Entertaining in the moment, this movie is bland enough that there’s nothing to say beyond liking Duke’s character and wishing that they’d had the guts to make Wahlberg play a continuation of his character from The Departed.
Downsizing justly indicts American avarice and blindness toward the disadvantaged who service the wealthy and wealth-aspirants, but falls down on its attempted environmental and human messages (including the main character’s story).
Immediately forgettable, American Assassin features a fridged girlfriend, Middle Eastern antagonists, a badass white man who’s right every time he disobeys orders, and the implicit approval of extrajudicial killings when done for America.
Bending both mind and flesh, Videodrome plays like an obsessive personality getting caught up in the underground war between two cults of TV wizards in a tense thriller that taught me once and for all that James Woods is not John de Lancie.
Despite tepid acting from the lead, this attempt at a psychic thriller may be worth watching to understand all the references to Scanners-style head explosions and to see David Cronenberg’s early work, with just a flirt with body horror.
Robert Sheehan and David Tennant nail their roles in this thriller (lacking only a denouement), Tennant the calm psychopath he perfected in Jessica Jones, and Sheehan the heart-of-gold thief who delights by making the moral decision every time.
Director Lynne Ramsay, aided by masterful cinematography and acting, gives us this amazing, quiet film of a shattered man trying to save himself through saving trafficked girls, all displayed with perfect, brutal humanity.