An assassin goes to tie up loose ends after a botched job in The Killer. Waiting from an empty office in Paris, The Killer (Michael Fassbender) patiently waits for the opportunity to eliminate his target. However, as fate would have it, The Killer misses his shot, and his employers now make him the target. As…
The assassin’s hunt for revenge climaxes in John Wick: Chapter 4. After being betrayed by his friend Winston (Ian McShane) and left for dead in the care of the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), John Wick (Keanu Reeves) recovers and continues his quest for vengeance against the High Table. The Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsg?rd)…
The Beast Cop returns in The Roundup. Detective Ma Seok-do (Don Lee) travels to Vietnam with Captain Jeon Il-man (Choi Gwi-hwa) travel to Vietnam to repatriate a captured criminal back to Korea. However, Ma discovers that a madman named Kang Hae-sang (Son Seok-koo) has been kidnapping and killing Korean tourists. When Kang travels to Korea…
The saga of the Dark Knight is rebooted as a brooding noir mystery with The Batman. For the last two years, reclusive millionaire Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) has been enacting vigilante justice as The Batman and he found an alley in Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). Batman’s biggest challenge arises when a serial killer named…
A drifter joins a carnival and becomes a skilled mentalist in Nightmare Alley. On the run from his past, Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) comes across a travelling carnival and is given work by its proprietor Clem Hoately (Willem Dafoe). Working as part of a psychic act of Zeena (Toni Collette) and Pete Krumbein (David Strathairn),…
A self-help author is tormented on a nightly business by a home-invading killer in Lucky. May Ryer (Brea Grant) is a notable self-help author, whose latest book hasn’t been selling as well as her first. One night. May discovers a masked invader at her house and her husband Ted (Dhruv Uday Singh) matter-of-factly mentions that…
A jeweller with a gambling addiction hopes to score big with a rare gem in Uncut Gems. Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is the owner of a jewelry store in New York’s diamond district, who owes a lot of money in gambling debts, particularly to his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian), who sends a couple of enforcers…
A retiring hitman finds himself hunted by his younger clone in Gemini Man. Henry Brogan (Will Smith) is an ageing government assassin, who has become disillusioned with killing and decides to retire. After retiring, Henry learns that the target of his final job was innocent. This knowledge makes Henry a target of the agency he…
A woman seeks bloody vengeance against those who abducted an assaulted her younger sister. Former martial arts champion Inae (Lee Si-young) is released from prison and is reunited with her teenage sister Eunhye (Park Se-wan). However, the reunion doesn’t last long, since Eunhye disappears the next day, after encountering bullies at her school. Inae goes…
A group of strangers descend upon a rundown hotel in Bad Times at the El Royale. El Royale is a hotel near Lake Tahoe, that is placed on the border between California and Nevada. One night, a group of strangers descend upon the hotel, including Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson)…
An unconventional police force tries to take down a deadly gang in The Outlaws. Inspector Ma (Don Lee) is the head of the Serious Crimes Unit in Seoul’s Garibong neighbourhood, which is home to a number of Chinese-Korean gangs. Things heat with with the arrival of the Black Dragon Gang, lead by Jang Chen (Kye-Sang Yoon), who begins…
A slacker goes to great lengths to find out what happened to his neighbour in Under the Silver Lake. Sam (Andrew Garfield) is directionless man in his mid-30s, whose daily routine involves playing retro video games and spying on his neighbours. It is during one of these spying sections that Sam sees Sarah (Riley Keough), a mysterious…
A 90 year old atheist navy veteran contemplates his mortality in Lucky. Living in a small town in the California desert, Lucky (Harry Dean Stanton) has a very specific daily routine, which includes doing the crossword at the local diner run or conversing with his friends at the bar. However, one day Lucky’s routine is…
A police officer in Japan-occupied Korea secretly begins to work with the resistance movement he is supposed to bring down in The Age of Shadows. Lee Jung-chool (Song Kang ho) is a Korean captain for the Japanese Police in 1920s occupied Korea. Lee and his partner Hashimoto (Um Tae-Goo) are tasked with bringing down the resistance movement…
A private investigator and enforcer reluctantly team up to locate a missing woman in The Nice Guys. Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a private investigator in 1977 Los Angeles, who is currently looking for a missing girl named Amelia Kutner (Margaret Qualley). However, Amelia doesn’t want to be found and hires Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) to tell…
An FBI agent finds herself part of a morally ambiguous anti-drug task force in Sicario. Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is an agent of the FBI Special Weapons and Tactics Team, who uncovers dozens of bodies in the walls of a house in Arizona. With this being the result of Mexican cartel activity, Kate volunteers to Department of…
Last night saw the Toronto premiere of Cutaway, the new short film by Kazik Radwanski (Tower, Princess Margaret Blvd). Cutaway is the story of a momentous development of a man’s life, told entirely through close-ups of his hands. Those familiar with Radwanski’s previous films would know that he has the tendency of shooting quite close…
Keanu Reeves stars as the title character in this action revenge thriller. John Wick (Reeves) is a retired assassin, who has been out of the life for many years. Shortly after the death of his wife, things hit rock bottom for Wick when Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), son of Wick’s old boss Viggo Tarasov (Michael…
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a videographer, who would do anything to make the news in the thriller Nightcrawler. Louis Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is a somewhat antisocial man, who is driven to find a career that meets his desire to make a name for himself. At the site of a traffic accident, Bloom meets a man named Joe…
Director Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff) returns with this very naturalistic look at a trio of eco-terrorists. Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning) are a pair of environmental activists, who join up with Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) in Portland to blow up a dam. Despite a few bumps along the way, the plan…
It is obvious from the opening credits that Killing Them Softly is more art film than crime film. Sure, the film focuses on a hitman named Jackie (Brad Pitt), who is called in to kill those responsible in a robbery. However, the film moves at quite a slow pace, which features much more talking than…
After the whole projector breakdown fiasco on Tuesday, I returned today to see Killer Joe in its entirety and I am glad that I did. I was correct in my estimation that there was only half an hour left to the film when the incident occurred. However, I have to say that I am glad that…
I delayed my list of my favourite films of 2011 as I went out to see some last-minute possible contenders. I saw War Horse on Sunday and I now I went to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy today. The film is an old school Cold War spy thriller in which a British spy named George Smiley (Gary…
Drive is an action/crime/drama that seems to be hearkening back to crime thrillers of the 1980s, with a little of Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver thrown in for good measure. The film stars Ryan Gosling as a nameless stunt driver/mechanic, who moonlights as a getaway driver for robberies. He takes one such job to help out the husband of his…
I have to say that there were a few moments in Shutter Island in which I was feeling a bit confused. It was not until the end of the film when I was able to piece everything together. If anything, this film proves that Martin Scorsese had the power to direct anything he wanted after…
During their career, the Coen brothers went back and forth between dark dramas and comedies. During the 11 1/2 years since the release of Fargo, they really leaned onto the latter with only 2001’s The Man Who Wasn’t There being the only real non-comedy released during that time. As such, you can call No Country…
