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Hit parade

Charlize Theron goes on a tear for the ages in Atomic Blonde, another pin on her action hero lapel after her ferocious turn as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road.

As Lorraine Broughton, an undercover agent on a mission in Berlin in the late ’80s as the wall begins to fall, she showcases her ability to kick people through walls with the best of them. She also shows how to use a freezer door as a weapon.

Directed by David Leitch, one of the directors of the original John Wick and future director of Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde pops with the same kind of kinetic energy as Wick when the bullets and kicks are flying. Also a legendary stuntman, Leitch knows how to make a hit look real, and the choreographed action scenes in this film stand as some of the year’s best. When Charlize lands a blow in this movie, you feel it in your face.

Based on the graphic novel The Coldest City, the film does drag at times, especially when Lorraine does the standard interrogation room narrative scenes with Toby Jones and John Goodman drilling her for answers. While it could’ve used some tightening in the edit room, the movie is very much worth wading through the shallow parts.

Lorraine tells her story in flashback as she hunts for a list containing nefarious info about herself and fellow agents, a list that could continue the Cold War for decades to come. Her hunt includes interactions with unorthodox agent David Percival (James McAvoy), somebody who mixes his espionage with partying and black market Jordache jeans trafficking.

Theron and McAvoy are good on screen together, and their dialogue scenes are some of the best that don’t involve teeth getting broken. As for the bonecrunching action, there’s a scene in this movie that rivals Logan for best action scene of the year. Leitch coordinates a battle that starts in a building and culminates with a car chase as if it were one shot, and it’s an exhaustive exercise in how to keep fighting while falling down stairs, getting shot and getting your face kicked in.

If the rest of the movie surrounding that scene were Theron and McAvoy gardening and sipping herbal teas while listening to a ball game on the radio, Atomic Blonde would still be worth seeing. It’s classically good.

McAvoy, having a great year with this and Split, has moved himself from amusing curio actor to heavy hitter in 2017. He’s a nut in this movie, as was the case in Split. He’s an actor willing to take some risks, and they are paying off. He also might win the award for keeping a cigarette in your mouth through a major ass kicking and strained dialogue delivery.

As good as he is, you don’t go to Atomic Blonde to see McAvoy. This is Theron’s vehicle, and she owns it in much the same way Keanu Reeves has taken his career to new levels with the John Wick films. Theron, an Academy Award-winning actress who can dramatically spar with the best of them, is a physical performer in league with the best of them. With this movie, she convinces you that neither Conor McGregor or Floyd Mayweather would stand a chance in the ring with her.

Late ’80s playlists are sure to spike on streaming services thanks to the film’s soundtrack, which includes David Bowie, Queen, Falco, ’Til Tuesday, the Clash and, quite notably, George Michael. (His “Father Figure” is put to astonishingly good use in that classic scene I mentioned above.) Leitch and company find some great ways to make the music a part of the film, and while I probably never need to hear “99 Luftballons” again, the presence of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Cities of Dust” is much appreciated.

The summer movie season is coming to a close, and while Atomic Blonde isn’t one of the summer’s best, it does have a couple of the summer’s best scenes. I’m not sure if there’s enough here to warrant another Atomic Blonde movie, but there’s definitely a call for more movies with Theron hitting people in the face with freezer doors. Or, just hitting and kicking people in general. She’s quite good at it. Ω

“Surely you saw my two-star passenger rating before you picked me up.”

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4Baby Driver This is a nice car chase movie antidote to The Fate of the Furious, a car chase movie that made me never want to see a car chase movie again, let alone Vin Diesel’s mushy mug. The soundtrack is one of the year’s best, and the guy in the title role is a major star in the making. Ansel Elgort plays Baby, who we see in the film’s opening sequence driving the getaway car for a robbery, a kinetic chase choreographed to the great Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms.” The scene snaps with a colorful energy that’s been missing from car chases of late. The best car chase movie of recent years, Drive, also featured a lonely driver and great vroom-vroom, but the soundtrack and look for that film were more meditative and hazy—not complaining; it worked beautifully. Baby Driver opts for a more clear-eyed, zippy approach, and it pays off. Edgar Wright writes and directs for this, a project he took up after his failed dalliance with Ant-Man. The chases go off with precision editing, filmed in a way that makes you feel like you are in the car. And the soundtrack, featuring music ranging from Simon and Garfunkel to Hocus Pocus and Queen, perfectly complements them.

5The Big Sick This is a romantic comedy like no other. Yes, two people fall in love in it, but that’s about all it has in common with the average romantic comedy. This film is an amazing beast off in its own rom-com category. Let’s just call it a rom-coma comedy. Real-life couple Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley) and Emily V. Gordon penned the script based on their own courtship. Nanjiani plays himself while the eternally awesome Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks) steps into the role of Emily. After a brief relationship, Kumail and Emily break up. A rare illness places Emily in the hospital, which results in Kumail not only coming back into her life, but dealing with her parents (Ray Romano and Holly Hunter), who feel slightly awkward around the guy who recently broke up with their daughter. Their story is incredible, and the way it is presented here, by a fine ensemble under the direction of the great Michael Showalter (Hello, My Name is Doris; Wet Hot American Summer) stands as one of the year’s best films. All the above mentioned actors are legitimate Oscar contenders, as is Showalter for his directorial efforts. I don’t think I’ve ever had to use my T-shirt sleeve to dab away tears from both laughing and crying while watching a movie in public. TheBig Sick got me both ways, and it will get you, too.

3Cars 3 The Cars franchise gets a nice little rebirth with Cars 3, a much, much better movie than Cars 2, and a slightly better movie than the first Cars. If you’re keeping score— and, really, you shouldn’t be, for there are far more pressing matters in your life—that still makes Cars 3 one of the more mediocre offerings from Pixar. Jettisoning the stupid spy movie bullshit—oops, I just cursed in a review for a G-rated movie … sorry, kids—that made the last installment convoluted and useless, the folks at Pixar choose to go an earthier, more emotional route with this one, and it works, for the most part. They also find a way to get the voice of the late Paul Newman into the mix, and hearing his beautiful growl again definitely warms the heart. Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is getting on in years, and he’s facing fierce competition from newer model cars like Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer), a strong, highly-trained vehicle that is beating McQueen on the racetrack. After a calamitous accident that renders his beautiful red sheen primer gray, McQueen is faced with either retirement or a new training regime comeback, Rocky III-style. The movie plays around with the notions of retirement and the rites of passage to the next generation, pretty heady stuff for a G-rated animated movie.

3Dunkirk Christopher Nolan’s ambitious film about the 1940 evacuation of allied troops from Dunkirk is one of the great visual cinematic spectacles of the 21st century, and for that, he should be applauded. Unfortunately, some of his scripting and editing decisions take away from the effectiveness of his movie. In a strange way, this is one of his least successful films. We’re talking about the guy who made Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, Inception, Insomnia and Memento. All of those films are better movies than Dunkirk. They are, in fact, great movies. Dunkirk is a good movie, and an occasionally astounding one if you manage to see it on an IMAX screen. Nolan shot on film, with all scenes intended for IMAX. Mixed with some incredible soundtrack work by Hans Zimmer, the movie begs to be seen in theaters. All that said, it still feels like a bit of an empty experience in some ways. I’m glad I saw it. I’m glad it exists, but it didn’t blow me away. Any Nolan fan knows that he loves to make his movies complicated in relation to time—Memento being a prime example—and the director himself has called Dunkirk his most experimental yet. Nolan is out to prove that you can cut away from a harrowing shipsinking sequence to an also harrowing battle sequence set in the air and maintain the tension. He simply doesn’t pull off the stunt every time. There are moments when he cuts away to another timeline that are nothing short of totally frustrating and unnecessary.

4Spider Man: Homecoming The last two Spidey adventures were a bummer. Things get back on track in a fun way with Spider-Man: Homecoming, a complete overhaul of the Peter Parker character thanks to the effervescent casting of Tom Holland, a fine actor and an impressive athlete (he does most of his own acrobatic stunts). The film gets a great villain in Vulture, played with snarling glee by Michael Keaton. Director Jon Watts and an admittedly ridiculous number of writers give Vulture an interesting origin. He’s Adrian Toones, a construction salvage worker who had a city contract to clean up the mess in New York City after the events of The Avengers. Some government types take over and kick him off the gig, leaving him pissed and with a bunch of high-tech alien junk in his possession. Toones constructs some weapons, including an elaborate winged suit, with the alien technology and, voila, Vulture. Parker is a younger incarnation this time out, dealing with typical high school traumas that seem a little trivial after the events of Captain America: Civil War, where he sort of saved the day. He’s gone from stealing Captain America’s shield to worrying about girls, and he’s just a little bored. Enter Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) who has given Parker his Spidey suit with some conditions, like that he can only be a “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” concentrating on local problems The film is basically one half kick-ass Marvel movie and one half enjoyable and frothy high school comedy.

4War for the Planet of the Apes The enthralling, modern Planet of the Apes trilogy comes to a close with its best chapter yet. Caesar (motion-capture Andy Serkis) is holding his own in the forest with his band of ape soldiers when a crazed colonel (Woody Harrelson) finds him and delivers a painful blow. Caesar finds himself on a revenge quest, with the likes of Rocket (Terry Notary), Maurice (Karin Konoval) and a new character named Bad Ape (a funny Steve Zahn) in tow. It all leads to a man vs. ape showdown for the ages, and the special effects that were great in the first movie are 10 times better in the third. For fans of the original Apes films, this movie is a virtual love letter to the series. It even has a mute girl named Nova (Amiah Miller), the same name as the girl who saw the Statue of Liberty with Charlton Heston in the original. Matt Reeves, directing his second Ape film, has managed to imbue his special effectsladen adventure with genuine emotion. This is a big budget blockbuster with heart and soul. While this concludes a trilogy, it’s a safe bet it won’t be the last for the Apes. If you recall, astronauts went missing in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Events in this film seem to be leading up to the events of the original movie. We might be getting a new dude in a loin cloth barking at Lady Liberty in our cinematic future.