The Day Shall Come (2020) - Movie Review

Chris Morris. Pizza-faced satirist. One of the leading voices in British absurdism since Dr. Chapman joined the choir invisible. Collaborator of fellow politically-minded comedian Armando Iannucci. And as of this particular film, a sophomore feature-length director. And man oh man, did he come out as reliably all guns blazing as usual.

The Report (2019) - Movie Review

Much like how Steven Soderbergh couldn’t restrain himself to a single film this year, his frequent collaborator Scott Z. Burns appears to be in the same mode as, along with writing Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, he has stepped back into the director’s chair to do some even more scouring of conspiratorial secrets, this time involving the United States government and their involvement in torturing suspected terrorists in the wake of 9/11. Strap yourself in for some pretty ugly ruminations because, much like the film itself, I’m not going to be holding anything back.

Hotel Mumbai (2019) - Movie Review

This is a difficult film to talk about. Productions like this that dramatise real-life tragedies have that aspect baked into them from the get-go, but this has inadvertently gained another layer of unpleasantness in light of the recent mosque massacre in Christchurch. Watching a film where Muslims are endangered by terrorists could very easily fall into the realms of exploitation, as most thrillers with action elements tend do to by their very nature, and considering recent events, that’s not a sensation we particularly need right now. Thankfully, in the hands of director/co-writer/co-editor Anthony Maras, an Aussie on his feature-length debut, what we get is a highly visceral but still tactful recreation of the 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

The Foreigner (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: A department store bombing claims the life of restaurant manager Ngoc Minh Quan (Jackie Chan)’s daughter. Distraught at losing the only family he had left, he pressures terrorist-turned-government-official Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan) to produce the names of the bombers responsible. As Quan’s desperation for answers reaches explosive levels, Hennessy is under his own pressure to find the culprits, as he digs into his old connections to find the rogue elements.

American Assassin (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Mitch (Dylan O’Brien)’s life got turned upside down after his fiancée was murdered in the middle of a terrorist attack. From then on, Mitch dedicated himself to getting revenge on the terrorist cell, to the point of getting the attention of CIA Deputy Director Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan). She sends Mitch to train under black ops operative Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton) and prepare for the best chance he has to get that revenge he craves.