Review: The Dirty Dozen (dir. by Robert Aldrich)

Posted on January 22, 2026 by Arleigh

“And kill any officer in sight. Ours or theirs?” — Victor Franko

The Dirty Dozen is one of those war movies that feels like it was built in a lab for maximum “guys-on-a-mission” entertainment: big stars, a pulpy premise, plenty of attitude, and a third act that goes full-tilt brutal. It is also, even by 1967 standards, a pretty gnarly piece of work, and how well it plays today depends a lot on how comfortable you are with its mix of macho camaraderie, anti-authoritarian swagger, and disturbingly gleeful violence.

Directed by Robert Aldrich and released in 1967, The Dirty Dozen is set in 1944 and follows Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin), a rebellious U.S. Army officer assigned to turn a group of twelve military convicts into a commando unit for a suicide mission behind enemy lines just before D-Day. The deal is simple and grim: survive the mission to assassinate a gathering of German high command at a chateau, and your death sentence or long prison stretch gets commuted; fail, and you die as planned, just a little earlier and with more explosions. It is a high concept that plays almost like a war-movie prototype of the “villains forced to do hero work” formula that modern blockbusters keep revisiting.

The film’s biggest asset is its cast, stacked with personalities who bring a rough, lived-in charm to what could have been a lineup of interchangeable tough guys. Lee Marvin’s Reisman is the glue: a cynical, gravel-voiced officer who clearly hates bureaucratic brass almost as much as the criminals he is supposed to whip into shape, and Marvin plays him with a dry, weary sarcasm that avoids hero worship even as the film asks you to root for him. Around him, you get Charles Bronson as Wladislaw, a capable former officer with a chip on his shoulder; John Cassavetes as Franko, the volatile, insubordinate troublemaker; Jim Brown as Jefferson, whose physical presence and final-act heroics leave a strong impression; and Telly Savalas as Archer J. Maggott, a violently racist, fanatically religious, and almost certainly deranged soldier sentenced to death for raping and beating a woman to death. Savalas never softens that portrait, playing Maggott with a creepy combination of sing-song piety and sudden bursts of viciousness that makes him deeply uncomfortable to watch and the one member of the Dozen who feels like an outright monster even compared to the other killers. He sells Maggott’s self-justifying religiosity—quoting scripture, talking about being “called on” by the Lord—as both delusional and dangerous, so every time he starts sermonizing, it feels like a warning siren that things are about to go bad, and that pays off in the finale where his obsession with “sinful” women sabotages the mission. Even smaller roles from Donald Sutherland, Clint Walker, and others get memorable beats, which helps the ensemble feel like an actual crew rather than background noise.

For much of its runtime, the film plays like a rough-and-rowdy training camp movie, and that middle stretch is where a lot of its charm sits. Reisman’s solution to building teamwork is basically to grind the men down, deny them basic comforts, and force them to build their own camp, leading to the nickname “the Dirty Dozen” when their shaving kits are confiscated and they slip into permanent grime. The squad slowly gels through a mix of forced labor, competitive drills, and a memorable war-games exercise where they outsmart a rival, straight-laced unit led by Colonel Breed (Robert Ryan), which lets the film indulge in its anti-authority streak by making the rule-breakers look smarter than the regulation-obsessed brass. Savalas’s Maggott adds a constant sense of volatility to these scenes, his presence giving the group dynamic a genuine horror edge that keeps the movie from becoming a simple “lovable rogues” fantasy and making viewers eager to see him punished.

That anti-establishment energy is one of the reasons The Dirty Dozen hit so hard with audiences in the late 1960s, especially as public attitudes toward war and authority were shifting in the shadow of Vietnam. The movie clearly enjoys showing higher-ranking officers as petty, hypocritical, or out of touch, while Reisman and his misfit killers get framed as the ones who actually understand how war really works: dirty, improvisational, and morally compromised. Critics at the time noted that this defiant attitude, coupled with the convicts’ transformation into rough heroes, gave the film a rebellious appeal that helped it become a box office smash even as traditional war films were losing their shine.

Where the film becomes more divisive is in its moral perspective, or arguably its lack of one. From the start, these are not misunderstood saints: several of the men are condemned to death for murder, others for violent crimes and serious offenses, and the script never really suggests they were framed or unfairly treated. Yet once they are pointed at Nazis, the movie largely invites you to cheer them on, leaning into the idea that in war, the ugliest tools might be the most effective, and that conventional standards of justice and morality can be suspended if the target is the enemy. Maggott stands apart here as the line the film refuses to cross into sympathy, with Savalas’s committed and unsettling performance underlining how poisonous he is even to other criminals.

The climax at the chateau is where this tension really spikes. The mission involves infiltrating a mansion where German officers and their companions are gathering, rigging the place with explosives, and driving the survivors into an underground shelter that is then sealed and turned into a mass deathtrap with gasoline and grenades. It is a sequence staged with brutal efficiency and undeniable suspense, but it is also deeply unsettling, essentially pushing the protagonists into orchestrating a massacre that includes unarmed officers and civilians in evening wear, and the film offers minimal reflection on that horror beyond the visceral thrills. Maggott’s instability forces the team to react mid-mission, heightening the jagged tonal mix of rousing action and casual atrocity.

This blend of rousing action and casual atrocity did not sit well with many critics in 1967. Contemporary reviews complained that the film glorified sadism, blurred the line between wartime necessity and psychopathic cruelty, and practically bathed its criminals “in a heroic light,” encouraging what one critic called a “spirit of hooliganism” that was socially corrosive. Others, however, praised Aldrich for making a tough, uncompromising adventure picture that pushed back against sanitized war clichés, arguing that the cruelty and amorality felt like a more honest reflection of war’s ugliness, even if the film coated it in action-movie swagger and gallows humor. Savalas’s Maggott amplifies this debate, singled out by fans as a great, memorable character who adds real repulsion without turning into a cartoon.

From a modern perspective, the violence itself remains intense but not especially graphic by contemporary standards; what lingers is the attitude around it. The movie’s glee in letting some of these characters off the moral hook, contrasted with the genuinely disturbing behavior of someone like Maggott, creates that jagged tonal mix: part old-school “men on a mission” yarn, part cynical commentary on the kind of men war turns into tools. Depending on your tolerance, that mix either gives the film an edge that keeps it from feeling like simple nostalgia, or it plays as carelessly flippant about atrocities that deserve more introspection than a last-minute body count and a fade-out.

On a craft level, though, The Dirty Dozen still works surprisingly well. Aldrich keeps the film moving across a long runtime by building distinct phases: the recruitment and introduction of each convict, the training and bonding section with its rough humor and humiliation, and the final mission that shifts into suspense and near-horror. The action is clear and muscular, the editing sharp enough that you rarely lose track of who is where, and the sound design—even recognized with an Academy Award for Best Sound Effects—helps the chaos of the finale land with blunt impact.

At the same time, the structure exposes a few weaknesses. The early sections do such a good job of sketching out personalities that some characters feel underused or abruptly sidelined once the bullets start flying, and the film’s length can make parts of the training montage drag, especially if you are less enamored with its barracks humor and macho posturing. The writing also leans on broad types—psychopath, wisecracking crook, stoic professional—which the cast elevates, but the script rarely pushes them into truly surprising territory, beyond a few late-movie acts of sacrifice.

Still, as a piece of war-movie history, The Dirty Dozen earns its reputation. It helped popularize the template of the misfit team thrown into an impossible mission, a structure that later shows up everywhere from ensemble war pictures to superhero teams and modern “suicide squad” stories. Its mix of black humor, anti-authoritarian streak, and violent catharsis captures a specific late-1960s mood, even as its politics and ethics remain muddy enough to spark debate decades later. Savalas’s turn as Maggott ensures that edge never dulls, keeping the film’s thrills packaged with a moral outlook as messy and conflicted as the men it sends to kill.

For someone coming to it fresh now, the film plays as a rough, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes queasy ride: entertaining as pulp, compelling as an ensemble showcase, and troubling in the way it treats brutality as both a necessary evil and a spectator sport. If you are interested in the evolution of war cinema or the origins of the “ragtag squad on a suicide mission” trope, The Dirty Dozen is absolutely worth watching, with the understanding that its strengths—like Savalas’s chilling Maggott—come wrapped in those ethical ambiguities.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (dir. by Nia DaCosta) Review

Posted on January 17, 2026 by Arleigh

“Every skull is a set of thoughts. These sockets saw and these jaws spoke and swallowed. This is a monument to them. A temple.” — Dr. Ian Kelson

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple crashes into 2026 with the force of a Rage-infected sprint, claiming its spot as one of the year’s top films right out of the gate, flaws and all. Directed by Nia DaCosta, the film continues to showcase her evolving command as a filmmaker, building directly on the promise of her 2025 character study Hedda, where she dissected emotional isolation with surgical precision and atmospheric tension. Where The Marvels in 2023 felt like a worthy attempt hampered by a screenplay that couldn’t decide on a tone—swinging between quippy banter and high-stakes drama while beholden to the cinematic universe’s endless interconnections—The Bone Temple unleashes DaCosta at full throttle, free from franchise baggage to craft a horror epic that’s visually poetic, thematically fearless, and rhythmically assured.

Yeah, it revels in bleakness that can border on exhausting, and its structure wanders more than it charges forward, but those imperfections only underscore how fiercely original and alive it feels compared to the rote horror sequels we’re usually fed. Decades past the initial outbreak that defined 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, the apocalypse here isn’t a fresh crisis anymore—it’s infrastructure, a grim new normal etched into the landscape. Survivors haven’t rebuilt so much as repurposed the ruins, carving out rituals and monuments that say as much about lingering trauma as they do about adaptation. The Rage virus still turns people into feral killers, ripping through flesh in those signature bursts of speed and savagery, but the infected have evolved in intriguing ways that deepen the world’s mythology without overshadowing the human core. The spotlight swings to human extremes: towering bone architectures raised as memorials, nomadic gangs treating murder like liturgy, and lone figures wrestling with whether dignity even matters when bodies pile up unmarked. This pivot lets the film breathe in ways the earlier entries couldn’t, expanding a zombie-adjacent thriller into something folk-horrific and introspective.

Dr. Ian Kelson embodies that shift, and Ralph Fiennes delivers what might be his meatiest role in years—a reclusive physician-architect whose Bone Temple dominates the story like a character itself, adding a profound level of tragic humanity that stands in stark, poignant contrast to the nihilistic worldview of Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal and his blindly devoted followers. Picture spires of meticulously arranged skulls and femurs, bleached white against misty Scottish skies, lit at night like profane altars: it’s production design that hits you visually first, then sinks in thematically as Kelson’s obsession with cataloging the dead. Fiennes plays him not as a villain or eccentric, but as a man fraying at the edges—tender when easing a dying woman’s passage (Spike’s mother, in a flashback that sets the whole narrative in motion), ruthless in his logic about preserving memory over sentiment. “Every skull is a set of thoughts,” he murmurs in one standout line, sockets staring empty, jaws frozen mid-word—a perfect encapsulation of the film’s meditation on legacy amid oblivion. Those quiet scenes, where Kelson debates ethics with survivors or observes the infected Samson with clinical curiosity shading into something paternal, ground the movie’s wilder swings and prove Fiennes can carry horror on sheer presence alone.

Spike, our entry point into this madness, carries scars from that childhood brush with the Temple and his mother’s end, propelling him toward Jimmy Crystal’s orbit like fate’s cruel magnet. He’s no square-jawed lead; he’s reactive, watchful, hardening through trials that test his humanity without fully erasing it. That arc collides with Jimmy’s cult—a roving pack of devotees renamed his “seven fingers,” all aping the leader’s bleach-blond hair, loud tracksuits, and flashy trinkets in a uniformity that’s both comic and chilling. Jack O’Connell chews the scenery as Jimmy, a pint-sized prophet whose charisma masks profound damage: twitchy grins, boyish rants blending kids’ TV catchphrases with fire-and-brimstone, devotion to his “Old Nick” devil figure turning every kill into theater. The Savile visual parallels—those garish outfits evoking the real-life abuser’s predatory fame—add a layer of cultural poison, implying charisma survives apocalypse by mutating into something even uglier, with institutions gone but the hunger for idols intact. O’Connell makes Jimmy magnetic and monstrous, a performance that elevates the cult from trope to tragedy.

If the film’s greatness shines through performances and visuals, its violence tests that shine—deliberately, one suspects. Infected attacks deliver franchise-expected chaos: heads torn free, eyes clawed out, bodies pulped in handheld frenzy. But Jimmy’s rituals amp the sadism—knife duels extended into endurance ordeals, flayings half-glimpsed but fully heard, victims’ pleas dragging until empathy fatigues. It’s grueling, sometimes overlong, risking audience burnout, yet it serves the theme: in a Rage world, human-inflicted torment outlasts viral rage because it feeds on belief. DaCosta pulls punches visually (smart cuts, shadows over gore) but lingers on emotional fallout, making cruelty feel earned rather than exploited— a maturation from The Marvels‘ tonal whiplash into controlled, purposeful discomfort. Counterpoints pierce through: Jimmy Ink’s furtive kindnesses toward Spike, Ian and Samson’s drug-hazy field dances blurring monster and man, fragments of backstory humanizing even Jimmy’s frenzy. These glimmers don’t redeem the world—they make its harshness sting deeper, proving flickers of connection persist as defiant accidents.

Technically, the film flexes non-stop, with DaCosta’s post-Hedda assurance evident in every frame. Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography weds gritty digital shakes to sweeping drone shots, turning Highlands into deceptive idylls ruptured by whip-pans and flame flares. Sound design hums with menace—whistling winds masking howls, train rumbles underscoring rituals, screams echoing into silence for maximum unease. Editing mirrors the narrative’s spiral: episodic loops around Spike’s hardening, Ian’s doubt, Jimmy’s collapse, eschewing linear escalation for dream-logic dread that suits a “settled” apocalypse. The Temple centerpiece ritual explodes into metal-thrash worship, cultists moshing amid pyres—a grotesque stadium parody where faith meets fandom in blood-soaked ecstasy. Even the score pulses with restraint, letting ambient horror fill gaps better than bombast ever could.

Tonally, it juggles masterfully: tender Kelson vignettes abut cult carnage, philosophical riffs on atheism versus delusion frame gore-fests, folk-horror monuments clash with infection thriller roots. Themes of faith-as-coping, grief-as-art, ideology’s pitfalls land without preaching—Kelson’s secular duty versus Jimmy’s ecstatic nihilism debates through action, not monologue. The ending circles back to series emotional cores (survival’s cost, hope’s fragility) while forging ahead, teasing Spike’s grim purpose without cheap uplift.

Flaws? The runtime sags in cult stretches, bleakness borders masochistic, sprawl might frustrate plot-chasers. But these are risks of ambition, not laziness—choices that make triumphs (Fiennes’ gravitas, O’Connell’s feral spark, visuals’ poetry) land harder, all under DaCosta’s steady hand that Hedda honed and The Marvels tested. In January 2026, amid safe genre retreads, The Bone Temple towers: a sequel philosophically dense, actor-propelled, unafraid to wound deeply then whisper mercy. It hurts because it sees us clearly—craving structure in chaos, building temples from bones, real or imagined. One of the year’s best, period, for daring to evolve rather than echo.

Review: Greenland 2 – Migration (dir. by Ric Roman Waugh)

Posted on January 13, 2026 by Arleigh

Greenland 2: Migration is a sequel that mostly leans into “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” for better and for worse. It delivers sturdy spectacle, a committed Gerard Butler, and a tense family-through-hell journey, but it also rehashes a lot of the first film’s beats and pushes the plausibility envelope more often this time around. If you were on board with Greenland as a grounded, human-scale disaster movie, this one feels like the more bombastic, road-movie expansion pack rather than a full evolution.

Set about five years after the comet strike that wiped out most of civilization, Greenland 2: Migration finds the Garrity family still holed up in the Greenland bunker complex, part of a fragile community waiting for the surface to become livable again. John (Gerard Butler) now works as a scout/engineer, Allison (Morena Baccarin) has stepped into more of a leadership role within the bunker, and their son Nathan is older, restless, and itching to prove himself outside the relative safety of underground life. When escalating quakes, electromagnetic storms, and general planetary chaos literally collapse the bunker around them, the film quickly turns into a survival trek across a devastated Europe toward the Clarke impact crater in southern France, rumored to be the one spot on Earth that has actually healed.

As a premise, the film works; it gives the story a clear A-to-B structure and justifies the shift from the contained panic of the first movie to a post-apocalyptic road odyssey. The script keeps the stakes straightforward: reach the crater region or die trying, while dodging unpredictable weather events, territorial military forces, and desperate survivors who are just as dangerous as the environment. There is something appealingly old‑school about how it plays as a throwback survival picture—less interested in intricate worldbuilding and more in reaction, improvisation, and narrow escapes.

The downside is that you can feel the film constantly echoing Greenland’s structure: another long, peril-filled journey, another series of escalating close calls, another parade of briefly sketched side characters who exist to either help or threaten the Garritys for a single sequence. The first film had novelty on its side and a sharper sense of dread as the comet approached; here, the formula is familiar enough that you can often tell who will live, who will die, and roughly when another set piece is about to kick off. That predictability doesn’t kill the tension outright, but it does flatten the emotional peaks, especially if you walked in hoping for a genuinely new angle on this world.

Gerard Butler remains the anchor, and this is squarely in his comfort zone. He plays John as perpetually exhausted yet stubbornly practical, the kind of guy who will grumble his way through heroism, and there’s an easy, weathered charm to that. Morena Baccarin gets a bit more agency this time, with Allison often driving decisions instead of just reacting to them, though the movie still stops short of really turning her into a co-lead with equal interiority. Roman Griffin Davis steps in as the older Nathan, and he brings a nervous, teenage energy that fits the “kid who grew up in a bunker and wants to see the world” vibe, even if the character’s arc hits pretty familiar notes about bravery and responsibility.

The script does flirt with heavier themes: the psychological toll of surviving the end of the world, the guilt of those who made it into the bunkers versus those left outside, and the question of what “home” even means when the planet itself has effectively turned against you. There are moments—like the chaotic clashes around remaining bunkers or the wary interactions with other survivor groups—that suggest a more morally murky, Children of Men‑style story lurking underneath. But the movie rarely lingers on these ideas; it tends to touch them, nod, and then hurry back to the next escape sequence or visual spectacle.

Visually, though, Greenland 2: Migration is where the sequel justifies its existence. Director Ric Roman Waugh and the crew make great use of European locations and Icelandic landscapes to sell a world that has been carved up by tectonic violence and choked with ash, but is slowly, unevenly rebuilding. The dried-out English Channel, the ravaged coastlines, and the eerie, storm‑lit skies give the film a distinct apocalyptic texture that feels different enough from the North American focus of the first movie. While some of the physics and survival odds strain credibility—especially as the Garritys walk away from setpiece after setpiece—there’s no denying the spectacle is engaging on a big screen.

The pacing is generally brisk; at around an hour and a half, the film doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it’s usually onto the next problem before you have time to overthink the last one. That said, the middle stretch starts to feel a little modular, like a video game where each region is an encounter: Liverpool bunker standoff, English Channel crossing, roadside bandits, insurgent ambush, and so on. Each of these sequences is competently staged, but because the emotional throughline is fairly simple—protect the family, get to the crater—the movie risks becoming a string of obstacle courses rather than a journey that deepens the characters in meaningful ways.

Where the film does land emotionally is in its treatment of sacrifice and the long-term cost of survival. John’s cumulative radiation exposure, picked up over years of scouting the hazardous surface, is a smart, quietly tragic detail, and the way the story gradually brings that to the forefront gives the third act a genuine sense of finality. The losses along the way, including allies who join the trek and do not make it, often feel a bit telegraphed, but they at least reinforce the idea that survival in this world comes with a steep bill that keeps coming due. The film’s ending, at the Clarke crater, delivers a cautiously hopeful image without completely sugarcoating what it took to get there, and that balance of bleakness and optimism fits the series well.

On the more mechanical side, the editing and sound design do a lot of heavy lifting. The cross‑cutting in the disaster scenes keeps geography mostly clear, and the low, grinding rumble of shifting earth and sudden storms adds tension even when the visuals are mostly people running or driving. The score is functional rather than memorable, but it meshes with the film’s focus on constant forward momentum instead of big thematic musical statements. It’s the kind of craft that doesn’t call attention to itself, which suits a movie that wants to feel like a direct, unpretentious survival yarn.

In terms of how it stacks up to the original, Greenland 2: Migration is solid but clearly a step less distinctive. The first film surprised people by grounding its spectacle in everyday logistics—pharmacy runs, traffic jams, family arguments—and by keeping the camera mostly at human scale during an extinction‑level event. The sequel, by comparison, nudges closer to standard disaster‑franchise territory: bigger vistas, more action, and a stronger sense of franchise‑building, but less of that “this could be you and your neighbors” feeling that made Greenland stand out. Depending on what you want from a sequel, that may be a selling point or a letdown.

Overall, Greenland 2: Migration is a competent, occasionally affecting continuation that doesn’t embarrass the original but also doesn’t redefine it. If all you’re looking for is another round of grounded‑ish apocalypse survival with Gerard Butler grimly shepherding his family through increasingly wild scenarios, this delivers exactly that, with a few striking images and some sincere emotional beats along the way. If you were hoping for a more daring thematic leap or a significantly different narrative shape, this will probably feel like a polished retread with a new coat of ash and ice. Either way, it’s an easy recommendation for fans of the first film and a decent mid‑winter disaster flick for anyone in the mood to watch people crawl through the end of the world one more time.

Review: Greenland (dir. by Ric Roman Waugh)

Posted on January 12, 2026 by Arleigh

“But sometimes you just gotta suck it up. Push through, right? Even when you’re super scared.” — John Garrity

Greenland is one of those disaster movies that sneaks up on you a bit. It sells itself like another “stuff blows up while Gerard Butler scowls” kind of ride, but what’s actually on screen is a more grounded, road-trip survival story about a fractured family trying to stay together as the world quietly ends in the background. Originally slated for a wide theatrical release, the film dropped right as the COVID pandemic shutdown began in early 2020, forcing theaters to close and tanking its box office hopes before it even started. That quick pivot to video-on-demand and streaming services gave it a real second life though, letting it find an audience at home when everyone was hunkered down, doomscrolling real-world chaos that felt eerily similar to the on-screen panic. It’s not a genre reinvention, but it’s a solid entry that balances tense set pieces with surprisingly sincere family drama, even if it leans hard on contrivances and some uneven effects along the way.

The setup is simple: John Garrity (Gerard Butler), his estranged wife Allison (Morena Baccarin), and their young son Nathan are thrown into chaos when a supposedly “spectacle only” comet called Clarke turns out to be a civilization-ending event. The family receives a government alert selecting them for evacuation, which kicks off a desperate scramble through crowded bases, riots, and crumbling infrastructure as they try to get to a classified bunker system in Greenland before impact. The structure is very much “point A to point B with escalating obstacles,” and if you’ve seen any road-movie apocalypse story, you can probably predict the broad strokes: separation, dangerous strangers, moral compromises, last-minute reunions, and a hopeful-but-not-too-happy ending.

What makes Greenland stand out, at least compared to louder fare like Geostorm or the Emmerich filmography, is the way it shrinks the perspective down to the family level. The script keeps the camera glued to people on the ground instead of spending time with scientists in war rooms or presidents giving big speeches, so the apocalypse feels like a series of frightening news alerts and glimpses of distant fire instead of a nonstop CGI showreel. That choice works in the film’s favor; the tension comes less from “how big is the explosion?” and more from whether this specific kid gets his medication in time or whether this specific couple makes it through a checkpoint together.

Gerard Butler reins in his usual action-hero mode and plays John as a somewhat worn-down, very fallible guy who’s been messing up at home long before the comet showed up. He’s not the indestructible savior archetype; he panics, he makes mistakes, and he ends up in violent situations that feel ugly instead of triumphant, especially during a grim sequence on a truck full of evacuees where a man tries to take his wristband and everything spirals. Butler’s limited but believable emotional range works here, and you can see why some viewers singled this out as one of his better recent performances in a genre that usually just uses him as a gruff mascot.

Morena Baccarin gets a bit more to play than disaster-movie wives usually do, which is a pleasant surprise. Allison’s arc runs parallel to John’s for large chunks of the film as she navigates looters, manipulative would-be rescuers, and the absolute nightmare scenario of having her child kidnapped by a couple trying to pass him off as their own to gain access to evacuation flights. Baccarin sells the mix of desperation and competence; she’s constantly stuck in situations where the “right” moral call is murky, but the film never reduces her to someone who just waits around for John to fix things.

The emotional spine of the story rests on the family dynamic and the small, very human interactions they have with strangers along the way. You get scenes with compassionate people—like the FEMA workers who listen to Nathan when he insists he’s been kidnapped—that remind you the apocalypse doesn’t instantly turn everyone into a villain, even as the script also leans into the uglier side of survival instinct. That push and pull between kindness and cruelty keeps Greenland from feeling completely nihilistic, and it lines up with the recurring idea that the real threat is less the comet itself than what people are willing to do to outrun it.

On the disaster side of things, the film works with a mid-sized budget, and you can feel that restraint in both good and bad ways. When the CGI is kept at a distance—comet fragments streaking across the sky, distant impacts lighting the horizon, a sudden shockwave rolling through a neighborhood—it does a solid job of selling scope without drawing too much attention to its limitations. Up close, though, the seams show: some of the destruction shots and digital fireballs look cheap, which undercuts moments that are clearly meant to be awe-inspiring or terrifying, something multiple viewers have criticized as “not consistently convincing CGI effects.”

Pacing-wise, Greenland rarely slows down, which is both a strength and a drawback. The film opens with domestic tension and immediately starts ratcheting things up: news of impacts, sudden evacuation notices, airport chaos, violent confrontations, and constant travel. That forward momentum keeps the film from dragging, but it also leads to what some viewers see as “too many plot twists and always new obstacles to overcome,” a sense that the script keeps piling on one more crisis just to keep the adrenaline high.

Because the film tries to have it both ways—grounded survival and genre thrills—it occasionally betrays its own realism. The amount of coincidence needed to reunite characters after brutal separations, or to get the family to exactly the right airfield and exactly the right plane, feels contrived even by disaster-movie standards. By the time the story reaches its final act in Greenland, complete with last-minute sprinting toward bunkers while the worst of the comet hits, you can feel it edging closer to the “unfortunately genre-typical heroic towards the end” vibe that some reviewers pointed out.

Where Greenland does feel a bit different from many peers is in tone. It’s not quippy, it’s not self-aware, and it does not pause for big “cool” shots of landmarks getting obliterated just for spectacle. The destruction is mostly glimpsed from the vantage point of regular people, via news broadcasts or distant views, which makes the apocalypse feel weirdly more intimate and plausible, like something you’d doomscroll rather than watch unfold from a helicopter. That seriousness is refreshing if you’re tired of disaster movies that treat mass death as a theme park ride, but it also means the film can come off as dour if you were hoping for more escapist fun.

Reception-wise, Greenland landed in that “better than expected, still not amazing” territory with both critics and audiences. Some viewers praised it as “one of the best disaster movies” of recent years specifically because it prioritizes human drama over “weightless CG spectacle,” calling out how tense and emotionally engaging the smaller-scale approach feels. Others shrugged it off as “usual disaster film fare,” pointing to its predictable structure, familiar character beats, and lack of a truly clever story, saying it’s fine for passing time but not particularly memorable. Its streaming surge during lockdowns only amplified word-of-mouth, turning what could’ve been a forgotten theatrical casualty into a go-to comfort scare for pandemic viewers craving controlled chaos.

Ultimately, Greenland sits in a comfortable middle lane. It’s not trying to reinvent the genre, and it doesn’t fully escape its clichés, but it does care more about its characters than its body count, and that goes a long way. If you go in expecting a grounded, on-the-road family survival story with occasional bursts of large-scale chaos, the film mostly delivers, bolstered by committed performances from Butler and Baccarin and a tone that takes the end of the world just seriously enough. If you’re looking for jaw-dropping effects or a genuinely surprising narrative, it will probably feel like a solid, slightly grim, one-and-done watch that does its job and quietly exits before wearing out its welcome—especially resonant for those who caught it streaming while the real world felt a little too apocalyptic itself.

Review: Constantine (dir. by Francis Lawrence)

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Arleigh

“Heaven and Hell are right here, behind every wall, every window, the world behind the world. And we’re smack in the middle.” — John Constantine

Constantine is one of those mid-2000s comic book adaptations that never quite hit mainstream classic status but has quietly built a loyal cult following, and it is pretty easy to see why once you revisit it. On the surface it is a supernatural action movie about a chain‑smoking exorcist stomping demons in Los Angeles; underneath, it is wrestling with guilt, faith, and whether redemption is even possible for someone who does not think they deserve it. The film is messy in spots but strangely compelling, and that tension between pulpy cool and spiritual angst is a big part of its charm.

Keanu Reeves plays John Constantine as a tired, bitter man who has seen way too much of both Hell and humanity to have patience for either. This version of Constantine is loosely adapted from DC’s Hellblazer comics, but the film leans into a distinctly Hollywood noir vibe: he is not a wisecracking British punk in a tan trench coat so much as a burnt‑out L.A. exorcist in a black suit who chain‑smokes like it is a survival mechanism. That shift understandably annoyed some comic fans, but taken on its own terms, this Constantine works. Reeves’s usual reserved style actually fits a guy who has emotionally checked out; he moves through scenes like someone who has accepted that his life is transactional and almost over, and there is something darkly funny about how little awe he shows when confronted with angels and demons. Even when the script gives him on‑the‑nose lines about damnation, he plays them with a kind of deadpan resignation that keeps the character from turning into a parody.

The basic setup is simple enough: Constantine can see “half‑breeds,” angelic and demonic entities who nudge humanity toward good or evil while technically obeying a truce between Heaven and Hell. As a child, he tried to kill himself because of these visions, and that suicide attempt has doomed his soul to Hell. Now he works as a freelance exorcist, trying to earn his way back into God’s good graces, not out of pure faith but out of sheer self‑preservation. That dynamic gives the movie a strong hook—this is a protagonist who is doing the “right” thing for profoundly self‑centered reasons. When he gets pulled into a mystery involving a police detective, Angela (Rachel Weisz), investigating her twin sister’s apparent suicide, the film folds in a noirish murder case, religious prophecy, and a scheme that could break the balance between Heaven and Hell. It is all a bit overstuffed, but there is a certain pleasure in how seriously the movie commits to its supernatural mythology.

Visually, Constantine is where the film really separates itself from a lot of its contemporaries. Director Francis Lawrence leans hard into a grungy, stylized urban Hellscape—Los Angeles feels damp, sickly, and spiritually polluted even before anyone literally steps into Hell. When Constantine does cross over, Hell is portrayed as a blasted version of our world, frozen in an eternal atomic blast, buildings shattered and howling winds full of ash and debris. It is not subtle, but it is memorable, and many of the images still hold up surprisingly well for a 2005 effects‑heavy movie. The demon designs are gnarly without becoming cartoonish, the exorcism sequences have a tactile, physical quality, and the movie uses practical effects and lighting cleverly to smooth over the limitations of its CG. Even small visual touches—like holy relics turned into weapons or tattoos used as mystical triggers—help sell the idea that this world is saturated with hidden religious warfare.

The cast around Reeves does a lot of heavy lifting. Rachel Weisz brings warmth and vulnerability to Angela, grounding the story whenever it threatens to float away in theological technobabble. Her dual role as both Angela and her deceased twin gives the plot some emotional weight beyond cosmic stakes. Tilda Swinton’s Gabriel is one of the film’s secret weapons: androgynous, cool, and quietly menacing, Gabriel feels alien in a way that fits an angel who has spent too long watching humans from a distance. Then there is Peter Stormare’s Satan, who shows up late in the game and somehow steals the entire third act with a performance that is gleefully gross and oddly charismatic; his version of Lucifer is barefoot, in a white suit stained with tar, amused and disgusted by Constantine in equal measure. These performances keep the movie watchable even when the script gets tangled in its own mythology.

Tonally, Constantine lives in an odd space between horror, action, and supernatural thriller. On one hand, it has jump scares, grotesque demons, and a very dark sense of humor. On the other, it features extended action beats where Constantine straps on a holy shotgun and goes demon hunting like a paranormal hitman. The film is at its best when it leans into slow‑burn dread and eerie atmosphere—scenes like the early exorcism or Angela’s first encounters with the supernatural feel genuinely unsettling. When it shifts into more conventional action territory, it is fun but less distinctive; some sequences play like obligatory “we need a set piece here” insertions rather than organic escalations of the story. The score and sound design help stitch it all together, layering in ominous drones, choral elements, and sharp sound cues that emphasize the hellish undertones without getting too bombastic.

One of the more interesting aspects of Constantine is how it treats belief and morality. The film’s theology is a mash‑up of Catholic imagery, comic‑book lore, and Hollywood invention, and if you are looking for doctrinal accuracy, you will probably walk away frustrated. But as metaphor, it works better than it has any right to. God and the devil are treated almost like distant power brokers using Earth as their battleground, the angels and demons as middle management enforcing a “rules of the game” structure that Constantine constantly pushes against. What saves it from feeling totally cynical is that the film does not ultimately let Constantine win by gaming the system; his big climactic play hinges on a genuinely selfless act. There is a sense, however stylized, that grace and sacrifice still matter, even in a world that treats salvation like paperwork. At the same time, the movie is very much a product of its edgy 2000s era, and at points it flirts with the idea that faith is mostly about loopholes and bargaining, which might put some viewers off.

That brings up another key point: Constantine is absolutely not a family‑friendly comic book movie. It is full of disturbing imagery, body horror, and bleak subject matter like suicide, damnation, and spiritual despair. The violence is often grotesque rather than purely action‑oriented, and the general mood is closer to a horror film than a superhero romp. The R rating is well earned. For some audiences, those elements will be exactly what makes the movie interesting—a comic book adaptation that is not afraid to be nasty and heavy. For others, the relentless grimness and graphic content will feel excessive, especially when paired with a mythology that is, frankly, all over the place.

Where Constantine stumbles most is in its storytelling clarity and pacing. The film loves its jargon: half‑breeds, the Spear of Destiny, balance between realms, rules of engagement, obscure relics tossed into dialogue with minimal explanation. If you are not already inclined to meet the movie halfway, it can feel like a pile of cool‑sounding concepts that never fully cohere into a clean narrative. The central mystery—what really happened to Angela’s sister and why—is engaging early on, but as the plot widens into apocalyptic stakes, some of the emotional throughline gets lost in exposition. The pacing can be uneven too, moving from slow, moody sequences to abrupt bursts of action, then back to dense dialogue. It is rarely boring, but it can feel disjointed.

Compared to the Hellblazer source material, the film definitely sandpapers off some of John Constantine’s rougher, more politically charged edges and transplants him into a more conventional action framework. Fans of the comics often point to the loss of his British identity, the absence of his punk roots, and the more simplified view of magic and the occult as major flaws. Those criticisms are fair if you are judging the adaptation on fidelity. As a stand‑alone movie, though, Constantine carves out a distinct identity: a moody, grimy, spiritually obsessed supernatural noir built around a protagonist who is more tired than heroic. It is less about clever schemes and more about a man who has done terrible things realizing that the only way out is to finally stop acting in his own interest.

In the years since its release, Constantine has aged better than a lot of early comic book movies. The visual style remains striking, the performances are still strong, and its willingness to be weird and bleak makes it stand out in a landscape that increasingly favors quip‑heavy, crowd‑pleasing superhero fare. The flip side is that its flaws—clunky exposition, a sometimes incoherent mythology, and a very specific grim tone—are just as apparent as they were in 2005. Whether it works for you will depend a lot on how much patience you have for religious horror dressed up as action cinema. Taken as a whole, Constantine is an imperfect but memorable ride: stylish, occasionally profound, frequently ridiculous, and ultimately more interesting than many cleaner, safer adaptations.

Guilty Pleasure No. 98: Raw Deal (dir. by John Irvin)

Posted on January 9, 2026 by Arleigh

There is a point in every Arnold Schwarzenegger fan’s journey where they eventually circle back to Raw Deal and go, “Wait, how did this one slip through the cracks?” Set between Commando and Predator, this 1986 action vehicle often feels like the red-headed stepchild of Arnold’s golden era: a half-forgotten mob thriller dressed up as a one-man-army shoot-’em-up, with an undercover plot that keeps tripping over itself. Before Arnold was secret agent Harry Tasker in True Lies, he was already workshopping that whole undercover persona as former FBI man Mark Kaminski in Raw Deal. There is something strangely compelling about watching him play at being slick, whether he is posing as “Joseph Brenner” in mob circles or later reinventing himself as a suburban-family-man-turned-super-spy. Yet for all its clumsiness, tonal whiplash, and baffling choices, Raw Deal settles into that sweet, trashy groove where “this is bad” and “this is kind of awesome” blissfully merge. It is, in the purest sense, a guilty pleasure.

The setup is straightforward on paper. Arnold plays Mark Kaminski, a former FBI agent pushed out of the bureau for beating a suspect who assaulted and murdered a child, now stuck as a small-town sheriff in North Carolina with an unhappy, alcoholic wife and a life that feels like exile. His shot at redemption comes when his old FBI buddy Harry Shannon (Darren McGavin) recruits him for an off-the-books vendetta: infiltrate the Chicago mafia responsible for Shannon’s son’s death and tear them apart from the inside, in exchange for a possible path back into the bureau. Kaminski fakes his death, rebrands himself as “Joseph Brenner,” and sets out to worm his way into the organization run by boss Luigi Patrovita (Sam Wanamaker), while juggling mob politics, double-crosses, and a steady escalation of gunfire.

What makes the Kaminski era so weirdly fascinating is how hard the film leans on Arnold as a suave operator when his natural screen charisma is more brute-force than smooth-talking. In Raw Deal, he stalks through nightclubs and mob hangouts as an “undercover” tough guy, and you can almost see the movie trying to stretch him into a more traditional cool-gangster mode even as his sheer physicality keeps breaking the illusion. That tension carries right into True Lies, where the humor finally acknowledges how absurd it is to treat this gigantic Austrian bodybuilder as a low-key spy. The seeds of Harry Tasker’s double life are there in Kaminski: the awkward attempts at suave posturing, the undercover role-play, and the sense that the film is constantly asking the audience to accept him as something more than just the gun-toting tank he so effortlessly embodies. That tonal tug-of-war is kind of a mess, yet it’s also exactly why the movie is weirdly fun to revisit.

As an action piece, Raw Deal is very hit-or-miss, but when it hits, it goes all in on 80s excess. Director John Irvin stages a number of shootouts, but the standout sequence is the gravel pit massacre where Kaminski tears through mob soldiers with Mick Jagger’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” blaring on the soundtrack, turning what should be a grim set piece into something closer to a music video about vengeance. The climactic assault on Patrovita’s casino base is another high point, with Kaminski stalking room to room, methodically mowing down henchmen in suits as the film abandons any pretense of undercover subtlety and embraces straight-up carnage. These moments are absurdly over the top, but they’re the reason the film lingers in the memory more than some “better” constructed movies from the same era.

The problem is that the film around those set pieces often feels oddly slack. For a movie with such a simple premise—ex-cop goes undercover in the mob—Raw Deal somehow manages to tangle itself in muddled plotting and underdeveloped subplots. Roger Ebert complained that the story is so basic it should be impossible to screw up, yet the movie still finds ways to make motivations cloudy and relationships confusing, especially when it comes to FBI leaks and why certain hits are happening. There are scenes, like the cemetery assassination setup, that should be loaded with emotional and narrative clarity but instead play as strangely opaque, leaving viewers wondering less “What will happen next?” and more “What exactly is going on?”

Despite the narrative wobbling, the cast gives the film more personality than it probably deserves. Schwarzenegger is still in that phase where his acting is limited but his screen presence is undeniable, and Raw Deal leans into that presence by letting him oscillate between stoic enforcer and deadpan comedian. He is not as effortlessly iconic here as he is in The Terminator or Predator, but he has a grounded gruffness in the early scenes as the weary small-town sheriff, and a playful swagger once he shifts into mob-infiltrator mode. The movie’s tonal confusion sometimes works in his favor: when he drops a ridiculous line in the middle of a supposedly serious undercover situation, it breaks the film’s self-seriousness in a way that oddly makes it more enjoyable.

On the supporting side, Darren McGavin brings a welcome dose of worn-out moral anguish as Harry Shannon, a man consumed by grief and desperate enough to go rogue, while Sam Wanamaker’s Patrovita and Paul Shenar’s lieutenant Max Keller give the mob side just enough theatrical menace to keep things lively. Kathryn Harrold’s Monique—Patrovita’s associate and Kaminski’s sort-of ally—is more underwritten than she should be, but she adds a smoky, world-weary charm to an otherwise thin role, bringing a touch of noir-vibe melancholy to a film that mostly cares about bullets. The dynamic between Kaminski and Monique hints at a more emotionally grounded movie lurking underneath, one that never fully arrives but peeks through in their quieter moments.

Visually and stylistically, Raw Deal fits comfortably into the mid-80s action aesthetic: slightly grimy urban backdrops, neon-lit nightclubs, smoky gambling dens, and anonymous industrial sites where bad guys go to die. John Irvin, better known for dramas and war films, occasionally tries to inject a more grounded tone, but the movie keeps undercutting that with comic-book logic and stylized violence, making it feel as if two different films are wrestling for control. On one level, that is a flaw; on another, that disjointed energy is part of what gives Raw Deal its “so off it becomes its own thing” quality, especially when watched now with decades of ironic distance.

Critically, the film was not well-loved on release, and its reputation has never really recovered in a mainstream sense. It holds a low Rotten Tomatoes score and only middling numbers on Metacritic, with reviewers at the time describing it as muddled, clichéd, and cheap compared to other action fare. Yet audience reactions have always skewed a bit warmer, with CinemaScore polling showing a respectable “B” grade and plenty of fans over the years framing it as an uneven but entertaining entry in Schwarzenegger’s catalog. The distance of time has turned Raw Deal into one of those movies where people admit its flaws freely but still find themselves rewatching it, chuckling at its corniness and vibing with its shootouts.

As a guilty pleasure, Raw Deal works because it is simultaneously too serious and not serious enough. It wants to be a gritty mob infiltration story but keeps indulging in gleefully excessive violence and dumb jokes; it dreams of being a tight cop thriller but never quite musters the narrative discipline. Yet that tension gives it a peculiar charm: it is a film that fails to be the sleek genre picture it might have been, but succeeds as a scrappy time capsule of 80s action sensibilities, carried by Arnold’s charisma and a few standout set pieces.

Viewed today, Raw Deal is hard to defend as “good” in any conventional sense, especially when measured against Commando’s pure cartoon energy or Predator’s lean genre perfection. But as a late-night watch, beer in hand, half-laughing at the dialogue while leaning forward during the gravel pit and casino shootouts, it absolutely delivers the specific pleasure it promises. The system may have given Mark Kaminski a raw deal, but for Arnold fans willing to embrace something messy, loud, and gloriously dated, this film still feels like a trashy little win

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Review: Face/Off (dir. by John Woo)

Posted on January 8, 2026 by Arleigh

“It’s like looking in a mirror. Only… Not.” — Castor Troy with Sean Archer’s face

Face/Off is one of those late‑90s action movies that feels like it escaped from an alternate universe where “too much” is a compliment, not a warning label. It is bigger than it needs to be, sillier than the premise probably deserves, and yet somehow more emotionally earnest than most modern blockbusters. The result is a film that swings hard between breathtakingly good and gloriously ridiculous, and that tension is exactly what makes it worth revisiting.

At its core, Face/Off is a story about two men who literally become each other, but it works because it never treats that concept as a small thing. John Travolta’s Sean Archer is an FBI agent consumed by grief after the death of his young son, while Nicolas Cage’s Castor Troy is a theatrical terrorist who seems to enjoy being evil as a kind of performance art. The sci‑fi hook—cutting off their faces and swapping them—does not remotely pass a reality test, but the movie leans into the idea with such conviction that you either roll with it or get left behind in the opening act.

The big selling point is the acting showcase baked into that swap. Watching Travolta play a supposedly buttoned‑up lawman unraveling inside the body of a flamboyant villain, while Cage dials his madness into something deceptively controlled, gives the film a strange, theatrical energy. There is a real pleasure in tracking how each actor steals little gestures and rhythms from the other, so scenes become layered: what you’re seeing on the surface and who you know is “underneath” the borrowed face are constantly at odds.

That identity confusion isn’t just a gimmick; it gives the film some surprising emotional weight. Archer’s grief isn’t window dressing—his obsession with bringing down Troy comes from the trauma of losing his son, and the face swap forces him to confront who he’s become in that tunnel‑vision pursuit. Meanwhile, Troy, once inside Archer’s life, plays “family man” in a way that’s both gross and unnervingly intimate, manipulating Archer’s wife Eve and daughter Jamie with a mix of faux tenderness and predatory charm.

Joan Allen, as Eve, quietly grounds all this insanity. Her character spends a good chunk of the film being gaslit on a level that would break most people, yet Allen plays her with a subdued intelligence that makes the eventual moment of realization feel earned instead of convenient. Dominique Swain’s Jamie gets more of a stock “rebellious teen” setup, but the way Troy‑as‑Archer slithers into her life gives some scenes a genuinely uncomfortable edge, underlining how invasive the villain’s masquerade really is.

Of course, this is a John Woo movie, so the drama is constantly fighting for space with balletic gunfights and slow‑motion chaos. The action is elaborate and stylized, full of dual pistols, flying bodies, and highly choreographed carnage that feels closer to a violent dance than a grounded firefight. Whether it is the prison escape with its magnetic boots or the church shootout framed with doves and religious imagery, Woo stages set pieces as big operatic crescendos, not just plot checkpoints.

That operatic tone is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, the heightened style matches the bonkers premise, letting the movie exist in a kind of hyper‑reality where emotions and bullets fly with the same intensity. On the other hand, the sheer excess sometimes undercuts the more serious beats, as if the film can’t decide whether it wants to be a heartfelt story about grief and identity or the wildest action comic you have ever flipped through.

The script occasionally gestures at deeper themes but rarely lingers on them. Archer’s time in a secret off‑the‑books prison hints at broader commentary about state power and dehumanization, yet the movie mostly uses the setting as a backdrop for an escape sequence rather than exploring what it means. Similarly, Troy’s infiltration of Archer’s family brushes against ideas about how easily trust and intimacy can be weaponized, but the story is more interested in cranking up tension than really unpacking that psychological damage.

Where the writing truly shines is in the mechanics of the cat‑and‑mouse relationship. The film keeps finding new ways to twist the knife, whether it’s Archer stuck in Troy’s body trying to convince former enemies he’s changed sides, or Troy using Archer’s authority to erase evidence and tighten the trap. Some of the most satisfying scenes are the quieter confrontations where both men have to stay in character in front of others while aiming verbal daggers at each other, maintaining the illusion even as their hatred escalates.

Still, Face/Off is not exactly a model of restraint or logic, and that’s where some fair criticism comes in. The science of the face swap is nonsense even by sci‑fi standards, and the movie’s attempts to hand‑wave voice, body shape, and mannerisms require a level of suspension of disbelief that will be deal‑breaking for some viewers. On top of that, the third act piles on so many stunts and reversals that fatigue can set in; not every action beat feels necessary when the emotional arc has already hit its key notes.

There is also the question of tone in how the film treats violence and trauma. The opening murder of Archer’s son is genuinely brutal, and the later manipulation of his family taps into real discomfort, yet the movie often snaps back into cool‑shot mode a moment later, as if unsure how long it wants to sit with pain. That tonal whiplash can make it hard to fully buy into the emotional stakes, because the film keeps reminding you it is here, first and foremost, to put on a show.

Despite those flaws, Face/Off has aged in a strangely resilient way. In an era where many big action movies flatten actors into interchangeable cogs in a CG machine, there’s something refreshing about how much personality this film allows its leads to display, even when they’re chewing the scenery. The movie’s excess becomes part of its charm: it feels handcrafted in its madness, a spectacle built around big performances rather than just big effects.

Face/Off is neither a straightforward masterpiece nor a disposable guilty pleasure; it lives in a messy, entertaining space between those extremes. The film delivers memorable performances, inventive set pieces, and a surprisingly sincere emotional throughline, but it also leans on ludicrous science, tonal inconsistency, and overindulgent action. If you can accept its central absurdity and meet it on its own heightened wavelength, it remains a wild, engaging ride that showcases what happens when star power, genre bravado, and unfiltered style crash into each other at full speed.

Review: The Accountant 2 (dir. by Gavin O’Connor)

Posted on January 4, 2026 by Arleigh

“Is there anything better than punching somebody in the face who’s got it coming?” — Braxton

The Accountant 2 plunges back into the offbeat world of Christian Wolff, Ben Affleck’s autistic accounting savant who wields a calculator and a combat prowess with equal deadliness. Directed by Gavin O’Connor, the sequel reunites Christian with his wayward brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) as they unravel a conspiracy triggered by the murder of FinCEN director Raymond King (J.K. Simmons), pulling in agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) for a tense alliance. It cranks up the action and brotherly banter from the 2016 original, delivering bursts of gritty fun, but bogs down in bloated plotting and uneven tone that dilute its punchy premise.

The story explodes open with King’s brutal assassination, his dying message—”find the accountant”—dragging Christian out of his trailer-bound solitude. Medina taps Wolff’s uncanny financial insight to sift through King’s jumbled clues, tracing a trail from a pizza parlor’s money-laundering scheme to a vicious human trafficking ring straddling the Juarez border. A sleek assassin named Anaïs (Daniella Pineda) haunts the edges, her fragmented memories linking to Christian’s murky history, while Braxton joins for brawn and levity, transforming the probe into a chaotic sibling odyssey. The narrative sprawls across factories, motels, and hacker dens, blending forensic number-crunching with explosive confrontations, though it piles on subplots—like selfie-stalking tech whizzes and cartel infighting—that strain coherence without sharp resolutions.

Affleck deepens Christian’s portrayal, blending rigid logic with flashes of wry humor that feel more lived-in than the first film’s stiffness. He shines in quirky beats, like speed-dating disasters fueled by probabilistic algorithms or spotting fiscal fraud in pizza dough sales, then enforcing confessions with a vicious finger-twist. Yet the character teeters into trope territory, his neurodivergence often serving as shorthand for unstoppable violence rather than a nuanced lens on isolation. Bernthal dominates as Braxton, his raw charisma and emotional cracks—vulnerable confessions evolving into rowdy bar dances teaching Christian social flow—infuse the film with infectious warmth. Their rooftop schemes and escort-aided stakeouts pulse with buddy-movie spark, a major merit that carries weaker stretches.

Action remains the film’s powerhouse, surpassing the original in raw ferocity if not elegance. The pizza factory brawl erupts from interrogation into a whirlwind of pipes, knives, and improvised carnage, while garage pursuits and a border compound siege unleash R-rated savagery—precise headshots, joint-snapping grapples, even a sniper duel echoing thriller classics. O’Connor’s practical stuntwork and sweaty cinematography ground the chaos effectively, with a throbbing score that heightens tension without flash. These sequences thrill, but the climax devolves into a generic bullet storm, missing the original warehouse fight’s balletic intimacy, and the 132-minute runtime drags amid repetitive cop-agenta standoffs.

Medina’s arc offers steady grit, as Addai-Robinson charts her shift from protocol-bound skeptic to off-book partner, her rapport with Christian adding subtle friction to the bromance. Simmons maximizes his opener, fending off thugs in a dive bar before a fatal shot, nailing a tone of immediate peril. Pineda’s Anaïs cuts a striking figure—poised killer grappling with resurfaced trauma—but her threat fizzles, undermined by sparse buildup and a rushed tie-in to the brothers’ past. Lesser foes like the greasy pizza kingpin or border thug Tomas propel the plot competently yet forgettably, while Christian’s handler Justine (Annie Oosterom) doles out remote wisdom that’s underutilized.

At its core, The Accountant 2 wrestles with family bonds and hidden pains, pitting Christian’s analytical shell against Braxton’s impulsive soul in redemption-tinged flashbacks. Lighter quirks—honky-tonk flirtations, cat cameos, goofy T-shirts—humanize without diluting the edge, crafting a playful hyperviolence that charms in detours like smart-home hacks gone absurd. These merits shine brightest in hangout vibes, where meandering chats and line dances breathe life into the formula. Failures creep in through diluted quirks: the accounting genius takes a backseat to rote crime-thriller beats, cartel clichés overwhelm the fresh oddity, and pacing lurches from taut kills to listless exposition.

Technical craft holds firm, with O’Connor’s no-frills visuals capturing industrial grime and motel seediness, favoring tangible impacts over CGI gloss. The R-rating justifies itself via unflinching gore and profanity, satisfying gorehounds, though humor occasionally jars—like trailer quips amid slaughter—disrupting tonal balance. Compared to the debut’s sleeper surprise, this entry coasts on familiarity, expanding the Wolff mythos with teases of future clashes but lacking the tight ingenuity that sparked cult love.

The Accountant 2 succeeds as a rowdy sequel when leaning on its stars’ chemistry, visceral fights, and odd-couple heart, making it a blast for action cravings. It falters, however, in overreaching scope, diluting Christian’s uniqueness amid familiar shadows and slack momentum. Solid for fans seeking sibling sparks and calculated brutality, it lands as entertaining excess rather than essential evolution—catch it for the highs, forgive the math that doesn’t quite balance.

Review: We Bury the Dead (dir. by Zak Hilditch)

Posted on January 3, 2026 by Arleigh

“You can’t keep digging if you’re still holding onto the shovel of the past.” — Clay

We Bury the Dead knows exactly what genre it’s working in and makes no qualms about it, blending zombie tropes with a refreshingly modest scale that keeps the focus tight on one woman’s personal quest amid catastrophe. Directed and written by Zak Hilditch in his first effort since These Final Hours, the film unfolds in Tasmania after the U.S. President accidentally detonates an experimental explosive device, killing 500,000 people—some from the blast, others from a pulse that shuts down their brains. Daisy Ridley stars as Ava, who joins a body retrieval unit searching for her missing husband, only to face complications when the corpses begin showing eerie signs of life.

The setup draws from familiar zombie beats but refreshes them through its grounded, intimate lens. Rather than globe-trotting stakes or worldwide pandemonium, the story stays glued to Ava’s hip as she combs the ruins, making her emotional journey the true center of gravity. Gradual flashbacks peek into Ava and her husband’s rocky relationship before the event, adding layers to her drive without overwhelming the present-tense dread. Encounters with traumatized military forces emerge as secondary antagonists, heightening tension through human flaws rather than just the undead threat.

Daisy Ridley’s reserved yet gripping performance anchors everything, deftly avoiding caricature by pulling back just enough to hint at deeper turmoil bubbling beneath Ava’s surface. She brings a quiet physicality to the role—slumped shoulders during endless retrievals, micro-expressions like a jaw tightening over a child’s toy or hands trembling before steadying—that fills the sparse dialogue scenes with unspoken pain. Ridley knows when to unleash raw emotion, as in survival scraps with reanimating bodies or a claustrophobic clash with soldier Riley (Mark Coles Smith), where her eyes convey fear, rage, and clarity in equal measure. Her restraint evolves into resolve by the end, distilling Ava’s arc into a wordless shift from numb hope to tentative agency, her face a map of acceptance and lingering sorrow.

Even amid the somber tone, Hilditch infuses energy to keep things lively: a bright pop-rock track over chilling explosion fallout imagery, retrieval crew members partying hard off-duty, or Brenton Thwaites’ Clay (a reasonably charming co-lead) masking horror with dark comedy. These beats prevent the film from dragging into pure depression, balancing Ava’s grief with flickers of messy humanity. Clay’s warmth breaks up her isolation through shared exhaustion and hesitant bonds, while his humor underscores the absurdity of survival.

The zombies themselves spark a love-hate dynamic, refusing the z-word like Shaun of the Dead but delivering undead with a standout twist: teeth grinding to shards, visually grotesque but sonically haunting in a way that crawls under the skin. They start subtle, twitching amid body bags, before ramping to aggressive charges in the final act—though their motivations stay murky, adding unease. This sound design stands as one of the film’s boldest, most horrific choices, turning every onscreen appearance into an auditory assault that lingers longer than the visuals. Violence stays blunt and quick, feeling like grim necessities in a broken world rather than showy spectacles.

Craft-wise, the modest production shines. Cinematography captures Tasmania’s vast emptiness and suffocating interiors, with dust motes and shadowed hallways amplifying emotional compression. Design sells the halted lives—scattered toys, frozen family photos—without CGI excess, grounding the pulse-induced apocalypse in tangible loss. The 95-minute runtime clocks in tight, its observational repetition mirroring grief’s grind while building to disruptive spikes of undead or human peril.

Pacing favors atmosphere over escalation, risking sluggishness in routine retrievals but fitting the theme of numbing loss punctuated by shocks. The finale embraces ambiguity, prioritizing Ava’s internal shift over tidy resolutions to the outbreak or weapon’s fallout, leaving bigger questions underdeveloped to stay personal.

Ridley’s work elevates the familiar tropes, her internalized subtlety proving ideal for this scaled-down zombie tale that prioritizes haunting sound, emotional depth, and quiet resilience over bombast. We Bury the Dead may lean on genre staples, but its fresh restraint and sonic chills make it a compelling, if divisive, mood-driven entry—perfect for those craving horror that’s more about enduring the aftermath than outrunning the horde.

Review: Strange Days (dir. by Kathryn Bigelow)

Posted on December 31, 2025 by Arleigh

“Memories are meant to fade, Lenny. They’re designed that way for a reason.” — Lornette “Mace” Mason

Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days plunges into a gritty, near-future Los Angeles teetering on the edge of the millennium, where illegal “SQUID” technology lets people hijack others’ sensory experiences, fueling a black-market addiction to raw thrills. Released in 1995 with a screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, the film stars Ralph Fiennes as Lenny Nero, a shady ex-cop dealing these clips amid escalating racial tensions and urban chaos. At over two hours, it mixes cyberpunk visuals with thriller tension, crafting an immersive world that pulses with sensory overload and moral ambiguity.

The story opens with a heart-pounding sequence—a robber’s point-of-view heist captured in one seamless, breathless shot that drops you right into the adrenaline-fueled action, setting a template for the film’s signature subjective dives into chaos. Lenny navigates this underworld, peddling clips of highs and dangers to escape his own regrets, especially over a past love, singer Faith Justin, brought to life by Juliette Lewis with vulnerable intensity that captures the pull of faded dreams. He pulls in his loyal bodyguard Mace, Angela Bassett delivering a fierce, grounded performance, as a mysterious clip hints at deeper corruption involving cops and power players in the city, drawing them into a web of intrigue that tests loyalties amid the neon haze. Bigelow leans into the tech’s seductive pull, where users feel every rush or rush of emotion, blurring lines between observer and participant in uncomfortably real ways that linger long after the credits roll.

Visually, the film explodes off the screen, with cinematographer Matthew Leonetti’s dynamic camera and Bigelow’s high-octane style painting L.A. as a neon-drenched maze of helicopters, crowds, and holographic distractions that feel alive and oppressive. That kinetic opening blends POV chaos with slick editing that amps the disorientation, making every frame pulse with urgency. The world feels authentically grimy and multicultural, alive with New Year’s Eve energy in clubs and streets, evoking millennial anxiety through thumping sound design and distorted audio bleeds that heighten the sensory assault. Bigelow channels her action roots into visceral set pieces that turn the future into something tangible and tense, rewarding close attention to the details that build immersion, from flickering holograms to rain-slicked streets buzzing with tension.

Fiennes captures Lenny’s sleazy charisma perfectly—a sweaty, chain-smoking hustler whose charm masks desperation, keeping him oddly relatable even as his flaws pile up in moments of quiet vulnerability. Bassett dominates as Mace, a tough wheelwoman with unshakeable integrity, her presence anchoring the frenzy and elevating every exchange with quiet strength that cuts through the chaos like a blade. Lewis adds raw edge to Faith, trapped in a web of influence and ambition, her scenes crackling with desperation and fire. Tom Sizemore brings twitchy noir flavor as Max, Lenny’s private investigator buddy who adds layers of unreliable grit to their partnership, his manic energy bouncing off Fiennes in tense, believable banter. The cast meshes well in the overload, though some peripheral figures lean into cyberpunk stereotypes like street dealers and digital oddities, occasionally stretching the vibe thin without fully fleshing out their roles amid the relentless pace.

At its core, Strange Days digs into tech’s grip on empathy in a numb world, where SQUID clips turn voyeurism into full-body complicity, raising tough questions about detachment, consent, and the thrill of borrowed lives. Lenny’s habit of replaying personal moments underscores the addictive pull of reliving the past, turning memory into a dangerous escape that erodes real connections. Bigelow threads in sharp commentary on racism and authority, drawing from real ’90s unrest, with Mace pushing for truth amid systemic shadows in ways that feel urgent and unflinching, her moral compass a steady force against the moral rot. The infamous rape scene stands out as a gut-wrenching pinnacle of this approach, forcing viewers into the perpetrator’s twisted perspective via SQUID playback, amplifying the victim’s terror and the assailant’s depravity to confront voyeuristic horror and power imbalances head-on without pulling punches or easy outs—its raw intensity is jarring, deliberately so, to expose the ethical rot at the tech’s heart. The female-led perspective highlights abuses thoughtfully, adding layers to the spectacle and giving the film a distinctive edge that balances exploitation with unflinching critique.

That said, the film isn’t without bumps, as the plot weaves a tangled web of alliances and betrayals that can feel convoluted under the sensory barrage, occasionally losing focus amid the noise and demanding sharper clarity to match its ambition. Its 145-minute runtime sags midway with Lenny’s brooding and repetitive demos, testing patience before ramping up to its feverish peaks, where the editing could trim some fat for tighter momentum. The climax aims for catharsis amid riots and revelations but lands unevenly, with a hopeful turn that feels rushed or tidy in spots, underplaying certain social threads post-buildup and diluting their harder-hitting potential just when they build to a roar. Some effects show their age, like glitchy clip transitions that disrupt rather than enhance the immersion at times.

Still, these rough edges can’t overshadow the film’s bold highs. Bigelow’s direction thrives on discomfort, using the SQUID concept to mirror how media desensitizes us, making every clip a window into ethical quicksand. The sound design deserves special mention—bass-heavy tracks and visceral screams that bleed from headsets create a claustrophobic intensity, amplifying the tech’s invasive allure. Action beats, from high-speed chases to brutal confrontations, showcase Bigelow’s knack for kinetic choreography, with Bassett’s physicality in the driver’s seat stealing the show. Lenny’s arc, flawed as it is, lands with pathos, his hustler’s denial cracking under pressure to reveal flickers of redemption tied to loyalty and loss.

Strange Days delivers highs that exhilarate and lows that challenge, mirroring its own addictive clips—a raw, uneven ride pulsing with Bigelow’s bold vision that thrives on discomfort and connection. Mace’s decency offers human spark amid the dystopia, balancing provocation with heart in a way that elevates the whole, her bond with Lenny grounding the spectacle in something real. It’s provocative cyberpunk for those craving immersion with bite, a film that doesn’t just show a future but makes you live it, flaws and all, leaving you wired and wary. Fire it up if you’re ready to jack in and feel the rush—just brace for the crash.