KATE is the straight-to-Netflix Mary Elizabeth Winstead action movie produced by David Leitch and Chad Stahelskiâs company 87North (formerly 87Eleven). As youâd expect from that pedigree, it has excellent action scenes, with JOHN WICK fight coordinator Jonathan Eusebio acting as second unit director and stunt coordinator. He did BIRDS OF PREY too, so I gotta wonder if Winstead asked, âYou got any more of those JOHN WICKs laying around?â
The screenplay is credited to Umair Aleem (whose only previous credit is EXTRACTION – no, not that one – the Bruce Willis/Kellan Lutz/Gina Carano one), and the story is admittedly more standard than a JOHN WICK or a NOBODY. Elite assassin wanting to retire, yes, but none of the fanciful stuff. Working with her handler Varrick (Woody Harrelson, DOC HOLLYWOOD), who trained her since she was orphaned, Winsteadâs titular character adeptly infiltrates, beats up, parkours and rooftop snipes whoever they send her after (which seems to mean Yakuza bosses, since she seems to live and work out of Japan). The first hit we see is successful, but she has to kill the guy in front of his daughter, which upsets her so much she decides sheâs retiring after wrapping up the job. The second one we see she misses, making it much more exciting because we get to see her leap and somersault across buildings to get a second shot and then improvise an escape, stealing some dudeâs ridiculously pimped out pink and yellow ride for a SPEED RACER/2 FAST 2 FURIOUS neon-blur car chase. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE GREEN KNIGHT was one of my adventures in mostly-empty Covid-era theater-going, but Iâm always working on a million things at once and I didnât finish the review until after itâs left most theaters and most peopleâs minds. And yet I continue, undaunted. (Itâs on VOD now and comes to disc October 12th.)
I donât know if Maggie Q thinks of herself as an action star. Sheâs a good actress, and in recent years sheâs been in horror movies and thrillers and on Designated Survivor, and she has a new sitcom coming soon. Maybe one of her best known roles was the title character in Nikita, where I assume she kicked a multitude of asses every week, but itâs not like anybody puts the original TV Nikita Peta Wilson or the original movie Nikita Anne Parillaud or the second movie version Bridget Fonda in a category with Jean-Claude Van Damme and those guys. Theyâre just actors without much association to the genre.
CRY MACHO is the new one starring and directed by Mr. Clint Eastwood. In a way it seems like a movie he wouldâve made when he was younger, and in fact he almost did make it in the late â80s, but decided to do 
ZOLA tells a wild road trip story that, I feel, doesnât amount to much, but itâs worth it for the ride, and for the telling. The big hook is that itâs based on the 2015 ânow iconic series of viral, uproarious tweetsâ (source: A24films.com), something thatâs not only emphasized in the marketing, but noted on screen at the beginning. The official onscreen title is @zola (which is actually the Twitter handle of some wedding company, not author/protagonist AâZiah âZolaâ King), the main characters are often looking at their phones and monotonously speaking aloud their texts to each other, and thereâs a notification sound heard frequently throughout the movie – I was never really sure if it was meant to be diegetic or not. Admittedly all that sounds stupid, but when it comes down to it this is really just âbased on a true story.â Not even entirely based on a true story told in an unusual medium, because a Rolling Stone article about the whole affair…
I think RIDERS OF JUSTICE, a Danish film technically released in November 2020, is my favorite movie Iâve seen this year. It plays off of some genre traditions and themes that interest me, but it feels unlike anything Iâve seen before, and it was exciting to discover that as I watched it. So this is one of the reviews where I have to start by suggesting you take my word for it that itâs a truly special movie, stop reading, go watch it, and then come back. But I know most people wonât do that, so Iâll start by explaining what the movie is and warn you before I get into heavy spoiler stuff to analyze the meaning with those who have seen it.
THE CARD COUNTER is the new one from writer/director Paul Schrader, with Oscar Isaac (
A cool thing about MALIGNANT is that the trailers made it look like the new movie from James Wan, the director of 
I’m the guest on the new episode of the podcast 30 Years Later, which is of course a podcast where they revisit movies from 30 years ago. They saw me tweeting about summer of ’91 and invited me on, so of course I offered to do the episode on 
DISCO 9000 – or FASS BLACK as itâs called on the Xenon Entertainment VHS tape I rented – is a 1977 movie about a super big shot who runs a record label and dance club in the top of a 26 story building on the Sunset Strip. Itâs the second of two movies directed by the actor DâUrville Martin (GUESS WHOâS COMING TO DINNER, ROSEMARYâS BABY, 
