FiLM

Straight shooting

The gun opera that is the John Wick franchise keeps on rolling and shooting with gory gusto, and some great dogs to boot.

When we last saw Keanu Reeves as John Wick, he had himself a little time before getting excommunicated from the assassination club The High Table and all its perks. His killing a fellow assassin within the walls of the Continental Hotel means no more room service or dog sitting. He’s got a multimillion dollar bounty on his head and no place to kick his feet up.

John Wick: Chapter 3-Parabellum picks up right where the last one left off, with a battle-weary Wick running in the streets, putting distance between himself and the hotel and trying to figure out his next big move.

John Wick gets no time for rest in this movie, and he seriously gets his ass kicked while kicking ass. Credit Reeves for playing this part perfectly, on a level where we can believe that this dude who keeps getting stabbed and shot can turn on his power afterburners and keep shooting people in the face.

Wick basically runs from one action set piece to another, with returning director and former stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski making each of those set pieces a thing to behold. A gun battle inside a weapons museum counts as a franchise highlight, as does Wick’s gunfight atop a motorcycle.

And, yes, dogs play a major role in the shenanigans, which makes this dog person very happy. Wick’s travels take him to fellow assassin Sofia (Halle Berry) looking for assistance. Sofia has two German shepherds who get into the action during a gun battle and, let’s just say, they add an interesting element of violence to the proceedings.

Stahelski isn’t just a master of human stunts, as things turn out; he’s totally capable of getting badass performances out of canines, too. Wick’s beautiful pit bull does have a place in the film, so those of you who have missed that pup will be pleased.

As for Berry, she may’ve missed her calling all these years. She’s beyond awesome in this movie, a veritable action star who actually outshines Reeves during her major battle scene.

As good as Berry is, the best supporting player in the film is Mark Dacascos as Zero, a sushi chef/ assassin who goes up against Wick while also having feelings of hero worship for him.

Another stop along the way has Reeves sharing screen time with Anjelica Huston as The Director, a stern Russian who talks dirty business while punishing ballerinas. Laurence Fishburne returns as the Bowery King, so the coolness of that Matrix connection continues.

Asia Kate Dillon proves to be the film’s weak link as the Adjudicator, a representative of the High Table sent to set matters straight with the Continental, Wick and the Continental’s manager, Winston (an always growly Ian McShane). Dillon is dull as the Adjudicator, basically killing all the scenes where the character shows up.

As for Parabellum’s place in the series, I’ll go ahead and call it the best in the franchise after the original. It’s got the largest scope, and Stahelski and Reeves continuously top themselves with each action feat and gun ballet. Stahelski is making a serious run at being one of cinema’s all-time best action directors. You really feel every shot, every hit and every fall in this movie. The action scenes have a major clarity to them, with crisp and concise editing that makes it very easy to follow the mayhem. It’s all insanely beautiful.

This chapter, like those before it, ends with a big cliffhanger, so it’s a safe bet the story will continue. Like the character himself, this money train won’t be bleeding out anytime soon. Ω

“Do you know where i can sell this for more bullets?”

John Wick: Chapter 3-Parabellum 12345

4Avengers: Endgame The Marvel universe gets its most grandiose chapter with Avengers: Endgame, a fitting successor to last year’s Infinity War and a generous gift to those of us who like our movies with superheroes in them. When last we saw Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), he was a survivor of the dreaded Thanos (Josh Brolin) finger snap, a universe altering occurrence that took out half its living creatures and provided for that tear-jerking moment when Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and many others turned to dust. Endgame picks up where that action left off, with Stark floating in space and keeping a video journal of his inevitable demise having run out of food and water. Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Rocket (Bradley Cooper) are among the other survivors, dealing with the repercussions of so much death on Earth, just like Justin Theroux in The Leftovers. Oh, there are tons of questions this movie needs to answer in its three-hour-plus running time. Where’s Thanos? Where’s Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)? Is Tony permanently marooned in space? What’s been going on with Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) during all of this Thanos hullabaloo? Is everybody really dead? Does Star Lord (Chris Pratt) still have his Walkman in the Great Beyond? Good news: the movie answers many of your questions and more thanks to another well-balanced screenplay and a crack directorial job from the team of Anthony and Joe Russo. When you leave Endgame, your belly will be happily full of cinematic satisfaction.

2Charlie Says Mary Harron, director of American Psycho, helms this movie about real life psycho Charles Manson (Matt Smith) and three major female members of his “family,” those being Leslie Van Houten (Hannah Murray), Susan Atkins (Marianne Redding) and Patricia Krenwinkel (Sosie Bacon). Harron and longtime screenwriting partner Guinevere Turner try to make an insightful look at the three women in their early prison life while using flashbacks to show a buildup to the crimes that got them there. The film makes the mistake of trying to portray the three women as brainwashed victims, with their every line delivery accompanied by that patented Manson Family smile. The film works fairly well when showing life on the ranch with Manson and the ways he manipulated those around him. It’s brief depiction of the murders is chilling. As for the prison scenes where the three women are going through a form of therapy, those scenes alternate between pretty good and very bad. Harron is a gifted director, and a full-fledged movie about Manson and his followers might’ve been something else from the likes of her. A semi-sympathetic depiction of his “family victims” leaves a slightly bad taste in the mouth. (Available for streaming and rental during a limited theatrical release.)

3Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile Director Joe Berlinger is no stranger to dark subjects. He directed the documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, a movie that arguably helped release three innocent men from prison. Earlier this year, he directed Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, a four-part documentary series on the infamous serial killer. Now comes this, a narrative film about Bundy’s life, focusing on the years in which he was killing women while having a relationship with Liz Kendall (Lily Collins), a single parent he met in a bar. Zac Effron steps into the role of Bundy in a way that is downright frightening. As it turns out, if you mess with Effron’s hair a bit, he’s a dead ringer for Bundy, but his work here goes well beyond physical resemblance. There was plenty of footage of Bundy for Effron to study. (His murder trial was televised, a first in American history.) And Effron definitely captures Bundy’s creepy, deceptive charisma. Berlinger’s film focuses on the charms that fooled some who knew Bundy, a mostly affable, cheerful guy in the public eye. There was something supremely evil boiling behind his movie star eyes, and Berlinger opts for a film that mostly avoids his depraved deeds in favor of examining his life away from the murders. It’s a risky approach that mostly works, risky in that Berlinger could be accused of romanticizing Bundy with the casting of Effron and the lack of carnage in the movie. This is a horror story, but one that favors creeping terror over massive bloodletting. Berlinger covered the details of Bundy’s crimes (using Bundy’s own words) in the documentary. (Streaming on Netflix during a limited theatrical release.)

3Long Shot Charlize Theron stars as Charlotte Field, Secretary of State and potential Presidential candidate. Her romantic interest is Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen), a journalist turned speech writer who, not surprisingly, smokes lots of weed. Flarsky is a dweeby, wind breaker-wearing columnist whose alternative weekly newspaper is sold to a conservative media mogul (an unrecognizable Andy Serkis). He quits his job and finds himself attending a high society party featuring Charlotte and Boyz 2 Men along with best pal, Lance (O’Shea Jackson, Jr., showing he’s a lot funnier than his reasonably funny dad, Ice Cube). Turns out Fred knows Charlotte. She was a neighbor when he was a kid, and she, being three years older, babysat him. They get reacquainted, Fred gets a job as her speech writer, one thing leads to another, and there you have it, one of this year’s most unlikely rom-com pairings. It’s also a pairing that works swimmingly because Theron and Rogen have serious screen chemistry. Whatever you think of this pairing before you see the movie, Theron and Rogen pull it off. Their courtship is funny, awkward, comedically drug-laced and utterly convincing. There are many fantasy elements to this movie, but most of those play out on the political side. As for the romance part, that’s the most realistic thing happening in this film. Charlotte likes to party, and much of the Fred part is modeled after Rogen, and Rogen is the king of partying. It’s a good match.

1Pokemon Detective Pikachu Walking into Pokémon Detective Pikachu, there’s an established mythology. It’s not an origin-of-thePokémon movie. It’s a, “If you don’t know anything about Pokémon, none of this is going to make a lick of sense” movie. Ryan Reynolds voices the title character, so that could be fun, right? It’s fun for about the first 15 minutes that Reynolds spends on the screen as the little yellow furball with a Sherlock Holmes hat. Then, Reynolds and the rest of them get lost in a haze of sloppy action and convoluted plotlines. No doubt, they got some good performers to participate in this moneymaker. Along with Reynolds, you get Bill Nighy as the creator of the Pokémon world, or something like that. (Still not sure what he really did.) Justice Smith plays Tim, the main protagonist, a young adult who has lost his father and befriends Pikachu. And then there’s the very talented Kathryn Newton, under-used as TV reporter wannabe Lucy Stevens. Heck, even Ken Watanabe shows up in this mess, doing pretty much what he did in Godzilla (looking up to the sky in awe). By the time this thing wrapped, I honestly had no idea what had really happened, nor did I really care. The movie didn’t pique my interest in the Pokémon enterprise. It solidified my indifference. Let’s just say I’m not going to be downloading any of that shit to my phone.