No Exit

Film: Warfare
Format: Streaming video from HBO on Fire!

I’ve been trying to post reviews about more current movies lately. If you look at what I have been posting in general, I’ve been watching movies from this year and last year, at least in terms of what I’m putting up as full reviews. Part of this is because I want to have a more or less consistent posting schedule, even if I don’t always keep to it. Part of it is also that it’s a sort of self-defense. The more I watch from these current years, the less gets added to the list later. So, today it was the turn of Warfare to be the film of the day. This is a film that comes from Alex Garland, so I was interested based on that going in.

The truth is that you have already seen this in large part. While the events of this film come from the experiences of the men who lived through this event. In fact, co-director Ray Mendoza is a survivor of the battle in question, and is one of the only characters in the film depicted with his actual name. Warfare is every bit a modern war movie, though. There is no tearful scene where some kid from Brooklyn talks about his girlfriend before being killed by an errant shot. This is brutal, and violent, and vicious. The issue is that there’s not a lot here that feels any different from Black Hawk Down.

Police (Not So) Procedural

Film: Normal
Format: Streaming video from HBO on gigantic television.

Bob Odenkirk has an odd career trajectory. He made his bones in comedy as one half of the two heads of HBO’s Mr. Show, then became much more of a household name with his connection to Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Recently, though, Odenkirk has become an action star, but a vastly different one in a lot of ways. Odenkirk’s action characters don’t spit one-liners and walk away with a couple of scratches. His characters get hurt—shot, stabbed, beaten, and bruised. And rather than one-liners, he’s going to have speeches and moments of surprising badassery. This brings us to Normal.

It’s also worth noting that there was a film made in the early 2000s that was also called Normal. It featured Tom Wilkinson and Jessica Lange as a married couple in a situation where he realizes that he is transgender and wants to undergo sex reassignment surgery. I say this not because these two movies would ever be confused beyond the name, but because it was filmed a few miles from where I live. Odenkirk’s Normal is not a story of discovery, but an extremely bloody action comedy with a surprisingly high body count and multiple Rube Goldberg-style deaths.

Troy Story

Film: The Odyssey
Format: Market Square Theater #3.

It seems like every now and then, a movie shows up that really pisses off a lot of people for no reason more than the fact that it exists. The backlash against Barbie happened before it released, and the same thing happened to The Odyssey. Over and over again, the movies that draw this kind of negative attention prove to be wildly successful, just as The Odyssey has done. It’s gone from having the most-disliked movie trailer in YouTube history to a movie in the high 90s on Rotten Tomatoes and clearly on its way to more than $1 billion, and it still hasn’t opened in China.

So, while I am going to talk about the movie, I think the controversy is worth a paragraph here. The backlash against The Odyssey was framed as being “historically inaccurate” because of the casting. Were people upset that we didn’t have an actual cyclops? Or that Odysseus was being played by a guy from Boston? No, of course not. The problem was that Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, was being played by Lupita Nyong’o, a woman who is objectively gorgeous, but happens to be Black. Oh, and Elliot Page plays Sinon, who actually isn’t in Homer’s epic poem and that freaked a lot of people out. In fact it freaked people out so much that the rumor was that Page was actually playing Achilles. And in the movie? If you aren’t waiting to be outraged, you wouldn’t even notice.

The Gaang is Back

Film: Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
Format: Streaming video from Paramount on Fire!

Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest television shows ever made. I say this with no conditions or reservations. The show is smart, the characters are deep and believable. There are moments of great humor and moments of real tragedy, and it depicts a world in terrible conflict, with young kids at the center of it—kids who are essentially charged with solving that world-spanning conflict on their own. It is (my opinion) the best animated show in history, and without qualification, a show that I think everyone should watch. So I was very excited to see that Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender was a thing. I was also happy to see that it received just enough of a limited release for it to qualify for awards season.

It would be impossible to give a comprehensive look at the Avatar universe, but a quick primer will help with understanding the movie. In this world, there are essentially four nations, each one based on one of the four classic elements. Some people in each of those nations—the Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, the Air Nomads, and the Earth Kingdom—have the ability to “bend” those elements, something akin to performing magic with those elements. Overseeing all of this is the Avatar, an element bender who has the ability to learn all four elements and who is charged with maintaining balance. When each avatar dies, the spirit is reincarnated in the person of another bender, and the title rotates from someone in one nation to the next.

The Devil You Don't Know

Film: They Will Kill You
Format: Streaming video from HBO on various players.

Tropes and basic plots exist for a reason: they work. They serve as a sort of shorthand for character and plot. We can pick up a lot of basic truths about a story or a character quickly, and this also serves as a way for creators to subvert those tropes. Haunted house stories work the same basic way—people are trapped in a house and are unable to leave and are pursued and often killed by the thing (or things) haunting the house. Alien and Event Horizon are really just haunted house movies in space. Ready or Not subverted the genre by giving us a single victim being pursued by everyone else. They Will Kill You does the same basic thing.

I mean that sincerely. They Will Kill You is an almost spiritual sequel of Ready or Not, and it’s not much of a coincidence that they came out at virtually the same time. We’re going to have one motivated person against a crew that wants to get rid of her and there’s going to be plenty of Satan along for the ride.

New List, Who Dis?

Film: Predator 2
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Just like almost every May, the They Shoot Zombies list of 1000 most highly acclaimed horror movies has been revamped and retooled. This year, the list returned six films previously cut and added another 26, many of them from the last couple of years. There were a few older brand new additions, though, including Predator 2. This seems like an odd addition. It’s much more a science fiction/action movie than a horror movie, although there are certainly some clear horror elements. Anyway, I figured this would be a good way to herald in the new version of the list.

The original Predator was released in 1987 and presumably took place in 1987. The sequel, released three years later, takes place in that far distant future for the time of 1997. In this world, Los Angeles (and presumably other parts of the country and world) has become a war zone of criminal gangs fighting each other and the police in broad daylight. Into this rides our good cop Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover). Our opening sequence will show him taking out a number of criminal thugs, not realizing that there’s also our title character in the mix.

Appomattox

Film: Civil War
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

It was only a matter of time before someone decided to project a new civil war onto the United States. The level of division is maddening and disturbing—there are states I’d rather not drive through right now, and some that I have driven through recently where I wasn’t exactly worried, but where I definitely felt out of place. Alex Garland’s Civil War feels like a worst-case scenario, but also feels unfortunately real.

We don’t actually get a great deal of background on the war that is being fought. We see the unnamed president (Nick Offerman) practicing a speech that feels a bit overblown and hyperbolic, especially since we soon learn that there are multiple successionist movements of varying strength and success, and the group commonly referred to as the Western Forces are rapidly approaching Washington D.C.

Cold as Ice

Film: Dead of Winter
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on gigantic television.

Every now and then, an actor who has made their bones in traditional roles starts making action movies. It happened with Liam Neeson did Taken and it happened when Colin Firth did Kingsmen. It happens to comedians sometimes, too—Bob Odenkirk and the Nobody films, for instance. With Dead of Winter, it appears that it is now Emma Thompson’s turn. And let me tell you, if Emma Thompson is now going to be doing thrillers and action movies, I am 100% here for it.

Dead of Winter is a high concept movie in the sense that you can run down the plot in a couple of sentences. Barb (Thompson) is a recent widow who is traveling to a remote lake in northern Minnesota to scatter her husband’s ashes. On her way to the lake, she discovers that a couple has kidnapped a young woman (Laurel Marsden) for some unknown reason. Since the area is incredibly remote, has just survived a blizzard, and there is no good cell phone service, Barb realizes she is the only hope the young woman’s survival.

Apex Predator

Film: Predator: Badlands
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on gigantic television.

The original Predator movie is a classic and the second one is at least interesting, if not that great. And from there, the franchise tanked and it stayed tanked until it was handed to Dan Trachtenberg with Prey. Since this film, the franchise is on an upswing. The animated Predator: Killer of Killers was a great addition to the series, and then came Predator” Badlands. And while it’s not quite at the level of Prey, it really feels like the third movie in the franchise in a row that really gets it.

What’s different this time is that for the first time in the franchise, the film in the main will come from the perspective of the predator (the species refers to itself as “Yautja”) rather than the hunted prey. A young Yautja named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is the runt of his family, and because of this, desperate to prove himself. For his hunt to bring him fully into the clan, he decides to travel to the hell world of Genna and hunt a creature known as the Kalisk, thought to be unkillable.

Vroooooooooooom!

Film: F1 (F1: The Movie)
Format: Streaming video from Apple TV on rockin’ flatscreen.

There is a huge problem at the heart of F1 (sometimes called F1: The Movie). The problem is that because we know we are watching a movie, the endgame is played out for us once we know the premise of the film. Once you know what the plot is, the ending, while not guaranteed, is shuttled into a couple of possibilities with slight variation. It makes about 90 minutes or so of the film not meaningless, but having nothing really at stake. We know where we have to get.

We’re going to start not with F1 cars but racing at Daytona in the 24 hours at Daytona event. The person we are focusing on is Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a one-time F1 prodigy gone from that world for 30 years. Hayes now lives in his van, moving from driving gig to driving gig, essentially working for hire. His team wins the race, but he refuses to touch the trophy, or even really to celebrate. He collects his bonus check and drives off.

BTS, Eat Your Heart Out

Film: KPop Demon Hunters
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

Based on the film’s almost immediate cultural impact, I suppose I wasn’t really surprised at the Oscar nomination for KPop Demon Hunters. When this hit NetFlix, it became a huge sensation. What better place to start going through Oscar movies than this, I thought. It’s not a movie I would normally choose to watch and I’ll knock it out quickly and move on. Honestly, my original plan was to watch One Battle After Another, but by the time I had a chance to sit down with a movie, it would have taken my past midnight to finish. And so, KPop Demon Hunters it is.

This is a film where I want to spend a lot of time on what it is and less on the plot, so I’m going to speedrun the story in three paragraphs. Years ago, demons plagued the Earth, collecting souls and feeding them to Gwi-Ma (Byung-hun Lee), the demon king. A trio of women rose up to stop the demons, and pushed them back both with fighting skill and with the power of song, which created a magical barrier called the Honmoon. As time progressed, new signing trios emerged to maintain the Honmoon and fight against the demons who managed to break through.

...But No Mule

Film: 40 Acres
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on gigantic television.

I’ve said a couple of times in the past that one of the subgenres we’re going to start seeing more and more of is environmental-based horror. Environmental disaster science fiction is going to be just as much a thing in coming years. 40 Acres is absolutely a film in that subgenre. While this is an action movie in a lot of respects, the entirety of the film turns on climate catastrophe and famine.

We are in the new future, and the world has experienced a massive catastrophe. A fungal blight has destroyed crops the world over, plunging the entire planet into a massive famine. While food is a prized commodity, it is arable farmland that is the true prize. Any place where actual crops can be grown is more valuable than anything else.

Stay Tuned!

Film: The Running Man (2025)
Format: Streaming video from Paramount on Fire!

I don’t pay a lot of attention to new releases, although I do pay a little attention to them. In 2025, of all of the coming movies, the two I was the most excited about were The Long Walk and The Running Man, both based on books written by Stephen King under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman. The Long Walk made some clear changes to the book, but it kept the story generally the same, and it was generally a successful adaptation. But I was just as excited for The Running Man, which looked to be a legitimately accurate adaptation of the original book.

I need to stress this, because when I mention the book The Running Man, people get visions of Arnold Schwartzenegger and Richard Dawson. It’s a fun movie, but it’s not anything like the original story, which was transgressive, dystopian, and sweeping in a way that the first movie couldn’t approach. But sadly, The Running Man was getting lackluster reviews and didn’t stay in theaters long enough for me to see it there. I’ve seen it now, and there is a problem at the heart of it. To talk about it, though, we need to put this whole thing under a spoiler tag for both the movie and the original Bachman/King book. Consider yourself warned.

Time Off

Film: Nobody 2
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

One of the issues with modern action movies is that they have expanded in length over time. The genre used to be pretty straight forward. You could sit down with The Terminator or Predator and be out in under 2 hours, or go with Die Hard for a bit longer than two hours. The John Wick series is a solid example of what I’m talking about. The first film runs 101 minutes, the second is 122, the third is 131, and the fourth is a whopping 169. And why? Nobody 2 is a return to normalcy. It’s a tight 89 minutes including credits, and actually a touch shorter than the original film.

It helps to know the basics of the original film. Seeming average guy Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) has what seems like an average life but is distant from his family. In reality, he’s a former assassin, who gets dragged back into the life when he beats the snot out of someone who turns out to be connected. Mayhem ensues, and it is a glorious 90 minutes or so of absolute ass kicking. So here’s the sequel.

Ten Days of Terror!: Resident Evil: Afterlife

Film: Resident Evil: Afterlife
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

Here we go again. When you have a touch of the ‘tism, there are things beyond your control that guide at least some of your actions. In my case, it’s a necessity of being complete on things, which is one of the reasons (honestly, probably the reason) that I watch movies based on curated lists. The They Shoot Zombies list has a sublist of, not surprisingly, zombie movies, most of which I have seen, but it felt like another fun list to pursue, and here we are. It’s why I’ve been watching Resident Evil movies against my better judgment, and why I’m now getting through the fourth one, Resident Evil: Afterlife. For this installment, Paul W.S. Anderson has returned to the director’s chair, not that it’s going to make that much of a difference.

It won’t be surprising to hear that Resident Evil: Afterlife has the exact same problem as its two predecessors. Picking up from the previous film, Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her clones attack the main Umbrella Corporation facility in Tokyo, wiping out everyone aside from the chairman, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), who has injected himself with the T-virus. The original Alice has stowed away on Wesker’s escape craft, but naturally he’s going to continue to survive, and in this case, he’s going to inject Alice with an anti-virus that removes all of her supernatural abilities. This doesn’t seem to remove her ability to survive their plane crashing into a mountain, an accident from which she walks away essentially unscathed.

Ten Days of Terror!: Resident Evil: Extinction

Film: Resident Evil: Extinction
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I’d love to say lots of nice things about Resident Evil: Extinction, but that’s not the world that we live in. As much as I am personally and oddly fascinated by the career of Paul W.S. Anderson and as much as I will apologize for a lot of his films, I can’t bring myself to say a lot nice about this film, which was written and produced by him. There is a sense to this film that the story isn’t really that important, and even the franchise doesn’t matter much. Instead, the entire point of the film is about spectacle for its own sake.

I promise I’m going to go into some detail on this, but I want to set a sort of general idea of what I’m talking about first. Resident Evil: Extinction is a collection of scenes that are connected to each other, and there is a semblance of plot here, but very little sense of the larger story or the reality of the world that the film wants to exist in. It’s an odd little snapshot that exists for its own sake without a sense of anything larger. Things happen because they would “look cool” on screen. Stupid decisions are made for the sake of spectacle with no sense of reality, even the reality projected by the film series.

Power Trip

Film: Superman (2025)
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

The problem with Superman as a character is that it’s difficult, at least on the face of things, to make him compelling. When you have a character who can essentially do everything and whose weakness is extremely rare, how do you craft a story where that character is challenged? It’s been tried a number of times, of course, most recently by James Gunn in the rather simply named Superman. Gunn has proven himself to be a smart filmmaker and an equally smart screenwriter. I went in relatively cold but with a good deal of hope.

And it paid off. As I said, Gunn is a smart filmmaker and a smart screenwriter. The problems with Superman are mainly around giving him a compelling challenge. That’s hard to do physically, and in the case of this film, that does feel like a bit of a cobble. Other challenges, though, are probably more interesting. Public opinion is mutable, and becomes one of the mina problems in the film (although more could be done with it). We know that Supes is eventually going to defeat the bad guy, but how does he overcome bad press and failing in the court of public opinion?

Does Nazareth Get a Cut for Naming Rights?

Film: Love Hurts
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

Some people are natural action stars and some people aren’t, and it’s not always clear who works and who doesn’t. When Bruce Willis did Die Hard, it was seen as a huge misfire until people actually saw the movie. Who would have believed Bob Odenkirk as a movie badass before Nobody came out? Love Hurts attempts to do the same thing for the recently career-resurrected Ke Huy Quan, and sadly, the whole thing feels like an error. The action sequences are fun, but the movie itself is a huge miss.

It's a shame, too, because I really like Ke Huy Quan. He’s easy to like, and that’s one of the problems with Love Hurts. We’re presented with real estate agent Marvin Gable (Quan), who is evidently a very good real estate agent and who has signs up all over town. Someone is defacing those signs, though, giving him mustaches and sideburns, which seems like a harmless prank and the sort of thing that typically happens to real estate agents.

Hanuman-to-Man

Film: Monkey Man
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

There are weird confluences in movies sometimes. Every now and then, two studios release movies that are disturbingly similar at almost the same time. Witness The Sixth Sense and Stir of Echoes being released in consecutive months. Other examples include Dante’s Peak/Volcano, Tombstone/Wyatt Earp, The Prestige/The Illusionist and Friends with Benefits/No Strings Attached. The same thing happened in 2024. Both Boy Kills World and Monkey Man were released in April, and the two movies have a lot of common elements.

Boy Kills World is about a character named Boy who is attacked and left for dead by a corrupt government. He grows up with the goal of killing the people responsible for the death of his sister. Monkey Man follows the story of Kid (Dev Patel), who works in fight clubs and menial jobs. Kid was attacked and left for dead by a corrupt police force, and trains with the goal of killing the man responsible for the death of his mother. The main difference between them, aside from the setting, is that Boy Kills World is in large part a comedy and Monkey Man plays it entirely straight.

Player One Has Entered the Game

Film: Boy Kills World
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

I remember seeing the trailer for Boy Kills World and thinking that it’s exactly the kind of mindless bullshit that I want to watch on a big screen. If I’m paying for the movie, I’m very much a bread-and-circuses kind of guy. Give me over-the-top stunts and gun-fu, and I’m happy to fork over my $10 or more to watch. But Boy Kills World came and went almost immediately. I don’t know if it even opened within 15 miles of where I live. That’s not always a bad sign for a film, but it frequently is.

This is an action movie from start to finish, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Boy Kills World is the sort of action movie that gets the adrenaline junkie excited. Think The Raid: Redemption as a similar film with the same sort of simple plot and relentless action montages. The plot is high concept—in an oppressive society, a young boy’s family is murdered as an example by the ruling class. The boy (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) is left for dead, but is rescued by a man called the Shaman (Yayan Ruhian, who was in The Raid) and trained to hunt down the family that rules the area.