Category Archives: Action

Bullet Train review — Action comedy goes off the rails

August 15, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by David Leitch | Written by Zak Olkewicz, from a novel by Kôtarô Isaka | 127 min | ▲▲△△△ | Netflix Back in the 1990s, the success of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction spawned a collection of "Tarantino-esque" gangster pictures with titles like Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, 2…Read More

Predator series review

August 5, 2022 flawintheiris

As a science-fiction series birthed out of slam-bang, macho Hollywood of the 1980s, this one falls behind The Terminator and Alien by some distance. Maybe that's because those pictures have at least two stone cold classics each, while this one, despite a number of attempts to capture the magic of the first, still rides on…Read More

The Gray Man review — Big budget actioner a passable timewaster

July 24, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo | Written by Joe Russo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, based on the book by Mark Greaney | ▲▲▲△△ | On Netflix You know how the Uncanny Valley is usually used to describe a weird feeling one gets when computer animation is especially realistic but not quite real…Read More

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent review — Cage uncaged!

July 1, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Tom Gormican | Written by Gormican and Kevin Etten | 107 min | ▲▲▲△△| Netflix I feel like the story of how this movie got made might even be better than the movie itself — and the movie's not bad. For the Nicolas Cage fan, I'd say it might even be essential. For…Read More

Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins review — Toy time manages some fun

May 26, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Robert Schwentke | Written by Evan Spiliotopoulos, Joe Shrapnel, and Anna Waterhouse | 121 min | ▲▲▲△△| Netflix This blockbuster floundered last year at the pandemic box office but is now available on demand, which is where I caught up with it. Here's where I have to own a small weak spot for…Read More

Everything Everywhere All At Once review — Bonkers sci-fi comedy has plenty of heart

April 17, 2022 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by The Daniels, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert | 139 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | Amazon Prime If the Daniels aren't a familiar filmmaking name to you, they have a rep as creative, unusual filmmakers. They're maybe best known for a bizarre dark comedy, Swiss Army Man, the farting corpse movie with Paul…Read More

The Lost City review — Jungle snooze

April 10, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Aaron Nee and Adam Nee | Written by the Nees, Oren Uziel, and Dana Fox | 112 min | ▲△△△△ I was excited by the prospect of a romantic adventure movie having enjoyed pictures like Romancing The Stone and the The Mummy with Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser. Last year's awful Jungle Cruise did…Read More

Blacklight review — Neeson thriller is spectacularly lame

February 10, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Mark Williams | Written by Williams, Nick May, and Brandon Reavis | 108 min | ▲△△△△ Liam Neeson, so good in period epics like Silence and dramas like Ordinary Love, is best known these days for those interchangeable action pictures with titles like The Commuter, Cold Pursuit, and The Marksman. There's a precedence for…Read More

The 355 review — Formula fun from Chastain and company

January 14, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Simon Kinberg | Script by Kinberg and Theresa Rebeck | 122 min | ▲▲▲△△ The 355, a movie that the filmmakers could've come up with a better title for, isn't the picture that's gonna change the fortunes of female-led espionage/action pictures. Don't get me wrong — I'm all for them, and there've been…Read More

The Matrix: Resurrections review — You may want to take the red pill

December 31, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Lana Wachowski | Written by David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon | 148 min | Netflix | ▲▲▲△△ When I heard about this return to The Matrix, I didn't know what to think. Encouragingly, one of the two Wachowski siblings who helmed the original trilogy is back to bring us this new iteration of…Read More