"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Lukas Gage’

Companion

Tuesday, May 6th, 2025

COMPANION, which played in theaters a couple months ago and is now on disc and streaming, features certain genre elements that are strategically withheld for a while. For almost a third of its 97 minutes we can tell there’s something we’re missing about the main character because of some of the weird things people say to her, so we’re very intrigued. I don’t include myself in “we” though because I knew the premise of the movie, controversially (but understandably, I think) included in the second trailer and other promotions. There is good reason to go in blind, but I can confirm that the movie is still fun without being surprised by that part. And I’m not gonna write a review on eggshells, so I’m gonna get into it a couple paragraphs from now.

The movie is about a group of friends who go stay together at a rich guy’s fancy-ass lake house. Iris (Sophie Thatcher, MAXXXINE) is our narrator, these are friends of her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid, LOGAN LUCKY), and she’s worried she’s going to embarrass herself in front of them. Sure enough Kat (Megan Suri, IT LIVES INSIDE), who answers the door, barely acknowledges her presence. Poor Iris just stands there forcing a smile while a conversation goes on next to her. (read the rest of this shit…)

How To Blow Up a Pipeline

Thursday, April 17th, 2025

HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE (2022) is about a group of young people who have determined, quite reasonably, that the only voice they really have in stopping an oil company from poisoning their communities and exacerbating climate change is if they figure out how to sabotage their infrastructure enough to disrupt their business and make it less profitable. So that’s what they’re ready to do. They all rendezvous at a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, West Texas, some meeting for the first time, but they all know the plan, and they get to it.

I was a little thrown off by the opening, because it didn’t seem like the raw, authentic approach I had pictured. The filmatism is trying to make these twentysomethings rigging the security cameras at their maid jobs look like HACKERS meets OCEAN’S ELEVEN. And I was not buying this disparate team we see coming together – two messy punk rock kids (Kristine Froseth [THE ASSISTANT] and Lukas Gage [the villain the younger bouncer from the ROAD HOUSE remake]), one rugged camo-hat-wearing redneck (Jake Weary, MESSAGE FROM THE KING), etc. – how would they have gotten together? But it’s immediately thrilling with its blunt sense of purpose, its 16mm grain (cinematographer: Tehillah De Castro) and its un-ostentatious score by Gavin Brivik (The Pitt), with synths looping over beats banged out on oil drums. And though there will be scenes here and there that don’t ring true (like a cartoonish documentary director [Sam Quinn, JANE GOT A GUN] who says all the worst things to interview subjects in his one scene) it turns out to mostly play closer to “this must be what it would really be like” than just fun Hollywood bullshit. (read the rest of this shit…)

Road House (2024)

Monday, March 25th, 2024

ROAD HOUSE (1989) is one of my all time favorite movies. It is simultaneously extremely of its time and absolutely of all times. There’s nothing like it, nothing as good as it, it’s a lightning bolt and they stopped making the type of bottle you would need to even try to catch it again. But it is possible to make a fun remake of it, and I know this because after many years of threatening somebody finally went through with it. ROAD HOUSE (2024) skipped theaters because it was made for the Amazon Prime Free Product Shipping and Digital Television Network, but I liked it more than any non-JOHN WICK or M:I theatrically released Hollywood action movie of recent years I can think of. It’s funny and badass and different enough from the original to stand on its own. (read the rest of this shit…)