Violent Night (2022) - Movie Review

 

Well, if nothing else, hopefully this film’s mere existence will be enough to finally put that boring-as-all-hell “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” debate to rest. Seriously, even as a meme, that shit got old a long time ago.

Bullet Train (2022) - Movie Review

Over the last few years, I’ve been riding 87North’s dick pretty damn hard. David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, ever since they gave Keanu Reeves a turbo boost with the first John Wick, have been remarkably consistent in delivering some of the most exciting action flicks in recent memory. If the term ‘elevated horror’ is allowed to be in common parlance, then what these guys do has to be called elevated action. As such, I was quite jazzed about the chance to see Leitch in the director’s chair again. But while it’s definitely fun, it seems that even he couldn’t keep up his enviable momentum forever; he had to hit a lag eventually.

Kate (2021) - Movie Review

Usually, I would take one look at the director attached to this (Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, who also made the phenomenally unnecessary The Huntsman: Winter’s War) and be immediately sceptical about this being anywhere near the neighbourhood of worthwhile. But instead, I was actually looking forward to it because of basically every other name attached to it besides his, namely that of David Leitch’s 87North Productions. This is the studio that, along with its founders, has been pushing modern action cinema into a higher art form over the last several years, and considering star Mary Elizabeth Winstead and her own rising action cred off the back of Gemini Man and Birds Of Prey, I have enough faith in this working out. And honestly, I’d argue that this did work out.

Nobody (2021) - Movie Review

Okay… after the last three films turned out to be absolute shockers, I figured I’d hedge my bets on something that wouldn’t make me burst a blood vessel in anger. And for a modern action movie, it’s hard to think of a production in more stable hands than this one. From the director of the (in my humble opinion) criminally underrated Hardcore Henry, and the writer of John Wick (with Wick co-director David Leitch also on hand as producer), I was gearing up for something that matched those levels of transmedia fusion and world-building splendour. But I didn’t get that. No, these guys just found different avenues to make something awesome.