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.

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.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) - Movie Review

Fast & Furious is a very silly film franchise. Sudden character death, sudden character resurrection/amnesia, overblown emotionality, pretences towards it all being families and sticking together; it’s basically soap opera for people who think the WWE doesn’t go far enough. It’s also a series that, as the years press on, I find myself gravitating closer and closer towards, appreciating them honestly as some of the best blockbuster action in cinemas these days and somewhat pretentiously for how it deals with the relationships between its many, many main characters.

Deadpool 2 (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), in-between killing anyone he sets his sights on, is contemplating starting a family. Whatever domestic roles may be involved will have to wait, however, as his reconnection with the X-Men leads to him to a young boy named Russell (Julian Dennison), a powerful mutant with the potential for great disaster. As he connects with the young mutant, time-travelling mercenary Cable (Josh Brolin) has arrived in the present to hunt down the one responsible for the death of his family. With multiple threats on his life and others and his anti-social tendencies making his want to start his own superhero team a bit wonky, it's just another day in the life of everyone's favorite Merc.

Atomic Blonde (2017) - Movie Review

Over the past couple years, mainly off the back of the now-legendary Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron has become the female action icon that, honestly, we need right now. I know that this might sound a bit reactionary after the pleasant success of Wonder Woman, and especially in light of certain… comments that have been made about it recently, but we don’t really have a lot of bankable female action heroes right now. Not to say that they just don’t exist (hell, I’ve been singing Scarlett Johansson’s praises for a while now) but I specify “bankable” because money talks and we’re still in this weird position of hesitance in letting these actors get their fair share. So, in light of another widely-popular action reinvention in the form of the John Wick movies, Theron tapped Wick co-director David Leitch to give her a fighting chance. Does that chance pay off?