1983

STRANGE BREW (on screen title: THE ADVENTURES OF BOB & DOUG McKENZIE: STRANGE BREW) is a silly lowbrow comedy that I loved when I was kid, and that holds up well from an adult perspective, though I probly don’t have a much deeper understanding of what specific Canadian observations and stereotypes the characters are playing off of. No problem. They’re still funny.

Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas direct, co-write and star as their SCTV characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, the winter hat and earmuff wearing, beer guzzling stars of the Canadian-themed talk show Great White North. In the opening scene they host their show and demonstrate the difference between TV format and movie format, then they introduce their DIY post-apocalypse epic THE MUTANTS OF 2051 A.D., a very funny fake-bad movie that coincidentally (?) has parallels to fellow Summer of Nub release SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE. Bob’s character even spots “a mutant in the forbidden zone” (played by Doug). (read the rest of this shit…)

September 1st, 2023 | 21 Comments »

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

August 25, 1983

After all the bullshit I happily dissected for this Summer of Nub series, I knew I shouldn’t skip the revered international classic that dropped in the final week of August ’83. The one that’s in the Criterion Collection, that was brought up so lovingly when co-star David Bowie died in 2016, and when composer/co-star Ryuichi Sakamoto died in March. I’ve been giving you the lowdown on every cheapjack part 3, off brand space opera and fantasy sword guy you ever heard of, then right when I’m about to wrap up I swing in with this highly acclaimed drama that happens to have been released in four American theaters between JARED-SYN and HERCULES. Film criticism won’t know what hit it.

One problem, though: what if it turns out I don’t really understand MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE very well? What then? Well, I guess I’ll just confess that up front. We must be able to admit that we don’t know everything. But come along and help me parse it, if you want.

I really went in blind, so this was news to me yesterday: it’s the story of mostly British prisoners in a Japanese P.O.W. camp in Java, 1942. The titular Lieutenant Colonel is played by Tom Conti, who’s immediately unmistakable as the guy who played Albert Einstein in OPPENHEIMER. It’s impressive because yeah, he looks so much like Einstein, but the resemblance never would’ve occurred to me. Casting directors know what they’re doing. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 31st, 2023 | 4 Comments »

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