To BQ visitors: a safe and pleasant weekend!
To Trump voters: Prices on your Christmas toys are already rapidly rising.....you can always give your kids a Trump crypto-coin wrapped in foil....that is, if ICE hasn't separated them from you yet......
The Accountant 2 (2025)
Back on 8/26/24, we posted a rave about the first film in this series (a third is in the works). We loved watching Ben Affleck's Christian Wolff, an autistic accountant for criminal scumbags around the country and the world.
Woe to those who took Christian's meek, introverted demeanor for granted......not knowing that his dad had trained him and his brother Braxton in all the fine arts of ass-kicking combat and weaponry.
Now our favorite lightning fast cruncher of figures and felons takes on a world wide sex trafficking ring comprised of the most lethal depraved killers imaginable.
Facing such formidable foes, Christian calls upon the long estranged Braxton, (Jon Bernthal), a freelance assassin with his own family issues.
This oddest of odd couples clash constantly, their sibling rivalry aggravated by Braxton's simmering anger and resentment.......a loud Alpha predator, Braxton's remembers their painful early years of protecting, defending and coping with his unique neurodivergent brother.
Christian, terribly limited in his capacity to express emotion openly, tries awkward attempts to reconcile with Braxton, who's as blunt and outward as Christian is contemplative and inert. But in a clever and funny sequence, the brothers find a way to reconnect with each other in, of all places, a line-dancing, country and western bar.
But then there's the traffickers who need decimating, and the bros must swing into desperate action to stop them from executing and burying a busload of children they've separated from their families.
Spectacular carnage erupts but the film never forgets it's really all about the two brothers.......and the set-up for the third film promises a lot of potential fun.....and who knows how many dead bodies along the way, with Affleck and Bernthal functioning as the Abbott & Costello of violent chaos.
BQ had a blast with this one. We always welcome a fresh take on action movies and this movie's got it. 4 stars (****).
Deep Cover (Amazon Prime - 2025)
This laugh-out-loud gem couldn't have come along at a better time......while we cringe watching our lunatic Toddler-In-Chief repeatedly soil his diapers with hourly meltdown tantrums.
Since the U.S. nuclear arsenal sits in the hands of a bawling, insane infant, we might as well enjoy a good laugh before we all head for Kingdom Come, right?
And here's the perfect comic salve to calm our nerves......behold a motley trio of London losers-in-life recruited to pose as drug kingpins looking for a big score.
Expatriate American Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard) runs an Improv school as she struggles to find acting roles. Painfully shy, introverted cubicle toiler Hugh (Nick Mohammed) signs up for her class, hoping to boost his total lack of self confidence. Not suffering from confidence issues is mostly unemployed actor Marlon (Orlando Bloom), whose auditions go awry due to his method-acting intensity and overly fierce dedication to his craft
This oddball group, desperate for attention (and cash) signs on as undercover actors under the supervision of hard-boiled police detective Billings (Sean Bean).Their unlikely mission - use their performing skills to convince notorious dealer Fly (Paddy Considine) they're badasses lookin' to make a major drug deal.....(and give Billings the chance to permanently swat Fly).
From this point on, prepare to laugh yourself silly, as the Improv team's hapless efforts increasingly spiral out of control....and outrageous plot twists make their dire encounters with London's most murderous thugs even more harrowing and delightfully absurd.
Howard functions mostly as a reactive straight woman to the escalating calamities that befall the group but watching her cope becomes a riot in itself. Bloom goes all out in striking comedic gold, as his gangster confrontations finally allow him to give his actor-ish excesses full reign. Meanwhile Mohammed collects his own share of priceless moments since the mobsters mistake him for the most dangerous of the improv phony rogues.
Nothing more to describe.....except funny, funny, funny all around.
If the current state of the world's becoming too much for you (and when isn't it?), here's at least a temporary remedy. 4 & 1/2 stars (****1/2).
Snow White (2025)
And now, the very last review of this disasterpiece you'll ever see posted on the internet....
At BQ, we pride ourselves at throwing in the last word on a film that millions of bloggers, professional reviewers and film buffs have already weighed in on.
Rest easy.......we plan to devote as little time possible to picking over the bones of the rotting corpse of Disney's live-action 'Snow White'......
What a relief for Disney when this trainwreck ended its woeful theatrical run so the remains could be shipped off to its final resting place....Disney Plus.
Everything ruinous and toxic in the Disney game plan hit Armageddon status with this one.....and not just their greedy cannibalizing of the original Walt Disney classics in their catalog, converting them into grotesque, poorly made live action movies that nobody asked for even needed.
What also splattered against the wall......Disney's misguided, misbegotten attempts to insert 'social awareness' lessons and lectures into their content.....they no longer were content to entertain us, they were out to teach us.
'Snow White' combined the worst of these agendas......and for all their strenuous efforts, Disney managed to pull off a film deficient on both its creative and technical elements.
And the poison apple on top this cake turned out to be its out-of-control star, Rachel Zegler, whose freewheeling social and political statements made marketing the 200 million dollar film a pop culture nightmare for the ages.
The new songs written for it? Tuneless droning with word salad lyrics that babbled on about.....honestly we've forgotten what any of those songs meant.
The dwarves? Another wrong-headed move. Six of them were generic Uncanny Valley things that looked like refugees from a Robert Zemeckis motion capture universe. ('Beowulf", "The Polar Express") Dopey on the other hand was clearly modeled on the Mad Magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman. Damn weird.
The Prince? None in sight, as Disney and Zegler threatened......only a watered down, half assed forest bandit who may have wandered in from an aborted live-action 'Robin Hood'. Yuck.
Evil 'Mirror Mirror' Queen? A grim bland Gal Gadot doing the usual connect-the-dots badassery and about as entertaining as her infamous attempt to cheer up COVID-stricken America by singing John Lennon's 'Imagine'.
The result? A mass audience of toddlers falling asleep and adults checking their phones for e-mails.
No need to go on.....and we did promise to be brief. Once again we hand out BQ's very special award for films that achieve a monumental amount of abysmal failure......the AFH....Abomination From Hell.
What's terribly sad.....we've handed out more AFH awards to Disney than any other studio, mainly for their atrocious live-action conversions.
Unfit for human consumption.
Trump's MAGA minions start tearing into each other over Trump contemplating a bomb drop on Iran. Sources claim that Trump is considering a 'Hunger Games' fight-to-the-death between Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson.....to be televised live as a Pay-Per-View streaming event on Amazon Prime. Said in insider, "The President thinks it will be a nice distraction while he's making up his mind about Iran...."
Sword of the Conqueror (1961), Return to Treasure Island (1954), Finders Keepers (1966)
Earlier this year we were forced to jettison Hulu (via Roku) as a cable-cutting alternative. Hulu's never ending outages, glitches and technical gaffes became intolerable, as well as their stubborn refusal to do anything to correct their foul-ups.
So back we went into the corporate arms of Comcast Xfinity, which did in fact bring us some unexpected pleasures.
Chief among them: the four 'ScreenPix' movie channels, a treasure trove of uncut, commercial-free movies exhumed from the dusty, musty depths of movie studio catalogues. Down there we found no end of gems, oddities, classics and films so long forgotten even we never heard of them.....(and we doubt even their makers remember them.....)
Where do we even begin here? Well, we need to begin somewhere, so we'll start with these three.....(good examples of the eclectic variety you'll encounter in the ScreenPix movie-verse.....)
Sword Of The Conqueror (1961) All too typical stiff-as-a-board, badly dubbed Italian costume epic, this one playing out somewhere on the fringes of the Roman Empire.
War Lord Alboino (a grimacing Jack Palance) rampages and snarls, grabbing himself a conquered kingdom's princess (Eleonora Rossi Drago) for his bride. But not if the Princess's noble warrior boytoy (Guy Madison) has anything to say about it.
Swords clash, lots of extras bite the dust during the ho-hum low energy battle scenes. and Palance clenches his jaw with abandon. We stifled more than few yawns....1 star (*).
Return to Treasure Island (1954) Not a bad idea for a cheeseball movie, really.....sort of an early primitive attempt at fan fiction. But the execution never rises above the level of Grade D Saturday morning kids television.....
Jamesina 'Jamie' Hawkins (the dazzling redheaded starlet Dawn Addams) is a descendent of, you guessed it, the Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island.
Off she goes to the island, but discovers there's no less than two competing gangs of villains also after the treasure. Lucky for her there's a shipwrecked shirtless hottie (Tab Hunter, still deep in the closet) to help her outwit and outfight them.
Hunter's character also provides unnecessary narration in a monotone drone, but we didn't mind at all the chance to gaze upon the lovely Addams, who graced every variety of film during the 50's and 60's. Pardon us while we sigh.....
Mostly a dreary snooze, except for those of us who fondly remember Dawn Addams. That's the only reason it's getting its 1 star (*).
Finders Keepers (1966) Another machine-tooled vehicle for British pop star Cliff Richard and his group, the Shadows.
Not really an Elvis clone, Richard was more in the mold of cutesy-wootsy, squeaky clean American teen heartthrobs like Frankie Avalon, James Darren and Fabian. The film's designed to let him and his group burst into peppy, cheerful songs every five minutes. Which they do, like clockwork.
But what a bonkers plot for fluffy pop musical....loosely based on the real story of a NATO H-Bomb lost off Spain's coastal waters...(later recovered but leaving radioactive damage).
Cliff, looking like an overgrown 12 year old, sings his adorable little heart out while a whole bunch of competing bumbling spies hunt for the bomb (and played by those wonderful Brit mainstays Robert Morley, Graham Stark, Peggy Mount and John Le Mesurier.)
We don't mind saying we had ourselves a fine old Guilty Pleasure time with this film, a remembrance of a far more innocent age. The vanilla tunes were soothing and we always loved seeing the British character actors in fully hammy glory And the extra bonus of eye-candy Vivienne Ventura, an exotic stunner who decorated pulp cinema and TV throughout the 60's. For all that stuff, 2 & 1/2 stars.....(**1/2). (But proceed at your own risk if you don't find this kind of cornball artifact as unintentionally entertaining as we do....)
Presence (2024) & Black Bag (2025)
A double whammy by an unbeatable pair of creative talents working at the very top of their game.
You never know what Steven Soderbergh will try next....either a high profile, mega-budgeted all star, popcorn munchin' crowd pleaser or a way-off-the-beaten track, low budget, under-the-radar oddball indie....(usually photographed and edited by Soderbergh himself under assumed names.)
And you can normally depend on screenwriter David Koepp's name to show up on multiple sooper-dooper franchise blockbusters ("Mission Impossible", "Jurassic Park", the last few "Indiana Jones" entries).
Within the space of this year and last year, these extraordinary filmmakers took two well worn genres - the ghost story and the spy story - and worked all new wonders with them. Together, they re-shaped and refurbished tales of a haunted house and a world of backstabbing secret agents.
The result? A ghost story and a spy thriller like none you've ever seen.
These two films do have one thing in common. In bending and warping their genres in unheard of directions, they're both brilliantly entertaining.
Presence is entirely shot from the perspective of a ghost wandering aimlessly around an empty house.......until a new family moves in. For 84 minutes, we see and hear only what the ghost does.
A troubled, married couple (Lucy Liu, Chris Stullivan) arrive with their teen son and daughter (Eddy Maday, Callina Liang). Their own personal problems, rivalries and insecurities become heightened by the unseen entity always observing them,and sometimes manifesting itself in sudden disturbing ways.
Whatever it is, it seems to have an agenda......but what?
You can probably tell we're being deliberately coy about any more details here.....you need to enjoy them for yourselves. And if you're paying careful attention, the film drops an advance clue about the 'Say WHAT now?!', mind boggling twist that closes out things with a mixture of ironic satisfaction and heartbreaking tragedy.
For Black Bag, Soderbergh and Koepp lay out a twisting, turning drama of British spycraft, where absolutely no one is to be trusted.
A team of spies working in Cyber Security are supposedly good friends and dinner party companions. (Except their dinner together resembles a verbally vicious "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", with their senior officer George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbinder) goading them into spilling their own personal hidden secrets.)
Someone among them has turned traitor and George is tasked with sniffing them out, even if it's his fellow spy and fiercely beloved wife Kathryn (Cate Blachette). The wicked fun here comes from the fact that his spy friends and colleagues are infinitely skilled liars due to the very nature of their business. With duplicity their stock and trade, they've no concept of truth either in their profession or their personal lives.
Twists abound here and the top-of-the-line cast spits out David Koepp's razor sharp dialogue with precise timing. They include Naomi Harris (Daniel Craig's Miss Moneypenny in his Bond films)....and holy silencers, Pierce Brosnan himself turns up as the aggravated cold-as-ice Head Spymaster. You don't want to miss the sight of Pierce lunching on a fresh fish that's still gasping for air.....
Be aware: this is no Bond, Bourne or Mission Impossible action spectacle......nobody hangs from buildings or airplanes. In Soderbergh and Koepp's universe of dark and dirty espionage, these agents most lethal weapons are their plotting minds. And that's why any two minutes of "Black Bag" is way more clever and exciting then the entire 170 minutes of 'Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning'.
For "Presence" 4 stars (****). For "Black Bag" 5 stars (*****). Put both on your 'must' list.
A Novel Murder by E.C. Nevin (2025)
From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (2025)
At long last......for everyone who's been dying to see a hot babe and a hulky assassin face off with dueling flamethrowers.....
Your prayers are answered. Burn baby, burn.
The title tells you all - in the Wick-verse, this film's taking place between John Wick 3 and John Wick 4. (For any of you who've been keeping the John Wick timelines carefully plotted on a wipe off board taking up an entire side of your living room).
But enough about the wacky Wick-y world. Let's talk Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), our front-and-center ass-kicker.
As a little girl, she sees her beloved dad mix it up with minions of the killer cult-master, 'The Chancellor' (Gabriel Byrne). Dad dies, but Eve falls into the hands of the Ruska Roma, the same network of international assassins that employ our own Johnny Wick.
The RR's Headmistress is the stern as stone 'Director' (Angelica Huson, sort of combining Morticia Addams and Jabba The Hut). Her exclusive training for kids includes instructions in both ballet and bashing people to pulp. Her best pep talk to ballerinas she forces to twirl until their feet bleed : "Tend to your wounds before sepsis or then we'd have to cut off your feet"
(This woman should be coaching on 'Dancing With The Stars'......_)
Truly inspiring, but Eve's got bigger fish to fry while they're still alive......she's on her own independent mission to wipe out the cult who killed Daddy. That sits not well with the Ruska Roma bunch, as Eve goes on a crotch-kicking, eye-gouging shoot 'n stab campaign, absorbing as much punishment as she dishes out.
Those of us who loved those few minutes in "No Time To Die' that featured the always lovely de Armas decimating guys while poured into a slinky evening gown.....here's an entire two hours of premium fight-like-a-girl nut-crackin'. And for your continued action pleasure very rarely interrupted with that slow, annoying stuff....like...uh...talking and plot exposition.
All the carnage finally leads our gal to the Chancellor's HQ, a snowy Bavarian Alpine village where Big C and his whole org are parked including their future assassin kiddies. More shooting, punching, kicking, stabbing and assorted bashing with whatever implements are handy. For the cherry on top of this dessert......fire up them flamethrowers!
As long as you don't look for (or expect) anything other than what we just described in this movie (and we don't think we left anything out), sit back, gobble that tub 'o buttered corn and giggle as the bodies pile up.
We don't think the filmmakers behind 'Ballerina' aspired to any other higher purpose in mind.....
3 stars (***).
To Trump voters: Even if you can't watch Trump's parade live, if you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of your tax dollars used to pay for it getting sucked down the drain.
No Kings.
