Copshop finds Joe Carnahan at the top of his game, with the requisite violence, humor, and plot intricacies to sell this brand of genre bombast. Thanks to pandemic-related delays, we’re being gifted (or threatened with, depending on one’s tolerance for his brand of smart-ass macho bluster)…
Separation is yet another slog from director William Brent Bell, a logic-less and unscary bit of low-bar horror filmmaking. Director William Brent Bell has been responsible for some of the schlockier horror flicks of the 21st century, including 2006’s video game-inspired Stay Alive (“You…
The Marksman is a sturdy and uncomplicated but mostly satisfying entry into the Neeson oeuvre of stoic, righteous masculinity. Another exercise in stoicism and dignified masculinity, replete with a dash of reactionary violence and a grizzled lead performance? Smells like a Liam Neeson movie. In…
Honest Thief is a lazy, cheap, and deeply stupid entry in the Liam Neeson crime cinema oeuvre. With Honest Thief we have yet another entry in the thriving low-energy, low-effort Liam Neeson concern. In this instance, we meet Tom Carter, demolitions expert and retired Marine,…
So unreconstructed that it barely registers, John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 is a slickly crafted, but almost ruthlessly conventional crime thriller, winding up a handful of cops and crooks like little toys (all played to the hilt by a prestige cast) and watching them stumble into each other in…
Hey look, another movie about a former black-bag operator whose past moral lapses catch up to him when some former colleagues attempt to have him assassinated. In The Gunman, it’s Sean Penn, and he’s enlisted Taken director Pierre Morel in what can’t help but be seen as a play…
Part of the fun — and the discomfort — of watching Nightcrawler is in gradually adapting to the rules of its nocturnal world, a sprawling network of photojournalism castaways following police reports to grisly crime scenes to shoot them and package the footage for network news stations. Because…