Category Archives: Action

Gemini Man review — CGI clone war loses on two fronts

October 13, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Ang Lee | Written by David Benioff, Billy Ray, and Darren Lemke | 117 min | Netflix For a chunk of its running time, I was confident Ang Lee's action thriller was gonna be the quintessential three star picture—if I was still giving reviews with star ratings—a perfectly fine action picture from a…Read More

Rambo: Last Blood review — Old and tired

September 22, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Adrian Grünberg | Written by Sylverster Stallone, Matthew Cirulnick, Dan Gordon, based on the character from the book by David Morrell | 89 min When the author of the book that was the source of inspiration for your movie franchise says he feels "degraded and dehumanized" by your most recent sequel featuring his…Read More

Reviews from the Vault Vol. 7 — Big-Budget Fantasy

August 25, 2019 flawintheiris

From 2005 to 2009 I was a programmer on CKDU 88.1 FM in Halifax, every Sunday morning hosting The Love & Hate Movie Show. I talked about what I was seeing and revisited some of my favourite films of old, pretty much what I do now here on FITI. I still have a lot of…Read More

Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw review — Lots of calories, no nutritional value

August 16, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by David Leitch | Written by Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce | 137 min | Netflix Makes a lot of sense that the stuntman-turned-filmmaker Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde) would be called to extend the Fast & Furious brand in this spin-off. It features two of the three bullet-headed stars of the globally popular…Read More

Shaft (2019), Shaft (2000), and Shaft (1971) reviews — Stick to the earlier two

June 13, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Tim Story | Written by Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow based on the novel by Ernest Tidyman | 111 min | Crave Plus Nineteen years ago, Samuel L. Jackson starred in a reboot/sequel of the original Gordon Parks blaxploitation classic, Shaft. Now we've got one more, also called Shaft. This resistance to renaming, or…Read More

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum review — John Wick kills more people

May 26, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Chad Stahelski | Written by Derek Kolstad, Shay Hatten, Chris Collins, and Marc Abrams | 131 min | Crave John Wick is a hard man to kill. We've learned that from the two previous chapters in this ongoing uber-violent action tale. But John Wick isn't someone who takes much pleasure in killing others.…Read More

Now on Canadian Netflix — March 2019

April 1, 2019 flawintheiris

Polar It took me a minute or two to get over the fact that Mads Mikkelsen had a feature in cinemas recently called Arctic, and there's this one on Netflix called Polar. I bet the producers of both films were annoyed. This is a John Wick-esque action picture from Swedish music video director Jonas Åkerlund,…Read More

Robin Hood (2018) review — Turgid actioner departs from myth for lame superheroics

November 26, 2018 flawintheiris

Directed by Otto Bathurst | Written by Ben Chandler and David James Kelly | 116 min One of the reasons myths and folk tales are so popularly adapted—along with the ease with marketing a recognizable, yet public domain brand—is their elasticity. You can update it, change it, as much as you like, so long as…Read More

Burt Reynolds’ Best on LENS ME YOUR EARS

October 3, 2018 flawintheiris

This week's episode of the podcast I do with Stephen Cooke, LENS ME YOUR EARS, is about Burt Reynolds, who died recently. Stephen and I are of the generation where Reynolds was one of the first movie stars either of us got to know, whose work left a big impact on our childhood moviegoing. Stephen…Read More

The Meg review — Big, bad shark has no bite

August 27, 2018 flawintheiris

Directed by Jon Turteltaub | Written by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, and Erich Hoeber, based on the book by Steve Alten | 113 min | Netflix A giant, prehistoric shark movie arriving in late summer? You give it a lot of rope. It's fair to expect a likely ridiculous but a fun time-waster, especially given…Read More