Showing posts with label Gabriel Byrne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gabriel Byrne. Show all posts

Sunday, October 12, 2025

Ballerina

If someone could be as inventive about solving the world’s problems as this movie is about killing people, we’d probably have a paradise in no time. There wasn’t nearly as much thought put into the movie’s plot; you just get a relatively thin story that serves as a skeleton upon which the movie’s meat is hung—that "meat" being extended and audacious fight sequences. Those are done with this franchise’s usual aplomb, and are enough to satisfy any moviegoer's thirst for mayhem. Ana de Armas already has the human pincushion thing down to a T (as in "trauma") here, displaying admirable survivability even in the face of some truly savage stuff. Indeed, that is the element that makes this feature very much a guilty pleasure; you only hope and pray that no one out there takes this exercise in bad behavior seriously, or indeed as a template for how to engage in such behavior IRL, as the texters say. This movie does stand as a model for how to artfully present action sequences (a hallmark of the franchise going back to the very first Wick flick). Indeed, the aforementioned Baba Yaga makes an appearance here, one that is actually surprisingly deep and lengthy for an off-the-main-storyline work. I don’t know if this qualifies as an actual good movie, but it does deserve props for mostly living up to expectations via its expertly choreographed carnage. Light as a feather, perhaps, but this one does move in an appealing way. Hard to ask for more than that. 

Saturday, May 18, 2002

Smilla's Sense Of Snow

A few redeeming moments, but a bit on the bleak side. And the plot point involving a meteorite is patently preposterous. If you're big on mysteries, maybe; otherwise, you can skip it.

Wednesday, August 7, 1996

The Usual Suspects

A movie that set the tone for a generation of crime flicks to come. Cool, funny, smart, and steeped in good performances. You hardly need any advice from me on this one, just a reminder that you're not hip if you haven't seen this film.