Category: Reviews

Thrice | KPop Demon Hunters (2025) Review

July 6, 2025

I have a friend who’s a bit of a troll. She wanted to watch KPop Demon Hunters and wanted more, perhaps, for me to watch it. Her logic was sound: “You like K-pop!” to which I noted I also like movies, and that doesn’t mean I’m rushing out to watch F1 this weekend. Nor for that matter, Elio, live-action Lilo & Stitch, or live-action How to Train Your Dragon – really, guys? Three at the same time? Anyway, my logic here is sounder: those movies are for babies. Of course, I’ve enjoyed movies for babies, especially when I was a baby, as well as movies empty of thought or weight. One doesn’t need to approach a work of art or entertainment in the exact same way each time, and we understand this implicitly, setting different expectations based on genre, content rating, and so on. Still, a lot of the criticisms I have for KPop Demon Hunters can be brushed aside with “It’s a kids’ movie,” leaving me in the impossible situation of having watched a movie I wasn’t meant to watch. … More Thrice | KPop Demon Hunters (2025) Review

Swan Lake of Blood | Ballerina (2025) Review

June 7, 2025

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is a strong contender for “movie with the worst title of the year,” and incidentally, the subtitle (supertitle?) is both strength and weakness. My question, from the moment the film was announced in 2019, was “Why does this have to be a spin-off?” There’s nothing about a ballerina-turned-assassin that screams John Wick any more than it does La Femme Nikita or 2023’s own Ballerina, though the lead character in that one wasn’t the titular ballerina. In fact, 2025’s Ballerina starts on the most stock-standard note: her father is killed, and she seeks revenge. That’s every action movie! It’s also why the original John Wick was such a breath of fresh air: action movies are bad. … More Swan Lake of Blood | Ballerina (2025) Review

The Beach Episode | Sonatine (1993) Review

June 3, 2025

It’s rare for a film to give the sense that we, the audience, are seeing the world through the director’s eyes. Typically, great direction serves the story, but in this case, the director may be the story, doubling as the lead actor. As his character Murakawa, Takeshi Kitano observes. Along with countless static shots of people standing by, sitting still, waiting, we look at a lot of Murakawa looking. More than that, Sonatine, like Kitano’s earlier film Boiling Point, moves to its own rhythm. Proceeding without a lot of dialogue, it establishes a unique language with what we see and when we see it. Often, what we see is a shocking instance of violence. For my money, Sonatine has the most effective jump scare in any non-horror movie. I practically leapt out of my seat. And yet, it’s also irreverent and tender, melancholy and affecting. It’s phenomenal. … More The Beach Episode | Sonatine (1993) Review

Automatic Arsenal | Battle Girl (1991) Review

May 22, 2025

It’s true that the movie fully entitled Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay has a very low budget. As much as I’d prefer to be an enlightened critic who doesn’t discriminate on such bases, in this case I’m interested in how the miniscule production influences the viewing experience. For reference, we can plot this one somewhere between, say, Nemesis and Screamers? The former is so raggedy that it’s sometimes incoherent, not only in the big picture but in the micro, where the camera and editing have to be so judicious, so careful not to show the edges of the set, so to speak. Battle Girl has a little bit of that, though its setting – the zombie post-apocalypse – is easier to render than other sci-fi worlds, where “scatter some trash in the corner” is actually workable. … More Automatic Arsenal | Battle Girl (1991) Review

Starship of Fools | Mickey 17 (2025) Review

March 8, 2025

It’s been a long winter. If I’m getting into my car these days, it’s to go to the grocery store to continue stocking up on canned goods for the coming economic recession or government collapse or whatever it’s gonna be. Tonight, as I waited for the engine to warm, I asked myself: “Do I really want to see this movie?” It was kind of an obligation, for two reasons. One, I’ve been writing a sci-fi story about clones and needed to know if I should stop, and two, Parasite was so good that I owe Director Bong. I’d also managed to avoid all trailers and plot details – even the cast list, beyond Pattinson – so why spoil that now, though it’s probably why I was feeling so neutral. What was there to excite me but the promise of another Bong Joon-ho movie? He’s been a little hit-or-miss, though I’m not sure if it’s just because I vibe so much with his friend and colleague Park Chan-wook. That man can ruin my night any day of the week, and by comparison, Bong’s sillier, more welcoming sensibilities are less appealing. As a sci-fi movie with a funny premise, Mickey 17 seemed to promise the same thrills of The Host or Okja – undoubtedly with that satirical bite. … More Starship of Fools | Mickey 17 (2025) Review

Old Myths, Old Men | Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024) Review

February 20, 2025

There’s a Wikipedia page for the topic “epic film,” which gets into some of the back-and-forth in film scholarship about whether the term applies exclusively to historical-style movies or to those in other genres as well. If the latter, then 2001 is (as designed) a “sci-fi epic,” and The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy epic, though that’s somewhat obvious. What about the less obvious genres, like comedy? I can only think of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And then there’s action, which might be even trickier. This is our punchy genre, often driven by a single hero rather than an ensemble, and inside a contained scenario instead of sprawled out across time and space. I’d actually make the argument for The Night Comes for Us, for its multiple perspectives, its backstory, and the scale of the fights. Consider, too, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, running at a touch over two hours and setting its action inside the real-world megastructure Kowloon Walled City. … More Old Myths, Old Men | Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024) Review

Gun Haver | A Janitor (2021) Review

February 17, 2025

The onset of Ben Affleck sequel The Accountant 2 is occasion to reflect: what is this thing we do? Whether it’s Jason Statham is The Beekeeper or Tom Hiddleston is The Night Manager or Charles Bronson (and Jason Statham) is The Mechanic, these titles are, like, almost a metaphor? It’s more like an unspoken understanding, between the dads who make these movies and the dads who watch them, that this is gonna be about a reserved, quiet guy who’s secretly a badass. Sheds the accountant facade (glasses?) and springs into action, possibly to give a couple of taunting bad guys what-for. “Hey, old man!” they taunt. We can probably add A Janitor to this pantheon, but with asterisks. At one point, the girl character says to/of our titular janitor, “You’re not an ordinary man,” which is true to the form, but then it’s like, I don’t know why he’s a janitor? … More Gun Haver | A Janitor (2021) Review

Remember, No Guns | Bad City (2022) Review

February 2, 2025

The year is 2022, and we’ve had decades of action movie innovation. The bare minimum has to be: “What hasn’t been done yet?” which must be how you get “megaphone as melee weapon.” In Bad City, a white-haired badass squares off against a group of thugs disguised as a baseball team, and after shouting at them through the megaphone at point-blank range, beats them with it to the peculiar rhythms of director Kensuke Sonomura’s light-speed fight choreography. After clobbering several bad guys, he tries to use the megaphone again as intended and finds it’s broken. Already, this is a marked improvement on Sonomura’s previous film, the bewildering Hydra. Inexplicably presented, that movie would’ve benefited from a simpler script guided by cliché, and so it was, initially, a relief that Bad City acquits itself with a police investigation, corrupt politicians, and evidence stored on a USB stick. … More Remember, No Guns | Bad City (2022) Review

Homemade Gyoza Party | Baby Assassins: 2 Babies (2023) Review

January 23, 2025

I’m so excited that Baby Assassins ballooned into a media franchise, encompassing a trilogy of films, a TV series, a making-of documentary, and a making-of mockumentary, most of which came together in the last two years. Mahiro actress Saori Izawa has been working for a long time, as her action reels on YouTube plainly demonstrate – up to and including slicing a delivery pizza in half with a katana – mostly behind the scenes, even doubling Rina Sawayama in John Wick: Chapter 4. Our dear new franchise, then, is basically her proverbial (if not literal) John Wick moment, and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her featured more prominently in another American movie soon. It’s weird that American action cinema is currently in a renaissance, but for Japan, movies like Baby Assassins are the exception – kind of. … More Homemade Gyoza Party | Baby Assassins: 2 Babies (2023) Review

A Killing at the Maid Café | Baby Assassins (2021) Review

January 22, 2025

In action movies, there’s always that moment in the final battle when the bloody-faced hero looks up at their opponent, and the line is something like, “I’m not giving up” or “Is that all you got?” In Baby Assassins, it’s more like, “She didn’t tell me about this strong guy.” That’s it. Just another snippet of an internal monologue that’s sometimes spoken aloud. At the start of the movie, this character Mahiro is introduced as a socially awkward teen doing something painfully relatable: bombing a job interview. Only, she cuts it short by shooting the hiring manager in the head (ideally, that’s less relatable). What follows is a frenetic fight scene choreographed by the modern master Kensuke Sonomura, where assailants lifting Mahiro into the air doesn’t stop her from repeatedly stabbing their shoulders and arms. Spoiler alert: this is most of the movie’s action until the final battle. … More A Killing at the Maid Café | Baby Assassins (2021) Review