A massive, unexploded bomb left over from World War II is discovered at a construction site in the middle of a busy London neighborhood. The authorities evacuate the area and call in a bomb disposal unit. A crew of thieves use this cover to stage a daring heist. So goes Fuze, the new thriller from director David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water). What unfolds is a taut, fast-paced ticking-clock thriller full of twists and turns, with a few more twists and a handful of extra turns thrown in for good measure.
Because it’s an action movie starring Bob Odenkirk as a seemingly regular guy pushed to extreme violence and was written by Derek Kolstad, Normal is going to get compared to 2021's Nobody, for good and ill. (Honestly, the similar title doesn’t help in that regard.) While there are definite parallels, Ben Wheatley’s new movie is more average-Joe-in-extraordinary-circumstances than it is secret-badass-hiding-in-plain-sight. Quite a bit of Normal is a total blast, but just as much, if not more, sags under curious, often baffling choices. It’s a weird, mixed bag of a film.
It’s springtime in Seattle, which means it’s either sunny and glorious outside or rainy as all hell. Either way, it’s the perfect time to spend a Saturday in a dark movie theater watching horror movies. And let’s be honest, probably drinking. That’s right, the annual BoneBat Comedy of Horrors film festival is once again upon us.
Working within specific, well-worn genre or subgenre frameworks can make it difficult to do something wholly new. How many rehashed slashers have we all sat through? But that doesn’t mean there aren’t worthwhile stories to tell. We still occasionally see exciting, fresh zombie tales, for instance. Post-apocalyptic movies are another example, illustrated nicely by The Well. Documentarian Hubert Davis (Black Ice), in his first narrative feature, uses these familiar trappings to tell a tense, brooding, slow-burn tale of life past the collapse of civilization.
Gabriele Mainetti’s The Forbidden City is a strange movie. It presents as a throwback martial arts actioner about a Chinese woman, Mei (badass stunt performer Yaxi Liu), single-mindedly battling her way through Rome’s criminal underworld in search of her missing sister. And it is that. The Italian picture comes out swinging and plays like a kung-fu movie greatest hits collection: Mei fights her way up many flights of stairs; there’s a kitchen fight, complete with using pots and pans as improvised weapons, boiling oil, and flaming stovetops; and even a red-light brothel fight. This all happens in the first few minutes. From there, it’s an odd assemblage of a face-pummeling action movie, gangster saga, melodramatic rom-com, operatic tragedy, and more. It’s an unexpected mixture and doesn’t seem like it should work, but it does, combining into something singular and unique.
A woman stands in a desert in the darkening twilight, looming over a man, tied to a chair, burning to death at her feet. This is Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus). She’s traveling dimension to dimension, methodically killing every version of Neville (Jeremy Holm), the serial killer who murdered her daughter. It’s a hell of a first image to kick off Kevin and Matthew McManus’s (The Block Island Sound) indie sci-fi thriller Redux Redux.
According to author and famed writing teacher, John Gardner, all fictional stories can be boiled down to one of two plots: someone leaves town, someone comes to town. (OR maybe you subscribe to Christopher Booker’s Seven Basic Plots approach, or one of the many other theories, but for our purposes today, we’ll stick with Gardner.) Hellfire, the latest from direct-to-video action auteur Isaac Florentine (Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, Undisputed 2 and 3), follows this formula to a tee.
