3 Best Movies To Watch After Game of Death (1978)
Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver
My favorite moments in Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver come during quick breaths before a plunge. In the first, warriors Tarak (Staz Nair) and Milius (Elise Duffy) come to terms with their likely imminent deaths at the hands of a smoke-spewing tank. Having spent years of his life consumed by survivor's guilt, Tarak thought having a cause to die for would be enough. It isn't. He wants to live, but he probably won't. The next best thing is to die fighting alongside a peer like Milius. In the second, Kora (Sofia Boutella) is in the midst of blasting her way through the fearsome dreadnought King's Gaze. After slaying a warrior wielding a high-tech superheated sword, she takes a moment to catch her breath. With some pilfered cloth, she wraps the blade's hilt so she can use it without burning herself. It's a moment of improvisation, providing Boutella a chance to deliver a quieter piece of physical acting that stands in contrast to brawling with a corridor of goons or swordfighting Ed Skrein's Admiral Noble. Continue Reading →
To Live and Die in L.A.
It must have been easy to be cynical about William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. in 1985. After a blazing hot early 1970s, his critical and popular reputation bottomed out with four straight disappointments. So, it makes sense that someone might think Friedkin’s return to the cop-on-the-edge genre was a purely commercial decision, a hope to rekindle the fire he lit in 1971 with The French Connection. After all, that movie was both a commercial and critical smash. Continue Reading →
The Forever Purge
The Purge franchise, spanning five films and a now-canceled two-season television series, was never one to traffic in nuance or subtlety, or even optimism. Its premise is born of a kind of didactic, Shirley Jackson-esque thought experiment: what if all crimes, even murder, were legal for 12 hours? How would people react, and who would they become, when they could let out their raging ids just for a night? From its second film, the Carpenter-esque The Purge: Anarchy, series creator James DeMonaco tacked on a third question: What if *gasp* the rich and powerful were just using the Purge as a means to cull the poor, the marginalized, and nonwhite? Continue Reading →