Black Bag is perhaps the most clinical and non-engaging film I can recall seeing on the big screen.
I mean the pieces are there: A great opening Scorsese-style shot, solid performances, a married couple who are both spies and the ever-present question of whether one is playing the other, as well as a handful of side characters who each have their part to play in trying to find (or sell) a device that could trigger WWIII ...
Black Bag with…
When the most exciting part of your $180 million franchise extending superhero film is the post-credits teaser, you know you're in trouble.
Whether it's because of the many reported reshoots or not, the third act of Brave New World is a mess. Sudden cuts to scenes that seemed to miss the scene that led into them, ludicrous wonders that characters can do with a computer, a flat and uninspiring climax (post credits scene aside), and awkward exposition being just some…
The mental gymnastics required to successfully process that Wes Craven, the man who created Freddy Kreuger and brought A Nightmare on Elm Street to our screens, released this painfully poor sequel in the same year as that iconic film has all but broken me.
(Yes, I know it was shot years earlier and the studio didn't bother releasing it wide to cinemas, but still ...)
1 Smart Returning Character for The Hills Have Eyes Part 2.
Liked this as a teenager in the early 90s, thought it was laughably stupid as a middle aged reviewer.
Find me a discernible arc for a character here? The "final girl" is terrible. The hero barely in it.
The villains go from being non-verbal, barely human creatures to sophisticated trap-creating sadists and back again. One minute they're kidnapping the women for awful purposes and the next they're putting one in a killer death trap, not worrying about those purposes.
And…
Things I learned while watching Crawl:
- Florida state police officers do not bother pursuing people who directly and brazenly ignore their explicit orders.
- Basements below ground level do not flood until it is narratively necessary for them to do so.
- Alligators are all at least 9 feet long.
- If any alligators smaller than 9 feet long do exist, they most certainly do not venture into basements where their smaller size would enable them to crawl under…
NO SPOILERS AT ALL BELOW
For several months now, Tenet has been proclaimed as the film which might just save the movie theatre industry. A 200 million dollar, original property blockbuster, written and directed by one of the most reliable names in Hollywood, Christopher Nolan. The hopes were that Nolan might deliver a film that was so incredible – so quintessential – to see on the big screen that it would tempt people from their homes, with their huge televisions…
