Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-31 (Friday)

On 2/1/25 3:00 PM, Arthur Lipscomb wrote:

On 2/1/2025 11:06 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
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Well, at least the first day of classes went relatively smoothly! So, I ended up tackling a couple of movies, after I got home and watched soaps:
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Then I watched a couple of movies off Hulu:
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Take Cover (Hulu) - A 2024 Scott Adkins... well, it's less an "actioner" and more of a "thriller" flick.

 "Thriller?" No one wants to see Scott Adkins try to act.  Does he kick people in the face or not?
 

    As Scott Adkins flicks go, I would not put this one in the top echelon - it takes way too long to get going, and while the hand-to- hand combat scenes are actually pretty darn good and well choreographed (no quick cuts!!),

 OK, so there is face kicking.  I'll add it to the watch list.

Yes there is. And those sequences are good.
There's just probably not enough of them.

there aren't that many of them, and much of this film is
people hiding and talking.
    Gist: Adkins is a top-notch sniper for a (private?) contractor. Jack Parr (an actor I think I recognize, though not by name) plays his spotter. In the movie's open, a sniping "goes wrong". This makes Adkins' sniper want to quit, and so they agree to go on one last mission. Alice Eve (who doesn't appear onscreen much in this film, and seems to mostly do voice-over work) is their "supervisor".
    You should get suspicious for their "one last mission" when Eve's character starts giving them top-notch accommodations, like the hotel's penthouse suite, and a couple of masseuses(/hookers?) show up.
    It's not long before all 4 of them are trapped by *another* sniper team in a building across the way. From here on in, the 4 of them must avoid the sniper, or be killed by him.
    Part of the problem is that it takes way to long to get to this point. And the other problem is that it mostly isn't interesting enough once they do.
    I did like Romanian actress Madalina Bellariu as the main masseuse. And Parr was pretty good too.
    But, as I said - I would not rate this among the "best" of Adkins flicks (those probably being "Accident Man" and "One Shot").
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Acradian (Hulu) - I remember Arthur reviewing this months ago, and being cagey about it.

 Not me.  I just double checked and I didn't review it.  I don't think I've ever even seen it before. 

If it wasn't you, the only other person I can think of it might have been is shawn.

But it's definitely on my watch list now.  I may even get to this tonight!
 

    This 2024 (horror?) flick opens with Nick Cage running through a city that is under attack(?) or at war(?) somehow, though Nick is keeping right away from that action. This sequence ends when Nick gets to two infant/todder boys.
    The film then picks up 15 years later. Apparently, it's now "post- apocalypse". The boys are now teens, and Nick is a stern task master, making them do chores through the day. But, at night, they turn their (farm?) house into a fortress. As there are monsters about! - Real monsters! Trying to break in!!
    As an aside: At this point in the flick, I was hoping they were going to go with vampires of some sort. But no such luck.
    The older son (Maxwell Jenkins) keeps running off after chores, and we soon find out it's so he can go to a neighboring farm and hang out with the cute girl (British actress Sadie Soverall, from Netflix's "Fate: The Winx Saga", and the film "The Last Exit" (aka. "Little Bone Lodge"), whom they force to use an American accent) there.
    This is eventually heading towards a showdown with the monsters", as you'd expect.
    This was OK. But it's one of those films where they never bother to explain what the "apocalypse" that happened actually was. (I always take major points off for this!) Or where the "monsters" came from, or even really what they are.
    Presumably set somewhere in America, it's clearly not "filmed" in the U.S., and indeed the credits confirm that it was filmed in Ireland.