Tag Archives: Joel Kinnaman

Icefall – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A film with an interesting premise that is unable to capture its potential because of some choices, like a very dour tone.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was sent a screener of this film.

Money falls into the icy water.

Icefall Review Introduction –

There are a lot of variations on the heist film, and one of my favourites is what happens when everything goes wrong. When you have gotten the money, but then it goes missing, you must hunt it down. Today, we are looking at a film that is paying in that space, with the added difficulty of never knowing if your next step will plunge you into the icy depths.

So, to set the scene, we open with a pawn shop getting robbed, but not for its valuables, but for the secrets it holds in the basement. Hidden safes, in clandestine basements, secured behind a front. Nothing legal is happening here, but when you mess with the Albanian Mob, you don’t have to be worried about just the police coming after you. But you may have the best plans in the world, and none of that will hold up to a rogue lightning strike crashing your plane. Five months later, and the snow has started to thaw, the rivers have started to flow, and a pesky GPS tag might have just sent everyone who knows into the forest to look for money that can change lives.   

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Silent Night (2023) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – I respect this film for trying something new, even if they don’t actually pull it off.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Silent Night Review –

There are some directors that you have to watch when you hear they are attached to a project, and if you are a fan of action, then you know that John Woo is one to get yourself into a cinema. Add to this is a hook that I have not seen played like this before, and I was intrigued, well, at least I was when I walked in.  

So to set the scene, we open with a man running, hands covered in blood, as tires screech and bullets fly. Two cars are in battle as bullets fly around, and the man is chasing them down. You think he might be succeeding as he flings a metal bar into the window, crashing the car. That is until Playa (Harold Torres) gets out of the crashed car and shoots Brian (Joel Kinnaman) right in the neck. Brian can speak, but that is only the start of his trauma, and he decides that he has to do something about this.

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The Suicide Squad – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A film that finally made me care about these characters but one that also suffered from some narrative bloat    

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid and post-credit scene

Disclosure – I was sent a screener of this film.

The Suicide Squad. Image Credit: Warner Brothers Pictures.

The Suicide Squad Review –

In life, you rarely get the chance to make a second first impression. For every Parks and Rec that gets to find its feet in its second season, many more fall by the wayside after their first attempt. Well, today, DC gives us a film that is a second chance to bring a set of characters and scenarios into the DCEU to see if they work, and the answer to that question is yes … mostly.

So to set the scene, we open in with Savant (Michael Rooker) in prison attacking birds with his bouncing ball. But before he has time to finish his time off, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) tells him that he has been conscripted into a mission. Within moments he is rushed to the island of Corto Maltese, with Weasel (Sean Gunn), Javelin (Flula Borg), Blackguard (Pete Davidson), TDK (Nathan Fillion), Mongal (Mayling Ng), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). Their mission is to infiltrate the island and get past the military patrols, as the island recently suffered a military coup. It is all going well right up until Weasel dies because he can’t swim, and Blackguard immediately sells them out.     

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TV Review – Altered Carbon: Season One

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TL;DR – Imagine if Westworld and Blade Runner had a baby with Ghost in the Shell as the midwife.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Altered Carbon

Review –
What do we do as a society when the body is no longer the final resting place of the mind, or maybe even our souls? Well you get a world where you can wake up the dead and get them to tell you who killed them, where a child in a hit and run can get a second chance at life, where the rich can live forever jumping from one cloned body to the other, and where jail terms can last hundreds of years and you will wake up in a different body than the one you came in on. It is a world of great possibility but also a world of great sadness and inequality. So today we will be unpacking the first season of Altered Carbon an interesting show with highs and lows. However, quickly before we start, I have not read the books this show is based off, as such, I won’t be able to tell you how the show works as an adaptation on the source material. As well as this, because we are looking at the season as a whole, there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Movie Review – Suicide Squad

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TL;DR – Sigh, oh DC, it really looked like you tried on this movie, but boy the best that you can do is an aggressively mediocre outing that adds nothing to the franchise, and as a self-contained film – well you can do a lot worse, but you can also do a lot better.

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

P.S. There is a mid-credits scene

Suicide Squad. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

When it comes to that whole DC v Marvel comics rivalry which seems to permeate the internet these days, for me this was one of those arguments that was never really a factor in my life growing up. This is because we didn’t really get the comics where I lived, but what we did get was the animated series, like X-Men and Batman, and they were not aired in competition with each other, and indeed sometimes aired on the same TV channel. So growing up you were not a DC or Marvel person, it was more “did you see that episode yesterday”, I feel I really need to start with this up front because I really want this Justice League series to work, I really do. However I don’t think Suicide Squad is the film that will do it, and in fact all it does is show that DC/WB just don’t seem to know how to get this movie series off the ground. At best it is average, and at worse it is quite problematic, but in the end it is not really all that engaging and you’ll probably forget most of it within a day of watching it.

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