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Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)
Desperate times. Desperate measures.
Filmmaker(s): Christopher McQuarrie

Ethan and team take on their most impossible mission yet—eradicating 'The Syndicate', an International and highly-skilled rogue organization committed to destroying the IMF.

The Woman After the disaster that I consider ‘Barbie’ and the very mixed feelings I have about ‘Wonder Woman’, I’ve been sensitive to how women are often portrayed in action films, how I feel about it, and what would be better. I completely forget what...
Published March 9, 2024
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Elemental
Opposites react.
Filmmaker(s): Peter Sohn

In a city where fire, water, land and air residents live together, a fiery young woman and a go-with-the-flow guy will discover something elemental: how much they have in common.

Spatial Depth I suppose most people will talk about the story. It has the by now standard Father dynamics. The also now standard tension from a systemic (I hesitate to say ‘environmental’) threat rather than a bad guy. And a love story of the typical...
Published February 28, 2024
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Gulliver’s Travels (2010)
Something big is going down.
Filmmaker(s): Rob Letterman

Travel writer Lemuel Gulliver takes an assignment in Bermuda, but ends up on the island of Liliput, where he towers over its tiny citizens.

Action Figures There is something brilliant about this project, something absolutely brilliant. You will find it hard to locate in the storm of distracting bad decisions elsewhere. The bad? Well, you can read about that elsewhere. A cheap film factory and story meets the three...
Published February 23, 2024
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True Grit (2010)
Punishment comes one way or another.
Filmmaker(s): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Following the murder of her father by a hired hand, a 14-year-old farm girl sets out to capture the killer. To aid her, she hires the toughest U.S. Marshal she can find—a man with 'true grit'—Reuben J. 'Rooster' Cogburn.

Pumice The Coens are important to me because they invented an approach to film that has had effect in the world of film, dreams and my life. What they are able to do is take us to the edge of a genre, showing us the...
Published February 23, 2024
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The Warrior’s Way (2010)
Assassin. Hero. Legend.
Filmmaker(s): Lee Seung-moo

A warrior-assassin is forced to hide in a small town in the American Badlands after refusing a mission.

Edges I rushed to see this on the big screen because I expect it to go away quickly. This is another movie where the watching is itself not rewarding; the reward is in the awareness of sharing the experience of a risky, somewhat twisted experience....
Published February 22, 2024
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The Machine Girl (2008)
It's Payback Time!
Filmmaker(s): Noboru Iguchi

The life of a young, Japanese schoolgirl is destroyed when her family is killed by a Ninja-Yakuza family. Her hand cut off, she replaces it with various machines-of-death, and seeks revenge.

Borrowing There’s something disturbing about American filmmakers going to other cultures to borrow porn tropes. ‘Kill Bill‘ just never seemed right, like a traditional Jewish grandmother making Tacos for her goyim daughter-in-law‘s brownie troop because she thought that’s what it was all about. Today, when...
Published February 22, 2024
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Runaway Train (1985)
Desperate, And Determined To Survive.
Filmmaker(s): Andrei Konchalovsky

A hardened convict and a younger prisoner escape from a brutal prison in the middle of winter only to find themselves on an out-of-control train with a female railway worker while being pursued by the vengeful head of security.

Movement Having seen ‘Unstoppable,‘ I had to see this. It is hard to know what influence Kurosawa had on this, but one can guess. He had been through his rejection in Japan, suicide attempt and film made and financed by the Soviets. He subsequently arranged...
Published February 19, 2024
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Tomorrow, When the War Began (2010)
Where were you when everything changed?
Filmmaker(s): Stuart Beattie

Ellie Linton, a teen from an Australian coastal town, leads her friends on an excursion to a camp deep in the woods, dubbed "Hell." Upon their return, the youths find that their town has been overrun by an enemy army, and their friends and family have been imprisoned. When the hostile invaders become alerted to their presence, Ellie and her friends band together to escape -- and strike back against -- this mysterious enemy.

Kids I suppose studios have genre classifications that would put this as ‘action,‘ with a (Australian) patriotic flavour. But my own personal genre classification system has this as a teen stereotype movie. Maybe 20-25% of all movies are of this type, even those featuring adults....
Published February 19, 2024
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Wish (2023)
Be careful what you wish for.

Asha, a sharp-witted idealist, makes a wish so powerful that it is answered by a cosmic force – a little ball of boundless energy called Star. Together, Asha and Star confront a most formidable foe - the ruler of Rosas, King Magnifico - to save her community and prove that when the will of one courageous human connects with the magic of the stars, wondrous things can happen.

Many in One I won’t lead this with a rebuttal to those that did not enjoy it because they thought it woke, and part of a grand conspiracy against something. I will lead with what I think is a brilliant, effective cinematic decision. Pixar’s world...
Published February 18, 2024
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127 Hours (2010)
There is no force more powerful than the will to live.
Filmmaker(s): Danny Boyle

The true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston's remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah.

The Hand Left in the Thing There are so many filmmakers out there that I am still approaching many films the way they were intended to be approached: as self-contained works of art (or craft). But there are some filmmakers I know well enough to...
Published February 16, 2024
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