Category Archives: Action

Khartoum

Khartoum                                            5 stars

This is the last movie I saw in the theater before the Coronavirus shut down all the movie theaters in the state. Khartoum is the 1966 film that tells of the 1884 conflict in Sudan that occurred between the British led Egyptians and Sudanese against a Muslim army led by Muhammad Ahmad.  At the time Egypt was part of the British Empire and Ahmad was determined to take Egypt and the entire Arab world away from the Western powers and rule it himself.  I remember hearing the story of General Gordon and his doomed quest to keep the Egyptians and Sudanese from falling victim to the madman at the city of Khartoum on the Nile River.  In a purely political move the British Prime Minister, Gladstone knew he could not defend the city so he sent General Gordon, a hero in the eyes of the Sudanese, to the city to effect an evacuation of the city’s population, so that if he failed the blame would not fall on the British government.  The film brings these events to the big screen telling it as an epic tale aided with scenes involving hundreds of extras and a wide colorful screen.  The film stars the legendary Charlton Heston as General Gordon and Laurence Olivier as the evil and very tanned Ahmed.  These stars along with supporting cast of Richard Johnson and Ralph Richardson bring some of the most dramatic dialogue I’ve seen of the era.  One can compare it to the truly epic Lawrence of Arabia to give you an idea.  There is action too involving some well produced armed conflict in the desert, but the main attraction is the story itself.  It’s mainly about a man’s quest to do the right thing in the face of unbeatable odds.  I am really glad I finally got the chance to see it.  I don’t know when I will get the chance to go to the theaters again, unfortunately.

Avengers: Infinity War

Avengers: Infinity War   2 stars

I finally got around to Avengers: Infinity War, the continued adventures of the Marvel characters that was in theaters two years ago.  This two and a half hour extravagant CGI production is about all the superheroes in the series joining forces to battle their greatest enemy ever, Thanos, a supervillain who has such great superpowers he aims to destroy half the universe to create his vision of what the universe should look like.  He can accomplish his mission by collecting all the special stones scattered throughout creation and putting them in his gauntlet, a special weapon created just for him.  This story is scattered through so many different worlds and includes so many different characters that many of them seem to get lost and buried in the background.  There is the usual wit and personalities that we remember and the usual giant set pieces of battles between the heroes and the various villains.  Why do stories like this have to threaten the entire universe?  The writers pretend that we have no concept of how vast the universe is, like one individual could affect all of creation.  In my view there is only one franchise/science fiction story that could involve the whole universe and that is of Doctor Who.  All others need to limit themselves to a portion of the universe.  Infinity War is memorable for its overblown special effects and super-being battles, but I don’t recommend it for much beyond that.  Everybody probably knows how it ends by now, but I won’t mention that, except that there is a sequel after this.

The Smashing Machine

The Smashing Machine                  4 stars

The Smashing Machine by writer director Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems, Daddy Longlegs) is the recently released biopic about the life of Mark Kerr, the mixed martial arts star of the nineties and early 2000’s. It is not a conventional sports movie where a team or individual overcomes the challenges of their sport and triumphs in the end. Instead, the film focuses mostly on the character of Kerr (played by Dwayne Johnson, the former wrestling star and movie action hero, but forget about Red One) and the struggles he faces in his life within the sport and in his personal life. A few fights are represented, but they only take up a small portion of the total screen time, so don’t expect an MMA version of Rocky. I don’t know much about the sport that became the UFC, but it seems like the objective is to tackle your opponent, hold him on the floor while you beat him in the face turning it into a bloody mess until he gives up. (At least this is what I took from it. The nation will get a first-hand look at UFC next year when it will be featured on the White House lawn on the occasion of President Trump’s eightieth birthday.) Much of the film has the look of being a documentary using long takes, making it seem like you are watching the real Mark Kerr. It shows us the various sides of him. As played by Johnson he is the nicest guy you can imagine while dealing with the public. He is polite in the extreme to the average person, being very humble and restrained. But when he loses a fight for the first time and then only focuses on his next fight he becomes completely absorbed, shutting out those around him. This gets to be a problem for his girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt) as she comes to resent Kerr’s silence at these times. Much of the story is about these two people who can’t understand each other and who question the motives of the other’s decisions. The role of Dawn is a complete change from how we are used to seeing Blunt. Normally, her characters are of women who are adventurous and in complete control of their lives. Here Blunt is not her normal movie star self (think The Fall Guy and Jungle Cruise) but has an understated presence and is subservient to boyfriend Kerr. It is a testament to her acting talents that she can blend into the feel of the movie so effectively. Blunt may be in line for an acting Academy Award nomination for this role. There also seems to be talk of Johnson getting an acting nomination as well. It would be well deserved. The film is recommended, but again you shouldn’t expect a lot of action leading up to a traditional final climactic finish. (I hope I’m not giving too much away, but what kind of sports movie has the winner being awarded the trophy because of a cancelled final match?) You should go to see a person dealing with setbacks in their life and finding a way to get through them.

One Battle After Another

One Battle After Another                             5 stars

It’s only October and I feel I may have seen one of the Best Picture nominees or even the Best Picture with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. Anderson, the master storyteller (remember Licorice Pizza, Phantom Thread and There Will Be Blood) has created a film that is part social commentary and part family saga. It tackles matters that are relevant to today’s social situations and has some exceptional heart pounding action sequences. The main story follows an ex-revolutionary figure named Pat or Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his sixteen-year-old daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti in her first movie role) as they try to escape an enemy from their past, a certain army colonel named Lockjaw (Sean Penn) who is trying to hunt them both down. But first we must learn what led to this situation through the first part of the movie. Bob and Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) are part of an anti-establishment revolutionary group called the French 75, a loosely organized group of freedom fighters who try to free detained undocumented aliens and cause general chaos through destructive actions. Perfidia is one of leaders of the group while Bob has skills with explosives. Their actions could fit in almost any time period, but here it seems to be the early 2000’s. They run afoul of Colonel Lockjaw, a hardnosed tough as nails army officer with a really bad haircut who literally has a hard-on for black chicks. He is also part of a secret Neo-Nazi white supremacist society (called the Christmas Adventurers Club) which creates a conflict when he meets Perfidia during one of the 75’s missions. Pat and Perfidia have a baby daughter, who they are raising together that is, until most of the gang gets rolled up after a bank heist, including Perfidia. She is convinced to reveal names by Lockjaw and is placed into witness protection only to flee into the wind. Sixteen years go by during which time the gang goes dormant and Bob must live off the grid while raising the baby, now named Willa on his own. Bob is no criminal mastermind and by now has become a stoner regularly getting high and drunk. Other than his skills with explosives, he is not good for much. But DiCaprio is very convincing as a father who has a real attachment to his daughter. Bob has a real problem when he is alerted through his underground contacts that the authorities are on to them and he and Willa will need to disappear. Fortunately for Bob, there are still a few members of the group around that can help keep him and Willa out of the hands of the government. They include Sensai Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro also of Inherent Vice) and Deandra (Regina Hall of The Hate U Give) who finds Willa and gets her out of harm’s way (at least for a while). The latter part of the movie is very intense as Bob and Willa try to stay one step ahead of Lockjaw’s soldiers who are closing in. The scenes are aided by a fast-moving original score by Johnny Greenwood. The audience will really be glued to the screen during two car chase scenes, with an outcome that is not expected. (Also, look for Alana Haim in a small role. Anderson featured her in his film, Licorice Pizza.) I fully expect One Battle After Another to earn several Academy Award nominations. It could be Paul Thomas Anderson’s best to date. Do not miss it.

Ready Player One

Ready Player One             4 stars

Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg seems like an appropriate movie for now as we isolate from one another and communicate through electronic devices.  In this movie, set decades in the future, most people live in poverty while a small segment live well working for giant corporations.  The masses escape their reality by venturing into the Oasis, a virtual world where people meet through their avatars and compete to find the treasures that its creator, James Halliday left behind but he died.  Our hero, Wade Watts is determined to do what no one has been able to do, find the hidden keys that will lead to the Easter Egg, giving the recipient total control over Oasis.  Of course there is a sinister corporation called IOI headed by the evil Sorrento, who will stop at nothing to get control of Oasis even if it means hurting Wade and his friends.  The movie is filled with pop culture references to movies, comic books and video games that others will appreciate even more than I did with what I managed to notice.  I especially liked the scenes from The Shining.  The references to Saturday Night Fever, Back to the Future and The Iron Giant were fun as well.  Even though I am not a video game player I enjoyed the action sequences and the visual effects.  The scenes continually alternate between reality and the virtual world with the result being a well put together story.  I was not at all bored through the two hour and twenty minute running time.  Be sure and watch for the appearance of one Simon Pegg!

The Hunt

The Hunt                                             2 ½ stars

Since I haven’t been to a theater in a long time, I went looking for a new release. I landed on The Hunt which has been called one of the most controversial recent movies. The Hunt is a violent political satire horror action movie that features the hunting down of people for sport on an isolated patch of land by a few rich elites.  The elites are believers in the usual left-wing issues like climate change, follow leftist authors and are led by Athena (Hilary Swank), a left winger who hates the kind of people who love Donald Trump.  A group of twelve people awake to find themselves in an unknown countryside and discover that they are all believers in the conspiracy theory that there is a place called The Manor where right wing types are hunted down by leftist elites. There are a few utterings of second amendment rights and the evils of immigrants. In a clearing there is a giant crate, that when opened reveals a pig and a giant cache of arms. It doesn’t take long till the shooting starts and the group finds that they are the prey. They gather the weapons available and try to escape while each is gunned down in ever increasing bloody and violent fashion.  The violence level is high in this one, (comparable to Revenge from a couple of years ago). There is an assortment of well known actors playing the right wingers. There is Emma Roberts who is Yoga Pants who doesn’t last very long. Justin Hartley from This Is Us is a hunter of exotic wildlife. Ike Barinholtz of The Mindy Project is Staten Island. Wayne Duvall is Don??. Ethan Suplee of My Name is Earl is Shut the F*** Up Gary. There is another character referred to as Target for reasons that become clear. As the body count increases one person emerges as more than Athena was counting on by the name of Crystal (Betty Gilpin of the TV show GLOWS) who is quite proficient with a gun and various hand to hand weapons. While it may not be entirely appropriate for our times, the movie effectively satirizes the common behavior of believing conspiracy theories without checking out the facts.  If you feel like combining political lunacy with bloody violence, then The Hunt might be for you as there is something in it for both sides. Who knows? President Trump might even like it.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo: A Star Wars Story                  4 stars

By now everyone has seen the origin story of Han Solo titles Solo: A Star Wars Story, part of the Disney expansion of the Star Wars universe.  So I won’t go into any great detail about the story, other than to say it was an interesting departure from the other Star Ward movies.  Here story is that of an outlaw, Han Solo, joining with other outlaws to put together a colossal interstellar heist to steal some valuable treasure from some very sinister folks.  There is little mention of the empire or the force and we only see a couple of the characters that are so familiar from the other movies.  There is no shortage of action be it high speed chases, shootouts or space dog fights.  It looks like the critics were split on this one and I come on the side of those who thoroughly enjoyed the film.  Woody Harrelson does his usual bad guy impression as Beckett, the outlaw that Solo teams up with.  Paul Bettany is a convincing evil villain who you better not cross and we even get to see how Chewbacca and Han got together.  Also, Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge make a well matched and very mouthy pair.  I could see there being a follow up film starring Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han.  If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for?

RRR

RRR                        5 stars

RRR is the blockbuster 3-hour epic action movie that created something of a sensation in 2022 when it appeared in theaters in India and soon spread around the world. The movie stars two popular actors from Indian cinema, Ram Charan and N. T. Rama Rao, Jr. and tells a popularized version of two legendary figures from 1920’s India and floods the screen with heroic action and carefully crafted dance scenes all set to Bollywood style music. The title, RRR, stands for Rise, Roar, Revolt and tells the story of the colonial rule of India by the British and of two men, Rama and Bheem who lead a revolt against them. It all starts with a story showing the cruelty of the English rulers as the rich governor has a young Indian girl kidnapped from her family because of her artistic talents and in the process leaves a few corpses behind. It is meant to show the contempt and racist attitudes of the British toward their brown skinned subjects. That memorable scene is followed with separate action-packed sequences involving Rama and Bheem, (both very muscular men) where Rama fights off a crowd of men in order to apprehend one rock throwing individual and Bheem does face to face battle against a ferocious tiger. The two men have different motives for their actions and we eventually learn more about their backgrounds through flashbacks. The two meet and become friends with each hiding something in their background from one another. At one point, about a third of the way through the movie we experience the grand event of a sort of dance off between the English and the two heroes where the two cultures go toe to toe against one another with Rama and Bheem coming out on top. The number, called “Naatu Naatu” which goes on for several minutes, is a real crowd pleaser and was the winner of the Best Original Song Academy Award two years ago when it was performed live at the ceremony. It is not only entertaining, but it sets the stage for the wider conflict in the movie. Oddly, the movie was not nominated for International Feature. Eventually, the two heroes come together to do battle with literally hundreds of British soldiers in some of the most violent scenes I have seen lately. But don’t worry. It is all comic book style violence and is all done using CGI effects. (And we are assured that no animals were harmed in making the movie.) Whether or not you know anything about the history of India in this period, you will certainly be entertained by the film. And it would be best to see it with a group of friends.
 

Harriet

Harriet                  4 stars

Harriet Tubman, the slave girl turned freedom fighter for many slaves in the pre-Civil War south finally gets the big screen treatment in Harriet. Cynthia Erivo does a superb job of portraying the tiny Harriet with her expressive acting and her big voice. We know Erivo from her role in Bad Times at the El Royale and for winning a Tony for The Color Purple. The movie is something of a romanticized account of her escape from her abusive master, her encounters with the people running the Underground Railroad and her coming a legendary conductor, venturing into the South and leading many black slaves to freedom in the North. The anguish that the slaves went through is told in convincing style, but some of the encounters and dangers of the escape attempts seemed to be a bit overdramatic. Some of the movie serves as a good history lesson such as the treatment of The Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 that made it legal to hunt and return escaped slaves in the North and how a plantation owner’s wealth was measured by how many slaves they owned. Some of the violent consequences of the Slave Act are enacted in the film. We also see how some blacks lived in the South as free people, but that required them to carry papers showing their freed status that any white person could require them to show. Notable performances in the movie also include Janelle Monae as Marie Buchanon, a free black woman helping escaped slaves, Leslie Odom, Jr. as Henry Still, one of the leaders of the Underground Railroad and Vondie Curtis-Hall as the reverend who preached obedience to the slaves while also helping to harbor escaped slaves. The movie is two hours long, but seems to move along quickly. I watched the deleted scenes too and was disappointed to see some minor characters removed from the final version. The movie deserves its Oscar nominations for Cynthia Erivo as Best Actress and Best Song performed by Erivo.

Ford v. Ferrari

Ford v Ferrari     5 stars

Ford v Ferrari tells the story of two individuals who joined forces with Ford Motor Company to build a race car that could challenge the dominating Ferrari in the 24 hours of Lemans in 1966. The superb cast is led by Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby, American car designer and Christian Bale as Ken Miles, British born fearless race car driver. Both display a passion for the craft of racing in convincing fashion. The two have to battle the corporate meddling of the executives at Ford Motor Company who are more concerned with appearances and marketing than understanding what it takes to win a race. Of course the real show are the racing scenes with cars reaching speeds of 240 miles per hour and performing daring maneuvers that could end in disaster or blow a piston at a critical moment. This is all done with the amazing stunts and effective film editing and some great sound effects. It is apparent that CGI has come a long way as the entire movie looks like the real thing. I am not a gear head so I am sure some things got past me, but it looks like the best auto racing movie I have seen. The disadvantage is that since it is a true story, you have a pretty good idea how it is going to turn out in the end. The story does get a little ironic when you stop to consider that Ford is the Goliath here as they take on the much smaller auto company, Ferrari using virtually unlimited financial resources. The film is worthy of its Best Picture Academy Award nomination and its wins in both Film Editing and Sound Editing.