Silent Night (2023) – Movie Review

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 Killer – Movie Review

TL;DR – It is an odd but compelling film where we dive into the mind of a professional killer when everything falls apart.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.

The Killer sets up his shot.

The Killer Review

A revenge film can be a challenging beast to pull off. Because if you don’t work on making the motivations land, then you just have a slasher flick. However, what if you had a cold, distant killer taking on interesting characters, and you can pull that off thematically? Well, that is the film that we are looking at today.

So to set the scene, it is a quiet morning in Paris as The Killer (Michael Fassbender) waits for The Target (Endre Hules) in a cold and gloomy room. He waxes philosophically as he sits there waiting. He has one job, to kill his target, and he does not care who it is as long as he is paid. But what happens when, at the last second, someone gets in the way of your target, and your whole reputation disappears instantly? How many redundancies did you really plan? Are they enough? And are you prepared for the coming storm?

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The Northman – Movie Review

TL;DR – The Northman is unrelenting, uncomfortable, unyielding, and uncompromising

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film

Bjork as a witch in a wheat headdress

The Northman Review

When I heard that Robert Eggers was making a new film, I was interested because his last work, The Lighthouse, well, it was ‘a lot’, but it was also fascinating from start to finish. Then I heard it would be a Norse epic tale of revenge and carnage. Well, I was intrigued. But when I heard that early reviews were calling it ‘impenetrably Norse’, I had to check it out because that is my jam.

So to set the scene, in 985AD, on the Atlantic coast, young Prince Amleth (Oscar Novak) looks out into the sea and sees that his father, King Aurvandill War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), has returned from his raids. With his Mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), he greets his father and discovers that he was wounded in the last battle. After Aurvandill’s brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang) arrives, Gudrún counsels her husband that Amleth needs to start the process of becoming a man. Aurvandill takes Amleth to the Heimir (Willem Dafoe), the fool and seer, to have a vision. But as they leave the temple, Aurvandill is ambushed and murdered, and as Amleth runs, he sees that the murderer is his uncle Fjölnir. Many years later, in the Lands of the Rus, Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) is a berserker taking out villages when he is reminded of his duty to avenge his father’s murder.

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Movie Review – The Hunt

TL;DR – A film that is brilliantly bookended but a bit of a slog to get from start to finish.    

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

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

The Hunt. Image Credit: Universal Pictures.

Review

Many films have a rocky road from start to release, however, the problems usually lie either during or in the post-production process. Rarely do films have problems once they are ready to go, well sometimes it is threats from North Korea, and sometimes it is issues well outside anyone’s controls. Today we look at such a film that whose second attempt at a release got messy thanks to the world at the moment, but it is here now so let’s take a look.

So to set the scene, we open in on a forest as eleven strangers wake up, with no idea where they are or what happened to them, nor why they are wearing gags. One of the group, a young woman (Emma Roberts) notices one of the group run off into the woods, but everyone else is fixated on the box in the middle of the field. Inside is the keys to their escape, but also the start of the carnage as guns start going off everywhere. Now unlike a lot of films, it is a bit difficult to talk about this film without hitting [SPOILERS] real quick, so there will be some plot points that are spoilers that we will be discussing in the review.

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Movie Review – John Wick

TL;DR – A really good action flick and an example of world building done right.

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

John Wick. Image Credit: Summit Entertainment.

Review

John Wick has been out on DVD/Digital Download for some time and with a sequel now on the cards, I thought I would have a look back at one of the better action films in recent times.

The basic plot of John Wick is that the titular character John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a man who was once in deep in the Russian mob, and through an impossible act he freed himself and settled down with his new love, only for her to pass away. The last thing his wife did was buy John a puppy so he could move on from his grief. The son of the Russian Mob boss Iosef (Alfie Allen) mistakes him for an easy mark, this is an error, a grave error.

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