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…)
HUMINT (as in “human intelligence”) is a 2026 South Korean thriller from writer/director Ryoo Seung-wan (THE CITY OF VIOLENCE, ESCAPE FROM MOGADISHU). It stars Zo In-sung (THE GREAT BATTLE) as Manager Zo, an agent for South Korea’s National Intelligence Service who goes undercover to bust human traffickers.
As you may have seen I’ve been dabbling in a little anime lately, trying to find interesting ones that speak to me. I can’t remember what tipped me off to A TREE OF PALME (2002), but it’s one I found interesting, first because it has an unusual style and transports us to a distinctly strange fantasy world, then because it has a complex mix of tones and emotions that speak to the experience of being human and what not. Two things I enjoy in cinema.
SPACE SWEEPERS is a South Korean movie from 2021 that I first watched in February of 2022. I know that because when I went to save this document I discovered the partial review I wrote back then, but got too busy to finish. Recently I was thinking about the movie, watched it again, and I’m excited to share it with anyone who missed it. (It’s on Netflix.)
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.
I know prequels are always divisive, but I’m usually willing to give them a shot. When I 
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.
I loved the first two films from writer/director Julia Ducournau – 
PROJECT HAIL MARY is a nice crowd pleasing sci-fi movie based on a book by Andy Weir, same author as 
