Posts Tagged ‘Sofia Boutella’
Monday, September 23rd, 2024
You bet your ass I’m gonna go see a theatrically released Dave Bautista vehicle directed by action legend J.J. Perry. THE KILLER’S GAME came out during the week I was traveling and it’s already down to limited showings but I got in there in time. I’m glad I did, but I gotta admit I can already feel it dissolving from my memory as I type this. I didn’t know it was based on a book and that it’s been in development since the ’90s (more on that later), but coming now it’s very well-worn material within the familiar Wacky Assassins mode of action filmmaking (think THE BIG HIT, LOVE AND A BULLET, THE TOURNAMENT, SMOKIN’ ACES, BULLET TRAIN, POLAR, ACCIDENT MAN and its sequel or HOTEL ARTEMIS, which even features both of THE KILLER’S GAME’s leads).
Bautista (MASTER Z: THE IP MAN LEGACY) stars as Joe Flood, elite assassin who in the opening scene kills an arms dealer in the balcony of an opera house. All he really has to do is come in wearing a tux and kill a couple guards to get up there. It’s kind of funny that this is the last role before Bautista decided to slim down from his giant wrestler body, because his huge size seems like a disadvantage in this job (along with his attention-grabbing hand and neck tattoos). That’s not a complaint, though! I enjoy improbable muscleman characters – Schwarzenegger playing scientists, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Balazs Lengyel, Ben Kingsley, Daniel Bernhardt, Dave Bautista, Drew McIntyre, Felix Betancourt, George Somner, J.J. Perry, James Coyne, Jay Bonansinga, Justin Yu, Lee Hoon, Marko Zaror, Pom Klementieff, Rand Ravich, Scott Adkins, Sofia Boutella, Terry Crews, Troy Robinson, Wacky Hitmen
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime | 10 Comments »
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
REBEL MOON PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER is, in most traditional senses, a better movie than REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE. It’s more straight forward, less tangents, a little build and then a bunch of action. And I think it looks better, maybe because it’s mostly taking place on one planet (the titular moon of Veldt), so they were able to focus most of their energy on the design and style of that one location. The downside to this is that it feels a little more normal, less unhinged, more restrained. But narratively it’s the big pay off, the exciting part, so it’s hard to be disappointed.
The first movie, you remember, was loosely structured as the first half of SEVEN SAMURAI/MAGNIFICENT SEVEN/BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. This humble farming village is going to be forced by the evil Imperium to give up all their grain, so secret-former-bad-guy-and-adopted-daughter-of-their-tyrannical-leader Kora (Sofia Boutella, STREETDANCE 2, CLIMAX) flew around and recruited a team of warriors to train the farmers how to defend themselves. They thought they headed off the threat by killing the fascist admiral Atticus Noble (the wonderfully strange looking Ed Skrein, THE TRANSPORTER REFUELED, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK), but they quickly learn that he’s still alive (technologically resurrected in a cool, slimy opening sequence) so oh shit, it’s back on. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Charlotte Maggi, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Ed Skrein, Fra Fee, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Kurt Johnstad, Michiel Huisman, Shay Hatten, Sky Yang, Sofia Boutella, Zack Snyder
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 18 Comments »
Thursday, April 18th, 2024
With part two releasing tomorrow, I have been spurned into action – I must complete my review of Zack Snyder’s REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE. To summarize my Snyder history, I’m a fan. In the eras of SUCKER PUNCH, OWL 300 and MAN OF STEEL I seemed to like him more than the next guy, then I fell off as the true Zack Zealots and ZAnons began their ascent. But I still enjoy all of his movies on some level, and love some of them.
REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE is, uh… the short version of the first half of his long-awaited take on the space opera genre. Squirted onto Netflix with extreme fanfare and modest response, it’s unclear when the promised director’s cut will ever be released. But even in this abbreviated form it manages to have plenty of the self indulgence that defines a Zack Snyder film – it’s what powers his rockets, and also what gets him too close to the sun. On first viewing I felt this leaned closer to the latter, that it was one of his worst, but that I still got a kick out of it. Then I watched it a second time yesterday and it was better than I remembered. I cannot tell a lie. I kinda dig it. Not every “new Star Wars” has to really be the new Star Wars. There’s room in my heart for a new CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. This is way more fun to watch than SPACE RAIDERS or KRULL or METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN or even SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE although that one’s kinda good.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Charlie Hunnam, Charlotte Maggi, Cleopatra Coleman, Corey Stoll, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Ed Skrein, Elise Duffy, Fra Fee, Jena Malone, Junkie XL, Kurt Johnstad, Michiel Huisman, Ray Fisher, Shay Hatten, Sofia Boutella, Stuart Martin, Zack Snyder
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
Thursday, November 18th, 2021
PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND is the latest entry in the Nicolas-Cage-weirdo-arthouse-version-of-an-exploitation-movie subgenre (see also: BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS, MANDY, PIG). This one is unusual because it’s the first English-language movie from respected Japanese director Sion Sono (SUICIDE CLUB, LOVE EXPOSURE, WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL). It’s the first movie I’ve seen from him, but I promise I’ll watch TOKYO TRIBE, which has been recommended to me a few times.
It takes place in what seems like a post-apocalyptic settlement, though apparently it’s just a section of Japan that has been quarantined after a nuclear waste accident. The place is called Samurai Town, and it’s mostly populated by Japanese people in traditional robes, but “The Governor” (Bill Moseley, PINK CADILLAC) is an American redneck. I like how it looks like a very colorful period samurai movie but then there’s a car and Moseley in a white suit and cowboy hat. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Hendry, Bill Moseley, Charles Glover, Nick Cassavetes, Nicolas Cage, Reza Sixo Safai, Sion Sono, Sofia Boutella, Tak Sakaguchi, Young Dais
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 28 Comments »
Thursday, January 14th, 2021
“I’m just thinking. What if people don’t get it? I mean our Street-Latin fusion. Dancing with just us is one thing, but, a street dance battle, I just don’t…”
Recently I reviewed STREETDANCE 3D (2010), an enjoyable street-dancers-team-up-with-a-ballet-class movie that I saw as the U.K.’s answer to STEP UP. It didn’t go on to have as many sequels as STEP UP, but it did have one, in 2012, so it was my duty to check it out.
The sequel also reminds me of the STEP UP movies, and that’s a compliment. It sort of follows the first one in the way that STEP UP 3(D) follows STEP UP 2 THE STREETS: it introduces new male and female leads, but also elevates a younger, charmingly geeky supporting character to a more central role. Or if you prefer action movie comparisons, it’s kinda like NEVER BACK DOWN 2, which promoted Evan Peters’ character Max from nerdy underground fight fan to hotshot promoter. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anwar Burton, dancing, Falk Hentschel, George Sampson, Sofia Boutella, Stephanie Nguyen
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 10 Comments »
Wednesday, May 13th, 2020
Two years ago there were two intriguing looking movies about hotels from pretty good writer/directors named Drew. I didn’t get around to seeing either, and they seemed to have unusual premises that were hard to explain in the trailers, so I have always been confused about what they were about and which one was which. When I saw HOTEL ARTEMIS was on Amazon Prime and clicked on it I had my fingers crossed that it was the one with Dave Bautista. And it was.
It takes place over one Wednesday night in L.A., summer of 2028, in what I gotta say are bad times at the Hotel Artemis. There are huge riots in the streets, which a crew of robbers in very stylish skeleton masks are trying to use to cover their getaway, but they get spotted by cops. Sherman (Sterling K. Brown, THE RHYTHM SECTION), his younger brother Lev (Brian Tyree Henry, WIDOWS) and a guy named Buke (Kenneth Choi, TIMECOP 2: THE BERLIN DECISION, STREET KINGS, Judge Ito to Brown’s Christopher Darden in The People vs. O.J. Simpson) manage to get away, but with injuries, so there’s only one place they can go. (See the title of the movie for specifics.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Tyree Henry, Charlie Day, Dave Bautista, Drew Pearce, Eric Brown, Jeff Goldblum, Jenny Slate, Jodie Foster, Sofia Boutella, Sterling K. Brown, Wade Allen, Zachary Quinto
Posted in Crime, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 18 Comments »
Wednesday, June 26th, 2019
I’m not too well-versed in the films of Gaspar Noe. I still haven’t seen his early films like I STAND ALONE and IRREVERSIBLE that gained him a following and a reputation as a nihilistic wipe-your-nose-in-it gloom merchant. I have seen ENTER THE VOID, which taught me that he’s also a great stylist with incredible technical mastery in the area of long takes and seemingly impossible camera moves. I knew this one also had dancing, so I checked it out.
Here’s my pitch: STEP UP 3 meets mother! on acid. Literally on acid – it’s about a French dance troupe having a party in an empty school building and realizing somebody dosed the sangria. Everybody gradually goes from joyfully celebrating their progress on a new routine to getting paranoid, agitated and violent. The few who didn’t drink it are suspected of spiking it, and become targets for the others. Everybody is trying to fuck everybody else while also trying not to be fucked by everybody else. It turns into a dark, horny fever dream where the rooms keeping getting darker and redder and the camera more disorienting, eventually even upside down (shout out to the massage parlor robbery scene in TOO MANY WAYS TO BE NO. 1). I noticed that there was a whole lot of screaming and wigging out, but actually didn’t catch that 42 minutes of it was one unbroken take. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: dancing, Gaspar Noe, Sofia Boutella, Soheila Yacoub
Posted in I don't know, Reviews | 24 Comments »
Thursday, August 3rd, 2017
Our Lady of the Swaddledog, Academy Award winner Charlize Theron, stars in her first post-Furiosa ass-kicking movie, and holy shit it’s from JOHN WICK co-director David Leitch and the 87Eleven action team. ATOMIC BLONDE, based on a 2012 graphic novel called The Coldest City, is a twisty Cold War spy thriller set in Berlin right before the wall came down. Theron plays Elaine Broughton, a beaten and bruised MI6 agent recounting a disastrous mission to obtain “The List,” a document listing all the spies active in the Soviet Union (similar to the NOC List in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE), and to kill whoever stole it.
Broughton has the qualities we look for in a larger-than-life movie spy: three steps ahead, improvisational when necessary, hyper-fashionable, sexy. When less experienced French agent Delphine Lasalle (THE MUMMY herself, Sofia Boutella) follows her, Broughton immediately makes her and beds her. The movie could get away with treating this like a conquest, but instead they start helping each other – spies with benefits – and you get to like Delphine.
The same cannot be said for David Percival (James McAvoy, THE POOL), the goofy, shifty contact who shows her around but might be the Russian double agent known as Satchel. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 87Eleven, Berlin, Charlize Theron, Cold War, Daniel Bernhardt, David Leitch, Eddie Marsan, James McAvoy, Kurt Johnstad, Sofia Boutella, spies, Til Schweiger
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 45 Comments »
Monday, June 26th, 2017
There are some things too powerful, too uncontrollable, too dangerous to play around with. Ancient, vanquished forces brought back to life in a world they were never meant for, doomed to fulfill prophecies of disaster. In this case, I’m talking about the 85-year-old Universal Monsters franchise properties, resurrected once more using the fearsome occult invocation “SHARED UNIVERSE REBOOT.”
Of course, most people don’t see this summer’s THE MUMMY as a remake of the 1932 film starring Boris Karloff in a fez, which is in my opinion the least memorable of the Universal Monster introductions. No, they see it as a remake of Stephen Sommers’ frantic, rhythmless action-adventure version from 1999, and they’re not really wrong. This one borrows the idea of a globetrotting adventurer hero, capable but fallible, who teams with a “funny” sidekick and a strong-willed female antiquities expert who he bickers with while exploring some tombs and accidentally unleashes an evil ancient Egyptian royal who has magic powers and a tragic backstory and at one point appears as a giant face in a sandstorm.
But it’s a contemporary version, not only because it takes place in the present day, but because by its imagery and content you can tell it was made after the J-horror wave, and the zombie wave, and James Wan, and years of conflict in Iraq, and most notably THE AVENGERS. So the mummy is pursued not only by our hero Nick Morton (Tom Cruise, THE LAST SAMURAI), but by a secret monster-studying militia called Prodigium, led by Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Kurtzman, Annabelle Wallis, Dark Universe, Jake Johnson, mummies, Russell Crowe, Sofia Boutella, Tom Cruise
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews | 44 Comments »
Wednesday, July 27th, 2016
I’m not sure if this is what STAR TREK BEYOND is supposed to mean, but this new star trek goes beyond just referencing old star treks. I don’t think part 2, INTO DARKNESS, is as bad as its reputation now, but it kinda left a sour taste in my mouth by building itself too much on “see, this is like before, only it’s the reverse of before” and shit like that. I would rather see a new story, which is what they did here.
Since part 1-2 director J.J. Abrams jumped ship to do a STAR WARS, he’s only producer on this one. And since Paul Greengrass decided to do another BOURNE movie with Matt Damon, Justin Lin (FAST AND FURIOUS 3-6) had to forget about the one he was developing with Jeremy Renner, so he became available.
Another thing that’s different on this one is that Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty, co-wrote it (along with Doug Jung, who wrote CONFIDENCE and some episodes of Dark Blue and Banshee). So it finds Captain Kirk, like Pegg’s character in the Edgar Wright movies, unhappy and questioning what he’s doing with his life. He’s three years into a five year star trekking contract (I guess we’ve missed a whole bunch of adventures since part 2) and getting kind of bored of the ol’ final frontier. So he thinks he wants to become an Admiral.
But one day on what seems like an easy task the Enterprise suddenly gets destroyed by a swarm of metal space bug things and they crash land on a rocky planet. The crew gets split up and they face various threats before they reunite and come up with a plan to fight Krall (Idris Elba, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE), the leader of the bugs, and rescue themselves. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anton Yelchin, Chris Pine, Deep Roy, Doug Jung, Idris Elba, Joe Taslim, Justin Lin, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Sofia Boutella, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 56 Comments »
