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[Johann]

JANE GOT A GUN (2016)




Great little western directed by Gavin O'Connor (WARRIOR).
Starring Natalie Portman as Jane (and she also produced!).
Her hubby Ham stumbles home after being shot multiple times, and he warns her that the John Bishop gang are coming to finish him off. Bishop is played by Ewan McGregor, and this was as close as he's ever got to disappearing in a role.
His gang is indeed out for blood, and Jane enlists the help of a former lover (a fantastic Joel Egerton, who also co-wrote the script).
This was surprisingly gritty and great. Westerns don't really interest me but this one did.
They still make decent ones from time to time...

[Johann]

MUD (2012)



Written and directed by Jeff Nichols, this was a great coming-of-age tale.
Matthew McConnaughey is Mud, a fugitive hiding out on an island on the Mississippi river.
He's discovered by two 14-year-old boys sleeping in a boat in a tree that they found.
Mud spins yarns about how he's on the run because he had to kill a man to protect his girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). He's eventually got the boys running errands for him, buying food and getting items to help eventually launch his boat. A lot happens in this movie, and it's all interesting.
The family of the killed man want revenge, the boys are warned to stay away from Mud (they don't), and it all leads to a surprise ending. Highly recommended.

[Chris Knipp]

I saw it and reviewed it and here is my review:
MUD (Mike Nichols )

Among other things I point out it's a great role for Matthew McConaughey, and I quote a great description by Mike D'Angelo at Cannes of the character he plays. Tye Sheridan has "emerged as one of Hollywood's most sougth after young talents."

[Johann]

Your review nails the movie. You're right- the movie isn't even about McConnaughey.

[Johann]

END OF WATCH (2012)



David Ayers' ultra-real buddy cop movie is amazing.
Michael Pena and Jake Gyllenhaal underwent 5 months of actual police training to prepare for their roles as LAPD partners on the beat. The results are awesome. Nothing but praise for this movie and those 2 guys.
From the get-go they encounter all sorts of craziness. They physically fight gang members, uncover drug rings and human trafficking operations, deal with being shot at and even heat from within their own police department.
Riveting movie from start to finish. The ending was awesome.
Be warned tho: gruesome images are here, and F-bombs are dropped all the time.

[Johann]

HUMMINGBIRD (2013)




This film was released in the U.S. under the title "Redemption".
It stars Jason Statham as a fugitive ex-special forces soldier who's escaped his court martial for revenge killings he did in Afghanistan. He's currently homeless, looking for his girl Isabel.
He gets involved in organized crime and several other unsavoury actions.
In Afghanistan he saw buddies slaughtered in front of him, and lost it. He conducted revenge kills to compensate for the loss, committing war crimes.
It's hard to be sympathetic to his plight, despite Statham being very committed to the role.

[Johann]

47 METERS DOWN (2017)



This was a good horror film by Johannes Roberts.
Lisa and Kate are on vacation in Mexico, and they decide to go on a scuba trip where you watch sharks in a cage. The boat owner is Matthew Modine, lending some weight to this B-movie.
They are lowered into the water, and you can guess what happens. The cage winch and pully system breaks, plunging the girls to the bottom.
Precious time gets frittered away, at the surface and in the cage. The girls don't have enough air in their tanks to survive down there for long- they keep leaving the cage, trying to get a comms signal with the boat, and looking for divers who said they'd winch them up. Huge sharks are ever present too, ready to snack. A couple devastating twists will keep you on your toes. There are tons of cheapo shark films out there; this one is better than most.

[Johann]

THE ASSIGNMENT (2017)



Bizarre B-movie from Walter Hill.
Avatar alumni Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver really went left-field here, with Michelle playing a hired killer who has gender re-assignment surgery performed on him by Weaver.
They are both involved in some heavy duty against-the-grain behavior, and Weaver tells her side of the story in custody in a straightjacket.
I recognized the lower East side of Vancouver, where the whole film was shot.
The film draws you in, but it's scuzzy all the way.
With violence, nudity and very mature themes.

[Chris Knipp]

I like Sigourney. i don't know if that would keep me glued to the scren though.

[Johann]

She definitely lowered her standards for this one.
John has given me a slew of B-movies this time around.
I’ve never seen them, so I’ll watch them.
THE ASSIGNMENT is a one-time watch.

[Johann]

MECHANIC: RESURRECTION (2016)



Directed by Dennis Gansel, this sequel to THE MECHANIC is apparently way better.
Jason Statham is great as "BISHOP", a jack-of-all-trades mercenary who's enlisted to perform 3 seperate assassinations. Statham proves he can carry a movie by himself. I loved this flick- it was "a bite-sized Bond", with a large body count and tons of action.
It also stars Michelle Yeoh, Jessica Alba and Tommy Lee Jones- A-list backup players.
The killings that Bishop is tasked with are implausible, nearly impossible to pull off.
Yet he does, and he barely breaks a sweat.
While Hummingbird disappointed me, this renewed my faith in Statham as an action icon.
From the producers of The Expendables.

[Chris Knipp]

It got very bad reviews, but the excellent critic Owen Gleiberman spoke favorably of it in Variety, and said this about Jason Statham which fits in with what you say:

For a while now, Jason Statham has been the thinking man’s smart/dumb B-movie action star. His films, or at least a lot of them, swim around in the grindhouse muck of bloodsport and revenge, a genre that has spawned such brooding blocks of wood as Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris. But Statham, unlike most action-pulp icons, is a genuine actor, with a darting intelligence and finesse. He has often been much better than the movies he’s in, and he has flirted with the A-list as well. It’s seriously doubtful that an action star pushing 50 would be considered for the role of James Bond, but it would be fascinating to see what Statham could do with it.

Makes one think how a good critic can make us rethink an actor.

[Johann]

Indeed. Gleiberman has got the right attitude about Statham.
He IS better than the movies he's in, and while watching Mechanic: Resurrection I kept thinking he could play James Bond. He's super-lethal and more cunning than MacGyver, a new kind of Rambo.
He just needs those great scripts, those great movies. He's up to the challenge. I don't call him an actor. I call him an Icon. And he did it his way.

[Johann]

POINT BREAK (2015)




This is the remake of the 1991 action/adventure film.
Directed by Ericson Core, I highly enjoyed this movie. You want thrilling daredevil stunts?
Look no further. This movie has big wave surfing, extreme motorcross, skydiving, high mountain snowboarding, basejumping, and extreme rock climbing, to name a few.
The FBI is on the trail of a group of extreme sport enthusiasts who perpetuate extreme crimes and get away with them. They have to enlist the help of a new recruit familiar with the stunts named Utah (Heath Ledger lookalike Luke Bracey). Utah chases them all over the globe, with spectacular results. One by one he closes in. Co-starring Ray Winstone & Delroy Lindo. Wonderful cinematography- Core captures every stunt flawlessly, the most impressive being the rock climb at Angel Falls in Venezuela.

[Chris Knipp]

You don't sound like you've seen the classic Kathryn Bigelow original with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, which revolves around surfing. It's a movie I loved from when I first saw it and have rewatched any number of times. Surfing is essential to its mystique, and the edgy bromance between the cocky FBI tyro "Johnny Utah" and the exciting, mystical bad guy known as "Bodhi," lost in this new version. I went to see the remake, of course - but went away feeling empty. I think it would have probably been better to copy the original slavishly, even though the chemistry would never have been there. But they didn't even halfway strive for that; they just put together a "related" story. It might seem exciting and diverting - compared to some of the duds you've been watching. But it got terrible reviews (on Metacritic 34, way into the red zone), because a remake must be judged in relation to what it's a remake of. See Bilge Eberi's Vulture review here.

Uninterested in competing on the bromance front, or even on the action-thriller front, this new Point Break often plays like an extreme-sports documentary with bits of narrative interstitials to carry us along. The production brought together stuntmen and athletes from all around the world for the film’s many setpieces, which include BASE jumping, big wave–riding, motocross, snowboarding, and free-climbing. If you really like that sort of thing, you should see this on the biggest screen you can.

I'm having trouble accessing this website again, by the way. I happen to have access to a computer that accepts me and it together. But my main computer can't connect with "Filmleaf". It's annoying and mysterious. Like somebody up there in computer land doesn't like me.

Talking about Point Break, the 1991 one, makes me want to see it again - though I can never quite recapture the magic of the first watch. Eberi points out the FAST AND FURIOUS films are built on that same kind of macho bro competitive vibe, with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, a really solid duo broken of course by Walker's tragic death at 40. Swayze is gone. But Keanu has a durable persona, it has turned out with the John Wick franchise.

There's also the exhilaration of the (off-season) bank robberies int he dead presidents masks. The original is just so much mindless fun.